the pope signed it (ib. iv. ii. 3749). Leaving for England, Knight was ordered back to Orvieto when he had reached Asti, but he appears to have arrived in London in February 1528 (ib. iv. App. p. 146). He seems to have admitted the failure of this embassy (ib. iv. ii. 4185), and went (13 Dec. 1528), with some misgiving, on another mission with Benet to Montmorency, to confer about Italian affairs, and was instructed to proceed thence again to Rome (ib. iv. ii. 5023, 5028, 5148–50; 5179, their instructions). On 31 Jan. 1528–9, however, Gardiner joined Knight and Benet at Lyons and brought new instructions; Knight went back to Paris and acted through March and April with Sir John Taylor (master of the rolls) as ambassador; in June Suffolk and Fitzwilliam were with him. On 30 June 1529, Knight, with Tunstal, More, and Hacket, arranged the treaty of Cambray (ib. iv. iii. 5744). He was at the convocation of Canterbury of 1529, and was admitted archdeacon of Richmond on 7 Dec. (Le Neve, iii. 141).
In February 1532 Hacket and Knight were appointed to treat with the emperor's commissioners about commercial intercourse, and the hope was expressed that they were well instructed, as they would have to meet ‘the polytikist felows in all this londe.’ The embassy did not bear much fruit (Letters and Papers, v. 804, 843, 946, 1056). Knight held at this time the rectory of Romald Kirk, Yorkshire. In November 1533 he had difficulties as to jurisdiction with the Archbishop of York, who, he writes, ‘deals very unkindly with me,’ and ‘cursed my official,’ Dakyn, the vicar-general (ib. vi. 1440). The archbishop offered to submit the dispute to arbitration (ib. p. 1441). On 30 Jan. 1535 Knight was a commissioner for collecting the ecclesiastical tenths, and on 15 Oct. 1537 was present at the christening of Edward VI.
On 29 May 1541 he was consecrated bishop of Bath and Wells, in succession to John Clerk [q. v.] (Le Neve, i. 144), and he resigned all his other preferments. At Wells Fuller relates that he built a market cross with the assistance of Dean Woolman. He died in 1547 at Wiveliscombe, Somerset, and was buried in Wells Cathedral next to Sugar's Chapel, where a pulpit which he had erected and which bears his arms served as a monument.
Knight was a faithful servant of Henry VIII, and a useful diplomatist of the old school, which regarded dissimulation as one of the requisites of success. He was a patron of Henry Cole [q. v.], whose education he seems to have paid for, and Cole calls him ‘my master’ (Letters and Papers, x. 321, xi. 573). When in London Knight lived in a house in Cannon Row, Westminster, afterwards (1536) assigned, in accordance with an act of 27 Henry VIII, to the bishops of Norwich. By his will he left money to Winchester and New Colleges.
[Wood's Athenæ Oxon. ed. Bliss, ii. 752; Cassan's Bishops of Bath and Wells, i. 447, distinguishes Knight from William Knight of Merton College, Oxford, who lived about the same time; Fuller's Worthies, ed. 1662, p. 205; State Papers, Henry VIII; Dixon's Hist. of the Church of England, ii. 284, gives a character; Strype's Memorials, I. i. 86, 136, 188, II. i. 9, III. i. 452; Cranmer, pp. 77, 135; Thomas's Hist. Notes; Syllabus to Rymer's Fœdera; Nicolas's Privy Purse Expenses of Hen. VIII, p. 118; authorities quoted.
KNIGHT, WILLIAM (fl. 1612), divine, a native of Arlington, Sussex, was matriculated as a pensioner of Christ's College, Cambridge, on 1 July 1579, went out B.A. in 1582–3, was subsequently elected a fellow of his college, and in 1586 commenced M.A. His friend Joseph Hall, afterwards bishop of Norwich, wrote, encouraging him to persist in the calling of the ministry, and commended his ‘variety of tongues and style of arts.’ Knight was instituted to the rectory of Barley, Hertfordshire, on 19 April 1598, but before the close of that year he exchanged the benefice, with Andrew Willet, for the rectory of Little Gransden, Cambridgeshire. On 12 July 1603 he was incorporated M.A. at Oxford. Willet terms him ‘vir probus, prudens, doctus, mihique amicissimus.’
He was author of: 1. ‘A Concordance Axiomatical, containing a Survey of Theological Propositions, with the Reasons and Uses in Holy Scripture,’ London, 1610, fol. 2. Latin epistle prefixed to Joseph Hall's ‘Mundus alter et idem,’ Frankfort, n. d.
[Cooper's Athenæ Cantabr. iii. 16; Bishop Hall's Works (Pratt), vii. 251, x. 132; Heywood and Wright's Univ. Trans. i. 465, ii. 10; Horsfield's Sussex, i. 322; Newcourt's Repertorium, i. 800; Strype's Annals, iii. 400, App. p. 201 fol.; Willet's Epist. Ded. to Harmonie on 2 Samuel; Wood's Fasti Oxon. (Bliss), i. 229, 300.]
KNIGHT, WILLIAM (1786–1844), natural philosopher, son of William Knight, a bookseller, of Aberdeen, was born in that city on 17 Sept. 1786. In 1793 he entered the Aberdeen grammar school, where he was a contemporary of Lord Byron. Though not in the same class with him, he preserved a vivid recollection of the poet, whose disposition he described in later life as ‘most damnable.’ He entered the Marischal College and University in 1798, graduated M.A.
