the crown arrived at no decision in 1712 and 1728. Knollys died in France in April 1740. One Elizabeth Price issued in 1696 a pamphlet entitled ‘The True Countess of Banbury's Case relating to her Marriage rightly stated in a Letter to the Earl of Banbury,’ Lond. 1696, sm. fol. The writer claimed, after living with Knollys at London, Paris, and Mantua, to have married him at Verona, 7 April 1692, but Knollys denied her statement, and was legally married at the time to Elizabeth, daughter of Edward Lister of Barwell, Leicestershire. The latter was his first wife. By his second wife, Mary (d. 1762), daughter of Thomas Woods of St. Andrew's, Holborn, he left a surviving son, Charles (1703-1771), of Christ Church, Oxford (B.A. 1725, M.A. 1728), who was titular Earl of Banbury, and was vicar of Barford, Oxfordshire, from 1750 till his death. The vicar's two sons, William (1726-1776) and Thomas Woods Knollys (1727-1793), both officers in the army, were also successively titular Earls of Banbury. The latter's son, William Knollys, called eighth Earl of Banbury (1763-1834), took legal steps to reassert his claim to the earldom. He was appointed ensign of the 3rd foot-guards in 1778, and lieutenant, with rank of captain, in 1788. He served throughout the campaign in Flanders in 1793, and became lieutenant-colonel in December of that year, and in 1796 brevet-colonel. He was with the grenadier battalion of guards throughout the expedition to Holland in 1797. In 1802 he was promoted major-general, and in 1808 lieutenant-general. In 1818 he became lieutenant-governor of St. John's, in 1819 general in the army, and was later governor of Limerick.
In 1806 he petitioned the crown for his writ as a peer. On 17 Jan. 1808 the attorney-general, Sir Vicary Gibbs, reported that the resolution of the lords in 1692-3 was ‘not a conclusive judgment’ against the claim, and that no attempt had been made to reverse the decision of the court of king's bench, but that the legitimacy of the Nicholas Knollys, the first petitioner, was doubtful. After five years' discussion and a reconsideration of all the former proceedings by the committee of privileges of the House of Lords, the lords on 15 March 1813 resolved that the claimant was not entitled to the title of earl. An ‘eloquent and forcible’ protest, enunciating the illegality of this decision, was drawn up by Lord Erskine, and was signed by the Dukes of Kent, Gloucester, and Sussex, and six other peers. The general died at Paris of influenza, 20 March 1834 (see Gent. Mag. 1834, ii. 209), leaving by his wife (a daughter of Ebenezer Blackwell of London) a son, Sir William Thomas Knollys [q. v.] Since the decision of 1813 the family have taken no steps to assert their right to the earldom of Banbury.
[For the life of William, earl of Banbury, see Dugdale's Baronage; Spedding's Bacon; Gardiner's Hist. of England; Nichols's Progresses; Doyle's Official Baronage. Much of the earl's official correspondence is in Brit. Mus. Addit. MSS. (cf. index for 1854-75). The fullest account of the peerage case is in Sir H. N. Nicolas's Treatise on the Law of Adulterine Bastardy (1836), which includes the reports of proceedings in the House of Lords from 1661 to 1813. A good summary of the litigation appears in G. E. C[okaync]'s Complete Peerage, 1887, i. 229 sq. Burke's version of the story in Romance of the Peerage and in Extinct Peerage is unsatisfactory.]
KNOLLYS, Sir WILLIAM THOMAS (1797–1883), general, born on 1 Aug. 1797, was eldest son of General William Knollys, called eighth Earl of Banbury, and until 1813 Sir William held the courtesy title of Viscount Wallingford [see under Knollys, William, Earl of Banbury, ad fin.] Educated at Harrow and Sandhurst, Knollys received his first commission in 1813, when little more than sixteen, in the 3rd (now the Scots) guards, and was almost immediately despatched with a draft to the Peninsula. Thence he crossed the Bidassoa into France with the victorious English army, and after the passage of the Adour was attached to the force which invested Bayonne. The first day he joined the headquarters of his battalion he was detailed for outpost duty, and on being shown the area which he was to guard by Lieutenant-colonel (afterwards Field-marshal) Sir Alexander Woodford, he found his own sentries stationed behind one hedgeside of a narrow lane, while the French sentries lined the other hedgeside. But Colonel Woodford explained that he need give himself no concern about this anomaly, for that the pickets of both nations had for some time held it a point of military honour and courtesy never to molest one another so long as the respective delimitations of ground were observed. Indeed Knollys was wont to dwell on the difficulty experienced in preventing this mutual forbearance merging into actual friendship, leading the opposing pickets to exchange presents of wine and tobacco, and thus allowing undesirable intelligence to leak out.
On the occasion of the French sortie from Bayonne, 14 April 1814, Knollys was again with the outposts. He had noticed an ominous stir in his front, and his suspicions had been
