life. He became known as a botanist of merit, corresponded with Mark Catesby, E. M. Da Costa [q. v.], and other members of the Royal Society, and won the esteem of Sir Hans Sloane. To him is due the first discovery in England of the ‘moor-ball,’ a species of fresh-water algæ of the conferva family, called by Linnæus Ægagropila, from its resemblance to the hairy balls found in the stomachs of goats (Dillwyn, British Confervæ, 1809, pl. 87). In order to find even a moderate number of these balls, he had to spend many hours wading in the lake at Wallingfen, in water from two to over three feet deep. Knowlton was also something of an antiquary. He discovered the exact site of the ancient city of Delgoricia, near Pocklington in Yorkshire, and communicated some observations on this and other subjects to the ‘Philosophical Transactions’ (xliv. 100, 102, 124). Two large deer's horns which he discovered, one resembling the horn of an Irish elk, are figured in the same volume (plate 422). Knowlton died in 1782 at the age of ninety. A botanical genus of the order Ranunculaceæ, comprising five or six species of plants indigenous to the Cape of Good Hope, has been named after him. A John Knowlton, gardener to Earl Fitzwilliam, whose will was proved in February 1782 (P. C. C. Gostling, fol. 95), was probably a brother of the botanist, and Charles Knowlton, who graduated M.A. from St. John's College, Cambridge, in 1751, and was presented, on 7 April 1753, by the Earl of Burlington to the small living of Keighley in Yorkshire, was almost certainly his son (Whitaker, Deanery of Craven, ed. Morant, p. 202; Gent. Mag. 1838, i. 544).
[Pulteney's Progress of Botany, ii. 240; Biog. Universelle, xxii. 498; Nicholson's Dict. of Gardening, ii. 220; Nichols's Illustrations, iv. 469, 748, 785, where several letters to and from Knowlton are printed.]
KNOX, ALEXANDER (1757–1831), theological writer, born at Londonderry, 17 March 1757, was descended from the Scottish family to which John Knox the reformer belonged. The father was a well-to-do member of the corporation of Derry. In 1765 John Wesley, while in Ireland, became acquainted with Mr. and Mrs. Knox, who both joined his society. Alexander formed an intimacy with Wesley, which was kept up until Wesley's death in 1791. Knox always expressed the deepest obligation to Wesley's influence, but denied that he owed to him his early religious impressions, which he attributed entirely to his mother (Letter to Mr. Butterworth in 1807). When he was twelve years old he lost his father. At an early age he became for a time a member of Wesley's society, but ‘a growing disposition to think for himself’ caused his ‘relish for their religious practises to abate before he was twenty.’ His weak health prevented him from passing through any regular course of education at all, though his writings prove that he managed to pick up a considerable knowledge of the classics and of general literature. He attributes his low spirits to his having been brought up to no regular employment; but he was also subject to epileptic fits. Twenty letters to him from Wesley, published in the ‘Remains,’ gave him much pious and rational advice. For a while he threw himself into politics. He was a good public speaker, as well as writer, in support of parliamentary reform in Ireland. His alarm at the proceedings of the United Irishmen convinced him that ‘any degree of popular reform would infallibly lead to complete democracy,’ and he finally became ‘an unqualified supporter of the existing constitution.’ In 1797 he renewed an intimacy with John Jebb [q. v.], which had commenced when Jebb was a boy at Derry school. He was private secretary to Lord Castlereagh during the rebellion of 1798 and afterwards. After the union Lord Castlereagh urged him to accept an offer of representing his native city, Derry, in the united parliament, and also to write a history of the union. Knox, however, retired from public life and devoted himself to theology, in which his chief interest had always lain. He lived a recluse life in lodgings in Dawson Street, Dublin. He spent 1801 and 1802 in England, where he made the acquaintance of Hannah More, William Wilberforce, and others of similar tendencies. This society, perhaps, deepened his religious impressions, for after his return to Ireland he commenced in 1803 a stricter course of life; but he always differed widely on many important points from the evangelical party. He now made the acquaintance of the La Touche family, and spent much of his time at their country residence, Bellevue, near Delgany, amid the Wicklow mountains. Bellevue became practically his home, though he still retained his lodgings in Dawson Street, Dublin, whither he retired on the death of Peter La Touche in 1827, and where he died, unmarried, 17 June 1831. He kept up a close intimacy with many attached friends, the chief among whom were John Jebb, bishop of Limerick; Charles Brodrick, archbishop of Cashel; Hannah More, whom he enthusiastically admired; William Wilberforce, whom he charmed with his conversational powers; and the whole family of the La Touches; Joseph Butter-
