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Henry Knighton

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Abbey ruins St Mary of the Meadows

Henry Knighton (or Knyghton) (died c. 1396, in England) was an Augustinian canon at the abbey of St Mary of the Meadows, Leicester, England, and an ecclesiastical historian (chronicler).[1] He wrote a history of England from the Norman conquest until 1396, thought to be the year he died.[2]

Biography

Biographical information on Knighton mainly comes from his chronicle, in the first three books of which his name is shown as HENRICVS CNITTON.[3] It is thought his name indicates that he came from Knighton.[4] He was a canon at the "St Mary of the Meadows" abbey before 1363, since he was recorded as being present during a visit from King Edward III.[3] He was at the abbey for a further 33 years and in his writings included considerable detail on the abbey's economic well being.[5] The Augustinian abbey, where Henry Knighton was made a canon, was one of the wealthiest in England and stood on the northern edge of Leicester, in what is now Abbey Park.[4]

Knighton was a supporter of King Edward III and wrote well of him,[6] although historian Louisa D. Duls labels Knighton as a member of the "Lancastrian Detractors of Richard" school.[7] Knighton calls five of King Richard II's trusted advisors – Robert de Vere, Alexander Neville (Archbishop of York), Sir Michael de la Pole, 1st Earl of Suffolk (lord chancellor), Sir Robert Tresilian (chief justice of the King's Bench), and Sir Nicholas Brembre – the five evil seducers of the king ("quinque nephandi seductores regis").[8]

Knighton lived during the same time period as John Wycliffe and had personal knowledge of him as he went to Oxford when Wycliffe was a master there. However he was neither directly associated with Wycliffe or nor with the Lollards ("Wycliffites", followers of Wycliffe's philosophies). Knighton has been called the first historian of Lollardy.[9] He writes that those voicing Church complaints and echoing the principles of Wycliffe in 1382, hence being associated with the principles of the Lollards, were every second man in the Kingdom of England.[10]

Knighton did not care for Wycliffe's church reform doctrines or the Lollards as they threatened his monastic way of life or his personal safety.[11] He respected Wycliffe as an academic scholar, however, writing that he was a famous and important ecclesiastic and philosopher of the time.[12]

See also

From the 1913 Catholic Encyclopedia

Henry Knighton — (CNITTHON)

A fourteenth-century chronicler. Nothing is known of his career except that he was a canon of St. Mary's, Leicester, and that he was present when Edward III visited Leicester Abbey in 1363. His chronicle was first published by Twysden in "Historiae Anglicanae scriptores decem" (1652); a critical edition by Lumby in the Rolls Series contains an exhaustive study of the only two manuscripts which have survived. Both are now in the British Museum. This work consists of five books and covers the history of England from the accession of Edgar in 959 to the year 1366, in which it abruptly ends. The sudden conclusion suggests that the writer died in or about that year, though from an earlier passage in the work we know that he was threatened with blindness, so that he may have been forced to desist through loss of sight. A later writer from the same community continues the story (book V) from 1377 to 1395. The first three books are of no historical value, as they consist of admitted transcripts from Higden, whom Knighton supplements with unacknowledged extracts from Walter of Hemingburgh. He ensured the preservation of his own name by arranging that the initial letters of the chapters in books I and II should spell Henricus Cnitthon. The really important part of his work is the fourth book, which was written from his own knowledge, and which contains facts, particularly with regard to domestic history, not to be found in any other chronicler. A feature of special value is the economic particulars in which the work abounds. He carefully records the rate of wages, the prices of grain, wine, and cattle. He throws much light on the effects of the Black Death on the labour market, and on the inroads made on the feudal system by the liberation of the adscripti gleboe. He also details the evil effects of the pestilence which caused a dearth of priests that was supplied by the ordination of candidates ill-prepared and but little suited for the sacred ministry.

Chronicon Henrici Knighton vel Cnitthon Monachi Leycestrensis, ed. LUMBY in Rolls Series (London, 1889); LUARD in Dict. Nat. Biog., s.v.

References

  1. Back to citation Vaughan, p. 246 footnote 24
  2. Back to citation G. H. Martin (2004). "Knighton, Henry (d. c.1396), chronicler and Augustinian canon". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/15747. (Subscription, Wikipedia Library access or UK public library membership required.)
  3. Back to citation occurrence 3.0 Back to citation occurrence 3.1 Martin, 1995, p. xvii
  4. Back to citation occurrence 4.0 Back to citation occurrence 4.1 Martin, Geoffrey (2006). "Henry Knighton's Chronicle and Leicester Abbey". In Joanna Storey, Jill Bourne and Richard Buckley (ed.). Leicester Abbey: Medieval history, archaeology and manuscript studies. LAHS.
  5. Back to citation THE MIND'S EYE: Reconstructing the Historian's Semantic Matrix through Henry Knighton's Account of the Peasants' Revolt, 1381, 2011, by Sara Keehan (p. 33)
  6. Back to citation Drees, p. 271
  7. Back to citation Duls, pp. 212–214, 250
  8. Back to citation Martin, p. 392
  9. Back to citation Martin, p. xviii
  10. Back to citation Vaughan, p. 150
  11. Back to citation THE MIND'S EYE thesis (p. 44-47) by Sara Keehan
  12. Back to citation Deanesly, p. 239

Bibliography

  • Geoffrey Haward Martin (translator); Knighton's Chronicle 1337–1396; Clarendon Press, 1995, ISBN 0198205031
  • Duls, Louisa DeSaussure, Richard II in the Early Chronicles, Paris: Mouton, 1975
  • Deanesly, MargaretThe Lollard Bible and other Medieval Biblical Versions, Cambridge University Press, 1920
  • Vaughan, Robert, The life and opinions of John de Wycliffe, Holdsworth and Balls, 1831, 2nd ed. Internet Archiveeveryone is dum
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