Henry Gally Knight

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Henry Gally Knight
Knight, c. 1840s, in a portrait by Samuel William Reynolds Jr.
Member of Parliament for North Nottinghamshire
In office
1835-1846
Member of Parliament for Malton
In office
1831–1832
Member of Parliament for Aldborough
In office
1814–1815
Personal details
Born
Henry Gally

(1786-12-02)2 December 1786
Died9 February 1846(1846-02-09) (aged 59)
SpouseHenrietta Hardolph Eyre
RelativesJohn Gally Knight (uncle)
Frances Jacson (aunt)
Maria Elizabetha Jacson (aunt)
EducationTrinity Hall, Cambridge

Henry Gally Knight, F.R.S. (2 December 1786 – 9 February 1846) was a British politician, traveller and writer.

Biography[edit]

Knight was the only son of Henry Gally (afterwards Gally Knight), barrister, of Langold, and was educated at Eton and Trinity Hall, Cambridge.[1] He succeeded in 1808 to estates at Firbeck and Langold Park which his father had inherited in 1804 from his brother John Gally Knight.[2]

Knight was appointed High Sheriff of Nottinghamshire for 1814–1815.[citation needed] He also held the office of deputy-lieutenant of Nottinghamshire.[3] He was a Member of Parliament for the constituencies Aldborough (12 August 1814 - April 1815), Malton (1831–1832; 31 March 1835 - 9 February 1846),[2] North Nottinghamshire (1835 and in 1837). In parliament he was a fluent but infrequent speaker. He was also a member of the commission for the advancement of the fine arts.[3]

Knight was the subject of the 1818 satirical poem "Ballad to the Tune of Salley in our Alley" by Lord Byron, in which Byron facetiously accuses him of being not only a poetaster, but a dandy as well.[5]

Knight owned Firbeck Hall in Rotherham. Sir Walter Scott's novel Ivanhoe is set nearby, and Knight may have been Scott's source of local information when he was writing the book. He was admitted a Fellow of the Royal Society on 20 May 1841.[6]

Family[edit]

Knight was the nephew of the novelist Frances Jacson.[7] He married Henrietta, the daughter of Anthony Hardolph Eyre of Grove Park, Nottinghamshire and the widow of John Hardolph Eyre. They had no children.[3]

Works[edit]

Nave of the Church of St. Trinité Caen, from An architectural tour in Normandy[8]

Knight was the author of several Oriental tales, Ilderim, a Syrian Tale (1816), Phrosyne, a Grecian Tale, and Alashtar, an Arabian Tale (1817).

He was also an authority on architecture, and wrote various works on the subject, including Hannibal in Bithynia, An architectural tour in Normandy (1836),[8] The Normans in Sicily (1838),[9] and The Ecclesiastical Architecture of Italy (1842-4), described by Pevsner as a "sumptiously illustrated sequel to The Normans in Sicily".[10] These books brought him more reputation than his fictions.[11]

References[edit]

  1. ^ "Gally (or Gally-Knight), Henry Gally (GLY805HG)". A Cambridge Alumni Database. University of Cambridge.
  2. ^ a b Stokes, Winifred; Thorne, R. G. (1986). "GALLY KNIGHT, Henry (1786- 1846), of Firbeck Hall and Langold Park, Yorks.". In Thorne, R. (ed.). The History of Parliament: the House of Commons 1790-1820. Boydell and Brewer.
  3. ^ a b c  One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Wroth, Warwick William (1892). "Knight, Henry Gally". In Lee, Sidney (ed.). Dictionary of National Biography. Vol. 31. London: Smith, Elder & Co. pp. 253–254.
  4. ^ Byron, George Gordon (11 April 1818). Ballad  – via Wikisource.
  5. ^ See especially Byron's fifth stanza:

    He rode upon a Camel's hump
    ⁠Through Araby the sandy,
    Which surely must have hurt the rump
    ⁠Of this poetic dandy.
    His rhymes are of the costive kind,
    ⁠And barren as each valley
    In deserts which he left behind
    ⁠Has been the Muse of Gally.[4]

  6. ^ "Lists of Royal Society Fellows". Archived from the original on 22 January 2007. Retrieved 15 December 2006.
  7. ^ Percy, Joan. "Jacson, Frances Margaretta (1754–1842)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/40495. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
  8. ^ a b Knight, Henry Gally (1836). An architectural tour in Normandy : with some remarks on Norman architecture. London: J. Murray.
  9. ^ Knight, Henry Gally (1838). The Normans in Sicily; being a sequel to "An architectural tour in Normandy". London: J. Murray.
  10. ^ Pevsner, Nikolaus (1972). Some Architectural Writers of the Nineteenth Century. Clarendon Press. ISBN 978-0-19-817315-1.
  11. ^  One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Cousin, John William (1910). "Knight, Henry Gally". A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature. London: J. M. Dent & Sons – via Wikisource.

External links[edit]

Parliament of the United Kingdom
Preceded by Member of Parliament for Aldborough
1814–1815
With: Henry Fynes 		Succeeded by
Preceded by Member of Parliament for Malton
1831–1832
With: Francis Jeffrey 1831
Lord Cavendish of Keighley 1831
Charles Pepys 1831–1832 		Succeeded by
Preceded by Member of Parliament for North Nottinghamshire
1835–1846
With: Thomas Houldsworth 		Succeeded by
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