Edward Knight’s Inheritance: The Chawton, Godmersham, and Winchester Estates - CHRISTINE GROVER

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The story of the Knight family’s involvement in Winchester begins with the mother-in-law of Sir John Lewkenor, Anne Mynne.  Sir John was the nephew of Sir Christopher Lewkenor and a cousin of William Woodward and Elizabeth Martin.  Anne’s husband, George Mynne of Woodcote Park, Epsom, was described as a merchant, draper, clothier, royal servant, politician, ironmaster, moneylender, clerk in Chancery, and extortionist (Malden 271-78).³  Following George’s death in 1648, his trustees managed his estate on behalf of his widow, Anne.  In 1649 Anne purchased the reversionary interest of the Manor of Steventon in Hampshire from Thomas Brocas (Page 171-74).  In 1650 she purchased the manor belonging to Edward Darcy in Epsom.

 

So how did the Abbey Farm (the home farm and site of Hyde Abbey) and Abbots Barton (the grange farm) end up in the hands of the owners of Chawton?⁴   After Hyde Abbey was dissolved in 1538 by Henry VIII, Hyde Abbey’s farms were separated and sold to different owners. 

•  In 1650 Anne Mynne purchased Abbots Barton from the financially-ruined owner. On Anne Mynne’s death in 1663 her estates passed to her daughters:  Elizabeth (wife of Richard Evelyn⁵) and Lady Anne (wife of Sir John Lewkenor of West Dean, Sussex). 
•  The Epsom estate passed to Elizabeth, Abbots Barton to Lady Anne, and Steventon was shared between them.  Under the law at that time, Sir John was seen as the owner of all Lady Anne’s wealth and property.  Lady Anne was well-connected.  Her husband’s uncle was Sir Christopher Lewkenor, MP for Midhurst (1628) and Recorder of Chichester (1640).  Sir John died in 1669 (aged 46) and Lady Anne (then aged 35), as was common for a young widow, soon married again.  Her second husband, Sir William Morley of Halnaker, Sussex, was also a rich and respected member of the gentry (Page 171-74).⁶  (The family trees of the Lewkenors and Knights are given in the Appendix.⁷)
•  When Lady Anne died in 1704, all her estates, including Abbots Barton, passed to her son John, who, like his father, also served as MP for Midhurst.  John died in 1706 with no legitimate heirs, and Abbots Barton passed to Elizabeth Martin, a distant cousin, through her parents Michael and Frances (née Lewkenor).  Elizabeth already owned extensive property, inheriting lands at Chawton in 1702 after the deaths of her brothers, Richard and Christopher. The Knight family had owned Chawton from 1524 when William Knight had taken on the lease of the manor place and farm.  When his descendent, Sir Richard Knight died in 1679 without heirs, the estate passed to the grandson of his aunt, Dorothy.  (See Appendix, Table 2.)  The eldest grandson, Elizabeth’s brother Richard, died of smallpox in 1687 while at Oxford.  Their brother, Christopher, also died young. (Page 171-74).⁶  (The family trees of the Lewkenors and Knights are given in the Appendix.⁷)
• Elizabeth Martin was a strong woman with a sense of duty and took an active part in managing her estates (Austen-Leigh and Knight 124).  Her detailed accounts have survived at Hampshire Record Office.⁸  As a requirement of her inheritance, Elizabeth changed her name to Knight as her brothers in their turn had done.  When Elizabeth married her cousin William Woodward (son of Elizabeth Lewkenor, her mother’s sister), he too changed his name to Knight, thus perpetuating the Knight family name even though the last direct heir had died in 1679 (Burke 442-44; Austen-Leigh and Knight 122-24, 127-29).  Four years after William Knight (né Woodward) died in 1721, Elizabeth married Bulstrode Peachey, who was at one time MP for Midhurst.  Her second husband also relinquished his family name, becoming known as Peachey Knight; such was the power of the inheritance conditions. 
• The marriage settlement between Elizabeth Knight and Bulstrode Peachey was used to protect the rights of Elizabeth’s heirs once Bulstrode had rights over his wife’s property.⁹  If such an agreement had not been reached, the future of Chawton and Abbots Barton would have been very different.  Elizabeth was not entirely happy with the settlement, but “she accepted for the sake of peace.”¹⁰  There is some doubt whether Peachey was happy to go through the legal process to separate out the two interests to ensure the profits from Elizabeth’s estates went to her and for her lands to be passed to her heirs rather than to his family.  In a somewhat complaining tone, Bulstrode noted in his will that he had laid out “considerable sums of money in repairs and lasting improvement of Mrs Knight’s separate estate and of her other estates all with repairs and improvements.”  Bulstrode died in 1735, and as his brother had pre-deceased him, his lands were left to his nephew Sir John Peachey for his life.¹¹ Elizabeth died in 1737, leaving no surviving heirs and no immediate relatives.
• Elizabeth had no children or close relatives, and so her two Hampshire estates passed in tail-male to a distant relative, in this case a second cousin related three generations back.  The will set up an entail naming Thomas May of Godmersham, William Lloyd of Newbury, and the Rev. John Hinton of Chawton and their descendants successively as the heirs. A proviso or condition was that Thomas May, his sons, and the heirs of their respective bodies who came into possession of the premises, were to change their surnames to Knight.
• Thomas was the son of Anne May and William Broadnax.  His mother’s aunt Mary and her husband, Sir Christopher Lewkenor, were the grandparents of both Elizabeth Knight and her first husband, William Woodward. Thomas Knight, the new owner of Chawton and Abbots Barton, was well-respected, highly educated, and active in politics.  He was educated at Balliol College, Oxford, studied law, acted as High Sherriff of Kent, and became MP for Canterbury.  Born a Broadnax, Thomas had changed his name to May in 1727 after inheriting the estates of Sir Thomas May of Rawmere, near West Dean in Sussex.  Thomas married Jane Monk in 1729:  they had many children, but only five survived to adulthood, a son and four daughters, who died spinsters.  On Elizabeth’s death, Thomas once again was compelled to change his name as a condition of inheritance―this time to Knight.  Each change of name required a private and expensive Act of Parliament, and one MP commented, “This gentleman gives us so much trouble that the best way would be to pass an Act for him to use whatever name he pleases” (qtd. in Nokes 34).
• After his inheritance of the Knight estates, Thomas Knight took the opportunity to expand and consolidate his landholdings.  He sold Rawmere, the ancestral home of the Mays, and in 1744 he exchanged some of Lewkenor’s West Dean estate with land close to Chawton, now in the ownership of Sir John Peachey.  As the two estates had almost identical values, Sir John Peachey and Thomas Knight for “their mutual convenience and accommodation and for the improvement of their several estates in two counties have proposed to make exchange.”¹³
• When Thomas (Broadnax May) Knight died in 1781, his son, Thomas, inherited the three estates.  The younger Thomas did not appear to have such a concern for the Winchester estate or indeed history.  In 1785, he sold the site of Hyde Abbey, the burial place of the Saxon King Alfred the Great, his wife, and son to the County for the Bridewell—a House of Correction.¹⁴  He also sold other land nearby.  To be fair, these plots were not productive, so there was no financial benefit in retaining them (Grover 103, 119). 
• Thomas Knight died in 1794.  In his will he left Godmersham and his other estates, which included Abbots Barton, to his widow, Catherine, for her life and confirmed Edward Austen as his adopted heir.  He added the clause that if Edward did not have any children, then the estates should pass to Edward’s brothers in succession.  Thomas Knight’s estates had been tied up in trust between William Deedes (the elder and younger) and Nicholas Cage, of whom only William Deedes (the younger), was still alive.¹⁵  Four years after her husband’s death, Catherine decided that the estate was better passed over to Edward and his family to run, rather than for him to wait for her to die before inheriting.

•  Catherine Knight out of her love and affection for Edward Austen and in order to advance him to their present possession of the estates which were settled on him and his issue in remainder under the will agreed to convey all the estates unto and to the use of Edward Austen during the joint lives of him and her Catherine Knight subject to a rent charge or clear annual sum of £2,000 clear of all deductions and taxes to be reserved and made passable.¹⁶

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