Samuel Knight: Notes on Cambridgeshire churches

Samuel Knight (? 1678-1746), Canon of Ely and rector of Bluntisham, Hunts was born in London and educated at St Paul's School and Trinty College, Cambridge. He graduated BA during the year 1702-3, MA in 1706, and DD in 1717, and was later incorporated at Oxford in 1740. He was ordained priest in 1704 and held a number of church positions in East Anglia. He was a keen collector of manuscripts and antiquary and counted amongst his acquaintances many of the foremost antiquarian scholars of the age, including William Cole, Edmund Gibson, Thomas Tanner, White Kennett and Thomas Baker. He died in 1746.

With drafts of his lives of Erasmus and John Colet. The book was formerly used by an unidentified 17th cent. divine to draft sermons. Among the notes (fos 60-2) are copies of the wills of John Sixtin (24 Mar. 1519), John Yonge (25 Apr 1516), Andrew Ammonius (17 Aug. 1517), and William Lychefeld (30 Jan. 1519).

Belonged to Samuel Knight DD, prebend of Ely and rector of Bluntisham, Hunts. After Knight's death in 1746, the MS. descended to John Percy Baumgartner of Milton, Cambs., who presented it to the Library in 1861.

Please cite as Cambridge University Library, Department of Manuscripts and University Archives, Samuel Knight: Notes on Cambridgeshire churches, MS Add.21

Knight's Lives of Erasmus and of John Colet were published in London in 1724 and 1726 respectively.