Henry Gally Knight

{{Short description|British politician, traveller and writer (1786–1846)}}

{{Infobox officeholder

| name = Henry Gally Knight

| image = Henry Gally Knight Reynolds.png

| alt =

| caption = Knight, {{circa}} 1840s, in a portrait by Samuel William Reynolds Jr.

| office1 = Member of Parliament for North Nottinghamshire

| term1 = 1835-1846

| alongside1 = Thomas Houldsworth

| office2 = Member of Parliament for Malton

| term2 = 1831–1832

| alongside2 = Francis Jeffrey (1831)
Lord Cavendish of Keighley
Charles Pepys (1831-1832)

| office3 = Member of Parliament for Aldborough

| term3 = 1814–1815

| alongside3 = Henry Fynes

| birth_name = Henry Gally

| birth_date = {{birth date|1786|12|02|df=yes}}

| birth_place =

| death_date = {{death date and age|1846|02|09|1786|12|02|df=yes}}

| death_place =

| education = Trinity Hall, Cambridge

| relatives = John Gally Knight (uncle)
Frances Jacson (aunt)
Maria Elizabetha Jacson (aunt)

| spouse = Henrietta Hardolph Eyre

}}

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

Biography

Knight was the only son of Henry Gally (afterwards Gally Knight), barrister, of Langold, and was educated at Eton and Trinity Hall, Cambridge.{{acad|id=GLY805HG|name=Gally (or Gally-Knight), Henry Gally}} He succeeded in 1808 to estates at Firbeck and Langold Park which his father had inherited in 1804 from his brother John Gally Knight.{{cite encyclopedia |first=Winifred |last=Stokes |first2=R. G. |last2=Thorne |year=1986 |title= GALLY KNIGHT, Henry (1786- 1846), of Firbeck Hall and Langold Park, Yorks. |encyclopedia=The History of Parliament: the House of Commons 1790-1820 |editor-first=R. |editor-last=Thorne |publisher=Boydell and Brewer |url=http://www.historyofparliamentonline.org/volume/1790-1820/member/gally-knight-henry-1786-1846}}

Knight was appointed High Sheriff of Nottinghamshire for 1814–1815.{{citation needed|date=March 2021}} He also held the office of deputy-lieutenant of Nottinghamshire.{{DNB |inline=y |first=Warwick William |last=Wroth |wstitle=Knight, Henry Gally |volume=31 |pages=253–254}} He was a Member of Parliament for the constituencies Aldborough (12 August 1814 - April 1815), Malton (1831–1832; 31 March 1835 - 9 February 1846), 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.

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.{{refn|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.{{refn|{{cite wikisource |title=Ballad |wslink=The Works of Lord Byron (ed. Coleridge, Prothero)/Poetry/Volume 7/Ballad |last=Byron |first=George Gordon |authorlink=Lord Byron |date=April 11, 1818}}}}

}}

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.{{cite web|url=http://www.royalsoc.ac.uk/page.asp?id=1727 |title=Lists of Royal Society Fellows |accessdate=2006-12-15 |url-status=dead |archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20070122204215/http://www.royalsoc.ac.uk/page.asp?id=1727 |archivedate=2007-01-22 }}

Family

Knight was the nephew of the novelist Frances Jacson.{{cite ODNB |last=Percy |first=Joan |id=40495 |title=Jacson, Frances Margaretta (1754–1842)}} He married Henrietta, the daughter of Anthony Hardolph Eyre of Grove Park, Nottinghamshire and the widow of John Hardolph Eyre. They had no children.

Works

File:Trinité Caen Nave Architecturaltou00knig 0085.jpg

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), The Normans in Sicily (1838),{{cite book |last1=Knight |first1=Henry Gally |title=The Normans in Sicily; being a sequel to "An architectural tour in Normandy" |date=1838 |publisher=J. Murray |location=London |url=https://archive.org/details/normansinsicilyb00knigiala}} and The Ecclesiastical Architecture of Italy (1842-4), described by Pevsner as a "sumptiously illustrated sequel to The Normans in Sicily".{{cite book|first1=Nikolaus |last1=Pevsner |title=Some Architectural Writers of the Nineteenth Century|year=1972|publisher=Clarendon Press|isbn=978-0-19-817315-1}} These books brought him more reputation than his fictions.{{SBDEL |inline=y |wstitle=Knight, Henry Gally}}

References

External links

{{Hansard-contribs | mr-henry-knight | Henry Gally Knight }}
{{NPG name}}
[https://web.archive.org/web/20040817053051/http://www.rotherham.gov.uk/graphics/Learning/Archives+and+Museums/Rotherham+Greats/_The+19th+Century.htm A very brief biography]

{{s-bef

| before = Henry Dawkins

| before2 = Henry Fynes

}}

{{s-ttl

| title = Member of Parliament for Aldborough

| years = 1814–1815

| with = Henry Fynes

}}

{{s-aft

| after = Granville Harcourt-Vernon

| after2 = Henry Fynes