The Stately Homes of England

by Llewellynn Frederick William Jewitt; S. C. Hall

Fire Dogs.

KNOLE HOUSE adjoins the pleasant and picturesque town of Sevenoaks, in the fertile and beautiful county of Kent—the “garden of England”—and is situate in its most charming and productive district, neighbouring the renowned Wealds, and distant but an hour from the metropolis of England.

The principal approach to the mansion is by a long and winding avenue of finely grown beech-trees, through the extensive park—the road sloping and rising gradually, and presenting frequent views of hill and dale—terminated by the heavy and sombre stone front of the ancient and venerable edifice. Passing under an embattled tower, the first or outer quadrangle is entered; hence there is another passage through another tower-portal, which conducts to the inner quadrangle, and so to the

“Huge hall, long galleries, spacious chambers,”

for which Knole has long been famous.

Of Knole, as with most of our grand old mansions, it is impossible to fix, with any degree of certainty, the date of its original foundation; “but the evident connection between the several properties of Knole and Sevenoaks with Kemsing, Otford, and Seale, coupled with the gifts of certain lands in Kemsing to the royal abbey at Wilton, appears to identify those manors with the terra regia of the Saxon Kings of Kent, who had, it is supposed, one of their palaces at Otford, to which place Sevenoaks and Knole have always been esteemed appendant, and were for some time after Domesday survey held by the same owners.” Early in the reign of King John, the manor and estates of Knole, with those of Braborne (Bradborne), Kemsing, and Seale, were held by Baldwin de Bethun, or Betune, Earl of Albemarle.

The first Earl of Albemarle was Odo, Count of Champaigne, a near relative by birth to William the Conqueror, and the husband of his sister, Adeliza. He was succeeded by his son, surnamed Le Gros, who was also made Earl of Yorkshire. This nobleman appears to have had an only child, a daughter named Hawise, who espoused William Mandeville, Earl of Essex, who, on her father’s death in 1179, succeeded to the title and estates. After his death without issue, his widow, Hawise, married William de Fortibus, who enjoyed the title, as did also her third husband, Baldwin de Betune, or Bethun. On his death the earldom reverted to William de Fortibus, the son of Hawise by her second husband.

In the fifth year of King John, Baldwin de Betune gave the manors of Knole, Sevenoaks, Bradborne, Kemsing, and Seale in “frank marriage” with his daughter Alice, on her marriage to William Mareschal, Earl of Pembroke, who was succeeded by his brother, who, being attainted, the lands were escheated to the Crown. These manors were next, it is said, given to Fulk de Brent; but he having been banished the realm, they again reverted to the Crown, and, the family having returned to allegiance, the lands were restored to them, and the Earl’s brothers—Gilbert, Walter, and Anselme—successively became Earls of Pembroke and Lords-Marshal. These earls having all died without issue, the estates “devolved on their sisters, in consequence of which Roger, son of Hugh Bigod, Earl of Norfolk, who married Maud, the eldest sister, became entitled, and died seized of these estates about 54 Henry III., without issue, leaving Roger Bigod, his nephew, his next heir, who, in the 11th of Edward I., conveyed them to Otho de Grandison, who, dying without issue, was succeeded by his brother, William de Grandison; and his grandson, Sir Thomas de Grandison, according to Philpot, transferred Knole to Geoffrey de Say, and the rest of the estates to other hands.”

Geoffrey de Say was summoned to Parliament by Edward III.; was Admiral of the King’s Fleet, and a knight-banneret; and distinguished himself in the wars with France and Flanders. He married Maud, daughter of Guy de Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick, by whom he left issue William, his son and heir, and three daughters, who eventually became co-heiresses “to this property, which continued in the family till the reign of Henry VI., when one Ralph Leghe conveyed the whole estate by sale to James Fiennes,” the grandson of the youngest of the three co-heiresses.