KNEBWORTH, HERTFORDSHIRE
KNEBWORTH,
HERTFORDSHIRE.
NEBWORTH Manor and Fort were granted at the Conquest by William I. to his favourite counsellor and captain, Eudo, surnamed Dapifer. Knebworth was fortunate in the rank or fame of its successive owners during the early periods of our history. In the reign of Edward I. its ancient fort was possessed by the powerful Robert de Hoo; in that of Edward II. it had passed to Thomas de Brotherton, fifth son of Edward I. by marriage with his daughter Margaret, afterwards created Duchess of Norfolk. Its next owner was the famous Sir Walter Manny. It devolved by heritage on Anne, daughter of the Duchess of Norfolk, and wife to John de Hastings, Earl of Pembroke. In the reign of Henry IV. it became the property of John Hotoft, Knight of the Shire for Herts; an eminent man in that reign, and subsequently Treasurer to the Household of Henry IV. His daughter married Sir Robert de Lytton, of Lytton in the Peak of Derbyshire, Governor of Bolsover Castle, and Grand Agister of the Forests in the Peak. His grandson (also named Robert), early in the reign of Henry VII., purchased the property of his maternal ancestry, and thus became Lord of Knebworth. This second Sir Robert de Lytton was of great note and power in his time: his family had always espoused the cause of the House of Lancaster; he fought with Henry VII. at the battle of Bosworth, and was by that king made Keeper of the Great Wardrobe, Under-Treasurer of the Court of Exchequer, one of the Privy Council, and Knight of the Bath. He is mentioned by Perkin Warbeck, in one of his manifestos, as exercising considerable influence in the councils of Henry VII., and was one of the most powerful of that king’s supporters, in point of possessions and descent. He held rich lordships in Derbyshire, Cheshire, Northamptonshire, Herts, and Essex. Knebworth became his principal residence. He enlarged the fortress, and changed its character into the elaborate and enriched architecture, which the part of the house now standing, and originally reconstructed by him, still retains.
The family of Lytton had been settled in Cheshire and Derbyshire from the period of the Conquest. Sir Giles de Lytton, nephew to the great Hubert de Lacy, Earl of Chester, whose arms he quartered, followed Richard III. to the Holy Land, and fought with him at Askalon. The Lyttons continued to hold offices of state or trust under successive monarchs till the reign of Elizabeth. Under Henry VIII., William de Lytton was made Governor of Bulloign Castle. Under Elizabeth, Sir Rowland de Lytton, Lord Lieutenant of Essex and Herts, commanded the forces of those counties at Tilbury Fort; and was Captain of that flower of English chivalry, the band of Gentlemen Pensioners, so renowned in the reign of the Virgin Queen.[32] Sir Rowland Lytton married Anne, daughter of Oliver, the first Lord St. John of Bletsoe, and great-granddaughter of Margaret Beauchamp by her first husband, Sir Oliver St. John. By her second marriage with the Duke of Somerset, this Margaret was the grandmother of Henry VII.; so that Anne, Lady Lytton, claimed the honour of a blood-relationship with Elizabeth, who favoured Knebworth with several visits during her reign.
In the reign of Charles I., Sir William Lytton, Knight of the Shire for Herts, adopted the popular cause, supported by Pym, Elliott, and Hampden, and was one of the commissioners sent to treat with the king at Oxford; those commissioners being chosen from the most powerful country gentlemen of the party. He seems to have been a moderate man, and a sincere patriot; for he opposed the ascendancy of Cromwell no less than the despotism of Charles, and was one of the refractory members whom Oliver confined in Hellhole. By his marriage with Ruth, daughter of Sir Thomas Barrington, of Barrington Hall, Sir William Lytton allied his house with the blood-royal of the Plantagenets; Ruth Barrington being fourth in descent, through the Countess of Salisbury and Richard de la Pole, Knight of the Garter, from George, Duke of Clarence, and Isabel, daughter of Earl Warwick the King-maker.
In the reign of Anne, the heir-male of the Lyttons dying without issue, the estate passed to his cousin, William Robinson, ceu Norreys, of Guersylt, Denbighshire, and Monacdhu, in Anglesey, who, on the maternal side, descended from the Lyttons, and on his father’s, from a race still more ancient; tracing, indeed, in a direct and acknowledged line, from the heroes and princes of our earliest history,—Elystan Glodrydd, or the Glorious (godson of King Athelstan), Prince of North Wales, and Lord of all between Wye and Severn; Karadoc Vreicfras; Roderic the Great; and Cadwallader the last of the British kings. His ancestor, Sir William Norreys, married Anne, sister of Owen Tudor, and grand-aunt to Henry VII. His son, Sir Robert, married Anne, daughter of Sir W. Griffiths, Grand Chamberlain of Wales, and his name was of such eminence in the wars of the time, that his son, according to Welsh custom, took the name of Rob’s or Robin’s son, which was afterwards borne by the descendants indiscriminately with the proper patronymic of Norreys. Through later intermarriages this family claim also descent from the Norman houses of Grosvenor, Stanley of Hooton, Brereton of Malpas, and Warburton of Ardely. The great-granddaughter of this William Robinson, who took the name and arms of Lytton on succeeding to the estates of his maternal ancestry, was Elizabeth Warburton Lytton, who became sole heiress and representative of the families of Lytton and Robinson. She married William Earle Bulwer (brigadier-general), of Heydon Hall and Wood Dalling, Norfolk; lands which had been in possession of his family since the Conquest. (See Burke’s “Commoners,” and Bloomfield’s “Norfolk.”) By this marriage there were three sons: 1st, William Lytton Bulwer, the present possessor of Heydon; 2nd, the Right Hon. Henry Lytton Bulwer, Minister Plenipotentiary at the Court of Madrid, to whom his grandmother bequeathed a considerable fortune; and Sir Edward Bulwer, Bart., who succeeded to his mother by will, in December 1843, and took the surname and arms of Lytton.