Caroline Jane Knight, the last of Jane Austen’s nieces to grow up at Chawton House, shares the family ancestors the Austens discovered when they moved to Chawton.

Jane moved to Chawton in 1809 with her mother and sister Cassandra. Jane’s brother (and my fourth great-grandfather) Edward, who had inherited the Hampshire estate from childless fourth cousin, Thomas Knight, had his main residence at Godmersham Park in Kent, but visited Chawton annually with his family, staying up to 5 months a year. The family had great fun discovering details of the ancestors of the Knight family.

““It is very curious to trace the genealogy of the Knights & all the old families that have possessed this estate, from the pictures of which there are quantities, & some descriptions of them have been routed out, so that we are not at a loss for amusement.””

— Fanny Knight, Edward's eldest daughter and one of Jane's favourite nieces, 26th August 1807

The stained-glass heraldry windows on the first-floor landing of Chawton House were installed by Montagu Knight after Jane’s time in Chawton but serve as an excellent record of the ancestors they would have read about. Ancestors whose lives span centuries of historical moments in England.

Built in 1585 by John Knight, Chawton House has never been sold, passing from one generation to another, often to a sibling, nephew, or cousin, when the squire had no heir, on the condition that each changed their name to Knight. Seventeen generations of Knights had called Chawton home; my brother Paul and I were the last.

Chawton House, in the South of England (photo J B Grantham)

One of the heraldry windows is in the picture gallery. The second is around the corner outside what was my grandmother’s bedroom. The windows overlook the inner courtyard and depict six shields which trace the coats of arms of each successive owner of Chawton House. Under each vibrantly coloured shield in the stained glass were the names of the squires with the arms and the date of their inheritance of the house. As a girl growing up at Chawton House, the heraldry windows were my favourite place to learn the names and dates of my ancestors.

A few of the shields in the windows had multiple squires listed underneath, where they had used the same arms, but most had only one. The shields were all different combinations of arms as they brought together families through marriage, inheritance, and adoption, but each one included the gold lozenges set diagonally on a green background, the Knight arms. Some of the squires were of particular note and familiar to me. Other names I knew little about. From the first to the last, each was named Knight.

‘John 1583’ is the name and date under the first glass shield. John was the principal builder of the house. An iron fireback in my grandparent’s inner hallway marked ‘JK 1588’ was the earliest date I could find in the house. I saw repeats of the 1971 BBC series Elizabeth R with Glenda Jackson playing Queen Elizabeth I when I was young. The interiors of the buildings were very similar to those in Chawton and I could imagine how John might have dressed and spoken; he contributed £50 to the funds raised by the Queen to defend against invasion by the Spanish Armada, and I pictured him as a serious man with great presence. John died leaving no heir, and his brother, Stephen, became the second squire of the new manor house.

It was easy to count how many squires there had been on the heraldry windows. ‘John 1583’, ‘Stephen 1620’, ‘John 1627’, ‘Richard 1636’, ‘Sir Richard 1641’ completed the names under the first three shields. Sir Richard Knight inherited in 1641, when he was only two years old. In practice, his mother managed the property on her young son’s behalf. This was believed to have saved the house from being burnt to the ground during the English Civil War as other manor houses in the area, like Basing House, were destroyed by Oliver Cromwell’s army; the ‘Roundheads’. “Richard was so young, Cromwell couldn’t tell what shape his head was”, Dad (Jeremy Knight) once joked. How lucky we are – Chawton House could so easily have been lost. King Charles I, guarded by a strong body of troops, came through Chawton on his last sad journey from Hurst Castle on the Hampshire south coast to Windsor on his way to the Palace of Whitehall where he was executed. It’s extraordinary to think of such an important but sombre procession going through the village. I wonder if the streets were empty, or did people come out of their houses to watch?

In 1644, when Sir Richard was five years old, Cromwell enforced an Act of Parliament, which banned Christmas celebrations in England as it was believed to be a wasteful festival that threatened core Christian beliefs. The ban was not lifted until Richard was twenty-one, although lots of people continued to celebrate Christmas in secret. It was sad to think of him missing Christmas. Richard left provisions in his will for a monument to be constructed in the chancel of the church. Unmoved since his installation three centuries earlier, Sir Richard, the fifth squire of Chawton, reclines in marble on his left-hand side on what looks like the mantelpiece of a grand blue and white fireplace, and there is a long-held family tradition of putting holly in Sir Richard’s hand in December – to make sure he doesn’t miss out on any more Christmases!

Statue of Sir Richard with Christmas holly

Sir Richard is the only ‘Sir’ in the family. At the Restoration in 1660, when Richard had just come of age, his name appeared on a list selected for the proposed new order of Knights of the Royal Oak. The idea was later abandoned by Charles II, but Richard did receive the honour of a knighthood on 10th January 1667, and I was super proud of him. Sir Richard left no children and chose another Richard, Richard Martin, his aunt’s grandson, as his successor. Richard Martin changed his name to Knight to retain the name with the Chawton estate. The name ‘Richard’ was obviously of some amusement to Jane – at the beginning of Northanger Abbey, Austen tells us that Catherine Morland’s father was “a very respectable man, though his name was Richard!”

‘Richard 1679’ and ‘Christopher 1687’ are under the next shield, which included a quarter of arms with what appears to be three birds. The Martin brothers were both childless too, making three childless squires in succession. “Who decides who the next squire will be?” I asked as a child, and Dad explained that it was the duty of each squire to name their heir, usually their eldest son. If the squire had no children, it was their responsibility to find the most suitable relation, usually male, to continue the family legacy and prepare them for the responsibilities they would inherit.

The fifth and sixth shields are startlingly different; under the fifth were the words ‘William Woodward Knight Elizabeth Knight 1702 1st Husband’, and under the sixth were ‘Bulstrode Peachy Knight Elizabeth Knight 1702 2nd Husband’ – oh, how we used to laugh at his name. Elizabeth Martin was Richard and Christopher’s sister and inherited the house from her brother the same year Queen Anne inherited the crown. Such was the importance of the Knight name remaining in control of the estate, Elizabeth’s husbands both took her new surname. On each marriage a new shield had been created with Elizabeth’s arms on the left, her husband’s on the right.

Elizabeth ran the estates for 35 years and occupied a central position in the history of Chawton. She was a woman of strong character, was masterful but affectionate with a keen sense of the duties and dignity of the resident landowner. Elizabeth’s portrait with pink cheeks and blue taffeta gown was in my family’s living quarters, outside of the dining room (which we used as a sitting room). Elizabeth Martin Knight was highly competent woman who grew and secured the estate as effectively as the most capable of male squires. It appears that Elizabeth was proud of her status. She is famed for insisting the church bells were rung to mark her arrival and departure from Chawton. As far as I know, Elizabeth was the only squire to have expected it.

A letter from Cassandra Austen, Jane’s sister, to her niece on 26th February 1838, makes it clear the Austen ladies were very aware of Elizabeth Martin Knight and her reputation. Describing the funeral of her sister-in-law, who was interred in the Knight family vault under the church, Cassandra writes: “The old vault was opened and is now under repair – It contains at present four Coffins, I suppose those of Lady Knight, alias Betty Martin, her two Husbands and one Brother.” Betty is short for Elizabeth, and it is easy to assume this was merely a play on her name, but there was more to it than that. Elizabeth Martin was not eligible to use the title ‘Lady’, and it seems to have been underlined in mockery. As explained by researcher Linda Slothober in 2015:

“One way to mock the grandeur of the great lady was to inflate her title from ‘Mrs.’ to ‘Lady’; another way was to downgrade her to common ‘Betty Martin.’ Betty Martin was not just a diminutive form of Elizabeth Knight’s birth name, however: It was also part of an idiomatic expression that took different forms over the years. A few examples: That’s my eye, Betty Martin (Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue, 1788), My eye and Betty Martin (from a song of the same name in Ashburner’s New Vocal Repository, 1807), It’s all my eye and Betty Martin (Hampshire Chronicle, 1810), Oh! My eye, Betty Martin! (Oxford University and City Herald and many other newspapers, 1814), All Betty Martin (A Disagreeable Surprise (play), 1828).

“Whatever its form, the expression was well-known, and its meaning was, essentially, “That’s bunk--I’m not buying your story.” (Who Betty Martin was and how the expression originated are unknown.) Cassandra Austen’s words “Lady Knight, alias Betty Martin,” suggest that Elizabeth Knight was a bit of a fraud, and beneath the satin gown and queenly stare was only plain old Betty Martin.”

Did Jane know about Elizabeth? I can’t be certain, but her sister clearly did and, as stated by Chawton House: “Consider Lady Catherine de Bourgh in Pride and Prejudice and Lady Denham in Sanditon. These women, just like Elizabeth Knight, command a great deal of wealth and influence, and take an active role in their financial affairs.”

After Elizabeth’s reign (her portraits are all very regal), the house was entailed to the eldest born son of each generation. I wonder if Edward’s eldest daughter, Fanny Knight, who was denied the opportunity due to her gender despite being Edward Austen Knight’s first-born child, felt the injustice? Jane and Fanny were very close; was it discussed? Perhaps Fanny saw the burdens her father had endured with legal challenges to his ownership of Chawton, financial losses from which to recover, and hefty annual payments to Catherine Knight (you can read more about that online or in my book) and was happy the responsibility passed her by.

Elizabeth had no children and chose as her successor her second cousin, Thomas, from the Brodnax branch of her family. Thomas was also heir to Godmersham Park, and his succession brought the estates together under the same squire.

Thomas had already received his inheritance from the May family, and as a condition had changed his name by act of parliament (as was required) to Thomas May. When he sought another act of parliament to change his name once more to Knight to inherit Chawton, it was flippantly suggested in the House of Commons that a law be passed to allow Thomas to call himself whatever he liked – or whatever he ‘May’, Dad once joked.

This was the Thomas Knight who was second cousin to George Austen and appointed him the Rector of Steventon, a parish he had also inherited from Elizabeth Martin Knight. Like all of the previous shields, Thomas’s included the Knight arms of gold lozenges set diagonally on a green background but with the addition of a small flower toward the bottom left. The arms were altered to signify the distance of the blood relationship between Elizabeth and Thomas. ‘Thomas 1737’ and ‘Thomas 1781’ were the names under the next two shields. Thomas had left the estates to his son, Thomas II who was childless and at the end of the 18th century chose Jane’s older brother, Edward Austen, my great-great-great-great-grandfather, as his heir. In 1791, Edward married Elizabeth, daughter of Sir Brook Bridges, a British baronet and Whig politician.

‘Edward 1794’ was under the next shield. He was commonly referred to as Edward Austen Knight, despite never having carried both surnames, and his heraldry included both the Knight and Austen arms of a red chevron with three black bear paws. When Edward Austen inherited, the Knight arms of lozenges with a small flower were altered once more with the addition of a red square in the top left corner, to signify the fourth cousin blood relationship between Thomas II and Edward.

In 1812, Edward changed his name — and thus my own — to Knight. "Papa changed his name about this time in compliance with the will of the late Mr. Knight and we are therefore all Knights instead of dear old Austens How I hate it!!!!!!" noted Fanny in her diary. Jane drily commented in a letter to Martha Lloyd "I must learn to make a better 'K'.” But Jane did pay her respects to the Knight name and appreciated the circumstances that had led to her life in Chawton— the hero of her fourth novel, Emma, (written in Chawton three years later) was a perfectly English gentleman named Mr Knightley.

Founder & chair, Jane Austen Literacy Foundation

Author of Jane & Me: My Austen Heritage

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