Nicholas Knowles, Knollis or Knollys, 3rd Earl of Banbury, (3 January 1631 - 14 March 1674) was an English nobleman who sat in the House of Lords but was excluded from the Long Parliament, thus precipitating the famous “Banbury Case” which remains partly unresolved to this day.
The Banbury case was notorious both for its long duration and for the fact that it involved the bastardisation of children without an accompanying Parliamentary divorce. William Knollys, 1st Earl of Banbury, had died apparently childless, aged 85, in 1632. His widow, the Catholic Lady Elizabeth Howard, over thirty years his junior, had quickly married Edward Vaux, 4th Baron Vaux of Harrowden, also a Catholic, and soon after produced two young children who had undoubtedly been born during her first husband’s lifetime and who, she claimed, were William’s lawful issue. The case fell into abeyance during the English Civil War and the Commonwealth of England, but when Lady Elizabeth’s son Nicholas attempted to take his seat in the Convention Parliament (1660) leading up to The Restoration, his legitimacy was successfully challenged by his peers. There followed the presentation and scrutiny of at least eight petitions by Nicholas and his descendants, before their claim of his legitimacy was finally defeated in 1813, although the Committee merely reported that the petitioner had not discharged the burden of proof that lay upon him and so left the way open for a future claim.
Family and early life
Nicholas was born on 3 January 1631, a second son to The Countess of Banbury, at Harrowden Hall in Northamptonshire, the house of Edward Vaux, 4th Baron Vaux of Harrowden. She was the daughter of Thomas Howard, 1st Earl of Suffolk and granddaughter of Thomas Howard, 4th Duke of Norfolk, a second cousin of Queen Elizabeth 1.
Her husband was, William Knollys, 1st Earl of Banbury, whose mother, Catherine Carey was a first cousin of Queen Elizabeth 1. Some historians believe that Catherine was the illegitimate child of Henry VIII, which would make her also Elizabeth I's paternal half-sister She was also the mother of Lettice Knollys, (married to Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, favourite of Elizabeth 1) and grandmother of Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex, the last favourite of Elizabeth 1.
The Earl of Banbury died the following year on 25 May 1632 when he was about eighty-five or eighty-six years of age. According to a physician, Robert Lloyd, who was present at his death, he died at the house of Dr. Grant, in Paternoster Row in London, whom he had consulted during his last illness Less than five weeks later the widowed countess married Edward Vaux, 4th Baron Vaux of Harrowden, then aged forty-four
It was known that in 1605 Lord Vaux had been on the point of marrying Lady Elizabeth Howard, shortly before she married William Knollys. Indeed, if Vaux's mother can be believed, it was only the Gunpowder Plot that prevented his journey to London to become formally engaged to her; if that be so, she suffered a very sudden change of heart. And in March 1630 Vaux was still visiting her, if no more.
By 1641 the countess herself appears to have been regarded by parliament as a dangerous recusant. In June 1641 The Countess of Banbury and Nicholas obtained a licence to travel abroad and to take with them twelve servants, £200 in money, and such carriages as she needed. On 20 January 1642 the House of Commons ordered four justices of the peace to search the house in Northamptonshire of Lord Vaux who was then abroad, "and such other suspected places, for recusancy, as they shall think fit, in that county, for arms.’ In June 1642, the countess again obtained leave to go abroad, apparently to France, and to take with her six coach-horses and three nags. In 1643 she obtained the Speaker's warrant to go to France once more with twelve servants and her necessary apparel, and that she should have
"a coach and six horses and ten saddle horses to pass to the sea-side, and to return to carry her Ladyship and her servants to the port where she embarks”.
Assumption of the Earldom
Nicholas was known to have travelled to France with his mother in 1644 and may well have been in the party that included his elder brother Edward, the 2nd earl that was robbed in Italy, for John Evelyn notes an entry in his diary for 28 January 1645;
"We dined at Sermoneta, descending all this morning down a stony mountain, unpleasant, yet full of olive trees; and , anon, pass a tower built on a rock, kept by a small guard against the bandetti who infest these parts, daily robbing and killing passengers, as my lord Banbury and his company found to their cost a little before."