This MP belonged to a distinguished family of Staffordshire landowners which could trace its descent from Nicholas Maucovenant, one of the followers of William the Conqueror. His immediate ancestors had settled at Gnosall during the mid 13th century, and his grandfather, John Knightley (d.1413/14), had further consolidated their holdings by marrying the heiress to the manors of Burgh Hall (in Gnosall) and Cowley. We do not know exactly when Knightley succeeded to these properties, although his appointment to the Staffordshire bench in 1422 may, perhaps, have followed shortly after the death of his father. By then, however, he had made his home at the manor of Fawsley in Northamptonshire, which he and his wife acquired in February 1416 from Geoffrey Somerton. Four years later the MP obtained a lease from the Crown of the hundred of Fawsley, which he and Thomas Lilbourne undertook to farm until 1460 at an annual rent of £16. He was, therefore, particularly fortunate when, in April 1422, Henry V granted him an annuity of £10 payable directly from this rent, since he was thus able to avoid the usual delays in payment experienced by royal retainers. He and Lilbourne were also given custody of the Northamptonshire estates of Humphrey, earl of Stafford, which they held for just over three years until the latter came of age in August 1423. With the passage of time, Knightley and his wife added considerably to their original holdings in Northamptonshire. By February 1420 they and their elder son, John, had purchased the manor of Upton and the hundred of Newbottle Grove from the feoffees of Richard Clendon, who were then pardoned for disposing of the property without a royal licence. They also acquired a substantial amount of farmland in Great Preston, Farthingstone and Staverton, as well as a small estate in ‘Browode’ which they leased out to tenants. Knightley himself was the lessee of the manor of Preston Capes, a property rented to him for £60 a year in about 1422 by his patron, Richard Beauchamp, earl of Warwick, from whom he received many marks of favour. Much later, in December 1440, Sir John Baskerville confirmed Richard and Elizabeth Knightley in both the immediate tenancy and subsequent reversion of his manor of Hellidon with a remainder to their younger, but only surviving son, Richard. This transaction was effected at exactly the same time as a settlement of all the above-mentioned Staffordshire estates upon the young man and his wife, Eleanor, the daughter of Knightley’s old friend and parliamentary colleague, John Throckmorton, and no doubt marks the date of their marriage.
The long association between Knightley and Throckmorton probably began when they were both still comparatively young men in the service of the earl of Warwick (who also retained John Weston among his legal advisors). We know that Knightley had become one of Warwick’s councillors by 1417, and that he subsequently held some office on the Beauchamp estates. His appointment as a teller of the Exchequer, which was made earlier, in the spring of 1413, may also have owed a good deal to the earl’s patronage, since the latter held the hereditary post of chamberlain of the Exchequer and was certainly responsible for Throckmorton’s subsequent promotion to the Warwick chamberlainship. Knightley’s duties as teller occasionally took him abroad, as, for example, in 1419, when he spent four months in France and paid out over 50,000 marks on military expenses. He went overseas again in February 1422, this time with a consignment of 2,000 marks for the war-effort. By June of that year he had been elevated to the rank of a royal serjeant-at-arms, once again probably through the influence of his noble patron.
Although preoccupied with his official duties, Knightley still found the time to play an active part in the affairs of his friends and neighbours. In October 1419, he was the joint recipient of bonds totalling £240 which he held as security for the payment of a fixed rent from certain estates in Buckinghamshire to Sir John Chastelioun and his wife, Margaret. His name appears two years later among the mainpernors of John Iwardby, another Buckinghamshire man, who had taken over the farm of the manor of Marsh at the Exchequer. Knightley participated in a third financial transaction in December 1423, acting as a guarantor for the settlement of a suitable marriage portion upon Elizabeth, the wife of Richard Curson; and it is interesting to note that his associates then included John Throckmorton and other members of the Beauchamp affinity.
Knightley died towards the end of December 1442, having already settled his Staffordshire estates upon his son, Richard. The latter’s death occurred in 1476, barely two years after that of the widowed Elizabeth Knightley, who retained all her husband’s land in Northamptonshire, and was thus sure of at least £40 a year to support her in her old age.