Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 31.djvu/301

 what was then considered decent, that the editor, Tobias Smollett [q. v.], was tried for libel, sentenced to a fine of 100l., and to three months' imprisonment in the King's Bench. Nevertheless, Knowles's share in the miscarriage, and still more his championship of Mordaunt, offended the government. He was superseded from his command in the grand fleet, and though he had his flag flying for some time longer in the Royal Anne, guardship at Portsmouth, he had no further active service in the English navy.

On 3 Dec. 1760 he was promoted to the rank of admiral; on 31 Oct. 1765 he was created a baronet; and on 5 Nov. 1765 was nominated rear-admiral of Great Britain. This office he resigned in October 1770 on accepting a command in the Russian navy. Russia was at that time at war with Turkey [see ], but Knowles's service seems to have been entirely administrative, and to have kept him at St. Petersburg or the neighbourhood. On the conclusion of peace in 1774 he returned to England, and in 1775 published a translation of ‘Abstract on the Mechanism of the Motions of Floating Bodies,’ by M. de la Croix; in the prefatory notice he said that he had verified the author's principles by a number of experiments, and had also found them ‘answer perfectly well when put into practice in several line-of-battle ships and frigates that I built whilst I was in Russia.’ He died in Bulstrode Street, London, on 9 Dec. 1777, and was buried at Guildford in Surrey.

Few naval officers of high rank have been the subject of more contention or of more contradictory estimates than Knowles. He was beyond question a man that made many and bitter enemies, and when in command was neither loved nor feared, though he may have been hated. On the one hand, he has been described as vain, foolish, grasping—even dishonest—tyrannical, ‘a man of spiritless and inactive mind, cautious of incurring censure, but incapable of acquiring fame.’ On the other, Charnock, who in this may be supposed to represent the traditions he had received from Captain Locker, ‘believes him to have been a man of spirit, ability, and integrity; but to have thought too highly of his own merit in regard to the two first, and to have wanted those conciliating and complacent manners which are absolutely necessary to render even the last agreeable and acceptable.’

Knowles was twice married: first, in 1740, to Mary, eldest daughter of John Alleyne, and sister of John Gay Alleyne, created a baronet in 1769; she died in March 1741–2, leaving one son, Edward, who was lost in command of the Peregrine sloop in 1762. Secondly, at Aix-la-Chapelle in July 1750, to Maria Magdalena Theresa, daughter of Comte de Bouget, by whom he had, besides a daughter, a son, Charles Henry [q. v.], who is separately noticed. A portrait by T. Hudson has been engraved.

[Charnock's Biog. Nav. iv. 345; Naval Chronicle, i. 89, ii. 256, xvi. 415; commission and warrant books, official letters, minutes of courts-martial and other documents in the Public Record Office; information from Rear-admiral Sir Charles G. F. Knowles. The minutes of the court-martial on Knowles, December 1749, were printed; so also was the defence of Captain Dent at his trial in March 1749. Knowles's correspondence with Anson is in Add. MS. 15956, ff. 119–74. Besides the pamphlets noted in the text, there are many others relating to different passages in Knowles's career. Among these may be noted: Journal of the Expedition to La Guira and Porto Cavallos in the West Indies, under the command of Commodore Knowles … 1744, 8vo; Relacion de la gloriosa y singular victoria que han conseguido las armas de S. M. Catolica contra una escuadra Britanica que invadió el dia 2 de Marzo de 1743 la plaza de la Guaira, comandada … por Don Carlos Wnoles (reprinted Caracas, 1858, 8vo. A manuscript note in the copy in the British Museum says that the original, which bears neither place nor date, but probably Cadiz, is extremely rare); Authentick Papers concerning a late Remarkable Transaction, 1746, a curious correspondence between Knowles and the Bank of England respecting a large quantity of silver he brought home in the Diamond; The Jamaica Association Develop'd, 1755. There are also some pamphlets about the case of Captain John Crookshanks [q. v.], and many relating to the Rochefort expedition. See also Beatson's Naval and Military Memoirs, vols. i. and ii.]  KNOWLES, CHARLES HENRY (1754–1831), admiral, only surviving son of Admiral Sir Charles Knowles [q. v.], was born in Jamaica 24 Aug. 1754. He entered the navy in 1768 on board the Venus with Captain the Hon. Samuel Barrington [q. v.], and was afterwards in the Seaford with Captain Macbride. Three years later he was again with Macbride in the Southampton on the home station, and from 1773 to 1776 in the flagship in the West Indies with Sir George Rodney and Rear-admiral Gayton. Gayton promoted him, 28 May 1776, to be lieutenant of the Boreas. In August the Boreas was sent to New York, and in the following January Knowles went home in the Asia in order to be with his father, whose health was failing. In June he again went out to North America, and was appointed by Lord Howe to the Chatham, but on the news of his father's death, 9 Dec. 1777, and his own