Page:The Complete Peerage Ed 1 Vol 1.djvu/254

 232 BANBURY. II. 1632. & Edward (Knollys), Earl of Banbuby, &c, s. ami li. /). 10 April 1027 at Kotherfield Grays, where the Karl [his father) was then residing. Under the description of " Earl of Banbury " he whs part; to a chancer}- suit, S Feb. 1640-1, as "an infant, by William, Earl of Salisbury," his proehein amy and gusirdiau."( :1 ) He (/. unm. in or before June 1645, being slain in a quarrel on the road between Calais and Gravelines, and was bur. in the church of the Friars Minims, at Calais. III. 1646. 8. Nicholas (Knollys, "heretofore Vaux"), Earl of Banui-hv, &c, only br. and h. I. 3 Jan. 1630-1 at (Lord Vaux's House) Han-owden, co. Northampton. As heir to his br. he inherited a small property (called the Bowling Place) at Heuley-upon-Thames (being part of the heritable lands of his late father which had passed under the too. post mortem of 1641), and immediately assumed the peerage, as appears by a deed dak 19 Oct. 1646, whereby his step father, Lord Vaux, settles the manors of Hanowden, it, co. Northampton, on his (Lord Vaux's) wife, the Dowager Countess of Banbury for her life with rein, to Nicholas, her son, the said Earl. He was repeatedly present in the House of Lords at the " Convention Pari." from June to Nov. 1660, and was twice appointed a member of a Committee, though on 13 July of that year it was moved " that there being a person who, as is conceived, hath no title to be a Peer, the Earl of Banbury, it is ordered that this business shall be heard at the bar" on the 23rd. No proceedings, however, appear to have taken place. On '21 Nov. 1660 he obtained leave of absence, a permission frequently granted to other Lords, and one which was certainly a tacit admission of his riyht to be present. On the 29 Dec. following the Convention Pari, was prorogued. Although the Earl had thus sat in Pari, and exercised all the functions of a Peer for six months, yet, when the next Pari, was sum. in May 1661, no writ was issued to him. On this he presented a petition to the King which was referred to the Committee for Privileges who reported thereon on 1 July 1661, "that Nicholas, Earl of Banbury, is a legitimate person." The Lords, however, not adopting this report, it was re- ferred to the Committee, as also was the matter of " the Ri'jkt of Precedence. (") Depositions as to his birth were then made. The best account of the claim to the Earldom of Banbury is " A treatise on the Law of Adulterine Bastardy, with a report of the Banbuhy case, &c," by Sir N. Harris Nicolas, Loudon, 1836, 8vo., p. 588, from which work most of the facts mentioned in the text are taken. The learned writer is not only content with very ably demonstrating the legitimacy in law of the 2nd and 3rd Earls, but brings forth many arguments to prove that they were in feet children of the 1st Earl. There certainly seems no proof to the contrary The fact of the childless Lord Vaux settling his estates on his young step Bon who consequently took his name, though suspicious, is not without precedent ; at p. 369 of Nicolas' treatise a similar instance (Agsborough, alias Townshend) is mentioned. It seems also certain, that the Earl must have been aware of the birth of the elder of the two sons, as according to the evidence of " Frauds Delavall, Esq.," (1641) he "did come into the chamber where the Countess was, a little before her delivery, and desired to have persons sent for to give her ease, and shortly after the birth desired witness' wife to take care of his boy." The birth of the second hoy, being at Lord Vaux's house, is under more suspicious circumstances, but, even then, there is the testimony of Anne Delavall (1661), that the lying in was publicly known in the house, " that he [Lord Banbury] knew shee lay in " and that " he [Nicholas] was owned by the E. of Banbury as his son." The general impression however doubtless was (as is noticed by Peter Le Neve, Norroy, in an elaborate ped. of Knollys, about 1693, now in the Harl. MSS. 5808) that the two sons were begotten privately by Lord Vaux. Their maternity is quite clear, and the singular and probably unique hypothesis of Mr. Beltz (Lancaster Herald, 1822-41) that they were the sons of Lord Vaux, but by another woman [or women] than the Countess, appears to ho opposed to all evidence and probability. Whatever, however, may have been their actual, their legal paternity appears indisputable (not having been upset by Act of Pari. ) and has been acknowledged by the law of the land, though unacknoiclcdycd by the. House of LordB. See also p. 233, note " c."