Sir Edward Knatchbull, 9th Baronet

Knatchbull was the son of Sir Edward Knatchbull, 8th Baronet, and Mary, daughter and heiress of William Western Hugessen, of Provender House in Norton, Kent,[1] and was educated at Christ Church, Oxford and matriculated in 1800.

He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1802[2] and was called to the Bar at Lincoln's Inn in 1803. In 1819 he succeeded in the baronetcy on the death of his father.

Knatchbull was elected as a Member of Parliament (MP) for Kent at a by-election in November 1819, to fill the vacancy caused by the death of his father.[3][4] He held the seat until the 1831 general election,[5] which he did not contest. The Reform Act 1832 split the Kent county constituency into Eastern and Western divisions, and at the 1832 general election Knatchbull and John Pemberton Plumptre were elected as Members for the new Eastern division of Kent.[6] Knatchbull held that seat until his resignation[7][8] in early 1845[5] by taking the Chiltern Hundreds.[7]

In 1829 he became one of the leaders of the "Ultra-Tories" who were opposed to Catholic emancipation in Ireland. Sworn of the Privy Council in 1834,[9] he served under Sir Robert Peel as Paymaster of the Forces between 1834 and 1835 and as Paymaster General between 1841 and 1845.[10]

Knatchbull married twice. His first wife was Annabella Christiana Honywood, daughter of Sir John Honywood, 4th Baronet. They married on 25 August 1806 and had six children:

• Mary Louisa Knatchbull (b. 1808)
• Mary Dorothea Knatchbull (d. 1838), who married in 1826 Edward Knight[11]
• Sir Norton Joseph Knatchbull, 10th Baronet (1808–1868), who married in 1831 Mary Watts-Russell. They were parents of the 11th and the 12th Baronets.
• (child, d. 1818)

Annabella died in childbirth in 1814 and on 24 October 1820, Knatchbull married secondly Fanny Catherine Knight, daughter of Edward Knight (né Edward Austen, the brother of English novelist Jane Austen). They had nine children, including:

• Edward Hugessen Knatchbull-Hugessen, 1st Baron Brabourne (1829–1893)
• Reverend Reginald Bridges Knatchbull-Hugessen (1831-1911), who married firstly in 1866 Mary Brockman and secondly in 1885 Hon. Rachel Montgomery and had issues by both wives[11]
• Herbert Thomas Knatchbull-Hugessen (1835-1922)
• William Western Knatchbull-Hugessen (1837–1864)
• Eleanor Grace Knatchbull (d. 1913), who married in 1857 Robert John O'Reilly[11]

Knatchbull died in May 1849, aged 67, at the family's Mersham Hatch estate in Kent, and was succeeded in the baronetcy by his son from his first marriage, Norton. Lady Knatchbull died in December 1882.

• Hansard 1803–2005: contributions in Parliament by Sir Edward Knatchbull