Henry Knollys (privateer)

Sir Henry Knollys of Kingsbury, Warwickshire (ca. 1542 – 21 December 1582) was an English courtier, privateer and Member of Parliament.

He was born the eldest son of Sir Francis Knollys, Treasurer of the Royal Household, and Catherine Carey, Lady of the Bedchamber to Queen Elizabeth I. He was reputedly educated at Magdelen College, Oxford.

He entered Parliament in 1562 as MP for Reading in Berkshire and was re-elected for Reading in 1571. He served against the Northern rebels in 1569 and by 1570 had been appointed Esquire of the Body to Queen Elizabeth I. In 1572, together with his father, he became MP for Oxfordshire.

Around 1578, he joined Sir Humphrey Gilbert in a venture designed to set up a new colony on the east coast of North America although Henry showed more interest in the more profitable business of privateering in the Spanish Caribbean. Gilbert gathered eleven heavily armed ships and a crew of 600, many of them convicted pirates especially pardoned for the voyage. Knollys soon refused to acknowledge Sir Humphrey's authority and, together with the pirate John Callis, took three ships (later joined by more) to the Spanish Coast on a privateering expedition. The planned voyage across the Atlantic never came to pass and Gilbert complained to Sir Francis Walsingham of Knolly's “unkind and ill dealing”. In 1582 an expedition to Portugal in support of Don Antonio, Prior of Crato, the Royal claimant to the throne, foundered when Henry was ordered to return home. He later joined his distant cousin John Norreys in the Netherlands to fight for Dutch independence but soon succumbed to wounds or disease.

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