{{Short description|English politician}} {{Use dmy dates|date=November 2016}} {{Use British English|date=November 2016}} '''Christopher Lewknor''' (24 February 1598 – 1653) was an English politician who sat in the House of Commons variously between 1628 and 1641. He supported the Royalist side in the English Civil War.
==Family and early life== Lewknor was the fourth son of Richard Lewknor of West Dean, Sussex, and his wife Eleanor Broome, daughter of Sir Christopher Brome of Holton, Oxfordshire.<ref name=SAC>{{cite journal |title=Pedigree of the Lewknor Family |first=William Durrant |last=Cooper |journal=Sussex Archaeological Collections |year=1850 |volume=3 |doi=10.5284/1085096 |doi-access=free |url=https://archive.org/details/sussexarchaeolo62socigoog/page/n127/mode/2up?view=theater |pages=89–102}}</ref> His eldest brother, Richard Lewknor, also served as a Member of Parliament.<ref name = HoP>{{cite web |url =http://www.historyofparliamentonline.org/volume/1604-1629/member/lewknor-christopher-1598-1653|title= Lewknor, Christopher (1598-1653), of the Middle Temple, London; later of the Grey Friars, Chichester, Suss.|publisher= History of Parliament|access-date = 15 August 2016}}</ref> Lewknor's father died in 1603, when Christopher was around five years old. His mother subsequently married Sir William Oglander and had other children, among whom was the future politician and diarist Sir John Oglander. Lewknor received an annuity of £20 from his grandfather, Sir Richard Lewknor, the chief justice of Chester.<ref name = HoP/>
Christopher followed his grandfather into the legal profession, receiving his education at the Middle Temple from 1617, and being called to its bar in 1625. This was in spite of having gained a reputation as belonging to a group at the Temple notorious for being ‘exceeding riotous and dissolute swaggerers and professed duellists and champions’. In 1621 he was one of the group to be accused in a Star Chamber case of trying to provoke an older man into a fight. Lewknor was defended by Thomas Whatman in the case.<ref name = HoP/> After his call to the bar, Lewknor served, like his grandfather, as counsel to the Percy family.<ref name = HoP/>
==Parliamentary career== In 1628 Lewknor was elected Member of Parliament for Midhurst and held the seat until 1629 when King Charles decided to rule without parliament for eleven years.<ref name=Willis>{{Cite Notitia Parliamentaria|converted=1|part=2|pages=229–239}}</ref><ref>[http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=41712 ''West Dean'', A History of the County of Sussex: Volume 4: The Rape of Chichester (1953), pp. 97-101. Date accessed: 18 January 2011.]</ref> He, like his brother Richard, made little contribution to the business of parliament, though he made notes on its progress.<ref name = HoP/>
In 1636 Lewknor was appointed to a commission for better preservation of timber in view of the growth of the Sussex iron trade.<ref>[https://books.google.com/books?id=KnqfCr-uSEcC&dq=%22Christopher+Lewknor%22&pg=PA122 Mark Antony Lower ''Contributions to literature: historical, antiquarian, and metrical'']</ref> By the early 1630s he was recorder of Chichester. In April 1640, he was elected MP for Chichester in the Short Parliament. He was re-elected MP for Chichester in November 1640 for the Long Parliament and sat until he was disabled as a Royalist in 1642.<ref name = HoP/> He went over to the Royalist side, was commissioned in the King's army and attended the Oxford Parliament.<ref name = HoP/> He became Doctor of Civil Law at Oxford in 1642.<ref name = HoP/>
In August 1642 Lewknor supported Chichester mayor Robert Exton when he issued the Royal Commission of Array, calling upon all able-bodied men to take arms for the king; in response to the city's "Valiant Resolution to stand for the privileges of Parliament, the Protestant religion, the laws of the land, and the liberty of the people".<ref>[http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=41660 ''The City of Chichester: Historical introduction'', A History of the County of Sussex: Volume 3 (1935), pp. 82-90. Date accessed: 18 January 2011]</ref> Lewknor was styled "the man appointed by his Majesty to take in money and plate on his behalfe" and on 28 August 1642, he took part in a parley between the besiegers of Portsmouth and the beleaguered garrison.<ref>[http://www.marquisofwinchesters.co.uk/book-Civil-war-in-hampshire/chapter7.html Marquis of Winchester's Regiment - Civil War in Hampshire] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100801025340/http://www.marquisofwinchesters.co.uk/book-Civil-war-in-hampshire/chapter7.html |date=1 August 2010 }}</ref> In January 1643 he was a prisoner at Windsor Castle.<ref>{{Cite web |url=http://www.cgsc.edu/CARL/nafziger/643AAB.pdf |title=Royalist Prisoners Held at Windsor Castle |access-date=18 January 2011 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110118005832/http://www.cgsc.edu/CARL/nafziger/643AAB.pdf |archive-date=18 January 2011 |url-status=dead }}</ref> He was knighted on 18 December 1644.<ref name = HoP/> He appears to have been present at the siege of Salcombe Castle in early 1646, when a Parliamentarian recorded that ‘Kit Lukener the great trencher man being therein, is afraid he shall be starved’.<ref name = HoP/> In 1651, parliament ordered his lands to be sold.<ref name = HoP/>
==Later years== Lewknor drew up his will on 1 July 1653, in which he describes himself as being ‘sick in body’. He presumably died shortly afterwards, as on 5 September Sir Edward Hyde could observe that he had been ‘dead these many months’.<ref name = HoP/> He had married Mary, daughter of John May of Rawmere, on 7 May 1619. She was the widow of William Smyth of Binderton, Sussex.<ref name = HoP/> The couple had two daughters before Mary's death in 1642.<ref name = HoP/> Christopher Lewknor died without any male heirs, though two of his grandsons entered parliament, Christopher Knight for Arundel in 1698 and William Knight for Midhurst in 1713.<ref name = HoP/>
==References== {{Reflist}}
{{s-start}} {{s-par|en}} {{s-bef | before= Richard Lewknor | before2= Sir Henry Spiller }} {{s-ttl | title=Member of Parliament for Midhurst | with= Edward Savage | years=1628–1629 }} {{s-non| reason= Parliament suspended until 1640}} |- {{s-vac| reason= Parliament suspended since 1629}} {{s-ttl | title=Member of Parliament for Chichester | with= Edward Dowse | with2= Sir William Morley | years=1640–1642 }} {{s-aft | after= Sir John Temple | after2 = Henry Peck }} {{s-end}} {{Authority control}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Lewknor, Christopher}} Category:1598 births Category:1653 deaths Category:Cavaliers Category:People from Midhurst Category:Politicians from Chichester Category:English MPs 1628–1629 Category:English MPs 1640 (April) Category:English MPs 1640–1648 Category:Oxford Parliaments Category:People from West Dean, West Sussex