Samuel Knight

Samuel Knight (1675–1746) was an English clergyman and antiquary.

Life He was born in London the son of John Knight, a mercer, and attended St Paul's School, London and Trinity College, Cambridge (BA 1702, MA 1706), and received a Cambridge DD in 1706. He then became chaplain to the Earl of Orford, who presented him to the rectory of Burrough Green and vicarage of Chippenham in Cambridgeshire in 1707. He held Burrough Green and Bluntisham until his death. He died on 10 December 1746 and was buried in Bluntisham Church, where a white marble monument was erected with an inscription by his friend Edmund Castle. In 1766 he purchased an estate in Milton, Cambridgeshire, becoming rector there a decade later.

According to William Cole, who lived in Milton in retirement and knew Knight's son, Knight was 'a very black and thin man, and had much the look of a Frenchman'. The full title of the work - 'More Particularly that Part of it which He Spent in England, Wherein an Account is Given of His Learned Friends, and the State of Religion and Learning at that Time in Both Our Universities' - underlines the focus of the biography on Erasmus' friends in England and English universities. Both works were dedicated to Spencer Compton, speaker of the House of Commons