WILLIAM KNOX
(KNOX)
KNOX, WILLIAM (1732–1810), official and controversialist, was born in Ireland in 1732. He received the rudiments of his political education from Sir Richard Cox [q. v.] Lord Halifax appointed him ‘one of his majesty's council and provost-marshal of Georgia,’ when Henry Ellis [q. v.] was made governor of the colony. Ellis and Knox arrived at Savannah on 16 Feb. 1757, and Knox did not return to England until 1761. Lord Grosvenor was then his friend and patron; they were at Paris together in 1763, and it was probably through Grosvenor's influence that Knox obtained his introduction to George Grenville. He became agent in Great Britain for Georgia and East Florida, and in the interests of the colonies sent a memorial to Lord Bute, recommending the creation of a colonial aristocracy and the inclusion in parliament of representatives of the colonies; but his services as agent were dispensed with by resolution of the Georgia assembly on 15 Nov. 1765, for two pamphlets written in defence of the Stamp Act, which he considered to be the least objectionable mode of taxation. In the same year (1765) he gave evidence before a committee of the House of Commons on the state of the American colonies, and from the institution of the secretaryship of state for America in 1770 to its suppression by Lord Shelburne in 1782, he acted as the under-secretary. His views formed a basis for the conciliatory propositions of Lord North in 1776; he suggested the creation of a separate loyalist colony in Maine in 1780, which was approved by the king and ministers, but abandoned through legal difficulties, and to his zeal were ascribed many of the measures taken against the American colonies. On the suppression of his post he sought for compensation, but it was refused on the ground that his services were sufficiently rewarded in the two pensions of 600l. a year each bestowed by the state on him and his wife for the loss, as loyalists, of their property in America. In 1772 the ‘reversion of the place of secretary of New York’ (Calendar of Home Office Papers, 1770–2, p. 581) was granted to him, but it never brought him any emolument. Knox continued to be consulted even after his dismissal from office. He drafted in July 1783 an order in council excluding American shipping from the West Indies, and on his suggestion the province of New Brunswick was created in 1784, and lands were granted to the expelled loyalists of New York and New England. After the death of Sir James Wright in 1786 the loyalists of Georgia made him their attorney to press their claims to compensation, but his active life then ceased. He died at Ealing, near London, on 25 Aug. 1810.
