[1] Born in Bangalore, the second son of the Reverend George Knox and Frances Mary Anne (daughter of Thomas Forbes Reynolds, M.D.

and a sister of the daughter-in-law of John Arbuthnott, 8th Viscount of Arbuthnott)[2][3][4][5] and educated at St Paul's and Corpus Christi College, Oxford, he was ordained in 1872 and began his ecclesiastical career with a period as Fellow, Tutor, and Dean of Merton College, Oxford.

[7] Knox was the author of a distinguished history of the Oxford Movement written from an unsympathetic evangelical viewpoint.

In a letter read at the 1903 opening ceremony of the Birmingham Crematorium, he wrote:[8] in spite of strong sentimental objections very naturally entertained, we shall come to see that under the conditions of modern life cremation is not only preferable from the sanitary point of view, but that it is also the most reverent and decent treatment of the bodies of the dead.During the First World War, Knox was an early proponent of conscription rather than relying on volunteers to serve in the forces and elsewhere.

H. Earnshaw Smith, then Rector of All Souls, officiated the service, Sidney Nowell Rostron read the lesson and T. W. Gilbert gave the address.