Colonel Sir Frederick Winn Knight KCB (9 May 1812 – 3 May 1897) was an English Conservative politician who sat in the House of Commons from 1841 to 1885.

Knight took over from his father in managing the 10,262 1/4 acre estate, (subsequently increased to about 20,000 acres) formerly the royal forest of Exmoor, Somerset, purchased for £50,122 by public tender by his father in August 1818[10] from King George III's Commissioners of Woods, Forests and Land Revenues.

[11] His father had commenced the great task of reclaiming the rough grazing of the high moors, all over 1,000 ft, to arable production, and had built two farmsteads, Honeymead and Cornham, to the east and west respectively of his own residence at Simonsbath House, Simonsbath, formerly the only residence on the forest, built by James Boevey (1622–1696) in 1654,[12] which already had enclosed farmland of 108 acres.

[14] This was during a time of great population expansion when it was widely feared that food supplies would inevitably run short.

[15] Both father and son were unsuccessful with the mining ventures they planned on Exmoor, although much expenditure was made in prospecting for minerals and one mine-shaft was sunk, named Wheal Eliza.

Knight was a keen sportsman and also valued his Exmoor estate for the stag-hunting,[16] which had been practised there with hounds for centuries.

He also encouraged the abandonment of his father's determined policy of attempting to grow wheat, more suited to lowlands, and sought to introduce a pastoral system using sheep.

[17] Most of Knight's farmsteads survive today, only 5 having been demolished or partly so, namely: The remaining farms and house which survive are: After the early death of his son aged 28 in 1879, Knight sold the reversion after his death of Exmoor to Viscount Ebrington, Master of the Devon and Somerset Staghounds, the future Hugh Fortescue, 4th Earl Fortescue (1854–1932), whose family's principal seat was Castle Hill, Filleigh, 10 miles SW of Simonsbath.

In 1927 the Fortescues sold 1,745 acres with Honeymead, Gallon House, Pickedstones and Winstitchen to Sir Robert Waley Cohen.

The Church of St Luke, about 1/2 mile to the east and uphill of Simonsbath House, was finally consecrated in 1856, and a new parish called Exmoor was created to cover the whole estate which had always been extra-parochial.

Letter, with prospectus, from the Somersetshire and North Devon Junction Railway Company, concerning the extension of a line to Porlock, and the proposed development of the harbour, dependent on the good will of Capt.

), esq., M.P., concerning the construction of a double line of locomotive narrow gauge railway from the property of said Knight on the forest of Exmoor to the harbour of Porlock, 1860".

Sir Frederic Knight died on 3 May 1897 as the inscription on the pink granite tombstone memorial to his son in Simonsbath churchyard records: "In memory of Frederic Sebright Winn Knight JP DL born at Wolverley 11 May 1851 died 28 February 1879.

His heir was his nephew Major Eric Ayshford Knight (1862/3-1944),[31] the son of his younger brother Edward Lewis Knight (1817-1882) by his second wife Henrietta Mary Sanford (d.1876), daughter of Edward Ayshford Sanford (d.1876) MP, of Nynehead Court, Somerset.