Richard Knightley

Sir Richard Knightley (1533 – 1 September 1615) of Fawsley Hall in Northamptonshire was an English Member of Parliament (MP) and leading patron of the Puritans during the reign of Elizabeth I.

In the late spring of 1588, Elizabeth Hussey allowed the printer Robert Waldegrave and the Puritan preacher and pamphleteer John Penry to set up a secret press at her country home at East Molesey, Surrey, across the Thames from Hampton Court Palace.

In late 1588 and early 1589, Waldegrave embarked on an even more controversial enterprise, printing the first four tracts written against the ecclesiastical authorities by an unknown satirist using the pseudonym Martin Marprelate.

In November the press was moved from East Molesey to Sir Richard Knightley's house at Fawsley, where Martin's second tract, The Epitome, was printed.

[citation needed] Shortly thereafter, the secret press was moved to the Whitefriars, Coventry, the home of Knightley's great-nephew, John Hales,[6] where Certaine Minerall and Metaphysicall Schoolpoints and Hay Any Worke for Cooper were printed, the former in early January and the latter in late March 1589.