Sir William Knyvett was an English knight in the late Middle Ages.Knyvett is also written as Knivet, Knivett or Knyvet He was the son of John Knyvet and Alice Linne and assumed the titles of Sheriff of Norfolk & Suffolk, Burgess of Melcombe, Bletchingley, & Grantham, Constable of Rising Castle.

Life

Sir William married married three times. The first was to Alice Grey, daughter of Sir John Grey of Ruthin, eldest son of the Baron Grey de Ruthin. The Grey family were staunch Yorkists and closely related to the Woodville family, and Queen Elizabeth. His second marriage was to Joan Stafford, daughter of Sir Humphrey Stafford, 1st Duke Buckingham, Earl of Buckingham, Hereford, Stafford, & Northampton, Count of Perche, 7th Lord Stafford and Anne II Neville, sometime before 1477. His final marriage was to Jane or Joan Courtenay, during the Wars of the Roses

Wars of the Roses

The Wars of the Roses were a series of dynastic civil wars for the throne of England fought between supporters of two rival branches of the royal House of Plantagenet: the houses of Lancaster and York...

. She was the daughter of Thomas, Earl of Devon

Thomas Courtenay, 14th Earl of Devon

Sir Thomas Courtenay, 6th Earl of Devon was the eldest son of Thomas de Courtenay, 5th Earl of Devon by Margaret Beaufort, the royal blooded daughter of John Beaufort, Earl of Somerset and Margaret Holland, daughter of Thomas Holland, Earl of Kent....

, a friend of York.

Sir William Knyvett died December 2, 1515 in Wymondham

Wymondham

Wymondham is a historic market town and civil parish in the English county of Norfolk. It lies 9.5 miles to the south west of the city of Norwich, on the A11 road to Thetford and London.- Before The Great Fire :...

, Norfolk

Norfolk

Norfolk is a low-lying county in the East of England. It has borders with Lincolnshire to the west, Cambridgeshire to the west and southwest and Suffolk to the south. Its northern and eastern boundaries are the North Sea coast and to the north-west the county is bordered by The Wash. The county...

.

Issue

His children were Sir Edmund Knivet of Buckenham, who married Eleanor Tyrell; and Anne Knyvett who married John Thwaits, 4th in descent from John of Gaunt, 1st Duke of Lancaster, 5th Earl of Leicester, 2nd Earl of Derby, Duke of Aquitaine, King of Castile and León, and his first wife, Blanche Plantagenet, mother of King Henry IV of England, daughter of Henry Grosmont, 1st Duke of Lancaster, and his wife, Isabel de Beaumont.