Catherine Knollys

The Knollys were living in the City of London, the Year of Our Lord, Thirteen Hundred and Eighty-One and her husband, Sir Robert Knollys was a moderately wealthy person. While he was on an expedition out of the country. His wife, Lady Constance Knollys, became annoyed that light industry was being built very close to her property so she bought up the land to use as an extension to her home and to plant a rose garden. Between her two pieces of property was a main road. This presented somewhat of a problem, so she to built a small foot bridge over the road linking her two buildings. Unfortunately, she failed to get planning permission to build the bridge, so the London City council called a meeting to discuss the issue... because Constance Knollys, husband, Sir Robert Knollys, was a very powerful person, the council decided that the bridge can remain, but a fine should be imposed. There final decision was that a red rose was to be presented yearly to the Lord Mayor. Sir Robert died in 1407, and left this house on Seething Lane to the Church. The garden that remains in Seething Lane is modern, being a left over from the construction of the nearby Trinity House, built in the 1920. It is believed this helped bring back to life the Knollys Rose ceremony in 1924. There is a project to renovate the rose garden, because the Ceremony is now an integral part of the heritage of the site.

From Find-a-Grave, Lady Constance De Beverley Knollys http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=100402880

[Commentary: This colorful story demonstrates as much as anything how rank and privilege operated back then. Today, Lady Constance would be labeled as a NIMBY. It is humorous to reflect that, today, most of the time, city councils would tell the land owner to remove the offending structure and get a proper permit. I say "most of the time," however, knowing that, as F. Scott Fitzgerald once wrote in The Great Gatsby, "the rich are different from you and me," so there are still instances where local government sucks up to people of power and influence. It is an open question whether today, Lady Constance would have still had her way. --Bob Scrivens ]

Child - Sir Thomas Knollys