Robert Knight, 1st Earl of Catherlough

Robert Knights father fled to Paris when an inquiry was instituted into the South Sea Company and was outlawed for high treason in Parliament in 1729. The younger Knight was a Whigg MP for Great Grimsby 1734-47, for Castle Rising 1747-54, for Grimsby again 1762-8 and for Milbourne Port from 1770 until his death.

In 1745 he was created Baron Luxborough of Shannon in the Peerage of Ireland and subsequently in 1763 Viscount Barrells and Earl Catherlough. The addition of the Earls' coronet on the present salver appears to date from the time of this creation; it is engraved over an erasure, possibly a crest.

Knight married, as his first wife, in 1727, Henrietta, sister of the half blood of Henry, Viscount Bolingbroke. This salver evidently formed part of the wedding plate. She was, according to Horace Walpole, a "high-coloured, lusty, black woman, who was parted from her husband upon a gallantry she had with Parson Dalton... She retired to the country and consoled herself, it is said, like Ariadne with Bucchus," She died 1756 in the same year Knight married "Mary, Lady Le Quesne, widow". The identity of this lady is un clear. He died without surviving heirs in 1772, when his title became extinct.

The Huguenot Legacy, English Silver 1680-1760 by Christopher Hartop p 346. Describing a plate made by a non Huguenot silversmith shop operated by Thomas Farren and citing "G.E Cokayne, ed,. The Complete peerage"