Knott Bolstrood

Overview

Barker, friend of Drake Waterhouse, Secretary of State, and reluctant lord. One of Daniel Waterhouse’s earliest memories is watching Knott destroy the organ in Archbishop Laud’s cathedral — a quintessentially Puritan act of iconoclasm. He’s the “B” in the fictional CABAL.

In the Novel

• Book 1 — A close friend of Drake Waterhouse who helped raise young Daniel. Part of the Barker movement — radical Dissenters who opposed both the Anglican establishment and the Catholic threat.
• When Charles II appointed him Secretary of State, the king ennobled him as Lord Penistone — deliberately choosing a title that forced Knott to say “penis” every time he introduced himself. Penistone is a real parish in Yorkshire, which made the joke technically dignified while being obviously cruel.
• Knott attempted to indict Nell Gwyn, Charles II’s famous mistress — a measure of how seriously he took moral reform, and how badly he misread the political room.
• His son Gomer Bolstrood represents the next generation’s retreat from radicalism into respectable craft.

What’s real

Fictional. His career — radical Dissenter who somehow ends up serving under a Restoration king — is “loosely suggested by events in the life of Shaftesbury” (Anthony Ashley Cooper, 1st Earl of Shaftesbury), who was the real “A” in the historical CABAL ministry and later became a fierce opponent of the Crown. The organ-smashing is drawn from real Puritan iconoclasm during the Civil War, when organs, stained glass, and statues were systematically destroyed across England.