Edmund Knox

Edmund Arbuthnott Knox (6 December 1847 – 16 January 1937) was the fourth Bishop of Manchester, from 1903 to 1921. He was described as a prominent evangelical. Born in Bangalore, the second son of the Reverend George Knox and Frances Mary Anne (daughter of Thomas Forbes Reynolds, M.D. and a descendant of John Arbuthnott, 8th Viscount of Arbuthnott) and educated at St Paul's and Corpus Christi College, Oxford, he was ordained in 1872 and began his ecclesiastical career with a period as Fellow, Tutor, and Dean of Merton College, Oxford. He was also rector of St Wilfrid's Church in Kibworth from 1884 to 1891, then from 1891 vicar of Aston by Birmingham, and from 1894 to 1903 rector of St Philip's, Birmingham, Suffragan Bishop of Coventry and Archdeacon of Birmingham.

Knox was the author of a distinguished history of the Oxford Movement written from an unsympathetic evangelical viewpoint.

Knox was an early proponent of cremation. In a letter read at the 1903 opening ceremony of the Birmingham Crematorium, he wrote:

in spite of strong sentimental objections very naturally entertained, we shall come to see that under the conditions of modern life cremation is not only preferable from the sanitary point of view, but that it is also the most reverent and decent treatment of the bodies of the dead.

Knox died on 16 January 1937. On 27 January 1937, a memorial service was held at All Souls Church, Langham Place. H. Earnshaw Smith, then Rector of All Souls, officiated the service, Sidney Nowell Rostron read the lesson and T. W. Gilbert gave the address. He was then laid to rest in what is now Beckenham Cemetery.

Family

Bishop Knox was married twice. Firstly he married Ellen Penelope French (1854–1892) in 1878, daughter of Thomas Valpy French, Bishop of Lahore. Secondly he married Ethel Mary Newton in 1895, daughter of Canon Horace Newton of Holmwood, Redditch and Glencripesdale Estate Argyllshire.

He was father of six children by his first wife Ellen French:

• Ethel Knox (1879–1958)
• Edmund George Valpy Knox (1881–1971) who was editor of Punch magazine
• Winifred Frances Knox (1882–1961), married James Peck and became known as an author under the name "Winifred Peck"
• Alfred Dillwyn Knox (1884–1943), known as "Dilly", a classical scholar, and a codebreaker in both World Wars
• Wilfred Lawrence Knox (1886–1950), Anglican priest
• Ronald Arbuthnott Knox (1888–1957), former Anglican priest who became a Roman Catholic priest and translator of the Bible.

His sister was Ellen Mary Knox, the first principal of Havergal College in Toronto, Canada. Another brother became a judge in the Allahabad High Court, later Sir George Edward Knox (1845 — 1922).