SECOND LIEUTENANT STEPHEN KNOWLES
RIFLE BRIGADE
24TH OCTOBER 1916 AGE 20
BURIED: GROVE TOWN CEMETERY, MEAULTE, FRANCE
This tender inscription has a very obscure origin. It comes from a monument in the church of St Mary the Virgin, Gilston, Hertfordshire, dedicated to the four-year-old daughter of Sir John Gore and Lady Gore, Bridget, who died in 1657:
" ... who Being the most desired Fruit of many prayers, and the joy of her Mother's heart, was without reluctancie, most chearfullie resigned to God that gave her in the 4th yeare, the blossome of her age, the 10th of February 1657. In testimony whereof & of her dearest affection to her most ravishing memorie, shee hath erected this small monument & deposited in the hands of the Officers of this Parish 60L. to be disposed in land, and the revenue of it for a perpetuall pious and charitable Anniversary of her eternall gratitude for the short enjoyment of so sweet a mercie."
Stephen Knowles was born and brought up in Bolton in Lancashire where both his parents were also born and where his father was a master cotton spinner. How was his mother, who chose the inscription his father having died in 1912, familiar with a monument in a Hertfordshire church? The inscription had been printed in 'The Historical Antiquities of Hertfordshire', 1826, and again in 'The Christian Remembrancer', 1841, but Mrs Knowles spells it as it appears on the monument and neither of these publications do.
Educated at Repton School and destined for Pembroke College, Cambridge to read medicine, Stephen Knowles joined up on the outbreak of war and was gazetted Second Lieutenant in the Rifle Brigade on 15 May 1915. He went to France on 6 December and died on 24 October 1916 of wounds received in action the previous day during an attack on the German trenches at Gaudecourt. The Times announcement of his death six days later describes him as a "dearly loved and most loving" son - "Eternal gratitude for the short enjoyment of so sweet a mercie".