Robert Bent Knox Doctor of Divinity Doctor of Laws was the Church of Ireland Bishop of Down, Connor and Dromore from 1849 to 1886, and then Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of All Ireland from 1886 until his death.
Background
Born in 1808 at Dungannon Park, County Tyrone, the country seat of his grandfather, Thomas Knox, first Viscount Northland (d 1818), Knox was the second son of the Honorary Charles Knox (d 1825), archdeacon of Armagh, and his wife, Hannah, the daughter of Robert Bent Member of Parliament.
Education
Educated at Trinity College, Dublin, he took the degree of Bachelor of Arts at the age of twenty-one, then graduated Master of Arts in 1834. He was also awarded the degree of Doctor of Laws by Cambridge in 1888.
Career
In 1832, Knox was ordained deacon and priest by Bishop Beresford of Kilmore. On 7 May 1834 he became chancellor of Ardfert. In 1849 he became a Doctor of Divinity and was appointed Bishop of Down, Connor and Dromore.
In 1886, he was created Archbishop of Armagh.
He was succeeded in Down, Connor and Dromore by William Reeves. Knox was nominated to the see of Down, Connor, and Dromore by George Villiers, 4th Earl of Clarendon, at the time Lord Lieutenant of Ireland.
Nevertheless, Knox was the author of various ecclesiastical and secular works. Knox made no secret of his view that disestablishment in Ireland was inevitable.
As Bishop of Down, Connor, and Dromore, he hoped to build a new cathedral in Belfast, but abandoned this plan in favour of another, to increase the number of churches of the united diocese.
He organized diocesan conferences and founded a Diocesan Board of Missions. In person, he was quiet and restrained, pragmatic and frank, and an able administrator and an effective speaker. Following the death of Marcus Gervais Beresford, Archbishop of Armagh, on 26 December 1885, Knox was chosen as his successor.
As president of the General Synod of the Irish church he was seen as fair and moderate.
He died at the archbishop"s palace, Armagh, on 23 October 1893, and was buried on 27 October in the old ruined church at Holywood. On 5 October 1842, Knox married Catherine Delia FitzGibbon, daughter of Thomas Gibbon FitzGibbon of Ballyseeda, County Limerick.
They had three sons, including Charles Edmond Knox, who became a lieutenant-general of the British Army, and also two daughters.