The House of Lords ruled the Earl of Banbury's sons were not his, and the Knollys family lost the earldom after 152 years of claims

William Knollys, later 1st Earl of Banbury, married Elizabeth Howard, daughter of the Earl of Suffolk, on 23 December 1605. He was about 58 and she was 19. Their son Edward was born on 10 April 1627, when the Earl was about 80. Nicholas was born on 3 January 1631 at Harrowden, the house of Edward, 4th Lord Vaux. The Earl's will of 19 May 1630 named no children and left everything to his wife. His funeral certificate said he died "without issue". Within five weeks of his death the widow married Lord Vaux. A court found Edward the heir in 1641; he was killed in a quarrel near Calais in 1645. In 1661 a Lords committee reported Nicholas legitimate. The House refused the report, and he never received a writ of summons. His son Charles killed his brother-in-law, Captain Philip Lawson, in a duel in 1692. On 17 January 1693 the Lords resolved that he had no right to the earldom. In 1694 Chief Justice Holt's Court of King's Bench quashed his murder indictment because he was Earl of Banbury and could only be tried by peers. Summoned by a Lords committee in February 1698, Holt refused to explain: "I am not to be questioned for my judgment." On 15 March 1813 the Lords resolved that the eighth claimant, William Knollys, had no right to the title. The family has not claimed it since, and in 2026 the earldom has no holder.