That sympathetic physician, Sir Thomas Browne, thought himself austere in conversation. ‘Yet, at my devotion,’ he confessed in Religio Medici (from the 1630s), ‘I love to use the civility of my knee, my hat, and hand, with all those outward and sensible motions which may express or promote my invisible devotion.’
His hat he took off in church. His hand? Did he make the sign of the cross with it? His knee he probably bent to kneel in prayer, certainly at the reception of the Sacrament, as the Prayer Book directed.
Today, there are two things odd about take the knee: the phrase itself and the gesture it describes. Neither was familiar in Britain.
The phrase finds a history in American football, which I don’t play. An NFL rule declares: ‘An official shall declare the ball dead… when a quarterback immediately drops to his knee.’
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