| HENRYIRVING | Who was the first English actor to be knighted? |
| ALLOW | Permit English actor to ignore lead (5) |
| ORLANDOBLOOM | English actor to flourish following location of Disney World (7,5) |
| OLIVIER | Who was the first actor to be elevated to a life peerage, which allowed him to sit in the House of Lords? (Last name only.) |
| KNELT | Lowered oneself to the ground in order to be knighted |
| JACKHOBBS | The first cricketer to be knighted (4,5) |
| MATTHEWS | Stanley _, the only footballer to be knighted while still playing the sport (8) |
| PURCELL | Baroque musician dubbed "Orpheus Britannicus" who became the organist for Westminster Abbey around the age of 20 and composed the first English opera, Dido and Aeneas (7) |
| BYRON | John ___, 1st Baron, the leader of Royalist forces against the Parliamentarians in the 1644 Battle of Nantwich during the First English Civil War (5) |
| DRAKE | Sea captain and explorer who commanded the Golden Hind on the first English circumnavigation of the Earth (5) |
| CLARENDON | 1st Earl of -; title of Edward Hyde, chief advisor to Charles I during the First English Civil War who was Chancellor of Oxford University from 1660-67 (9) |
| JOHNFLORIO | Author of the first English translation of Boccacio, and the first comprehensive Italian-English dictionary (1598) |
| BRONZE | Lucy, the first English footballer to win the UEFA Women's Player of the Year Award (6) |
| THISDUBSFORYOU | Shout to one about to be knighted? |
| NEILKNEEL | Request to a soon-to-be-knighted Simon? |
| BEHN | Author of Oroonoko: or, the Royal Slave; one of the first English women to earn a living as a profes |
| ETHELBERT | King of Kent (c552-616), the first English king to convert to Christianity (9) |
| UNITED | "The Blades" were the first English Football League team to use this word in their official name |
| WYATT | Bom at Allington Castle, poet and ambassador at the court of Henry VIII who wrote the first English sonnets (5) |
| KINGPAIR | Sam Curran became the first English cricketer to get this at Lord's in the Second Test against India in August 2021 |
