BLOUNT, Richard (by 1512-56), of Calais and London.

Published in The History of Parliament: the House of Commons 1509-1558, ed. S.T. Bindoff, 1982
Available from Boydell and Brewer

Constituency

Dates

1545

Family and Education

b. by 1512, s. of Richard Blount of Calais by Alice, da. of Richard Knight. m. at least 10 children.1

Offices Held

Master of the Ordnance, Calais 4 Nov. 1546-d.2

Biography

Richard Blount spent his life at Calais. His father, a younger son in the family of Sodington Hall, Worcestershire, had established himself there, probably in the wake of a kinsman, the 4th Lord Mountjoy, and had married the daughter of an officer in the garrison. The younger Blount’s military career had begun by 1533 and he was to be joined in it by two of his brothers. Following unsuccessful litigation with his stepfather Henry Lacy over property in Marck and Oye, in the course of which both parties invoked the support of the King and Cromwell, Blount was recommended by the King for the next vacancy as a spear, only to find himself involved in the quarrel thus provoked between Sir Richard Whethill and the deputy, Viscount Lisle. His cause was taken up by Sir William Kingston and early in 1536 the King granted him the house which had belonged to his mother’s father. After Kingston’s death Blount seems to have attached himself to (Sir) William Paget. On 13 Nov. 1545 he sent Paget an account of the state of affairs at Calais in terms which imply a friendship of some duration, and it may have been at the secretary’s prompting that six days later Blount was elected to Parliament by the deputy and his council. (The Parliament concerned had been postponed from the previous January and it is not clear why the elections at Calais had been deferred until the eve of its assembly.) During the prorogation of 1546 Paget first intervened with Lord Cobham, the new deputy of Calais, on Blount’s behalf in a legal matter and in November secured him the mastership of the Ordnance there. His nine-year tenure of this post is illustrated by the fragments of his official correspondence which survive. His death on 1 Jan. 1556 was reported to his ‘old host and good friend’ Cecil by John Overton.3

Ref Volumes: 1509-1558

Author: A. D.K. Hawkyard

Notes

  • 1. Date of birth estimated from first reference. Vis. Worcs. (Harl. Soc. xxvii), 21-22; CSP For. 1553-8, p. 66.
  • 2. LP Hen. VIII, xxi.
  • 3. Vis. Worcs. 21-22; A. Croke. Croke Fam. ii. 154; Chron. Calais (Cam. Soc. xxxv), 137; P. T. J. Morgan, ‘Govt. Calais, 1485-1558’ (Oxf. Univ. D.Phil. thesis, 1966), 64, 87; LP Hen. VIII, v-x, xx, xxi; CSP For. 1547-53, p. 320; 1553-8, pp. 3, 66; CPR, 1553-4, p. 436; 1555-7, p. 396; APC, i. 512; ii. 101; iii. 100; iv. 303; Lansd. 3(66), ff. 135-6.