BLOUNT, Peter (d.c.1405), of Dorchester, Dorset.

Published in The History of Parliament: the House of Commons 1386-1421, ed. J.S. Roskell, L. Clark, C. Rawcliffe., 1993
Available from Boydell and Brewer

Constituency

Dates

Feb. 1383
Oct. 1383
Apr. 1384

Family and Education

er. bro. of John Blount I*. m. (1) by 1369, Juliana; (2) Isabel.

Offices Held

Tax collector, Dorset Nov. 1377.

Dep. butler in all ports, Dorset and Som. 20 Oct. 1383-10 Nov. 1385.

Collector of customs, Melcombe Regis 26 Apr. 1387-12 June 1388.

Commr. of inquiry, Dorchester July 1397 (rights to tithes).

Biography

Blount’s first wife had an interest for life in some 80 acres of land at Toller Porcorum and elsewhere in Dorset, which they sold in 1369. Later, Blount acquired some property in Bridport, but his principal holdings were in Dorchester, and included a burgage with a dovecote in South Street, a tenement with a cellar in West Street and a toft in ‘Ulnenlane’. There was also a house in High Street, which he transferred to his brother John in 1398, and a messuage in South Street which he sold together with two acres of arable lying in ‘les West Walles’ to William Ash* in 1400.1

A week before the assembly of Blount’s second Parliament, in October 1383, he was appointed by John Slegh, the chief butler, as his deputy in the ports of Dorset and Somerset. He held the post for two years, not being dismissed until 1385, when his fourth Parliament was in session. Earlier that year he had acted as a feoffee-to-uses on behalf of Sir John Mautravers†, one of the knights of the shire for Dorset in Blount’s first three Parliaments.2 Subsequently, he held royal office again, this time as collector of customs at Melcombe Regis.

Blount was one of a number of Dorset men, headed by Sir Humphrey Stafford I*, who applied for a royal licence to make grants in mortmain to the Benedictine abbey of Abbotsbury, but he died before the formalities were completed. His will, dated 29 Aug. 1404 and exhibited in the town court at Dorchester in February 1406, named his second wife, Isabel, as beneficiary: to her he left three tenements in Dorchester.3

Ref Volumes: 1386-1421

Author: E.M. Wade

Notes

  • 1. Dorset Feet of Fines, ii. 120; CIMisc. vi. 46; Recs. Dorchester ed. Mayo, 121, 130, 140-1, 143.
  • 2. Dorset Feet of Fines, ii. 201.
  • 3. C143/438/21; Recs. Dorchester, 164.