BLOUNT, Francis (b.c.1535), of Broke, Wilts.

Published in The History of Parliament: the House of Commons 1558-1603, ed. P.W. Hasler, 1981
Available from Boydell and Brewer

Constituency

Dates

Family and Education

b. c.1535, 2nd s. of Charles Blount, 5th Lord Mountjoy, by Anne, gd.da. of Robert Willoughby, 2nd Lord Willoughby de Broke, and coh. to part of gd. mother’s Beauchamp inheritance. m. Catherine, da. of John Carleton of Brightwell Baldwin, Oxon., s.p.

Offices Held

Biography

Blount’s career, like that of many of the younger sons of the nobility in the Tudor period, is obscure: described as ‘of Broke, Wiltshire’, he does not appear to have held any office in the county. His mother’s family had property in the Westbury district, but he presumably owed his return to Parliament to his elder brother James, 6th Lord Mountjoy, lord of the manor there. Apparently Blount was hard up. A Trowbridge clothier whom he met in London and from whom he was trying to borrow £20 knew him ‘to have great need of money and somewhat slack for the payment of his debts’. Blount was still in England in the summer of 1582. It is not known whether he was the Francis Blount, recusant, who wrote to the Queen and Burghley from Paris in July 1588: ‘Your merciful Majesty hath protested to hurt none for the conscience’, denying that he had conspired or could conspire against Elizabeth. Another, though remote, possibility is that he was the Francis Blount on the Herefordshire commission of the peace 1575-1601.

CP, ix. 341-3; xii(2), p. 687; Vis. Salop (Harl. Soc. xxviii), 57; Vis. Oxon. (Harl. Soc. v), 123; C3/18/2, 19/77; Lansd. 58, ff. 24, 79.

Ref Volumes: 1558-1603

Author: N. M. Fuidge

Notes