BLOUNT, Walter

Walter Blount’s early career suggested that he was destined to continue a record of family service to the house of Lancaster which extended back to the reign of Edward II. His grandfather, Sir Walter Blount†, chamberlain of John of Gaunt, had died in the Lancastrian cause at the battle of Shrewsbury in 1403; his uncle, Sir John Blount, killed at the siege of Rouen in 1418, had earned promotion to the order of the Garter through distinguished service in Henry V’s campaigns; and his father, who held office as treasurer of Normandy in the late 1420s and early 1430s, had spent his best years in the service of Lancastrian arms in France.8 CP, ix. 330-4. Our MP was himself an esquire of the Household by 1441, the date of the first surviving household lists for Henry VI’s reign, and is likely to have held the same rank at least a year earlier when he briefly acquired the post of bailiff of the New Liberty of the duchy of Lancaster in Staffordshire. This early grant provided him with a frustrating glimpse of the problems caused by the young King’s liberality. On 8 Feb. 1440, a little over a month after his appointment, he was ordered to desist from the exercise of the office because John Mynors* had been able to prove a prior life grant to him.9 E101/409/9; DL42/18, ff. 133v, 149.

Blount’s marriage to Ellen, a daughter of the prominent Lancashire knight, Sir John Byron, is also to be assigned to these very early years of his career. It was probably brokered by the bride’s great-uncle, the lawyer Henry Booth*, who lived at Arleston, only a few miles from the Blount residence at Elvaston. The match was probably contemporary with an agreement he reached with his stepmother: on 7 May 1442 he confirmed to her certain properties, in which she had a joint estate with his father, on condition that she surrendered her future claim to dower in the remaining property of the family. Also to be assigned to the same date is his father’s conveyance of the manor of Elvaston to Byron, Robert Clifton* and others to hold to the use of the couple. This settlement explains why, in the subsidy returns of 1450-1, our MP was assessed on an annual income of £20.10 CCR, 1441-7, pp. 67-68; Add. 6698, f.195v; E179/91/73.

His family’s wealth and service to the ruling house entitled Blount to play an active role in county affairs even before the death of his father. What, however, may have given rise to some resentment among his county neighbours was the extent of this activity, especially with respect to parliamentary representation which the Vernons, the other leading gentry family of the shire, had dominated in the 1430s. On 19 Jan. 1447, nearly ten years before he entered his patrimony, Walter was elected to represent the county (his father-in-law represented Lincolnshire) and he was entrusted with the same responsibility at the following election of 16 Jan. 1449. Given the hostility he was soon to excite within the county, it is interesting to note that, if one may judge by the unusually large number of attestors named in the returns, both elections are likely to have been contested. In the first return, 50 attestors are named, nearly all drawn from the ranks of the lesser gentry and below; and in the second 61 names of similarly modest rank appear. This second list is particularly interesting for the attestors are not named in order of rank.11 C219/15/4, 6. Taken together with the fact that his father was responsible for conducting the first of these elections, it may be fair to infer that Walter was returned without the ringing endorsement of the leading men of the shire.

Blount employed his time as a prospective MP productively. On 8 Feb. 1449, four days before the meeting of the Parliament to which he had been elected a few weeks before, the Crown belatedly compensated him for the loss of his earlier grant of duchy office by granting him that of bailiff of the wapentakes of Morleston and Litchurch, previously held by Fulk Vernon*.12 CPR, 1446-52, p. 221. The office was a minor one, but it is noteworthy that he supplanted a Vernon, since that family was soon to take a leading role in opposition to him. On the following 24 July, eight days after the end of this Parliament, Blount’s local influence was further strengthened by his nomination to the Derbyshire bench, and this was followed by his third election to Parliament on 22 Oct. 1450. On this occasion his fellow Derbyshire MP was Fulk’s brother, William Vernon. Here the return has none of the irregularities of those of his first two elections: only 17 attestors were named and all hailed from the ranks of the middling gentry and above. None the less, it may be significant that the two leading attestors were drawn from either side of the later divide within the county: Ralph Shirley was either already or was soon to be our MP’s brother-in-law, and John Curson* was soon to number among the leading antagonists of the Blounts.13 C219/16/1. Shirley had married our MP’s sister Elizabeth by Sept. 1456: Leics. RO, Shirley, Earls Ferrers of Staunton Harold mss, 26D53/192. Perhaps already the two candidates represented opposing sides among the Derbyshire gentry, although, if this was so, it did not prevent them acting in concert on one occasion during the Parliament: in February 1451 they both stood bail for their fellow MP, Sir Robert Harcourt*, when he appeared in the court of King’s bench to face charges relating to the murder of Richard Stafford in Coventry in 1448. This need not, of course, imply a lack of rivalry; it may simply be a reflection of their mutual connexion with the royal household, from which other of the mainpernors were also drawn.14 C. Carpenter, Locality and Polity, 455. For Blount, these connexions remained strong into the early 1450s. He continued to appear among those in receipt of household robes down to the failure of the lists in 1452; and, on 4 July 1453, the King confirmed him in office as steward, constable and master forester of High Peak, which he held by grant of the queen. In the following Michaelmas term, when he suffered a common recovery of his manor of Fauld in Staffordshire, he employed the prominent Household servant, John Trevelyan*, as one of the plaintiffs in the collusive action.15 E101/410/9, f. 42v; DL37/21/30-31; Wm. Salt Arch. Soc. n.s. iii. 214; J. Biancalana, Fee Tail and Common Recovery, 400.

The lack of detailed evidence of Blount’s local enmities and friendships during his early career makes it difficult to explain the major disorders that disturbed the peace of Derbyshire in 1454. These have been interpreted as a local manifestation of the rivalry between Richard Neville, earl of Warwick, and Humphrey Stafford, duke of Buckingham, with our MP representing Warwick, and his opponents, Buckingham. This interpretation has been discredited, because there is no evidence either to connect Blount with Warwick until later in the decade or to provide Buckingham with a coherent motive for orchestrating opposition to him. The disorders appear rather to represent the damaging interaction of purely local rivalries among the leading gentry with the crisis in national affairs.16 H. Castor, ‘Sack of Elvaston’, Midland Hist. xix. 21-39. A reconstruction of events is almost entirely dependent on indictments taken before commissioners of oyer and terminer in July 1454. These indicate that the first sign of trouble came in 1450 when Ralph Shirley’s manor of Brailsford in the west of the county was raided by servants of Sir Nicholas Longford of nearby Longford. In December 1452 Longford himself, in company with two other leading local gentry, John Cockayne of Ashbourne and Nicholas Montgomery the younger of Cubley, broke into Shirley’s park at Shirley.17 KB9/12/1/10, 12. The significance of these attacks lies in the Blounts’ close connexion with the Shirleys, and the parliamentary election held on 8 Mar. 1453 took place against a background of mounting local conflict. Walter was again returned for the county and his brother, Thomas, was elected to represent Derby.18 C219/16/2. They may have intended to sponsor a petition against their friend’s attackers, and, if this was so, it may explain why Thomas, while visiting the nunnery of King’s Mead at Derby on 31 July 1453 during a recess in Parliament, was violently assaulted by Ralph Twyford, said to have been acting on the orders of Longford and John Curson.19 In a bill presented before the commrs. Thomas named Longford as one of his attackers; in the indictment the names of Longford and Curson have been struck out: KB9/12/1/15; 2/254. This assault prompted Walter into action. On the following 30 Apr., very soon after the dissolution of Parliament, he and his brother led 100 men in an attack on Longford’s property at Longford.20 KB9/12/1/9 (printed in Derbys. Arch. and Nat. Hist. Soc. Jnl. xxxv. 244). Were they emboldened to do so by the duke of York’s appointment as Protector? Their later connexion with the duke certainly implies this as a possibility, but, if this was their motivation, they misjudged the political climate. On 10 May our MP and Longford were summoned to appear before the royal council.21 PPC, vi. 180.

In ordinary circumstances this may have marked an end to, or at least a reduction in, the conflict: in the abnormal conditions of 1454 it was followed by escalation. The story of the events of 28 May has often been told: Longford, accompanied by (Sir) William Vernon and other leading gentry of Derbyshire and Cheshire, led an armed band of 1,000 men to Derby. There they rejected a proclamation to disband made by the sheriff, (Sir) John Gresley*, first cousin and friend of our MP who was in himself in dispute with the Vernons, before moving on to Elvaston, where they ransacked Walter’s manor. It is the description of this raid by jurors before royal commissioners that has lent a political interpretation to these events. The rioters allegedly quartered tapestries charged with the Blount arms, justifying their action on the grounds that our MP ‘was gone to serve Traytours’, implying they saw his recent actions as a betrayal of allegiance on the part of one who had previously been closely associated with the court.22 KB9/12/1/13; Derbys. Arch. and Nat. Hist. Soc. Jnl. xxxiv. 39-49.

The events of the following year, which witnessed a second round of violence, add rather than detract from the confusion. On 11 Apr. 1455 our MP’s kinsman, Roland Blount, was killed in an affray at Derby in which many of his servants were injured. According to an indictment taken 17 days later before Henry Souky, the Derby coroner, the killing had been ordered by John Curson and carried out by his son, Henry, and others. Other evidence connects Roland’s death with another murder which took place in the town on the same day. A local fletcher, Simon Iden, was killed by a yeoman of the town, Robert Strangleford, and, at an inquest taken on the following day, Henry Curson was named among those who had aided Strangleford, just as the latter was later indicted among Henry’s aiders and abettors in the death of Roland. An indictment taken by the Staffordshire j.p.s on the following 21 July links these deaths with an earlier alleged offence of the Blounts: on 31 Dec. 1453 four yeomen of Elvaston are said to have come to Lichfield and abducted Strangleford’s daughter from the house of one John Atwell. Walter and his brother Thomas were named as abettors. The same jury also indicted Thomas for assaulting John Cockayne, Roger Vernon and Nicholas Montgomery at Branston near Burton-upon-Trent on 2 July 1455.23 KB9/280/27, 66-67. The veracity of both sets of indictments is open to question: those taken before the Derby coroner because they are endorsed as sealed for return into the court of King’s bench in the presence of our MP; those before the Staffordshire j.p.s since the bench was headed by John Harper*, a leading adherent of Buckingham, by whom many of our MP’s rivals were retained. Even, however, if these indictments were malicious they demonstrate that the visitation of the commissioners in the previous year had not put an end to local rivalries. Indeed, there can be little doubt that the result of the shire elections held at Derby on 3 July was informed by these divisions. Blount was returned with Robert Barley*, a servant of John Talbot, earl of Shrewsbury. If the assault of the previous day did in fact take place it may have been intended to prevent the Blounts’ rivals attending the election. Sir William Vernon’s election a week before to represent Staffordshire is likely to have been informed by the same tensions.24 C219/16/3.

Although direct proof is lacking, effective measures by the duke of York as Protector seem to have been put in hand during this Parliament to bring to an end the violent feuds in Derbyshire. The disputes moved from the field to the arbitration chamber and the courts. On 12 July, three days after Parliament assembled, our MP’s ally, Sir John Gresley, and Vernon’s brother, Roger, were summoned to appear before the royal council to answer for recent riotous assemblies. Their appearance before the council and the referral of the matter to Buckingham’s arbitration coincided with the indictment of the Blounts before the Staffordshire j.p.s. On the following 12 Sept. Buckingham returned his award, the same day as our MP appeared in the court of common pleas to sue Henry Curson, Strangleford and many others for damages of £300 on account of the assault on his servants in the previous April.25 PPC, vi. 250; CP40/780, rot. 414; 787, rot. 46. This correspondence of date implies that a co-ordinated effort was being made to prevent outstanding differences seeking their resolution in further violence. On 12 Nov. 1455, the first day of the second session of the Parliament of which he was a Member, Blount took the precaution of suing out a royal pardon and, a year later, the justices of King’s bench ruled legally insufficient the indictment concerning the abduction of Strangleford’s daughter.26 C67/41, m.7; KB9/280/26; KB27/782, rex rot. 25d.

Some of Blount’s opponents, however, found themselves, initially at least, on slightly more difficult ground. On 26 Jan. 1456 the indictments concerning Roland Blount’s death were also called into King’s bench, and on the following 5 Nov. Henry Curson, Strangleford and others appeared to answer. Although they were bailed, our MP and several of his servants took the opportunity to bring bills against those involved in the attack at Derby in April 1455. Blount claimed damages of £700, to add to the £300 he had claimed in the court of common pleas, and his servants a further £320. The defendants pleaded self-defence, and both the King’s suit and the claim for damages then followed the familiar pattern of ineffectual process.27 KB9/280/68; KB27/782, rots. 52, 85-86d, 90, 95, 118, rex. rot. 8; 786, rot. 109; 789, rot. 72. Thus Derbyshire politics moved on from the dramatic events of 1454 and 1455.

So eventful were these early years of Blount’s career that it is easy forget that he did not inherit his considerable patrimony until his father’s death late in 1456.28 Sir Thomas was alive as late as 8 Nov. 1456: KB27/782, rot. 46. Curiously, no writs of diem clausit extremum were issued. By that date he had probably already formed the close association with the duke of York to which his enemies had indirectly referred in 1454. His removal from the Derbyshire commission of the peace, after York had surrendered the Protectorship, suggest that he was already perceived as a committed Yorkist. Later evidence is more direct. In May 1457 and June 1458 he offered mainprise in Chancery for John Browe*, a known associate of the duke. In February 1458, along with (Sir) Walter Devereux I*, William Hastings, and other of the duke’s servants, he entered bonds to Alice, dowager-duchess of Suffolk, for the payment of the portion of York’s daughter on her marriage to the young duke of Suffolk.29 CCR, 1454-61, pp. 208, 301-2; CAD, iv. A6340, 6343.

Only at this point does the first evidence emerge to associate Walter with the earl of Warwick. On 7 Oct. 1458 Warwick wrote to the duke asking permission to appoint Blount as his marshal at Calais; the duke replied eight days later in the affirmative with the proviso that he could spare his servant for only a year.30 Orig. Letters ed. Ellis, ser. 2, i. 124-6. The date of this letter is established by the reference to the manor of Collyweston, which Warwick purchased from the executors of Ralph, Lord Cromwell, in May 1458: Magdalen Coll. Oxf., Misc. 303. One must assume that our MP took up his duties at Calais: a later reference to him as Warwick’s lieutenant at the nearby castle of Hammes in Henry VI’s time implies that he did.31 E13/157, rot. 21. Indeed, in view of his earlier difficulties in his native shire, he may have been glad to do so. What is not clear is whether he returned to England with Warwick in September 1459 and took part in the disastrous Ludford Bridge campaign. Indirect evidence suggests that he was not at Ludford, either because Warwick left him behind in Calais or because he was elsewhere in England. He certainly did not share the fate of those who were, namely attainder in the Coventry Parliament of the following November. Rather, on 20 Dec., the day on which this Parliament was dissolved, he was granted a pardon for all treasons. If this was an attempt by Lancastrians to regain his support, it was a wasted effort. Within a month he was described as a ‘rebel’ and his bailiwick of Morleston was taken from him on 13 Jan. 1460.32 CPR, 1452-61, pp. 568, 593. Blount was wise not to abandon his Yorkist allegiance. It is not known whether he fought at Northampton in the following July, but the Yorkist victory there brought him immediate benefits: on 31 Aug. he was appointed to the important office of treasurer of Calais, formerly held by Sir Richard Vernon*. Eleven days later he was elected to represent Derbyshire in Parliament in company with his friend Sir John Gresley, an election determined by the fact that they were the only two significant gentry in the shire who had shown themselves supporters of the now-ascendant cause of York. 33 C.L. Scofield, Edw. IV, i. 112n.; C219/16/6.

A petition presented to the Pope by Elizabeth, widow of John Talbot, earl of Shrewsbury, throws a revealing light on Blount’s activities in the aftermath of the battle of Northampton where her husband had met his death. She claimed that, when she ‘was without the help of kinsmen’ and so feared the loss of her lands and goods, she pretended to be willing to marry our MP, then a mere esquire, even though he was ‘unequal and inferior to her in nobility and wealth’. Through his protection she hoped to protect her property ‘from the attacks of her enemies and the perils which threatened’ without the least intention of accepting him as her husband. Before June 1462 she asked the Pope to release her from her promise, and he in turn commissioned John Hales, bishop of Coventry and Lichfield, to investigate the matter.34 CPL, xii. 150-1; CP, xi. 705n. On 19 July 1460, only nine days after the battle, John, bishop of the Isles, had been commissioned to veil her. It is indicative of our MP’s interest in her affairs that he delivered into Chancery the inq. taken in Leics. after her husband’s death: C139/179/58. Clearly, in view of Blount’s subsequent marriage to another powerful woman widowed at the same battle, the result of these investigations was favourable to the countess. Her complaint suggests that he may have taken advantage of his Yorkist connexions in the disturbed aftermath of the battle to cajole an unwilling but wealthy widow into the promise of marriage, although it is also possible, if less likely, that the initiative had come from Elizabeth herself in her search for a protector. The grant to her on 31 Oct. 1460, during the Parliament in which Blount was sitting, of dower in the castle of Sheffield and other valuable Talbot property, may have been one of the fruits of his support. In this context it is also significant that, among those to whom Blount was later accused of illegally distributing livery on 20 May 1461, were several servants of the Talbots.35 CPR, 1452-61, p. 635; KB9/13/22.

Blount fought for the Yorkists at the decisive battle of Towton on 29 Mar. Knighted either there, or three months later, on the eve of Edward IV’s coronation, on the following 6 Aug. he was appointed steward of High Peak by the new king.36 Paston Letters, i. 165; Shaw, i. 133; Scofield, i. 182; R. Somerville, Duchy, i. 551. He repaid these marks of favour by giving the new regime his active support. Returning to Calais, in October 1461 he reduced the Lancastrian garrison at Hammes to submission, apparently paying the soldiers out of his own pocket for, three years later, the Crown owed him nearly £1,850 for their wages.37 Scofield, i. 205-6. Indeed, after the Lancastrian threat to Calais had been defeated, his services to the new King were financial rather than military. In July 1463, in an inventive attempt to pay the arrears of the wages of the Calais garrison, he was assigned as treasurer there the massive sum of £20,000 with which to trade in wool, the profits to go to the reduction of the arrears; and on the following 4 May he advanced the Crown the very considerable sum of £3,000, suggestive of a level of wealth far in excess of that enjoyed by even the greatest gentry.38 E404/72/3/44; E403/832, m. 3; A. Steel, Receipt of Exchequer, 289, 334. Were there some hidden benefits to his support for York? There may have been, but they are unlikely to explain why he and others in the 1460s were able to advance such considerable sums. It may be that the sums entered in the Exchequer records refer to composite loans attributed solely to the leading creditor.39 Woodger, 159. If so, the loans made by our MP in 1464 and thereafter were not funded entirely or even largely from his own resources. He may even have drawn the sums he advanced from the funds he held to trade on the Crown’s behalf. However this may be, there can be no doubt that Blount was viewed by Edward IV as a man of considerable financial acumen as witnessed by his promotion to the treasurership of England on 24 Nov. 1464. In his first two months in office he advanced the Crown £4,500, but again one must question how much of this money was his own.40 CPR, 1461-7, p. 356; Steel, 290.

Soon, however, a remarkable marriage was to make Blount a man with the means to sustain such a level of lending. His new wife, Anne, dowager-duchess of Buckingham, was the King’s maternal aunt and the wealthiest widow in England. It is hard to believe that our MP did not owe the match to royal patronage. Her jointure alone had a clear annual value of in excess of £1,300, and, taking her dower into account, it is likely that her total clear income was in the region of £2,000. Moreover, she also held, without the payment of any farm to the Exchequer, the custody of the Stafford lands outside Wales which had come into the hands of the Crown by virtue of the minority of her grandson, Henry Stafford, duke of Buckingham. This added to her income at least another £380 p.a., the sum for which these lands had earlier been demised to farm.41 C. Rawcliffe, Staffords, 121-3. The precise date of the marriage is unknown. It had certainly taken place before 29 Mar. 1466, when the couple had a papal indult of plenary indulgence, and it is a reasonable speculation that it had done so before 20 June 1465 when Blount was elevated to the peerage as Lord Mountjoy.42 CPL, xii. 522. If this is the case then it may be that the massive loan of £6,200 he made to the Crown six months after his elevation was partly drawn from Anne’s resources.43 Steel, 292, 331, 340; E405/43, rot. 3.

Despite these loans, in March 1466 Blount was removed from the treasurership. Given the financial burden the King placed on his treasurers, it is unlikely that anyone would wish to hold the office for long. Moreover, even if he did feel some resentment at the loss, this must have been considerably eased by the grant to him of 1,000 marks as a reward for his loyal support, not to mention his elevation to the peerage and the part the King is likely to have taken in making Duchess Anne his wife. Nonetheless, if the chronicle wrongly attributed to William Worcestre is to be credited, others did not view his removal with detachment: the chronicler implies that there was something improper about it, in that it was done ‘in concilio .. secreto’, adding that it was also ‘ad secretam displicentiam’ of the earl of Warwick and the magnates. Warwick’s displeasure probably owed more to the secret mode of the removal and the identity of the replacement, Richard Wydeville, Earl Rivers, than to his own earlier association with Blount. Although our MP had remained close to the earl in the first years of the reign (in 1463 he was named as one of the feoffees for the implementation of his will),44 CPR, 1461-7, p.270. any special relationship they may have enjoyed appears to have weakened as the decade progressed. On 8 June 1467 Blount was present when Edward took the great seal from George Neville, archbishop of York, and three days later he rode into the lists at Smithfield ahead of the ‘Bastard of Burgundy’ in the famous tournament designed to cement the Anglo-Burgundian alliance to which Warwick was opposed.45 CCR, 1461-8, p. 456; Excerpta Historica ed. Bentley, 210; C.D. Ross, Edw. IV, 110. Such services help explain why Blount was one of the major beneficiaries of the reordering of patronage in the wake of the Act of Resumption of 1467. In August 1467 he was granted the lordships of Chulmleigh (Devon) and Lymington (Hampshire) and other property of the Courtenay earldom of Devon, together with the manor of Cotheridge (Worcestershire), forfeited by Sir William Vaux. These grants were in tail-male and were clearly intended to support him and his male heirs in the new dignity of baron.46 CPR, 1467-77, pp. 24-25, 27.

When weighed against these and earlier gains, Mountjoy’s difficulties in securing repayment of his loans to the Crown were merely an annoyance. In December 1465, at the time of his largest loan, he had been assigned repayment of 5,155 marks by seven tallies, but he had been unable to convert them to cash. Accordingly, in the words of royal letters (words which presumably echo the exaggerated language of Mountjoy’s petition for redress), he was ‘greviously troubled’ by the suits of his creditors ‘for divers things bought and purveyed for the King’s pleasure’ during his term as treasurer. New arrangements were thus made for his repayment in February 1468 when he and others were licensed to trade in wool and other merchandise free of customs, so recouping the sum of £959 3s. 4d. p.a. over a period of four years. Those joined with him the grant – Master Thomas Kent (clerk of the council), Hugh atte Fenne* (former under treasurer), Humphrey Starkey, a serjeant-at-law, John Croke (an officer of the Exchequer) and Richard Stoke – may have been the impatient creditors who had brought his affairs to the supposed crisis, but it is more likely that they were colleagues who had joined with him in making the loan to the Crown. There is no reason to believe that our MP suffered any real financial crisis at this time.47 CCR, 1468-76, no. 30; CPR, 1467-77, p. 53; E404/74/2/107. Indeed, in the same month as he was granted this licence to trade, he was able to find 400 marks to purchase the wardship and marriage of his nephew, Robert, son and heir of his late brother Thomas.48 CPR, 1467-77, pp. 61, 111.

Mountjoy seems to have visited Derbyshire infrequently during the 1460s. In the early years of the decade he must have spent much time at Calais, and after his second marriage he was not only busy with government affairs at Westminster but also had the use of Duchess Anne’s more conveniently-situated residences at Writtle in Essex and Kimbolton in Huntingdonshire.49 Rawcliffe, 67, 87. It is thus not surprising that he was not directly involved in the disorders which overtook his native county late in the decade. These centred on the conflict between Henry, Lord Grey of Codnor, and Henry Vernon†, who had the support of John Talbot, the new earl of Shrewsbury. According to the pseudo-Worcester chronicler, this dispute was echoed at the royal court, with George, duke of Clarence, supporting Vernon, and ‘the King’s men’, Lord Grey. What evidence there is implies that Mountjoy supported the Talbot earl, who was the husband of his stepdaughter, Katherine. On 10 June 1468 he joined with his cousin, Lord Dudley, in entering into a recognizance in £1,000 that the earl would appear in Chancery, and, in the meantime, behave well to Grey and the grand jurors who had laid indictments before the commissioners who had visited Derby in the previous April. He himself had sat as one of these commissioners, as had both Clarence and William, Lord Hastings, who later offered a bond for Grey’s good behaviour. This suggests that the commission had been intended to balance the rival interests.50 S.M. Wright, Derbys. Gentry (Derbys. Rec. Soc. viii), 138-9; J.G. Bellamy, ‘Justice under the Yorkists Kings’, American Jnl. of Legal Hist., ix. 151-4; Ross, 405; CCR, 1468-76, nos. 93, 94. It is a singular aspect of the indictments that several concerned the giving of livery unconnected with the feud between Grey and Vernon. Despite the fact that he was one of the commissioners, Mountjoy was himself the subject of such an indictment. The grand jury claimed that, on 20 May 1461 at Barton Blount, he had distributed gowns of his russet livery ‘erga coronacionem’ of Edward IV. These indictments for giving livery were presumably prompted by the commissioners acting on the instructions of the King, and they are probably to be seen in the context of the statute against unlawful retaining passed in the following parliamentary session. However this may be, Mountjoy was little inconvenienced: on 13 Sept. he was granted a pardon for offences against the livery statutes and he pleaded it by attorney in the court of King’s bench in the following November.51 KB9/13/22; KB27/830, rex rot. 47.

By this time Lord Walter had turned his attention to more important matters. On 10 Sept. 1468 he entered into an indenture to serve, with 3,000 men, in an expedition in aid of Francis II, duke of Brittany, against Louis XI. The plan was for a two-pronged attack on Louis’s kingdom: Mountjoy was to attack from Brittany while Anthony Wydeville, Lord Scales, with a larger force, made a landing on the French coast. All, however, came to nought: the hard-pressed Duke Francis had not the leisure to wait on English help, and, on the same day as Mountjoy sealed his indenture, he made his peace with the French king. New arrangements were swiftly made. Mountjoy undertook to serve at sea in company with Scales with 1,000 soldiers and 500 mariners. The intention was to counter the supposed threat of Margaret of Anjou, who was rumoured to be about to invade from Harfleur. These rumours were, however, groundless, and Scales and Mountjoy cruised aimlessly in the Channel for several weeks. Nonetheless, although little or nothing was achieved, Lord Walter did not go without reward. On 28 Nov. the Exchequer was instructed to pay him £600 above the wages due to him.52 Ross, 113: Issues of the Exchequer ed. Devon, 492; E404/74/1/43, 67; CPR, 1467-77, pp. 105, 156.

Mountjoy’s prominence in the late 1460s brought with it less direct benefits than grants of royal patronage. He was enabled to contract a very favourable marriage for his son and heir, William. The bride was Margaret, daughter Sir Thomas Etchingham (d.1483) of Etchingham in Sussex and coheiress-presumptive to a sizeable inheritance, albeit one located a considerable distance from Derbyshire. Letters written in 1472, when she, as a widow, was being unsuccessfully courted by William Stonor†, provide details of the settlement made on her marriage to William. Her father is said to have settled lands worth as much as 100 marks p.a. on her in immediate possession, and Mountjoy to have matched this with lands to the same value as a jointure. So large a settlement by Mountjoy was more than justified by her expectations. In 1472 it was estimated that she stood to share with her sister an estate with an annual value of about £400.53 Stonor Letters, i (Cam. Soc. ser. 3, xxix), 124, 126. This marriage promised much for the future prospects of the Blounts. Their estates, even with the forfeitures granted to them in 1467, were insufficient to support the rank of baron. Margaret’s inheritance promised to supply this deficiency.54 In the subsidy returns of 1435-6 our MP’s father had been assessed at £266 p.a.: E179/240/266.

The defeat of the royalist earls of Pembroke and Devon at the battle of Edgcote on 26 July 1469 and the earl of Warwick’s subsequent detention of the King placed Mountjoy in an equivocal position. Not only had he once been closely associated with Warwick, but for the last few years he had been steward of the duke of Clarence’s lordship of Tutbury. He may even have briefly wavered in his loyalty to the King. The Burgundian chronicler, Jean de Waurin, in a confused account of the campaign, asserts that he and others treacherously advised the King that he did not need to take the field in support of Pembroke’s army. While it is difficult to believe that this advice if offered was anything more than simply misguided, Waurin may have been correct in claiming that Mountjoy was one of those responsible for giving it. Lord Walter later endowed prayers for the souls of Richard Wydeville, Earl Rivers, and Sir John Wydeville, executed on the orders of the earl of Warwick in the aftermath of the battle. Perhaps he felt some responsibility for their deaths because of the undistinguished role he had played in the campaign. Whatever the truth of this, it is clear that Warwick, then in control of the government, was anxious to secure the support of his former servant. On 10 Aug. 1469 our MP was granted £400 p.a. in repayment of £1,720 he had lent to the Crown; in return he served on the council in London, attending meetings held at Blackfriars on 7 Sept. and in the Star Chamber five days later.55 J. de Waurin, Chrons. ed. Hardy, v. 581; CPR, 1467-77, p. 388; C81/1547/7, 8. On 17 Sept. 1469 he and Duchess Anne were received into the fraternity of the priory of Holy Trinity, Canterbury: A. Croke, Fam. Croke, ii. 199; BL Arundel 68, f. 3v.

Nevertheless, when the King threw off his shackles, Mountjoy was quick to rally to his side, attending him on his entry into London in mid October. The events of the next few months indicate that Edward had no doubts about the loyalty of the Blounts. On 20 Oct. Mountjoy’s son and heir, William, who had been a member of the royal household since the early 1460s, was granted for life the custody of royal forests in Gloucestershire and Somerset, formerly in the hands of the ill-fated Humphrey Stafford IV*, earl of Devon. A few weeks later William was also entrusted with the shrievalty of Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire, and later in the same month he added to his offices the foresterships of two other west-country forests.56 E101/411/13; CPR, 1467-77, p. 175; CFR, xx. 254; M.A. Hicks, False, Fleeting, Perjur’d Clarence (revised edn. 1992), 46; PSO1/33/1747. Early in the following year Mountjoy was one of a commission of five, including Lord Hastings, who cleared the queen’s mother, Jacquetta, duchess of Bedford, of charges of witchcraft laid against her during the period of Warwick’s ascendancy.57 CPR, 1467-77, p. 190; Hicks, 37. In the following spring he repaid the King’s faith by taking the field: in March he helped in the suppression of the Lincolnshire rising, and he was with the royal army as it pursued the rebels into the south-west. On 17 Apr., three days after the King’s army had reached Exeter, he was appointed to a commission of array for Devon and Cornwall, and on 25 Apr. he was entrusted with the power to pardon any rebels who submitted within the following fortnight. The King’s trust in him is also apparent in his nomination as an auditor of the confiscated lands of the duke of Clarence in the Midlands and north.58 Ross, 142, 150; CPR, 1467-77, p. 207; Wolffe, 164-5.

Yet this service did not secure much personal reward. The only grant made to Mountjoy at this time was the keepership, jointly with his wife, of the lands in England in royal hands due to the minority of the Stafford heir. This was conditional on the payment of a farm to be agreed with the Exchequer, which was hardly a generous offering when his wife had previously held the same lands without the payment of a farm. No doubt Edward IV thought he had already done enough for Mountjoy, and he was prepared to be more generous to his sons. John Blount was appointed to his father’s old position as lieutenant of Hammes castle on 22 June 1470, the same day as Lord Walter was granted the Stafford farm.59 CFR, xx. 265-6; CPR, 1467-77, p. 211. Nonetheless, a slight feeling of resentment may partly explain why the latter’s pragmatism reasserted itself when the King’s position suddenly collapsed in the autumn of 1470. Although he suffered a brief period of imprisonment at the outset of the Readeption and was removed from his commissions of the peace, the earl of Warwick appears to have believed that he could win the support of his former servant.60 Scofield, i. 545. On 9 Oct. Blount’s son was briefly reappointed to the shrievalty, and later in the same month the duke of Clarence issued an order in the name of Henry VI that no-one was to spoil the manors of Barton Blount and Elvaston on pain of death. On 16 Nov. Mountjoy and his wife were re-granted the keeping of the Stafford lands on the same terms as the grant of the previous summer, and on the following 26 Dec. the couple were accorded a general pardon.61 CFR, xx. 268, 280, 282; Orig. Letters, ser. 2, i. 139-40. C67/44, m.8. Yet, at Lent 1471, as a Yorkist invasion threatened, Warwick calculated that he could not take chances on the loyalty of dissimulating lords, and Mountjoy was among those he imprisoned in London. It may be that his son William had fled to join Edward IV in exile and so newly compromised his father in Warwick’s eyes. In any event, Lord Walter was released on that King’s entry into the capital on 11 Apr. He almost certainly went on to fight for him at the battle of Barnet, where the gallant William met his death, and in the following month he was in arms against the Fauconberg rebels.62 H. Kleineke, ‘Gerhard von Wesel’s Newsletter’, Ricardian, xx. 79; CPR, 1467-77, p. 298; Arrivall of Edw. IV ed. Bruce (Cam. Soc. i), 20; A. Goodman, Wars of the Roses, 83.

Mountjoy regained his former position of trust. On 3 July 1471 he was among those present in the chamber of Parliament to swear an oath of allegiance to the infant prince of Wales, and on the same day the farm of the Stafford lands was recommitted to him and the duchess. Five days later a writ of privy seal ordered the Exchequer to assign them two payments: one of £100 for costs incurred in sustaining the young duke of Buckingham ‘in the tyme of trobles’, a reference to the period of Warwick’s ascendancy in 1469 as well as the Readeption; the other of 100 marks to redeem plate worth 140 marks pledged in March 1471 to raise a loan for Queen Elizabeth.63 CCR, 1468-76, no. 858; CFR, xxi, no. 55; E404/75/1/12. On the following 26 Dec. the King recognized the loss Mountjoy had suffered as a result of his son’s death at Barnet by granting him, for the ‘relief’ of William’s children, the wardship and marriage of his wife’s grand-daughter Anne, daughter and heiress of Sir Thomas Cobham of Sterborough in Surrey.64 CPR, 1467-77, p. 298. Further grants of responsibility and office followed. Together with restoration to the commissions of the peace in Derbyshire, Staffordshire and Kent, he was added to those of Huntingdonshire, Essex, Surrey and Sussex, counties in which Duchess Anne was a landholder. More significantly, in April 1472 he had the honour of installation to the order of the Garter, an honour formerly accorded to his uncle, Sir John Blount. In the following March his eldest surviving son John, an esquire of the royal body, replaced James as lieutenant of Hammes castle, and on 13 Apr. 1473 he himself was assigned repayment of £1,270 (the sum still outstanding of £1,720 due to him in 1469) to be taken over a period of four years from the wool customs. He secured exemption from the Act of Resumption of that year, both on his own account and on that of his nephew, Robert Blount, and, on 27 July, he was one of the royal councillors present in the refectory of the Friars Minor at Stamford when the King delivered the great seal to Laurence Booth, bishop of Durham.65 Shaw, i. 15; CPR, 1467-77, pp. 388, 591; CCR, 1468-76, nos. 1054, 1164; PROME, xiv. 158, 172.

During this period Mountjoy turned his thoughts to the future of his estates. By a fine levied in Hilary term 1472 he and his wife conveyed his lands in Derbyshire, Staffordshire and Worcestershire to a group of feoffees headed by John Booth, bishop of Exeter, John Stafford, earl of Wiltshire (son of Duchess Anne), Master William Dudley, dean of the King’s chapel and chancellor to Queen Elizabeth, and Richard Fowler†, chancellor of the duchy of Lancaster. Since his heir-apparent, Edward, the only son of his son William, was yet a mere boy, the clear intention of this conveyance was that the feoffees should keep the Blount estates out of royal wardship in the likely event of his death before Edward reached his majority.66 CP25(1)/294/76/80. Mountjoy also set out about resolving a longstanding weakness in his family’s title to the manor of Elvaston. This manor had a tangled recent history: it had come into the possession of Sir John Dabridgecourt† through his marriage to Maud, widow of Sir Richard Willoughby, and, on her death in 1405, he had acquired it in fee subject to the payment of an annual rent of ten marks to the Willoughbys. Following Dabridgecourt’s death it was purchased by our MP’s uncle, Sir John Blount, and the Blounts continued to pay the rent until February 1452 when Walter agreed to pay Richard Willoughby* 80 marks in return for a release of the rent and sure title. No more is heard of the matter for over 20 years – it certainly had no bearing on the sack of the manor in 1454 – but, by an indenture dated 8 Sept. 1473, Blount undertook to pay a further £80 to Robert Willoughby, half-brother and heir of the late Richard Willoughby. In return, Robert levied a fine in the following Hilary term acknowledging the right of the Blounts and creating a limited warranty that was collateral to his issue by his wife Margaret.67 Castor, ‘Duchy of Lancaster’ (Cambridge Univ. Ph.D. thesis, 1994), 196n., 308n.; CP40/763, rots. 57d, 479; Add. 6698, ff. 195v, 196v; Nottingham Univ. Lib. Middleton mss, Mi D 1770/3; Derbys. Feet of Fines (Derbys. Rec. Soc. xi), 1119.

Mountjoy made his will on 8 July 1474.68 PCC 18 Wattys (PROB11/6, ff. 131v-4); Derbys. Wills (Derbys. Rec. Soc. xxvi), 8-16. He wished to be buried in the Greyfriars in London, requiring his executors to inter the bones of his eldest son William in the same tomb. He instructed his feoffees to make generous provision for his youngest son, James, who was to have three manors in tail-male in addition to the sum of 500 marks. His other surviving son John, who was given a reversionary interest in these manors, was provided with money rather than land: he was to have as much as 1,500 marks. The other principal family bequests concerned his nieces and his wife. Margaret and Anne Blount, sisters of his nephew and ward Robert Blount, were to have 200 marks and 100 marks respectively for their marriages; Margaret, daughter of Ralph Shirley (d.1466) by his sister Elizabeth, was to have £100 to the same purpose if she did not wish to be a nun. In a curious arrangement, he instructed his feoffees to pay his wife £100 p.a. from the issues of the lands conveyed by the fine of 1472 until she had received £400 ‘in full contentment and allowance’ of her jointure and dower in the said property. This implies that he had not made a generous settlement upon her at the time of their marriage. His various inquisitions post mortem make no mention of any grant to her of jointure. The only lands of which he died seised were those he held by royal grant, and thus, having agreed to accept £400 as compensation for her dower in the enfeoffed estates, she could look forward to a dower drawn from only a very modest estate. One can only assume that her great wealth had rendered unnecessary any further provision for her widowhood. Presumably it was as a quid pro quo for her virtual renunciation of her legitimate interest in his lands, that he promised her the free enjoyment both of all the goods she had owned on the day before their marriage and any she had since purchased or been given.

The main interest of Mountjoy’s lengthy will, however, lies in its charitable rather than its family bequests. Mountjoy devoted some of his moveable wealth to works in the parish church of Elvaston, including the acquisition of ‘a three bell called a tenour’ and the provision of a suitable tomb for his first wife. His generosity helped to fund a general restoration of the church: much of the surviving structure, including the tower, is of a late fifteenth-century date.69 J.C. Cox, Notes on Churches Derbys. iv. 198-9. But his principal charitable bequest was reserved for the augmentation of the hospital of St. Leonard at Alkmonton near Barton Blount. Founded by Robert de Bakepuze in about 1100 as a hospital for female lepers, it had been in a state of decay when the Bakepuze estates were purchased by our MP’s grandfather, Sir Walter Blount, in the 1380s. It attracted the patronage of Sir Walter’s widow, Sancha Gomez (d.1418/19), and the elaborate instructions left by Mountjoy mark either the completion of her work or attonement for failure to implement her plans. He required his executors to purchase lands worth £10 p.a. for appropriation to the hospital, both ‘in Recompense of all such wronges as [his] auncestours hathe wronged the saide place’ and to pray for the souls of his family and those of his second wife’s first husband, Humphrey, duke of Buckingham, and the two Wydevilles. More interestingly, he had some very clear ideas about how the hospital’s affairs were to be conducted. The seven poor men resident there, who were to be at least 55 years old at the date of their election, were each to be provided with a weekly dole of 4d. and, every third year, a new gown or hood of white or russet. Oddly, the master of the hospital, who was to hold no other benefice than the parsonage of Barton Blount, was forbidden to wear either red or green. The testator also left very specific instructions with regard to the building of the hospital’s domestic quarters and for the improvement of the existing chapel.

The implementation of such detailed instructions promised to place a heavy burden on his executors, whom he named as his two surviving sons, together with Richard Fowler and Hugh atte Fenne. Recognising this, he left Fowler 100 marks and atte Fenne £40. Not the least of their tasks was to be the collection of debts. Unusually, the will contains a long schedule of debts both owed and due. At his death Mountjoy owed at least £640. The two greatest sums were £150 due to Alice, widow of (Sir) Hugh Wyche*, a wealthy mercer, and 200 marks owed to his stepdaughter Anne, widow of Sir Thomas Cobham. The first of these probably arose out of Mountjoy’s considerable trading interests; the second from the proposed marriage of his grandson and heir to the Cobham heiress. Such debts were modest for a man of his great wealth and were little compared to the sums he claimed he was owed. These are incompletely recorded: in most cases the schedule identifies the debtor but not the sum claimed. Nevertheless, the sums recorded alone amount to almost £1,700, nearly all of which was due from the Crown.

Mountjoy died on 1 Aug. 1474 and was buried, as he had directed, in Greyfriars.70 C140/49/24; J. Stow, Surv. London ed. Kingsford, i. 321. He was succeeded by his grandson, Edward, a boy of seven. On the following 1 Jan. the Crown sold the boy’s wardship and the custody of Mountjoy’s un-enfeoffed lands to John Elrington†, treasurer of the royal household, who had married Edward’s mother. Edward, however, lived only long enough to be contracted in marriage to his late grandfather’s ward, Anne Cobham. His death on 1 Dec. 1475 threw the family’s affairs into confusion. His common-law heirs were his two sisters, Elizabeth and Alice, thus threatening to divide the bulk of the family lands from the title, which was held in tail-male.71 CPR, 1467-77, pp. 489, 535; C140/57/55; CP, xi. 337. On 15 Jan. following the Crown licensed Mountjoy’s heir male, his second son John, to enter those lands he was entitled to hold in tail-male, in other words, the Courtenay and Vaux manors granted to the family in 1467, but the fate of the enfeoffed lands of the family remained to be decided.72 CPR, 1467-77, p. 566; CCR, 1476-85, no. 157. Upon whom were the feoffees to settle them once Mountjoy’s will had been executed? The will itself contains no instructions on this point, and there can be no doubt that the omission was a deliberate one. The possibility that his grandson would die young and childless must have occurred to Mountjoy and there can be little doubt that, in such an eventuality, he would have opted for continuance of his patrimony in the hands of his son rather than its division between his grand-daughters. It is likely that he said nothing because the bulk of the Blount estates were still bound by entails in tail-male made in 1393 and 1413. John, as second Lord Mountjoy, entered on the possession of his father’s feoffees and died seised of the manor of Barton Blount and the rest of the family estates in 1485.73 Croke, ii. 795; Bodl. Dugdale mss, 39, f. 48; CP25(1)/289/56/250; CIPM Hen. VII, i. 2, 114, 158, 240. There must, however, have been some room for doubt over the validity of his title. He himself, in his will of October 1485 expressed such a doubt in respect of his entitlement to four manors, including the manor of Elvaston. Later, in 1501, soon after the third lord had come of age, Anne and Elizabeth, sisters of Edward Blount, and their respective husbands, Sir David Owen† and Andrew Windsor, petitioned the chancellor against the two surviving feoffees of 1472, a clerk, William Drayton, and Thomas Hunte, for failure to make estate, and the abbot of Hyde in Hampshire for detention of deeds. Their claim failed.74 Logge Reg. of PCC Wills ed. Boatwright, Habberjam and Hammond, ii. 448-9; C1/217/19.