Bligh’s father, a wealthy Irish landowner, married the heiress to large but financially encumbered Kentish estates, including Cobham Hall, then much dilapidated. Clearing the debts with the income from the Irish estates, he and his sons restored and extended Cobham Hall.1E. Wingfield-Stratford, Lords of Cobham Hall, passim.
Returned in 1741 for Maidstone on the Aylesford interest as an opposition Whig, he voted against the Government on the election of the chairman of the elections committee in December. After the appointment of his brother, Lord Darnley, to be gentleman of the bedchamber to the Prince of Wales in Oct. 1742, he attached himself to Leicester House, voting for the Hanoverians in 1744 and 1746. At the general election of 1747 he was one of the candidates ‘to be brought into Parliament by His Royal Highness who are not able to bring themselves in’. Put up for Tregony, paying his own election expenses,2HMC Fortescue, i. 108, 119, 122. he was defeated and did not stand again. He died 31 July 1781.