BLOUNT, Mountjoy (c. 1597-1666)

Mountjoy Blount was the eldest offspring of the celebrated (and scandalous) love match between Elizabethan courtiers Penelope, Lady Rich (traditionally believed to be the ‘Stella’ of Astrophel and Stella by Philip Sidney^‡) and Charles Blount, earl of Devonshire. As such, Mountjoy was endowed with a colourful personal history, wealth, and an extensive and complex web of kinship and social connections. He was said to have succeeded to estates worth between £3,000 and £4,000 a year. R. Winwood, Mems. of Affairs of State in the Reigns of Queen Elizabeth and King James I (1725), ii. 206. One property alone boasted silver mines worth £1,000 p.a. Diary of the Marches of the Royal Army during the Great Civil War ed. C.E. Long, 81. He was also responsible for developing the Soho area of London known as Newport Market. Survey of London, xxxiv. 343, 360. It seems unlikely that he wielded a great deal of electoral control. During the Interregnum he sold the borough of Bere Alston, where his family had once exercised influence, although he may have retained some lands there. HP Commons 1660-90, i. 194; Cornw. RO, ME/1393. In the initial stages of the disputes between Charles I and Parliament, Newport flirted with the parliamentarians, but by 1642 he had thrown in his lot with the king, so much so that on 11 May he was ordered to attend the Lords as a delinquent, although he probably never did so.

Newport took his seat in the Convention on 14 May 1660, some three weeks into the session. Eight days later he was amongst those peers given leave to attend the king. On 10 July his previous experience was acknowledged when he was added to a committee concerning deeds belonging to peers which had been in the hands of the trustees for ministers. His main activity in the House after the Restoration related to metropolitan local government. On 10 Nov. 1660 he was named to the committee for repairing highways in Westminster, and on 22 Dec. to the bill to make Covent Garden parochial.

Newport’s importance as a courtier was evident on 22 Apr. 1661 when he carried the mantle in the king’s procession from the Tower to the Banqueting House. Evelyn Diary, iii. 277. He attended for the first day of the Cavalier Parliament and thereafter attended the House regularly, never attending a session for less than three-quarters of its sittings. On 11 July it was predicted that he would vote with the majority against the case of Aubrey de Vere, 20th earl of Oxford, for the great chamberlaincy. His pattern of activity again reflected his interest in the metropolitan area where he now held a large acreage of prestigious real estate. On 28 June 1661 he was named to the committee for the Westminster streets bill, on 5 July 1661 to the bill to relieve the poor in London, Westminster and Southwark, on 29 July 1661 to the committee on the repair of streets in Westminster, on 9 Jan. 1662 for legislation on sales and pawns in London and Westminster, and again on 25 Mar. 1662 to the committee for repairing Westminster streets. His other committee activity included the bill to relieve maimed royalist soldiers, the committee on sheriff’s accounts, and the Northern Borders bill. In May 1662, when the Act for repairing the highways and sewers, and for paving and cleaning streets in London and Westminster became law, Newport was appointed one of 21 commissioners. Ibid. 319n.

Newport attended the February 1663 session on its first day; he was named to the committee for privileges and to 14 other committees. It seems likely that he was present on 27 Mar. 1663 at a meeting of the committee on London streets, highways and the poor, which decided that the 21 commissioners appointed under the Paving Act were too few for the efficient conduct of local government. Newport chaired a subsequent meeting of the select committee on 12 May 1663. When the committee reconvened, Newport proposed a supplementary Act on highways, paving and sewers. Further debate in committee took place on 20 June 1663 and the commissioners, with an eye to law and order, agreed that the justices of the peace should be joined to the commission. A further meeting on 26 June 1663, again chaired by Newport, discussed the deployment of finance raised under the original Act, and inserted an urban planning clause in the proposed new legislation to prevent ‘multitudes of new buildings’. PA, HL/PO/CO/1/1, ff. 308, 365, 381, 398, 404.

Back in the House on 10 July 1663, Newport was present when George Digby, 2nd earl of Bristol, attempted to impeach Edward Hyde, earl of Clarendon. Newport was listed as a likely supporter of Bristol. In the brief session from March to May 1664, Newport attended on almost a daily basis. This pattern was repeated at the following session when he was named to seven more committees.

Newport was now an important figure representing the interests of the capital within the House and at court. A meeting of the mayor of London and justices of London, Middlesex, Kent and Surrey passed an order asking Newport and William Craven, Baron Craven, to petition the king that ships carrying coal should not dock for any purpose other than to supply the ports and the City. CSP Dom. 1664-5, p. 262. Newport and the other commissioners for Westminster highways and sewers resumed their committee activity in January 1665. Their hope for additional legislation to improve London’s urban space was continually delayed by the parliamentary timetable and when the committee next met, Newport proposed that the separate commissions be streamlined into one body to regulate streets and hackney carriages. HL/PO/CO/1/2, ff. 29-30. With the outbreak of plague in the summer, Newport and Parliament abandoned London for the cleaner air of Oxford. He attended the three-week-long session for 15 sittings, was named to the committee for privileges and to six committees including the additional bill to prevent plague which met on the afternoon of 20 Oct. 1665, to debate measures to combat the epidemic. Ibid. f. 88. He did not return to London. Taken ill with an attack of ‘the stone’, he died in the Oxford parish of St. Aldate’s.

Newport’s will reveals that his daughters Anne (married to Thomas Porter, 4th son of Endymion Porter, groom of the bedchamber) and Isabella (married to Nicholas Knollys, self-styled 3rd earl of Banbury) had already died, leaving him with three ‘incapable’ sons, each needing special care and financial provision. For this purpose, he had entered into a tripartite agreement with John Ashburnham^†, William Legge^† and Sir George Savile, (later earl of Halifax) to sell lands in Fotheringhay, with £2,000 of the proceeds to be invested for the care of his sons. Edward Montagu, 2nd earl of Manchester, and Charles Rich, 4th earl of Warwick, were named trustees of the interests of his granddaughter, Lady Ann Knollys. TNA, C7/419/51; Mapperton, Sandwich mss, journal, x, pp. 302-20; HMC 7th Rep, 432.

The widowed countess of Newport subsequently married Thomas Weston, 4th earl of Portland. Newport’s three sons succeeded in turn as the 2nd, 3rd and 4th earls but each died childless and the title became extinct at the death of Newport’s youngest son, Henry, in 1681.