Bland’s ancestors had held Kippax Park on a crown lease since 1595. His father was too young to take part in the Civil War, but his grandfather ‘to save his life did fly to Pontefract Castle’, a royalist garrison. He was fined £405 for his delinquency. Bland was returned for Appleby on the Lowther interest at the general election of 1681. The first of his family to sit, he was only 17 years of age and played no known part in the Oxford Parliament, but probably opposed exclusion. By his marriage in 1685 he acquired a major interest in the development of Manchester. He was one of the ‘true sons of the Church of England’ who volunteered to serve under the lord lieutenant of Lancashire against Monmouth; but after the Revolution he was active in searching for Jacobites. Under William III and Anne he sat for Pontefract as a Tory. He died on 25 Oct. 1715 and was buried at Didsbury. His son, a Jacobite, sat for Lancashire from 1713 to 1727.1Carlisle, 31 Royalist Comp. Pprs. (Yorks. Arch. Soc. rec. ser. xviii), 77; HMC Kenyon, 181, 374.