BLACKMORE, Thomas (1600-72), of Liverpool, Lancs.

Almost nothing is known about Blackmore’s background, parentage or education.8G.V. Chivers, ‘The Members from the Northern Cos. in Richard Cromwell’s Parliament’ (Manchester Univ. MA thesis, 1954), 273. His father was probably an inhabitant of Liverpool, and he himself was trading in the town before he became a freeman in the late 1620s.9Chandler, Liverpool, 127, 143, 152. Described in 1642 as a ‘mariner and ship-owner’, his commercial operations extended as far afield as Spain.10Lancs. RO, DDBL/23/17; Perfect Occurrences no. 27 (26 June-3 July 1646), sigs. Dd-Ddv (E.511.17); Chandler, Liverpool, 395. He seems to have remained in Liverpool during the civil war, but his role in the town’s defence against the royalists (assuming he had one) is not known. The town’s mayor and aldermen certified in 1644 that he was ‘well-affected’ to Parliament.11Ireland and the High Ct. of Admiralty ed. Murphy, 129. His loyalty was certainly not questioned by the Commons when, in July 1646, it allowed him to send an order that he had somehow obtained from the king to James Butler, marquess of Ormond in Dublin to return his captured merchantman, Gift of Liverpool, and its cargo.12CJ iv. 614a.

After serving as one of the town bailiffs in 1635-6 and as a merchant appraiser (valuer and assessor) in 1645, Blackmore was elected mayor in October 1645.13Chandler, Liverpool, 190, 327, 341. Two days after his election, the corporation admitted to the freeman body the Presbyterian minister John Fogg, of whom Blackmore was apparently a friend and patron. Fogg was removed as the town’s minister by order of the council of state in 1650 for refusing to take the Engagement, but he was reinstated by the corporation in 1652 after declaring ‘his submission to the present government’.14Chandler, Liverpool, 335, 392; Liverpool Town Bks. ed. Power, 31; CSP Dom. 1650, p. 395; Calamy Revised, 202. During Blackmore’s second term as mayor, in 1657-8, the corporation issued orders for the repair of the town’s church and wrote to Liverpool’s MP, Thomas Birche, informing him that ‘the business of this corporation requires his personal attendance in Parliament and to know his resolution concerning his going to the next Parliament’.15Liverpool Town Bks. ed. Power, 104, 118.

Blackmore was returned for Liverpool in the elections to Richard Cromwell’s Parliament of 1659. He probably owed his election to the backing of the corporation.16Supra, ‘Liverpool’. On 28 January, the corporation provided him with a horse and £10 to prosecute the town’s affairs in London, ‘and what more he spends is to be allowed during his attendance in Parliament’.17Liverpool Town Bks. ed. Power, 120. However, he received no committee appointments in this Parliament and made no recorded contribution to debate.

Blackmore and his son William were removed from all municipal offices by the corporation commissioners in 1662 for refusing to subscribe to the declaration renouncing the Solemn League and Covenant.18Liverpool Town Bks. ed. Power, 146-7. Blackmore died in the autumn of 1672 and was buried in St Nicholas, Liverpool, on 21 November.19Liverpool ed. Peet, 30. No will is recorded. He was the first and last of his line to sit in Parliament.