BLACKMORE, John (1616-aft. 1665), of Exeter, Devon.

The main branch of the Devonshire Blackmores were seated at Bishop’s Nympton, but there is no definite connection between them and the MP, whose father is described as ‘John Blackmore of Exeter’.21Vivian, Vis. Devon, 88-9; Al. Ox. The MP’s father was probably the John Blackmore, glover, admitted as a freeman of the corporation there, in succession to his own father, in June 1617, and who took on apprentices in the city until 1631.22Exeter Freemen, 119, 126, 129. John Blackmore senior was apparently a successful businessman: there was certainly money available to send his son to Exeter College Oxford in 1634, at the age of 18. John Blackmore junior apparently remained at Oxford until the new year of 1640, when he graduated BA.23Al. Ox. It is uncertain whether the John Blackmore listed in the Protestation returns for Trinity parish, Exeter, in 1641, was the father or the son.24Devon Protestation Returns, 338. There is no other record of the younger Blackmore’s activities during the early 1640s, but he was serving as captain in Sir Arthur Hesilrige’s foot regiment in Sir William Waller’s* army by July 1644, and in April 1645 he was commissioned as captain in the New Model army, serving in the foot regiment commanded by Colonel James Holborne.25Temple, ‘Original officer list’, 56. Blackmore did not take up this post, instead becoming lieutenant-colonel in Colonel John Humphrey’s Herefordshire-based regiment until its disbandment in early 1648.26Wanklyn, New Model Army, i. 44-5. In May of that year he caught the eye of Oliver Cromwell*, who wrote to Sir Thomas Fairfax* recommending him as ‘a good man and a good soldier’, and asking that he might be made adjutant-general of the army’.27Abbott, Writings and Speeches, i. 607. This request was apparently granted, as there are references to him as adjutant as late as December 1648, but it may have been only an acting position.28CCC 810; CSP Dom. 1648-9, p. 339.

From June 1648 Blackmore served as major of Cromwell’s own regiment of horse, and joined him in south Wales and on the Preston campaign.29Firth and Davies, Regimental Hist. i. 202; CCC 810. During the autumn Blackmore was in the north of England, and was probably present at the siege of Pontefract.30CSP Dom. 1648-9, p. 339. This association with Cromwell may have drawn Blackmore into the politics of the army. In November 1648 Blackmore headed the list of officers from Cromwell’s regiment who wrote to their colonel asking him to petition Fairfax, presumably in protest against Parliament’s insistence on pursuing a peace treaty with the king.31HMC Leyborne-Popham, 9. The Cromwell connection also widened the circle of Blackmore’s friends. In December the treasurer-at-war, John Blackwell*, asked officials at the treasury to grant Blackmore three-months’ pay, adding that ‘he is a special friend of mine’.32CSP Dom. 1648-9, p. 339. In May 1649, Blackmore returned to Oxford to receive an honorary MA, in the company of other senior officers like John Hewson*, John Okey*, Richard Ingoldsby* and his former colonel, Sir Hardress Waller*.33Wood, Fasti, ii. 137.

In 1649 Cromwell’s son-in-law, John Disbrowe*, took over the colonelcy of the regiment, and was given charge of the south west of England. During 1650 and the early months of 1651, Blackmore was based in his native Devon, where he joined a ‘military group’ on the commission of the peace, served on the assessment commission in Cornwall from November 1650, and was an active member of the militia commission for both counties.34Roberts, Recovery and Restoration, 55; A. and O.; CSP Dom. 1650, pp. 106, 130. The council of state relied on Blackmore, now based at Exeter, to keep the immediate area under control. In April 1650 the council ordered him to investigate ‘intemperate declarations and seditious invectives of some men in their pulpits’, and to bring the authority of the Devon justices of the peace against disaffected ministers. He also nominated new local commissioners, and decided, in consultation with Disbrowe, which existing militia commissioners should be removed from office.35CSP Dom. 1650, pp. 106, 130, 197. Blackmore was full of suggestions for local security in the spring and summer of 1650, recommending the demolition of Dartmouth Castle, and harsh measures against suspected royalists.36CSP Dom. 1650, pp. 137, 272, 412.

Military affairs took Blackmore away from Devon during 1651 and 1652. He was probably with his regiment when it took part in the defeat of Charles Stuart at Worcester in September 1651, and he was seconded to the forces in Scotland during Robert Lilburne’s* campaign in the highlands in June 1652.37Firth and Davies, Regimental Hist. i. 204-5; Dow, Cromwellian Scot. 64; Ludlow, Mems. i. 316. In July 1654 he was again in Devon, where he stood for the borough of Tiverton, but was ‘overpowered’ by the supporters of a prominent local Presbyterian, Robert Shapcote*.38SP18/74/1-2; vide supra, ‘Tiverton’. The dispute revealed the fissures in Devon society. Although a native of the county, Blackmore was seen as the army candidate, and it is telling that his support was led by the deputy clerk of the peace, Henry Fitzwilliam, the Independent ministers of Exeter and Tiverton, and parliamentarian veterans from the 1640s.39CSP Dom. 1654, p. 279; Roberts, Recovery and Restoration, 81-2. It is also significant that Blackmore was able to pick up, as a consolation, the Cornish seat of East and West Looe, which was at the time controlled by Colonel Robert Bennett*, Disbrowe’s trusted lieutenant in Cornwall.

Blackmore’s apparent inactivity in the Commons may have been connected with his military duties, as during the same period he was ordered to take his turn in command of the horse guard at the Mews. In December 1654, he was one of the officers who met at St James’s Palace to protest their loyalty following the cashiering of Robert Overton and other senior officers.40Clarke Pprs. iii. 11. In January 1655 he petitioned the protector’s council complaining that the keeper of the Mews would not supply coal on credit, and asking for the payment of money assigned to him the previous month.41CSP Dom. 1654, p. 458; 1655, p. 14; Abbott, Writings and Speeches, iii. 527. Blackmore had returned to Devon by the summer of 1655, when he was involved in the quarter sessions that followed Penruddock’s rising, and when Disbrowe was appointed major general of the south-west later in the year, Blackmore became an active commissioner under him.42Roberts, Recovery and Restoration, 55, 184, 200; CSP Dom. 1655, p. 342; 1656-7, p. 35. During the later 1650s, Blackmore was a loyal Cromwellian. He had no sympathy with the Quakers, and by 1657 he had acquired a reputation as one of their main persecutors in the south west, instructing constables to arrest itinerants who disrupted church services or distributed Quaker literature.43Gentles, New Model Army, 114; Roberts, Recovery and Restoration, 58. George Fox responded by shaming Blackmore in print, pointing out that he had always claimed that ‘he hath drawn his sword , and been at the shedding of a great deal of blood for liberty of conscience, for the liberties of England’, but had now betrayed his true, venal, nature.44Fox, The West Answering the North (1657), 77-8, 84-5 (E.900.3). Blackmore’s involvement in the administration of Devon intensified in the autumn of 1658, when he was appointed sheriff of the county. By this time he had been knighted, probably by Protector Oliver.45Mercurius Politicus no. 444 (25 Nov.-2 Dec. 1658), 47; Roberts, ‘Devon Justices’, 163. The connection between the two men remained strong even after Cromwell’s death, and the newly minted Sir John Blackmore was given a prominent place in the funeral procession in November, bearing one of the ‘guidons’ before the protector’s hearse.46Burton’s Diary, ii. 521.

Blackmore’s hardening attitude towards Quakers may have gone hand-in-hand with his softening line towards Presbyterians and moderates among the Devon gentry, which becomes noticeable after the end of protectorate in the spring of 1659. In July, for example, he invited his former opponent, John Willoughby, to return to the Devon bench, saying that his attendance at the assizes would ‘put a lustre upon the representative body of the county’.47Roberts, Recovery and Restoration, 59; Som. RO, DD/WO/55/3, unfol. Although he was duly recommissioned as Disbrowe’s major in July (and given command of the militia forces in Cornwall and Devon by the council of state), and moved to ensure that ‘there will be no flame in the west’ during the rebellion in the north led by Sir George Boothe* in August, there were soon signs that Blackmore was attached to the new commonwealth only conditionally.48Bodl. Rawl. C.179, p. 181; Clarke Pprs. iv. 295; CSP Dom. 1658-9, p. 379; 1659-60, p. 132. By December of the same year, Blackmore had parted ways with his colonel, John Disbrowe, siding instead with the restored Rump. He assured Speaker William Lenthall that, hearing of the likely ‘restoring civil authority into the Parliament’s hands’, he had moved to pacify the army units in Exeter, and had ‘declared our owning and being for the Parliament’s government’ before an assembly of the citizens. As a result, he claimed, ‘things in this place are in much quietness’, and the ‘bad blood’ between inhabitants and soldiers was now ‘much allayed’.49HMC Portland, i. 690-1. When Disbrowe was cashiered by Parliament, Blackmore may have taken over as colonel of his regiment, but if so the promotion was a brief one, as he was also deprived of all his commands in January 1660.50Firth and Davies, Regimental Hist. i. 209.

Blackmore seems to have survived the Restoration unmolested, and he even retained his tenements in Windsor Great Park, Berkshire, which he had purchased in the early 1650s, although they were crown lands.51Roberts, Recovery and Restoration, 161, 164. He was never trusted by the Restoration regime, however. In August 1664 he was implicated in a plot, apparently funded by the burglary of the exchequer at Taunton; and in August 1666 Henry Bennett, 1st earl of Arlington, received reports that Blackmore, alongside other prominent west country parliamentarians like Robert Bennett, was ready to raise troops against the government.52CSP Dom. 1663-4, p. 666; 1666-7, p. 31. Blackmore’s involvement in any such schemes seems doubtful, and he probably retired into obscurity immediately after the Restoration. The date of Blackmore’s death is unknown, and he seems not to have left a will.