BLACKETT, Christopher (1787-1847), of Wylam Hall, Northumb.

Blackett, whose family had resided at Wylam, eight miles west of Newcastle, since the seventeenth century, had a perfunctory army career and inherited the estate with its coal mine in 1829.2Hist. Northumb. xii.231-4. His father’s will was proved under £800, the personalty being divided between his widow and three other children (IR26/1216/296). He joined Brooks’s Club, 3 June 1829, and it was suggested in Whig circles in 1830 that he might offer for Newcastle.3Northumb. RO, Ridley (Blagdon) mss ZRI 25/59, unknown to Ridley, 21 June 1830. In the event he was returned unopposed for Bere Alston on the interest of the Tory Lord Beverley, a kinsman of the 3rd duke of Northumberland. He was listed among the ‘friends’ of the duke of Wellington’s ministry and informed The Times that he had voted with them in the crucial civil list division, 15 Nov. 1830.4The Times, 22 Nov. 1830. He divided against the second reading of the Grey ministry’s reform bill, 22 Mar. 1831. On 15 Apr. he vainly urged Lord John Russell to extend the boundaries of Bere Alston and transfer it from schedule A to B. He voted for Gascoyne’s wrecking amendment, 19 Apr. 1831. Next day he gave notice of a motion to save Bere Alston from disfranchisement, but this was overtaken by the dissolution. He did not seek re-election, and by the autumn of 1832 he had reverted to his former Whiggism and claimed to be a sincere supporter of reform.5Northumb. RO, Blackett-Wylam mss ZBK/C/1/B/2/22/1. He unsuccessfully contested Newcastle in 1836 and was returned for South Northumberland the following year, sitting as an advocate of ‘Whig principles, but averse to the ballot’ until his retirement in 1841.6Dod’s Parl. Companion (1838), 82. He died in January 1847 and left all his property to his eldest son, John Fenwick Burgoyne Blackett (1821-56), Liberal Member for Newcastle, 1852-6, on whose death it passed to the second son, Edward Algernon Blackett (1824-73), a naval officer.7IR26/1764/1202.