BLUNT, Sir Charles Richard (1775-1840), of Heathfield Park, Suss. , Suss. and 35 Mortimer Street, London

A wealthy nabob and veteran of three token challenges to Tory electoral patrons at Bossiney in 1818, 1819 and 1820, Blunt was an associate of the reforming historian Thomas Hinton Burley Oldfield.1HP Commons, 1820-32, ii. 140, iv. 302. Elected for Lewes as a supporter of the Grey ministry’s reform bill in 1831, Blunt continued to sit for the borough as an advanced whig, aided by his local status as the owner of the large Sussex estate of Heathfield Park, which he had purchased in 1819 and enlarged to over 3,000 acres.2Gent. Mag. (1840), i. 430. Unspecified medical complaints increasingly hindered his parliamentary attendance in this period, however, and he was regularly ‘killed by report’ prior to his terminal illness in 1840.3Brighton Patriot, 16 Aug. 1836.

Initially a steady presence in the lobbies, Blunt gave general support to the Whig ministry on most issues, but voted consistently for the ballot and was in the minorities for lower corn duties, 7 Mar. 1834, and shorter parliaments, 15 May 1834. On 15 Feb. 1833 he endorsed a Pevensey (Sussex) petition calling for the abolition of church tithes, noting that the clergyman in question took £1,200 a year from the parish but made ‘no return’. He also brought up others in support of Dissenters’ claims, 13 Mar. 1834.4Morning Chronicle, 14 Mar. 1834. That month he backed a radical motion to commute the sentence of the publisher of the Brighton Guardian, who had been imprisoned for inciting the agricultural labourers of Sussex to acts of incendiarism in 1831, calling his prosecution ‘impolitic’, unlawful and a ‘disgrace to the country’, and was in the minority of 27 on the issue.5Hansard, 4 Mar. 1834, vol 21, cc. 1136-7. In a possible clue to the condition that began to periodically remove him from the Commons, on 22 May 1834 he joined a London committee to establish a dispensary specialising in lithotripsy and ‘the removal of stones from the bladder without incision’.6Morning Post, 31 May 1834.

At the 1835 general election Blunt offered again for Lewes, demanding a ‘reform of all abuses, a settlement of the church question, and the extinction of all existing grievances’, and was returned at the head of the poll.7Parliamentary Testbook (1835), 21. He voted against Peel’s brief ministry on the speakership, 19 Feb., the address, 26 Feb., and Irish church appropriation, 2 Apr. 1835, and steadily backed the reappointed Melbourne ministry on most major issues thereafter, although he was in the minority for a silver standard, 1 June 1835, and continued to support the ballot. On 2 Mar. 1836 he endorsed a Lewes petition presented by his colleague against the new poor law’s bastardy clauses and its separation of families in the workhouse, observing that although he himself believed the act was working well, ‘it was obvious, that a measure of such magnitude must, from time to time, require amendment’. ‘Frequent indisposition’ prompted calls for him to ‘retire into private life’ that summer, and at a constituency meeting at the end of the year, he expressed regret at being absent from the vote on the abolition of military flogging ‘through illness’, accepting that the electors ‘had every right to demand’ that he ‘account for every vote he had given during the session’.8Brighton Patriot, 16 Aug., 13 Dec. 1836. Back in harness for the 1837 session, he voted steadily for Irish municipal reform, but was in the radical minorities for repeal of the window tax, 4 May, and a Reform Act amendment bill, 10 May 1837. He was in the Whig majority for the abolition of church rates, 23 May 1837.

Rumours that he would stand down came to nothing at the 1837 general election, when he was again returned in first place for Lewes as a supporter of the ballot and triennial parliaments. He was appointed to the Taunton election committee, 1 Mar. 1838, and was in the minorities for an early end to slave apprenticeships, 30 Mar., 6 Apr., and for appropriating the surplus revenues of the Irish church for educational purposes, 2 July 1838. He continued to support the ballot and divided for a revision of the corn laws, 18 Mar. 1839. In his last known vote, he rallied to ministers on the no confidence motion, 31 Jan. 1840.

Blunt, ‘one of the staunchest friends of reform’, died two months later.9Morning Chronicle, 5 Mar. 1840. His estate at Heathfield, where he had ‘added much to the improvements of the mansion’ and assembled ‘a collection of pictures by the best artists’, passed to his only son and successor in the baronetcy Walter Blunt (1826-47), along with extensive property in Surrey, Wiltshire and Bengal, India. A nephew, Charles William Blunt inherited following Walter’s early death in a riding accident.10PROB 11/1924/151; Gent. Mag. (1847), ii. 333. On Heathfield see R. Pryce, Heathfield Park: a private estate and a wealden town (1996).