Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 05.djvu/248

 and was living in 1593, was a friend of Dr. John Dee ( Diary, Camd. Soc. 445). His eldest son, James, became sixth Lord Mountjoy, was made a knight of the Bath at the coronation of Queen Mary (29 Sept. 1553); was lord-lieutenant of Dorsetshire in 1559; was one of the commissioners who tried the Duke of Norfolk (1572), and spent the fortune of his family in the pursuit of alchemy. Sir William Cecil encouraged him in the manufacture of alum and copperas between 1566 and 1572 (Cal. Dom. State Papers, 1566–72). He died in 1581 ( Sir Christopher Hatton, p. 209). He married Catherine, daughter of Sir Thomas Leigh, of St. Oswald, Yorkshire, by whom he had three sons—William, Charles [q. v.], and probably Christopher [q. v.] William, born about 1561, followed his father's pursuits, became seventh Lord Mountjoy, and died without issue in 1594. Two letters of his to Sir Edward Stradling, dated 1577, one of which proves him to have had literary tastes, are printed in the ‘Stradling Correspondence,’ 1840, pp. 46–8.

[Sir Alexander Croke's Genealogical History of the Croke family, surnamed Le Blount, ii. 222–7; Erasmi Epistolæ, ed. Le Clerc, cols. 1176, 1233, 1304, 1358, 1373; Knight's Life of Erasmus; Brewer's Letters and Papers of Henry VIII; Cooper's Athenæ Cantabrigienses, i. 88; Dugdale's Baronage, 521.]  BLOUNT, CHARLES, and eighth  (1563–1606), second son of James, sixth lord Mountjoy, by his wife Catherine, daughter of Sir Thomas Leigh, of St. Oswald's, Yorkshire, and thus grandson of  Blount [q. v.], fifth lord Mountjoy, was born in 1563. He studied at Oxford for a short time, and was created M.A. in later years (16 June 1589). From Oxford he proceeded to the Inner Temple to study law. But, although always interested in learning, his ambition lay in other directions. His family had been steadily losing its reputation and its wealth for many years past. To recover both was Blount's aim from youth. When as a boy his parents had his portrait painted, he insisted on its being subscribed with the motto ‘ad reædificandam antiquam domum.’ Arrived in London, he soon made his way to court (circ. 1583), and his good looks at once attracted the attention of the queen. ‘Fail you not to come to court, and I will bethink myself how to doe you good,’ was one of her earliest remarks to him (, Fragmenta Regalia, ed. Arber, 57), and the favour she bestowed on him excited the jealousy of the Earl of Essex. On one occasion Elizabeth is said to have rewarded Blount for his skill in a tilting match with ‘a queen at chesse of gold richly enamelled, which his servant had the next day fastened on his arme with a crimson ribband.’ Essex noticed the token and angrily remarked at court to Sir Fulk Greville, ‘Now I perceive every fool must have a favour.’ The speech was reported to Blount, and a duel followed, ‘near Marybone Park,’ in which Essex was wounded. The two men lived subsequently on friendly terms.

Blount was elected M.P. for the family borough of Beeralston, Devonshire, in 1584, although the return was never delivered; he was re-elected and took his seat for the same borough in 1586 and 1593 (Return of Members of Parlt. i. 413, 417, 428). He was knighted in 1586 and ‘had a company in the Low Countries [in the same year], from whence he came over with a noble acceptance of the queen’ (Cal. Dom. State Papers, Addenda, 1580–1625, p. 19). He was present at the skirmish near Zutphen, when Sir Philip Sidney received his fatal wound. In 1588 he was one of those who built ships at their own expense to join in the pursuit of the Armada (, Naval History, p. 353). His anxiety to distinguish himself in warfare led him to absent himself from court more frequently than the queen approved. Up to 1591 he was constantly visiting the English contingent in the Low Countries engaged in war with Spain, and in 1593 he ‘stole over with Sir John Norris into the action of Brittany, which was then a hot and active warre’ waged in behalf of the king of Navarre. On 30 June 1593 the queen wrote to Sir Thomas Sherley, ‘treasurer at war,’ that Blount was commanded by her to ‘absent himself from his charge in Brittany’ and to attend upon her, but that he was to receive his ordinary pay meanwhile. In December 1593 a company of 900 men in Brittany was still officially stated to be under his command. On 26 Jan. 1593–4 Blount was nominated captain of the town and island of Portsmouth, vacant by the death of Henry Ratcliffe, earl of Sussex, and he energetically superintended the renewal of the fortifications. The death of his elder brother, William, seventh Lord Mountjoy, later in 1594, put him in possession of the family peerage. In June 1597 Mountjoy accompanied Essex on his voyage to the Azores as lieutenant of the land forces (15 June), and on his return in the same year he was created a knight of the Garter.

On 14 Aug. 1598 O'Neil, the earl of Tyrone, signally defeated the English troops at Blackwater, and the government resolved 