Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 05.djvu/251

 2 May in St. Paul's chapel of Westminster Abbey. The funeral was celebrated with great pomp, but the heralds declined to impale the countess's arms with the earl's. The earl left his wife 1,500l., and a daughter 6,000l., and provided very liberally for his son [q. v.] His second natural son, Charles, fought with the royalists in the civil wars, acted as scout-master-general at Abingdon in May 1643 (, Hist. ii. 485), and died in 1645. His third son, St. John, was made a knight of the Bath at the coronation of Charles I. The earl did not provide for all his reputed children, and a third of his property passed away from his family.

His titles became extinct at his death. In 1606 Sir Michael Blount of Iver, Buckinghamshire, and Mapledurham, Oxfordshire—eldest son of Sir Richard Blount, grand-nephew of, first Baron Mountjoy [q. v.]—who had been lieutenant of the Tower since 1590, and high sheriff of Oxfordshire in 1586 and 1596, laid a claim to the barony of Mountjoy before the House of Lords, but it was rejected (, Survey, ed. Strype, bk. i. pp. 65, 75;, Lord Lieutenants and High Sheriffs of Oxfordshire, 40–1).

Mountjoy was popular with the poets of his day. John Davies of Hereford published a sonnet to him in his 'Microcosmus' (1603), and Joshua Sylvester prefixed three sonnets in his praise to 'The second weeke' of his translation of 'Du Bartas' (1641), probably written about 1598. In 1605 Nicholas Breton dedicated to him 'The Honour of Valour.' Soon after the earl's death John Ford, the dramatist, published a poem entitled 'Fames Memoriall, or the Earle of Deuonshire Deceased' (London, 1606), with a dedication to the Countess Penelope, and a sonnet in the earl's praise by Barnaby Barnes. At the same time Samuel Daniel, the poet, produced 'A Funerall Poeme vppon the Death of the late noble Earle of Deuenshyre.' It has been suggested with some probability that Ford's tragedy of the 'Broken Heart' (1633) was founded on the story of Mountjoy's relations with Lady Rich. The poets pitch their panegyrics in a very high key, and warmly denounce the earl's detractors. Fynes Morison, who was secretary to Mountjoy in Ireland, drew up a minute account of his character and habits in his 'Itinerary.' He was of 'stature tall and of very comely proportion,' very careful in his dress and in his food, a constant smoker, very discreet in the conduct of political business, and fond of study and of gentle recreations. Manningham quaintly notes in his 'Diary,' p. 104, on 18 Dec. 1602: 'The Lord Mountjoy will never discourse at table; eates in silence.' But against the laudatory verdicts of Davies, Sylvester, Breton, Ford, Daniel, and Morison must be set the fact that Mountjoy in his relations with Essex and with Spain was guilty of political dishonesty, and although much may be pleaded in extenuation of his private faults, there is little there to indicate a very high moral character.



BLOUNT, CHARLES (1654–1693), deist, younger son of Sir [q. v.], was born at Upper Holloway 27 April 1654. His father married him, at the age of eighteen, to Eleanora, daughter of Sir Timothy Tyrrel of Shotover, and provided him with a good estate. In 1673 he published, anonymously, 'Mr. Dreyden vindicated, in Reply to the friendly vindication of Mr. Dreyden, and reflections on the Rota.' This was a warm defence of Dryden against the criticisms of Richard Leigh in a pamphlet called 'The Censure of the Rota on Mr. Dryden's Conquest of Granada.' Blount afterwards took some part in a translation of Lucian, and Dryden makes a complimentary reference to him in the life of Lucian prefixed to the translation (which was not published till 1711).

Blount is chiefly known as the author of some freethinking books, which cause him to be reckoned by Leland (View of the Deistical Writers) as the successor of Herbert of Cherbury and the predecessor of Toland. The first of these is the 'Anima Mundi, or historical relation of the opinions of the ancients concerning man's soul after this life, according to unenlightened nature, by Chas. Blount, gent.' His father is said to have helped him in this book, and probably shared or inspired his opinions (see Oracles of Reason, p. 154). It gave some offence by its sceptical tendency. Compton, bishop of London, desired its suppression, and during his absence it was burnt 'by some zealous person,' but afterwards reissued. Blount sent a copy of it to Hobbes, with a letter dated 1678 (Oracles of Reason, p. 97), in which he praises Hobbes's 'incom-