Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 05.djvu/257

 Teresa. Pope, indeed, advised Miss Blount to leave her mother and sister altogether when this calumny was abroad, but she refused the advice.

In 1732 Martha Blount seems to have been seriously ill, under Dr. Arbuthnot's care. In 1733 Pope's mother died, to whom Martha had always shown affectionate attention. In 1735 Pope dedicated his ‘Epistle on Women’ to her, telling her she had ‘sense, good humour, and a poet.’ In 1739 her brother died, leaving children to whom she was much attached. In 1743, after the death of her mother, she paid a memorable visit to the Allens at Prior Park, where Pope was staying. Ruffhead says she behaved during the visit in an arrogant and unbecoming manner; Warburton and Warton say she ‘took the huff’ because the Allens, as protestants, refused to let their carriage take her to a Roman catholic chapel; she says (Mapledurham MSS.,, p. 378): ‘They talk to one another without putting me at all into the conversation. … I'll get out of it as soon as I can.’ Pope defended her; called Mrs. Allen ‘a minx, and an impertinent one,’ and, after his own departure, advised Miss Blount to ‘leave them without a word.’ Pope was seized with his last illness a few weeks after this unhappy episode. Ralph Allen went to see him, to find him still eager in Patty Blount's defence. Johnson relates that during Pope's last illness he saw Miss Blount in his garden, and sent for her, and (what is incredible) that Patty met the messenger (Lord Marchmont) with a callous cry, ‘What! not dead yet!’ Pope bequeathed to Miss Blount 1,000l., three score of his books, his household goods, chattels, and plate, the furniture of his grotto, the urns in his garden, and the residue after all legacies were paid.

Miss Blount retained her place in the fashionable world after Pope's death. She lived at last in Berkeley Row, by Hanover Square, and there Swinburne the traveller, her relative, visited her (, i. 581 note). He found her a little, neat, fair, prim old woman, easy and gay in her manners. By her will she left the residue of her property to her ‘dear nephew,’ Michael Blount, of Mapledurham. She died in 1762, aged 72. A pleasing portrait is in Ayre's ‘Pope,’ vol. ii. facing page 17.

[Spence's Anecdotes, pp. 152 note, 212, 260, 356 et seq.; Dilke's Papers of a Critic, art. ‘Pope;’ Carruthers's Life of Pope; Ruffhead's Life of Pope, i. 214, ii. 71; Ayre's Memoirs of Pope, ii. 17 et seq.; Pope's Letters; Johnson's Lives of the Poets; Walpole's Letters, ed. Cunningham, 1857, v. 166.] 

BLOUNT, MOUNTJOY, and  (1597?–1666), natural son of Charles Blount, earl of Devonshire [q. v.], by Penelope, Lady Rich, was born about 1597. His father left him a very plentiful revenue (, Hist., 1849, i. 89), and the earliest contemporary notice of him states that in 1617 he was parting ‘with Wanstead to the king or Buckingham in order to be made a baron.’ As a young man he seems to have been a favourite at court, and was created Baron Mountjoy in the Irish peerage on 2 Jan. 1617–18. On 8 Jan. 1620–1 he acted in a masque before the king at Essex House, the residence of Viscount Doncaster, and in April 1622 the emperor's ambassador in London ‘ran at tilt in the prince (Charles) his company with the Lord Mountjoy.’ In the same year Mountjoy and Colonel Edward Cecil spent some time in the Low Countries, and a false report that they had been slain there reached home ( Diary, Camd. Soc. 64). On 10 Feb. 1622–3 Chamberlain wrote that the king had proposed Mountjoy as a husband for Mdlle. St. Luc, a niece of the French ambassador, to whom James had been showing many attentions, and had promised the lady, in case she accepted him, to advance Mountjoy to an earldom. On 21 Feb. 1622–3 Mountjoy accompanied the Earl of Carlisle on a visit to the French court to ask the king to excuse Prince Charles's journey through Paris, on his way to Spain, without the king's leave or kissing the king's hand. After performing this task Mountjoy rode on to Spain.

In November 1623 Mountjoy attended Mendoza, the Spanish ambassador in London. On 5 June 1627 Blount was created Baron Mountjoy of Thurveston, in the English peerage, with a clause of precedency over all barons created since 20 May. Lords Fauconberg and Lovelace brought the clause to the attention of the lords' committee of privileges, who reported (29 April 1628) that the grant of precedency was illegal. On 27 July of the same year Mountjoy was created earl of Newport in the Isle of Wight. Newport was nominated to a command in the expedition for the relief of Rochelle in August 1628, but the assassination of Buckingham delayed its departure till October, when Newport was appointed rear-admiral of the fleet and sailed in the St. Andrew. Throughout 1629 and 1630 Newport was petitioning for payment of his services; he complained that during his absence from England his property had wasted away, and that during his minority he had been deprived of Wanstead. A warrant of payment