Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 05.djvu/262

 Pepys. Both Pepys and his contemporary diarist Evelyn tell us of the colonel's experiments and inventions at his stately seat at Charlton—his vineyard, the wine of which was ‘good for little,’ new-invented ploughs, and subterranean warren. He was among the first to adopt the application of the way-wiser, or odometer, to a carriage. Blount was living in January 1667–8, when he withdrew from the Royal Society.



BLOUNT, THOMAS (1618–1679), author of ‘Ancient Tenures,’ son of Myles Blount, of Orleton in Herefordshire, the fifth son of Roger Blount of Monkland, in the same county, was born at Bordesley, Worcestershire, being of a younger house of the ancient family of his name. He entered himself of the Inner Temple, and was in due time called to the bar. He was never advantaged, says Anthony à Wood, who knew him and received from him copies of some of his works, by the help of a university in learning. He succeeded to considerable property, both in Essex and Warwick, the former of which he appears to have derived from his mother, as a manor farm near Maldon is described in his will as being her jointure land. His religious tenets, those of a zealous Roman catholic, interfered with the practice of his profession; but he still continued the study of the law as an amateur, and gave gratuitous advice to his neighbours while residing at Orleton, where, says Wood, he had a ‘fair and plentiful estate.’ It was what Wood calls his ‘geny,’ supported by his ‘fair and plentiful estate,’ which led him to the paths of literature, and made him hunt after the difficult and uncouth terms of legal and other science, and ‘get nothing but his own satisfaction.’ He bestowed the waste hours of some years in reading histories of various countries—Turkey, France, Spain, Italy, &c. He had a reasonable acquaintance with the Latin and French tongues, and a smattering of both Greek and other languages. The agitation due to the alleged popish plot of 1678 was for Blount a source of trouble, obliging him to fly in fear from his home and lead a wandering life. Of the last year of his life, Wood says: ‘He contracted the palsy, as by his last letter sent to me, dated 28 April 1679, I was informed, adding therein that he had then quitted all books except those of devotion. On 26 Dec. following, being St. Stephen's Day, he died at Orleton in the year of his age 61.’ (According to Sir William Dugdale's diary, ‘16 Dec., Mr. Tho. Blount dyed at Orlton in Herefordshire of an apoplexie.’) He was buried in the church there, and soon after had a comely monument put over his grave by Anne, his widow, daughter of Edmund Church of Maldon, in Essex.

In the possession of William Blount, M.D., of Herefordshire, were, in 1808, several letters addressed by Dugdale to his friend Blount. In the first of these, bearing date 29 June 1674, Sir William, then Mr. William Dugdale, writes, praying his interference in the matter of one Scott, a bookseller in Little Britain, who owed Dugdale money for his ‘Monasticons.’ In another letter we learn that Blount corrected some of Dugdale's proof-sheets. In another he is introduced to Sir John Cotton, son of the great collector, to see some manuscripts in his library, as a ‘person well verst in antiquities and deserving all encouragement in these his commendable studies.’

Blount's chief works are:
 * 1) ‘The Art of making Devises, treating of Hieroglyphicks, Symboles, Emblemes, Ænigmas, Sentences, Parables, Reverses of Medalls, Armes, Blazons, Cimiers, Cyphres, and Rebus, translated from the French of Henry Estienne, Lord of Tossez,’ 1646; the same, together with a ‘Catalogue of Coronet Devises, both on the Kings and the Parliament's side, in the late Warres,’ 1650.
 * 2) ‘The Academie of Eloquence, containing a compleat English Rhetorique exemplified, with Common places and Formes digested into an easie and methodical way to speak and write fluently, according to the mode of the present times, together with Letters, both Amorous and Moral, upon emergent occasions,’ 1654 (? 29 Jan. 1653), often reprinted; a book ‘specially intended’ for the youth of both sexes.
 * 3) ‘Glossographia, or a Dictionary interpreting all such hard words, of whatsoever language, now used in our refined English tongue, with etymologies, definitions, and historical observations on the same; also the Terms of Divinity, Law, Physick, Mathematicks, and other Arts and Sciences explicated; very useful for all such as desire to understand what they read,’ London, 1656, 8vo; 1670, 1671, 8vo; 1679, 1691; enlarged by William Nelson, 1717, fol. Much of this was adopted by Edward Phillips in his ‘New World of English Words,’ which appeared the year after.
 * 4) ‘The Lamps of the Law and Lights of the Gospel, or the Titles of some late Spiritual, Polemical, and