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 popish recusants, speaks in his ‘Jus Cæsaris et Ecclesiæ vere dictæ,’ an odd and rambling work concerning presbytery, the power of kings, liturgies, and conventicles, of three persons, R. P., I. S., and P. W., as having written against his two former books. Whether either of these three was Blount, who certainly answered one of Denton's books in a little treatise of one sheet, it is now difficult to tell. Blount also left behind him an imperfect ‘Chronicle of England,’ which he and I. B. (which was all Wood knew of his collaborator, for Blount would never disclose his name) had for several years been compiling; but ‘what became of it afterwards,’ says Wood, ‘I cannot tell.’ He also wrote ‘Animadversions upon Britannia, written by R. Blome,’ but whether it was printed is uncertain. A ‘History of Hereford,’ two vols. small fol., was left in manuscript, in which the parishes were arranged alphabetically. Of these the second volume, beginning with letter L, was for some time in the possession of Dr. Blount of Hereford; but the other, having been lent to Sir Robert Cornewall, was lost. Mr. Speaker Cornewall examined his father's papers at the request of Dr. Nash, the Worcestershire historian, but could find nothing of Blount's. Nash quotes from a letter, which mentions the loan to Sir Robert Cornewall, the following extract: ‘The other volume I (Blount's grandson) had, but my son took it with him to London, in hopes of meeting with the present baronet, and with an intent of revising the whole if he could get it. … After my son's death, whether my son Edward took care to preserve it I do not know.’ There is probably little chance of ever recovering either volume of this historical manuscript. It has escaped the researches of Mr. Gough. ‘Les Termes de la Ley,’ by T. B. of the Inner Temple, 1685, is supposed by Loveday to be by Thomas Blount.



BLOUNT, THOMAS POPE (1649–1697), politician and author, was descended from an old Staffordshire family, the Blounts of Blount Hall. He was the eldest son of Sir Henry Blount [q. v.], and elder brother of Charles Blount, both noticed above, and was born at Upper Holloway 12 Sept. 1649. Having been carefully educated under the direction of his father, he early acquired a high reputation for the extent and variety of his learning and accomplishments. In his father's lifetime he succeeded to the estate of Tittenhanger upon the death of his mother in 1678, his father having given up the estate to her. On 27 Jan. 1679–80 he was created by Charles II a baronet. In the last three parliaments of Charles he served for the borough of St. Albans, and after the revolution he was made knight of the shire for Hertford. In the first year of King William he was chosen by the House of Commons commissioner of accounts, an office which he held during three successive years till his death at Tittenhanger 30 June 1697. He was buried in the vault of the family at Ridge, in Hertfordshire. By his wife, Jane, only daughter of Sir Henry Cæsar, Benington Place, Hertfordshire, whom he married at St. Olave's, Hart Street, London, 22 July 1669, he had five sons and nine daughters.

The most elaborate and important work of Blount is his ‘Censura celebriorum Authorum, sive Tractatus in quo varia virorum doctorum de clarissimis cujusque seculi scriptoribus judicia traduntur,’ 1690. A second edition, in which, for greater facility of reference, all the passages from the modern languages, English, French, or Italian, were translated into Latin, appeared at Geneva in 1694, and a third impression appeared at the same place in 1710. The translations were the work of the anonymous foreign editor. In the original preface to the work, Blount states that he had been led to compile it solely for his own private use, and that he had been induced to publish it at the urgent request of various learned men, a request which he had complied with, not to gratify his own ambition, for a life of quiet and retirement had always been his supreme delight, but solely that he might benefit letters. It is a bibliographical dictionary of a peculiar kind, and may be described as a record of the opinions of the greatest writers of all ages on one another. The independent research implied, in his time, in the compilation of such a work, comparatively minor though it is, was, of course, very great; but the plan necessarily left little room for the exercise of discrimination, except in the selection of writers to be treated of. The number of names is nearly six hundred, beginning at the earliest records of literature and science. There are many curious omissions. In later scientific names it is very defective, and the later English poets, such as Beaumont, Fletcher, Spenser, Ben Jonson,