Charles Blount, 5th Baron Mountjoy, inherited both his father’s title and his humanist instincts, attracting some of the most distinguished scholars in Europe to his household and serving as a gracious patron of learning during his brief tenure of the barony. Born in Tournai in 1516, where his father was governor, he succeeded to the title in 1534 and died in 1544, probably from illness contracted during Henry VIII’s siege of Boulogne.
His will, drawn up before embarking for France, is a considered document that reflects the family’s tradition of serious intellectual engagement with the life of letters.
Early life and education
Charles Blount was born on 28 June 1516 in Tournai, where his father William, 4th Baron Mountjoy, was governor; his mother was Alice Keble, daughter of Henry Keble, Lord Mayor of London. He was thus born into a household defined simultaneously by high politics and humanist scholarship.
The remarkable quality of his early education reflected his father’s connections. In 1522 Jan van der Cruyce, a graduate of the University of Leuven and personal friend of Erasmus, came to England to serve as private tutor to the Mountjoy children, remaining until 1527; he was succeeded by Petrus Vulcanius of Bruges. The great scholar Juan Luis Vives dedicated a short educational treatise to Charles in 1523, and John Palsgrave – composer of the first major French grammar in English – also taught him. Erasmus praised Charles’s written style, added his name alongside his father’s in the dedication to the 1528 edition of the Adagia, and made him the sole dedicatee of the next two editions as well as his 1531 edition of Livy.
The fifth Baron’s tenure
About August 1530 Charles married Anne, daughter of Robert Willoughby, 2nd Baron Willoughby de Broke – technically his stepsister, since her mother Dorothy Grey had become the fourth wife of Charles’s father. He succeeded to the barony on his father’s death in 1534.
As Baron Mountjoy he was a regular attender in the House of Lords. In May 1537 he was among the peers summoned to sit in judgement on Lords Darcy and Hussey, and in December 1538 sat on the panel for the trials of Henry Pole, Baron Montagu, and Henry Courtenay, Marquess of Exeter, his own brother-in-law. His country house was at Apethorpe, Northamptonshire. After the dissolution of Syon Abbey in 1539 he gave asylum in his London house to the learned priest Richard Whitford, who remained until his death in 1542, and like his father he sought a distinguished humanist tutor for his eldest son, approaching Roger Ascham, who declined the post while admiring the household.
Death and will
Charles Blount drew up his will on 30 April 1544, just before embarking with Henry VIII’s expeditionary forces for France, admonishing his children to ‘kepe themselfes worthye of so moche honour as to be called hereafter to dye for there maister and countrey’. In an unusual act of self-commemoration he also composed his own epitaph in English verse. He was present with the King during the first siege of Boulogne and died on 10 October 1544 at Hooke, Dorset, probably from an illness contracted during the campaign. He was buried at St Mary Aldermary in the City of London; his widow Anne survived him and remarried, living until 1582.