Mountjoy Blount, 1st Earl of Newport, was the natural son of Charles Blount, 1st Earl of Devonshire, and Lady Penelope Rich, legitimated in the eyes of society if not in strict law by his father’s recognition and a substantial inheritance from the earl’s estate. His career spanned the final years of the Jacobean court, the reign of Charles I, the Civil War and the Restoration, and in each phase he pursued his own interest with a calculating flexibility that left contemporaries uncertain of his true convictions.
He is the last figure in the Blount / Mountjoy line; the barony became extinct with his youngest son Henry in 1681.
Origins and early life
Mountjoy Blount was born about 1597, the natural son of Charles Blount, Earl of Devonshire, by his long-term partner Lady Penelope Rich. His early life was shaped by his father’s wealth – the earl had left him ‘a very plentiful revenue’ in the words of Clarendon’s History of the Rebellion – and by the prestige of the family connection, if not by its legal legitimacy.
In 1617–18 he was created Baron Mountjoy in the peerage of Ireland, reviving the ancient family title. A favourite at the court of James I, he was created Baron Mountjoy of Thurveston in the English peerage on 5 June 1627, and Earl of Newport in the Isle of Wight on 27 July 1628. In 1626 he married Anne Boteler, daughter of John Boteler, 1st Baron Boteler of Bramfield; Lady Newport became a prominent figure in London society and in 1637 converted to Roman Catholicism, a step her husband vigorously opposed.
Master of Ordnance and the Army Plot
On 31 August 1634 Newport was appointed Master of the Ordnance for life. Through the following years he engaged actively in the duties of the office and contrived to make substantial profits, including a controversial sale of gunpowder in September 1639 – at an inflated price and in breach of the King’s proclaimed neutrality – to the Spanish ambassador for the fleet of Admiral Oquendo.
The critical event of his political career came in April 1641, during the trial of Thomas Wentworth, Earl of Strafford. George Goring had revealed to Newport a Royalist plot to bring an army to London, seize the Tower, and rescue Strafford; Newport passed the information to the Earls of Bedford and Mandeville, who conveyed it to John Pym, who deployed it to seal Strafford’s fate and ensure the bill of attainder passed. Newport’s motives – ideological, self-interested, or personal – remain opaque.
The Civil War
When the Civil War broke out, Newport’s loyalties reasserted themselves in favour of the Crown. He served in the royalist army, was present with the King at the second Battle of Newbury in October 1644, and was with the King’s forces in Devonshire at the end of 1645. On 23 January 1646, when Dartmouth fell to Parliamentary forces, Newport was taken prisoner and confined in London, being released from bail by July 1646. In June 1655, under the Protectorate, he was committed to the Tower on suspicion of treason.
Restoration and death
At the Restoration Newport recovered some formal standing, though age had reduced his active role; in June 1660 he was suspended from the Mastership of the Ordnance. He carried the King’s mantle at the coronation of Charles II in 1661, as recorded in Evelyn’s Diary, and in November 1662 was granted a pension as gentleman of the bedchamber. He died at Oxford on 12 February 1666 (1665 in old-style reckoning), having retired there to avoid the plague then raging in London, and was buried in Christ Church Cathedral.
Children and extinction of the title
Newport had two surviving sons by Anne Boteler: George (2nd Earl of Newport, d. without issue) and Henry (3rd Earl of Newport, d. 1681 without issue). Both titles – the earldom of Newport and the barony of Mountjoy – became extinct on Henry’s death in 1681, ending the Blount peerage line begun by the 1st Baron Mountjoy in 1465. His birth year is given as c. 1597 in most sources, occasionally c. 1596.