Sir Walter Blount of Elvaston, Derbyshire, was one of the most trusted retainers of John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, and a soldier who served the Lancastrian cause from the battlefields of Spain to the plains of Shropshire. His death at the Battle of Shrewsbury on 21 July 1403, where he fell carrying the royal standard of Henry IV – dressed in armour to resemble the King – secured him a place in the literary as well as the historical record: William Shakespeare immortalised him as Sir Walter Blunt in Henry IV, Part 1, presenting him as the embodiment of chivalric loyalty.
He is the founding figure of the Blount line from which the Barons Mountjoy descend, and the man associated in estate tradition with Barton becoming known as Barton Blount.
Origins and early life
Walter Blount was the third son of Sir John Blount of Sodington, Worcestershire, by his wife Iseult (Isolda) Mountjoy, daughter and heiress of Sir Thomas de Mountjoy of Derbyshire – a connection that would give the Blount family both its Derbyshire lands and, ultimately, its baronial title two generations later. He was a child when his father died in 1358.
His brothers John and Thomas inherited the Sodington estates in Worcestershire, but Walter’s inheritance lay in the Mountjoy properties in Derbyshire. In 1374 his half-brother John, who had succeeded their mother Isolda in the Mountjoy property, formally made over the Derbyshire Mountjoy estates to Walter. Walter then substantially enlarged his holdings in 1381 by purchasing the great estates of the Bakepuiz family in Derbyshire, Leicestershire and Hertfordshire – the Derbyshire manor of Barton Bakepuys, later Barton Blount, among them.
Service to John of Gaunt and Castile
Walter Blount first appears in the historical record in 1367, when he accompanied Edward, the Black Prince, and John of Gaunt on their expedition to Spain to restore Peter of Castile (‘the Cruel’) to the throne of León and Castile, a campaign concluded by the Battle of Nájera on 3 April 1367. On or shortly after his return to England, Blount entered the permanent household of John of Gaunt, with whom he would remain closely associated for over a quarter of a century.
By 1372 Blount was in regular receipt of wages and an annuity of seventeen marks from the duchy of Lancaster, had been made Constable of Gaunt’s castle of Tutbury, and awarded a larger fee of fifty marks from the revenues of the High Peak in Derbyshire. He was, in effect, Gaunt’s leading retainer in the north Midlands, and served him through a succession of military, diplomatic and administrative roles.
By 1374 Walter had married Doña Sancha de Ayala, lady-in-waiting to Gaunt’s wife Constance and daughter of Diego Gómez, a high royal official in Toledo. The marriage brought a Spanish connection that added an armorial quartering (Ayala) to the Blount arms, visible in the later Mountjoy heraldry. In 1393 Blount was one of three commissioners appointed to negotiate a permanent peace with the King of Castile, and in 1398 Gaunt granted him and his wife an annuity of one hundred marks in consideration of their long service. He was named an executor of John of Gaunt’s will when the duke died in February 1399.
Later career and the Battle of Shrewsbury
When Henry of Bolingbroke returned from exile and seized the throne as Henry IV in September 1399, Blount supported him unhesitatingly; his Lancastrian loyalties, shaped over three decades, aligned perfectly with the new regime. He was elected Knight of the Shire for Derbyshire in Henry IV’s first parliament, which met on 6 October 1399, and in February 1400 was sent as a formal envoy to announce the English accession at the courts of Portugal and Aragon.
When the rebellion of the Percy family broke out in the summer of 1403, Blount joined the King’s forces and served as royal standard-bearer at the Battle of Shrewsbury on 21 July 1403. In the decisive phase of the battle, the rebel leader Henry Percy (‘Hotspur’) charged the royal position in an attempt to cut down Henry IV. Blount, dressed in armour resembling that of the King, was killed by Archibald Douglas, 4th Earl of Douglas, who believed he had struck down the King himself.
He was buried, in accordance with his will (made at Liverpool, 16 December 1401), at the collegiate church of St Mary de Newark in Leicester, a Lancastrian foundation. His widow Doña Sancha survived him until 1418 and, in 1406, founded the hospital of St Leonard between Alkmonton and Hungry Bentley, Derbyshire.
Shakespeare’s portrait
Shakespeare gives Blount, calling him ‘Sir Walter Blunt’, a prominent role in Henry IV, Part 1, with both Hotspur and Henry IV eulogising his martial prowess and personal honour. In the play Blount deliberately offers himself as a decoy for the King; Falstaff, finding his body after the battle, uses his death as an ironic commentary on the worthlessness of honour.
Children and legacy
His will named his wife and his sons John, Thomas and James, and daughters Constance and Anne. His elder son Sir John Blount inherited the Derbyshire estates, became Governor of Calais and a Knight of the Garter, and died without male issue at the siege of Rouen in 1418. His younger son Sir Thomas Blount served as Treasurer of Calais and was the grandfather of Walter Blount, 1st Baron Mountjoy. His daughter Constance married John de Sutton of Dudley Castle.
The date of birth (c. 1348) is approximate, and Sir Walter’s parentage is contested in older scholarship: the Dictionary of National Biography names his mother as Eleanor Beauchamp, but later research favours Iseult (Isolda) Mountjoy, whose connection is the better established through the subsequent land transfers.