William Blunden, MP

Family and Education bap. 30 May 1602, 1st s. of Richard Blunden of Bishop’s Castle and 1st w. Jane, da. of Richard Ottley of Pitchford, Salop.1 educ. M. Temple 1623;2 m. (1) Dorothy (bur. 8 July 1629), da. of Edmund Waring of Humfreston, Salop, 1da.; (2) 24 Sept. 1631, Susan (bur.11 Jan. 1635), da. of Charles Herbert of Lydham, Salop, 1s.3 suc. fa. 1619.4 d. 1644/5. sig. W[illia]m Blunden.

Offices Held

Churchwarden, Bishop’s Castle 1634-6;5 commr. subsidy, Salop 1641, Poll tax 1641, Irish Aid 1642, assessment 1642;6 bailiff, Bishop’s Castle 1642-3.7

Capt. dragoons (roy.) 1642-d

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Biography The Blundens traced their ancestry back to the thirteenth century, when they acquired land in Bishop’s Castle by marriage, but they were of little account until the late sixteenth century. The MP’s grandfather purchased 800 acres, and at his death in 1607 his Shropshire estates were worth nearly £200 a year, plus further property in Hampshire and Devon, which enabled him to spend heavily on a new mansion at Bishop’s Castle.8 Blunden’s father bought a further 600 acres, and served as bailiff of Bishop’s Castle in 1601-2, but while his lands descended to Blunden at his death in 1619, they were encumbered with substantial legacies to his second wife and her children.9

Blunden’s wardship was purchased by his uncle Thomas Ottley, who presumably encouraged him to stand for election in 1625 and 1626, the only member of the family to be returned to the Commons. He figured in the parliamentary record only once, on 5 June 1626, when the Shrewsbury MP Thomas Owen explained that he had missed the call of the House held three days previously while caring for Blunden, who had fallen sick while returning from the Whitsun recess. Blunden probably chose not to stand again in 1628, when bailiff Rowland Sayse (one of his tenants) returned Sir Edward Foxe in his stead. A signatory of a local royalist petition of August 1642, he was elected bailiff of Bishop’s Castle in the following month, and played an active part in recruiting dragoons for the Shropshire regiment commanded by (Sir) Vincent Corbet†, in which he served as a captain.10 He was presumably killed in action, as he never underwent sequestration or composition proceedings, but the Bishop’s Castle parish registers are lost for this period, and the date of his death is unknown.

Ref Volumes: 1604-1629 Author: Simon Healy Notes 1. Bishop’s Castle par. reg. (Salop par. reg. soc. xxiv), 74; Vis. Salop (Harl. Soc. xxviii), 49-50. 2. M. Temple Admiss. 3. Bishop’s Castle par. reg. 121-30. 4. C142/393/167. 5. Bishop’s Castle par. reg. 130-1. 6. SR, v. 65, 88, 107, 141, 155. 7. Gale of Life ed. J. Leonard, D. Preshous, M. Roberts, J. Smith and C. Train, 158. 8. Vis. Salop, 49-50; Salop RO, 11/801; C142/303/139. 9. C142/393/167; C219/34/185; PROB 11/134, ff.102-3. 10. NLW, Pitchford Hall 1603; C219/41A/53; Gale of Life ed. Leonard et al. 158-61, 168