Mountjoy Blount[1], 1st Earl of Newport (c. 1597 – 1666), created Baron Mountjoy in the Irish peerage (1617), baron Mountjoy of Thurveston in the English peerage (1627) and Earl of Newport (1628) was appointed master of ordnance to Charles I of England (1634) and played an ambiguous part in the early years of the English Civil War.
He was the natural son of Charles Blount, Earl of Devonshire and Penelope, Lady Rich; his father left him a plentiful estate, and he was a member of James I's court, who played in a masque before the king mounted by Viscount Doncaster at Essex House, 8 January 1620/21,[2] was among the entourage of the Earl of Carlisle, employed to offer excuses at the court of Louis XIII, for the passage of Prince Charles through Paris incognito on his way to Spain at the time of negotiations towards the ill-starred "Spanish Match". In July 1627 he was created Earl of Newport in the Isle of Wight; Newport, as he now was, held a rear-admiral's command in the ineffective expedition to relieve La Rochelle in August 1628, for which he was petitioning for payment in the following years.
His appointment as Master of Ordnance for his lifetime was granted 31 August 1634; as was expected in the seventeenth century, he derived a tidy fortune from the position. From his sale of gunpowder at exorbitant prices, through the Spanish ambassador, to supply the Spanish fleet attacking Dutch forces in September 1639, he pocketed £1000, and the King, £5000.[3] On his own account he bargained with the ambassador to land soldiers from the Spanish fleet at Dunkirk, at thirty shillings a head, though public neutrality had been enjoined by Charles.
Though at Christmas 1639, Newport participated with the King in the extravagant masque on the theme of Philogenes, royal "lover of the People",[4] with the return of the Long Parliament the next year, Newport by degrees joined the forces of opposition in the House of Lords.
The turning point came during the trial of Strafford in 1641, when Col. Lord Goring had revealed to Newport an amateurish plot of Royalist officers at Portsmouth to take London by surprise, seize the Tower and somehow rescue the king. Goring betrayed the plot to Newport, who passed on the information to John Pym, who brought it forward at the most dramatic and opportune moment, sealing Strafford's fate in the bill of attainder.
When the Civil War broke out, however, Newport served in the royalist army, and took part in the second battle of Newbury in 1644. In January 1646 he was taken prisoner and confined in London on parole. He had on 7 February 1626 married Ann Boteler, daughter of John Boteler, 1st Baron Boteler of Bramfield, by whom he had eight children:[5][6]
He died at Oxford, where he had gone to avoid the plague, leaving three surviving sons, all "idiots".[7] The earldom became extinct upon the death of the youngest, Henry, in 1679.
| Military offices | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by The Lord Vere of Tilbury |
Master-General of the Ordnance 1634 – 1661 |
Succeeded by Sir William Compton |
| Peerage of England | ||
| New creation | Earl of Newport 1628 – 1666 |
Succeeded by Mountjoy Blount |
| Baron Mountjoy 1627 – 1666 |
||
| Peerage of Ireland | ||
| New creation | Baron Mountjoy 1618 – 1666 |
Succeeded by Mountjoy Blount |