Sir Thomas Pope Blount, 1st Baronet (12 September 164927 January 1697) was an English politician and

baronet A baronet ( or ; abbreviated Bart or Bt) or the female equivalent, a baronetess (, , or ; abbreviation Btss), is the holder of a baronetcy, a hereditary title awarded by the British Crown. The title of baronet is mentioned as early as the 14th ...

Life

Thomas Pope Blount was born on 12 September 1649 in

Upper Holloway Upper Holloway is a district in the London Borough of Islington, London, centred on the upper part of Holloway Road and Junction Road, London, Junction Road. It is served by the Overground at Upper Holloway Station and the Northern Line at Arch ...

Islington Islington () is a district in the north of Greater London, England, and part of the London Borough of Islington. It is a mainly residential district of Inner London, extending from Islington's High Street to Highbury Fields, encompassing the ar ...

, London, son of Sir Henry Blount and Hester Wane. Thomas was the brother of Charles Blount. Thomas married on 22 July 1669 Jane Caesar, the daughter of Sir

Henry Caesar Sir Henry Caesar (2 October 1630 – 6 January 1668 ) was an English politician who sat in the House of Commons in 1660 and 1666 through 1668. Caesar was the son of Sir Charles Caesar, by his wife Jane Barkham, and succeeded to the estate of Be ...

. He was admitted to

Lincoln's Inn The Honourable Society of Lincoln's Inn is one of the four Inns of Court in London to which barristers of England and Wales belong and where they are called to the Bar. (The other three are Middle Temple, Inner Temple and Gray's Inn.) Lincoln ...

on 1 December 1668. In December 1678 he succeeded to the estate of

Tittenhanger Tyttenhanger House is a 17th-century country mansion, now converted into commercial offices, at Tyttenhanger, near St Albans, Hertfordshire. It is a Grade I listed building. History The Tyttenhanger estate was owned by the Abbey of St Albans unt ...

in Hertfordshire from his mother. He was the member of parliament for

St Albans St Albans () is a cathedral city in Hertfordshire, England, east of Hemel Hempstead and west of Hatfield, Hertfordshire, Hatfield, north-west of London, south-west of Welwyn Garden City and south-east of Luton. St Albans was the first major ...

between 1679 and 1681 and for

Hertfordshire Hertfordshire ( or ; often abbreviated Herts) is one of the home counties in southern England. It borders Bedfordshire and Cambridgeshire to the north, Essex to the east, Greater London to the south, and Buckinghamshire to the west. For govern ...

between 1689 and 1697. He was a Commissioner of Public Accounts between 1694 and 1697. Blount was created baronet of Tittenhanger on 27 January 1679. On his death in Tittenhanger the title passed to his son, Sir Thomas Pope Blount, 2nd Baronet.

Works

*''Censura celebrorum authorum sive tractatus in quo varia virorum doctorum de clarissimis cujusque seculi scriptoribus judicia traduntur'' (1690) *''Essays on Several Occasions'' (1692) *''A Natural History, containing many not common observations extracted out of the best modern writers'' (1693) *''De re poetica, or remarks upon Poetry, with Characters and Censures of the most considerable Poets'' (1694) Blount's ''Essays on Several Subjects'' (or ''Several Occasions''), originally published in 1692, touch on learning ancient and modern, and the education of children. In 1697 he added an essay that has been described as openly

deist Deism ( or ; derived from the Latin '' deus'', meaning "god") is the philosophical position and rationalistic theology that generally rejects revelation as a source of divine knowledge, and asserts that empirical reason and observation ...

ic.Thomas Pope Blount
in A Biographical Dictionary of Modern Rationalists His (1690) was originally compiled for Blount's own use, and is a dictionary in chronological order of what various eminent writers have said about one another. This involved enormous labour in Blount's time. It was published at Geneva in 1694 with all the quotations from modern languages translated into Latin, and again in 1710.

References

1649 births 1697 deaths People from Islington (district) Members of Lincoln's Inn Baronets in the Baronetage of England Members of the Green Ribbon Club English MPs 1679 English MPs 1680–1681 English MPs 1681 English MPs 1689–1690 English MPs 1690–1695 English MPs 1695–1698 Civil servants in the Audit Office (United Kingdom) Members of the Parliament of England for Hertfordshire {{17thC-England-MP-stub