Portrait of Mountjoy Blount, 1st Earl of Newport (c1597-1665)

Portrait of Mountjoy Blount, 1st Earl of Newport (c1597-1665)
Attrib. to Daniel Mytens (c1600-1656)

A natural son of the 1st Earl of Devonshire, Blount was a favourite at Court, created Baron Mountjoy in January 1617/18 and Earl of Newport in 1628. He became Master of the Ordnance in 1634, managing its affairs shrewdly to his financial advantage.

From 1640 onwards Blount was increasingly hostile to the Court but not the King, whom he joined in his search for the Five Members in 1641 and on whose side he fought in Yorkshire, Berkshire and Devonshire, being taken prisoner at Dartmouth in 1645.

Until the King's death and during the Commonwealth he was in custody or on bail. Discharged from the post of Master of the Ordnance in 1660 he was granted a pension by the Crown. He died in 1665 in Oxford, where he had gone to escape from the plague.