Blount, Walter, Lord Mountjoy

(d. 1474)

   Walter Blount, Lord Mountjoy, was a member of the loyal circle of nobles and gentlemen who supported EDWARD IV and the house of YORK throughout the WARS OF THE ROSES.

   Born into a Derbyshire GENTRY family, Blount was a servant of Richard PLANTAGENET, duke of York, in the 1450s, and probably fled to CALAIS in 1459 with York’s son Edward, earl of March, and the duke’s chief allies, Richard NEVILLE, earl of Salisbury, and his son Richard NEVILLE, earl of Warwick. In 1461, after York’s death at the Battle of WAKEFIELD, Blount fought for March, now Edward IV, at the Battle of TOWTON, where Blount was knighted. He was also rewarded with the treasurership of Calais in 1461 and the treasurership of England in 1464. In 1461, he was cocommander at the siege of Hammes, a Calais fortress that held out for HENRY VI until 1462. Raised to the peerage as Lord Mountjoy in 1465 and appointed to the royal COUNCIL, he had previously been allowed to marry the king’s aunt, Anne, the dowager duchess of Buckingham. He was also granted lands formerly belonging to Thomas COURTENAY, the Lancastrian earl of Devon, who had died at Towton in 1461.

   In 1468, the king appointed Mountjoy to command a campaign against FRANCE, although the expedition never sailed. In 1469, he was one of the first peers Edward summoned to his presence after the king freed himself from the custody of the rebellious Warwick; Mountjoy then accompanied Edward on his public reentry into LONDON. Mountjoy also rode with the king in March 1470 during the campaign that defeated Warwick’s second coup attempt at the Battle of LOSECOTE FIELD. Upon Edward’s flight to the continent in October 1470, Mountjoy was one of the Yorkist peers who was arrested and briefly imprisoned by the READEPTION government of Henry VI. Although soon released, he was dismissed from all his offices, including all commissions of the peace. Mountjoy rejoined Edward upon the king’s return in the spring of 1471 and probably fought for the Yorkists at the Battles of BARNET and TEWKESBURY. His eldest son William died fighting for Edward IV at Barnet. Honored with a Garter Knighthood (i.e., membership in the highest order of English chivalry) in 1472, Mountjoy died in 1474.

   See also Edward IV, Overthrow of; Edward IV, Restoration of; Peerage

   Further Reading: Hicks, Michael,Warwick the Kingmaker (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1998); Ross, Charles, Edward IV (New Haven, CT:Yale University Press, 1998).