and to the city of Exeter, the last benefaction being designed for the encouragement of the city's mechanics. But his chief public work consisted of the establishment and endowment under his will of the school known as Blundell's School, which was erected in 1604 at the east end of the town of Tiverton. Within this building have been educated a large number of the youth of the west of England, including Bishops Bull, Hayter, and Conybeare, Mr. Abraham Hayward, the essayist, and Mr. R. D. Blackmore, the novelist. John Ridd, the hero of Mr. Blackmore's novel of ‘Lorna Doone,’ was educated there, and two views of the school-buildings will be found in the illustrated edition of that work. Particulars of the feoffees, masters, and principal scholars may be obtained from the works of Incledon, Dunsford, and Harding. Minutes of the proceedings of the feoffees from 1665 to 1774 are in the possession of Lieutenant-colonel Carew, of Crowcombe Court, Somerset. When an annual school-feast was set on foot about 1750, a ticket was engraved by Hogarth.
[Incledon's Donations of P. Blundell, 1792 and 1804; Dunsford's Tiverton, 114–18, 180–9, 203, 265, 342–55; Harding's Tiverton, books i., iii., and iv.; Polwhele's Cornwall, v. 74–6; Prince's Worthies; Moore's Devon, ii. 116–19; Fourth Rep. Hist. MS. Comm. p. 374.]
BLUNDELL, WILLIAM (1620–1698), royalist officer and topographer, son of Nicholas Blundell, by Jane, daughter of Roger Bradshaigh, of Haigh, near Wigan, was born at Crosby Hall, Lancashire, and probably was sent to one of the secret places of education that were maintained by catholics in various parts of the country. At the age of fifteen he married Ann, daughter of Sir Thomas Haggerston, bart., of Haggerston, co. Northumberland. In 1642 he accepted a captain's commission from Sir Thomas Tildesley, authorising him to raise a company of one hundred dragoons for the royal cause. He joined in the march to Lancaster, where he received a serious wound, having his thigh shattered by a musket-shot. From this period till the close of the civil war his life was one of privation and anxiety. By the law of 1646 no papist delinquent could compound for his estate, and consequently all his real property was seized, and remained in the hands of the commissioners for nine or ten years. Ultimately he repurchased it at a cost of 1,340l. In addition to this he found himself saddled with the arrears of the rents reserved to the crown, arising out of frequent grants for recusancy, some of which had never been discharged. These went back as far as the reign of Elizabeth, and he was forced by the government to pay on this score 1,167l. 15s. 6½d. Moreover, the cost of making out this prodigious bill was added to the account, constituting an addition of 34l. 10s. 2d. to the foregoing sum. This remarkable document, a roll of twenty feet in length, is still preserved. After the civil war Blundell retired to Crosby Hall, where he died 24 May 1698.
His works are: 1. ‘A Short Treatise on the Penal Laws;’ this exists in manuscript at Crosby, but a printed copy cannot be found, although the author states that a few copies were printed in London. 2. ‘An Exact Chronographical and Historical Discovery of the hitherto unknown Isle of Man, containing a true and perfect description of this island at large; the history of their antient kings, late lords, and bishops of ye island, the ceremonies of their inaugurations, and installments,’ &c., 2 vols., Douglas, 1876–77, 8vo, edited by William Harrison, and forming vols. xxv. and xxvii. of the publications of the Manx Society. 3. ‘Manuscript Commonplace Books,’ kept on the method described by Drexilius in his ‘Aurifodina;’ a selection of the most interesting of the original notes, anecdotes, and observations, in these volumes has been published, with introductory chapters, by the Rev. Thomas Ellison Gibson, under the title of ‘Crosby Records, a Cavalier's Note Book,’ London, 1880, 4to.
[Memoir by Gibson prefixed to the Cavalier's Note Book; Publications of the Manx Society.]
BLUNDEVILL, RANDULPH de, Earl of Chester (d. 1232), warrior and statesman, was son and heir of Hugh 'de Kivelioc,' earl (palatine) of Chester, whom he succeeded in 1180 (Dugdale, Mon. Angl. iii. 218) or 1181 (Walter of Coventry, i. 317). His surname, like his father's, was derived from his birthplace, 'Blundevill' being identified by Dugdale with Oswestry. In 1187 he received in marriage, 'per donationem regis Henrici' (Gesta Regis Henrici Secundi, ii. 29), Constance, daughter and heir of Conan, duke of Brittany, and widow of Geoffrey, second son of Henry II, and jure uxoris 'duke' (or 'count') of Brittany, who died 19 Aug. 1186. By this marriage he became stepfather of Arthur, and, in consequence of it, he occasionally assumed the styles of Duke of Brittany and Earl of Richmond (see two charters printed by Ormerod on p. 37, and also an Inspeximus in Cart. 22 Ed. Ill, n. 6). He is said by Matthew Paris to have carried the crown (but cf. Ben. Abb. p. 558; Roger de Hoveden, p. 650) at the coronation of
