Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Blount, Thomas (fl.1668)
BLOUNT or BLUNT, THOMAS (fl. 1668), colonel, born in or about 1604, was the second son of Edward Blount, of the Middle Temple and Wricklesmarsh, in Charlton, Kent, by his second wife, Fortune, daughter of Sir William Garway, knight, of London. During the rebellion his leanings were to the popular party, and he became, says Sir Roger Twysden, ‘a great stickler for the two houses of parliament.’ Being present at the meetings of the cavalier country-gentlemen at Maidstone, which resulted in the getting up the Kentish petition of March 1642, he turned informer, and gave an account of the proceedings in evidence at the bar of the house. His name appears in 1643 on one of the earliest lists of the committee of Kent. Upon the accession of Charles II Blount was promptly committed to prison, where he saw fit to modify his opinions, and his petitions for release were certainly not wanting in servility. Blount was a highly ingenious man, and lived in intimacy with the most distinguished fellows of the Royal Society, to which he was himself admitted in February 1664–5. He constructed with his own hands a carriage with an improved action, ‘for the ease of both man and horse,’ which at the time attracted considerable attention, and is often mentioned by Pepys. Both Pepys and his contemporary diarist Evelyn tell us of the colonel's experiments and inventions at his stately seat at Charlton—his vineyard, the wine of which was ‘good for little,’ new-invented ploughs, and subterranean warren. He was among the first to adopt the application of the way-wiser, or odometer, to a carriage. Blount was living in January 1667–8, when he withdrew from the Royal Society.
[Hasted's Kent (folio ed.), i. 36 (o); Berry's Kent Genealogies, p. 417; Archæologia Cantiana, i. 202, 204; Kemble's Introd. to Sir R. Twysden's Certaine Considerations upon the Government of England (Camden Soc.), pp. lv-lvii; Evelyn's Diary (ed. 1850–2), i. 281, 310, 313, 320, 332, 414; Pepys's Diary (3rd ed.), iii. 12–13, 80, 149, v. 243; Birch's Hist. Roy. Soc. ii.; Lysons's Environs of London, iv. 492; Cal. State Papers (Dom. 1660–2).]