DIARY OF HENRY TICHBORNE BLOUNT 1770-81.
This diary measures approximately eight inches by six inches, and is bound in grey leather. It contains 334 pages of which the last 252 are blank. When Edwin Burton (who died in 1925) transcribed the manuscript it was in the archives of the Archbishop of Westminster . In 1970 it was at St. Edmund's College, Old Hall Green. The compiler of the diary was Henry Tichborne Blount, President of Douai College from 1770 until 1780.1 He was born on 6 December 1723, the second son of Michael Blount (1693-1739 of Maple) durham , Oxfordshire and Mary Agnes ( 1695-1777 ), daughter and one of the co- heiresses of Sir Henry Joseph Tichborne , fourth Baronet, of Tichborne , Hampshire. The other children of Michael and Mary Agnes Blount were Michael (1719-92) who married Mary, daughter of Mannock Strickland , the well-known conveyancer; Walter (1727-46) who became a Benedictine at St. Gregory's, Douai, and took the name Maurus ;2 Mary ( 1716-99 ) who married her relative Sir Henry Tichborne , sixth Baronet, of Tichborne ;3 and Frances (1717-40) who entered the Benedictine convent at Brussels in 1734 and took the name Henrietta.4 Henry Tichborne Blount arrived at Douai on 7 May 1740 and a year later defended his philosophical thesis . On 19 August 1743 he went to the English Carthusians at Nieuport to see whether his health was robust enough to permit him to enter that order . Apparently it was not, for he returned to Douai College, became a subdeacon on 24 May 1747, a deacon on 23 September 1747 and was ordained priest in March 1748. On 3 September 1748 he was sent to England. He had never taken the Mission oath for he was described in the note recording his departure as "convictor , not alumnus .5 In 1750 he travelled to France and lived at Angers until the summer of 1751 when he made an excursion to northern Italy. He returned to France and in May 1752 he became second chaplain to the English Poor Clares at Rouen. In 1758 he went to Esquerchin and replaced James Talbot as master at the school when the latter was appointed coadjutor to Bishop Challoner in 1759. 1 Most of the following sketch of Tichborne Blount's life has been taken from Sir A. Croke, Genealogical History of the Croke Family ( 1823), vol . 2, 274-6. 2 Birt, 96. 3 G.E.C., Complete Baronetage, vol . 1 , 162. * C.R.S., vol . 14, 196. 57th D.D., 224 , 229, 237, 249, 250, 255 .
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