Family and Education

3rd but 2nd surv. s. of Anthony Blincowe (d.1580) of Blencow, Cumb. and Winifrid, da. of Thomas Dudley of Yanwath, Cumb.1 m. lic. 9 July 1590, Elizabeth, da. of Sir Anthony Mayney of Linton, Kent, wid. of Thomas Fowler of St. Mary Spital, London,2 2s. 7da. (2 d.v.p.).3 d. by 2 Apr. 1610.4

Offices Held

Servant to John Dudley† by 1578-80, Ambrose, earl of Warwick ?1580-90,5 Queen Elizabeth by 1593.6

Freeman, Chichester by 1604;7 commr. sewers, Suss. 1604;8 j.p. 1605-d.9

Biography

The Blincowes had held land in Cumberland since at least the fourteenth century, and one of the family had been returned for Carlisle in 1385.10 A younger son, Blincowe entered the service of his uncle John Dudley†, the Cumberland born kinsman and client of the earl of Leicester (Sir Robert Dudley†), who left him £20 and an annuity of £10 at his death in 1580.11 He probably attached himself immediately thereafter to Leicester’s brother, Ambrose Dudley, 1st earl of Warwick, who, as master of the ordnance, employed him in 1587 to deal with the illegal export of artillery by Sussex gunfounders.12

Warwick died in February 1590 and the following February Blincowe married the widow of Thomas Fowler, executor to James VI’s grandmother, Margaret, countess of Lennox, and a friend and kinsman of William Ashby†, recently ambassador to Scotland.13 As a suitor in the Court of Requests in 1593, Blincowe described himself as the queen’s sworn servant and a resident of Chichester.14 He may have moved there to look after the interests of his elder brother Anthony, who had been appointed chancellor of Chichester diocese in 1590, but as provost of Oriel resided chiefly in Oxford.15 He was presumably responsible for John, 1st Lord Lumley’s nomination of Ashby as Member for the city in 1593.16

Blincowe himself was returned for Chichester in 1604, when he was described as a citizen of the city. He made no recorded speeches but was named to 16 committees in the first Jacobean Parliament. In the first session he was named to consider three naturalization bills, two for the Scottish courtiers, Edward Bruce, 1st Lord Kinloss (4 May 1604) and Sir George Home (18 May), and a further measure for the Scottish wife of Sir Roger Aston* (12 May). His other appointments concerned bills ‘for the true measuring of oats’ (22 May) and for the encouragement of archery (7 June). He may well have been responsible for delivering, at the second reading of the latter measure, a letter from the late earl of Warwick ‘in commendation’ of a (presumably) similar measure debated in the Elizabethan period.17

Blincowe was appointed to nine committees in the second session. On 22 Jan. 1606 he was named to consider the bill for the better enforcement of penal statutes and two days later, when the committee was due to meet, the text of the measure and the committee list were entrusted to him and Sir William Heyricke. The following day Richard Martin reported that the committee had failed to meet and returned the bill to the House. However, a further meeting was ordered and the bill finally passed the Commons on 17 April.18

Blincowe was among those appointed to attend the conference with the Lords of 6 Feb. 1606 on the recusancy laws. He was named to consider the bill to confirm the charter procured by his brother for Oriel College, committed on 18 Mar., and to committees for bills to preserve fish fry (3 Apr.) and advance ‘the necessary trade of butter and cheese’ (4 April). On 6 May he was appointed to the committee for the bill to reform the wasteful copying of legal documents, and 11 days later to consider a bill to extinguish the dowry rights of the wife of a Bedfordshire gentleman named Fowler, who was not apparently connected with his wife’s first husband.19 In the third session he was named only to the committees for a bill to expand the Forcible Entries Act (18 Feb. 1607) and the revived legal copies bill (12 May).20

Blincowe was ‘sick in body’ when he drew up his will on 2 Jan. 1610, and ‘ready to take my journey to heaven whensoever it shall please Almighty God to send his messenger for me’. He gave his address as Rumboldswyke, a parish just outside Chichester, and left property (unspecified) in Kent and Sussex to his sons. ‘In token of my unfeigned love’ he gave a nag worth £5 to Richard Juxon, receiver-general of the diocese and father of William, the future archbishop of Canterbury, and his modest charitable bequests included 20s. to the poor of the Chichester parish of St. Pancras. He named as overseers his father-in-law, his brother, and another civilian, his ‘good friend’ Hugh Barker, master of Chichester grammar school.21 He left no trace on the records of the fourth session, and absented himself from the assizes on 23 Mar. because of illness.22 On 2 Apr. his death was reported to the House by his constituency. No later member of the family entered Parliament.23

Ref Volumes: 1604-1629

Author: Alan Davidson

Notes

• 1. J. Nicolson and R. Burn, Hist. and Antiqs. of Cos. of Cumb. and Westmld. ii. 376; Vis. Cumb. (Harl. Soc. vii), 36; C142/192/5.
• 2. Bp. of London Mar. Lics. 1520-1610 ed. G.J. Armytage (Harl. Soc. xxv), 188; CSP Scot. 1589-93, p. 76; PROB 11/115, f. 412.
• 3. Soc. Gen. St. Peter the Great, Chichester par. reg.
• 4. CJ, i. 417b.
• 5. Lansd. 65, f. 82.
• 6. REQ 2/179/42.
• 7. C219/35/2/87.
• 8. C181/1, f. 81v.
• 9. Cal. Assize Recs. Suss. Indictments, Jas. I ed. J.S. Cockburn, 12, 31.
• 10. J.F. Curwen, Trans. Cumb. and Westmld. Antiq. and Arch. Soc. n.s. vii. 120; OR.
• 11. PROB 11/63, f. 118; HP Commons, 1509-58, ii. 63.
• 12. Lansd. 65, f. 82.
• 13. W. Robinson, Hist. and Antiqs. of Par. of Hackney, 256; CSP Scot. 1589-93, pp. 273, 279, 313, 361; HMC Hatfield, xiii. 396.
• 14. REQ 2/179/42.
• 15. PROB 11/115, f. 411; B.P. Levack, Civil Lawyers in Eng. 212.
• 16. HP Commons, 1558-1603, i. 353.
• 17. CJ, i. 198b, 208b, 213b, 221b, 233b and n.
• 18. Ibid. 258a, 260a, 299b.
• 19. Ibid. 263a, 286a, 292b, 293b, 299b, 305b, 310a; Levack, 212.
• 20. CJ, i. 337a, 373a.
• 21. PROB 11/115, f. 411.
• 22. Cal. Assize Recs. Suss. Indictments, Jas. I ed. J.S. Cockburn, 31.
• 23. CJ, i. 417b.