Earl of Newport

The Earl of Newport: detail from a double portrait with Lord Goring by Sir Anthony van Dyck.

Earl of Newport, in the Isle of Wight, was a title in the Peerage of England. It was created in 1628 for Mountjoy Blount, 1st Baron Mountjoy,[1] an illegitimate son of Charles Blount, 1st Earl of Devonshire. He had already been created Baron Mountjoy, of Mountjoy Fort in the County of Tyrone, in the Peerage of Ireland in 1618, and Baron Mountjoy, of Thurveston in the County of Derby, in the Peerage of England in 1627.[2] The latter title was originally created with precedence ahead of those barons created between 20 May and 5 June 1627. This precedence was later revoked by the House of Lords. The first Earl's three surviving sons were "all idiots",[3] and some confusion exists as to their names and dates of death. Parish registers indicate that the second Earl, named either George or Mountjoy, died at Newport House in London, and was buried at St Martin-in-the-Fields in March 1675; his brother Thomas, the third Earl, was buried at Weyhill in May 1675; and their youngest brother Henry was buried at Great Harrowden (home of his brother-in-law, Nicholas Knollys) in September 1679. Upon his death, all of his father's titles became extinct.[4]

  1. ^ The family surname is pronounced "Blunt".
  2. ^ Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Mountjoy, Barons and Viscounts" . Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 18 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 941.
  3. ^ Collectanea topographica et genealogica. Vol. v. 6. London: John Bowyer Nichols and Son. 1840. pp. 84–85.
  4. ^ Waters, Robert Edmund Chester (1878). Genealogical memoirs of the extinct family of Chester of Chicheley v. 1. London: Robson & Sons. pp. 151–152.