A HISTORY OF LANCASHIRE 



year he was required, as a recusant, to provide a 

 horseman equipped for the queen's service or pay .24 

 as an alternative. 1 His son, another Robert, was a 

 temporizer, sheltering the missionary priests, and yet 

 attending the statutory services in order to escape the 

 heavy penalties by which they were made effective.' 

 His wife was a convicted recusant." He in 1596-7 

 secured a commutation of the tenure of the manor 

 from knight's service to free socage, paying id. yearly 

 as acknowledgement and doing fealty to the lord of 

 Warrington. 4 He died at Preston, 22 March, 

 1615-6, leaving a son and heir, Robert, aged forty 

 years. 6 



This Robert, a lawyer of some eminence in 

 London, had been a Protestant, 8 but returned to the 

 Roman Catholic faith, and like other recusants took 

 the royal side in the Civil War, his sons being in arms 

 at Preston. Consequently his lands were raided and 

 seized by the Parliament, his wife being left without 

 support for herself and children.' At last he was able 

 to obtain a lease of his estate and afterwards to 

 repurchase it. 8 In his more prosperous days he had 

 greatly added to the family estates, purchasing the 

 manors of Birkdale, Meandale, and Ainsdale, and 

 Renacres in Halsall ; purchases which in the latter 

 half of the seventeenth century gave rise to a long 

 dispute between the Blundell and Gerard families. 9 



He died in January, 1656-7, and was succeeded by 



his son Henry, who as a known recusant thought it well 

 to retire to Ireland during the excitement roused by 

 Titus Gates ; his tenants took advantage of the diffi- 

 culty by withholding rents and other dues. 10 He died 

 in 1687, being followed by his son, another Henry, 

 frequently mentioned in the diary of Nicholas Blun- 

 dell of Little Crosby." His son and heir Robert 

 married Catherine daughter of Sir Rowland Stanley of 

 Hooton ; from which marriage resulted the possession 

 of this manor by the present lord, who is the great- 

 grandson of Thomas Weld of Lulworth, by his wife 

 Mary Stanley, a grandniece of Catherine." Like his 

 father, Robert Blundell was threatened with a prose- 

 cution for recusancy, the effect, it would seem, of 

 personal ill-will. 13 He obtained possession of the 

 Lydiate estate in 1760," and soon afterwards retired 

 to Liverpool, where he died in 1773." 



He had given Ince to his son Henry as a residence. 

 This son distinguished himself as a philanthropist and 

 connoisseur. 16 His life was embittered by a quarrel 

 with his son, largely owing to the latter's refusal to 

 marry. Henry Blundell thereupon endowed his 

 daughters with a liberal portion of his estates. 17 The 

 son, Charles Robert, resenting this action, bequeathed 

 the manors of Ince, Lydiate, Birkdale, and Ainsdale, 

 and other estates to a relative by his grandmother, as 

 already stated. He chose as his heir Thomas, the 

 second son of Joseph Weld, who was the son of 



