Thomas Bludder ca.1597-1655

Sir Thomas BLUDDER ca.1597-1655

Biographical Note

Son of Sir Thomas Bludder of Mile End, Stepney, merchant. BA Christ's College, Cambridge 1617, admitted at the Inner Temple 1616. He continued with his father's trading interests and in the late 1620s was involved in a dispute about the sale of gunpowder. MP for Gatton and Reigate between 1621 and 1644, surveyor of the Ordnance 1627. He supported the royalist cause in the Civil War; in 1650 he was imprisoned for debt, and he died in prison.

Books

175 books from his London house, valued at £32 9s, were seized by the London Committee for Sequestration in 1643, and sold. An inventory survives in the Committee's records in The National Archives. It has been observed that some of these books may have been inherited or acquired through his family connections (his second wife Jane was the widow of the King's Printer John Bill). His will has no specific reference to books.

Characteristic Markings

None of Bludder's books have been identified.

Sources

• Will of Sir Thomas Bludder, The National Archives PROB 11/285/269.
• History of Parliament.
• Priced list of delinquents' books sold, The National Archives SP 20/7.
• Lievsay, S. & R. Davis, A cavalier library – 1643, Studies in Bibliography 6, 141-60.
• Roy, I. The libraries of Edward, 2nd Viscount Conway, and others, Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research 43 (1968), 35-46.