Many Blacketts have been Members of Parliament. Sir William Blackett (1621-1680) of Hoppyland, Co. Durham, became Sheriff of Newcastle in 1660, Mayor in 1666, and was elected a Member of Parliament in 1673, and became the first Baronet on 12 December in that year. Soon after he had commenced business, he speculated most of his assets on a ship-load of flax. The flax fleet was reported to have been lost in a storm, and the price soared. On his morning walk, however, Sir William saw his ship making for port, having weathered the storm. He at once rode to London and sold his whole cargo at an extravagant price. This laid the foundation for one of the largest fortunes acquired in Newcastle, and the story is the basis for the title of A. W. Purdue’s book, “The Ship That Came Home”, published by Third Millenium Publishing Ltd. Sir William went on to develop a mercantile and industrial base, and acquired an additional fortune. His eldest son, Sir Edward Blackett, (1649-1718) also entered Parliament, and Sir William’s third son, another Sir William Blackett , was created a Baronet in his own right on 23 January 1684/5, became Mayor of Newcastle in 1684 and was elected as a Member of Parliament in 1685. He was High Sheriff of the county in 1689. In 1856 his great-great-great-grandson, Wentworth Blackett Beaumont, married Lady Margaret Anne de Burgh, a granddaughter of George Canning, Prime Minister 1827.

Canning was not the only British Prime Minister with connections to the Blacketts. In 1830 Beatrice Trevelyan, great-great granddaughter of Julia Blackett, married Ernest Augustus Perceval, son of Spencer Perceval, Prime Minister 1809-1812. Spencer Perceval was the only British Prime Minister ever to have been assassinated. In 1842 his nephew, Charles George Perceval, married Beatrice’s cousin, Frances Agnes Trevelyan, another great-great granddaughter of Julia.

The Assassination of Spencer Perceval

U. K. Prime Ministers do seem to keep cropping up in the Blackett family tree. (For two more please see Other Royal Connections below.) In 1812 Ann Blackett (who was not a descendant of Sir William’s, but a 4th cousin 4xremoved) married Robert Wrigley, a great-great uncle of Herbert Henry Asquith. Asquith was Prime Minister from 1908 until he was replaced by David Lloyd George in 1916, after dissatisfaction over setbacks in the First World War. Robert Wrigley was a descendant of the Wrigleys of Saddleworth, Yorkshire, who, like him, were cloth manufacturers. Another descendant of this family was William Wrigley Jr. (1861-1932) who developed the chewing gum that still bears his name.

And, as if that wasn’t enough, in 1912 Lavinia Marion Garforth, a 5xgreat-granddaughter of Diana Blackett, married Charles Lambton, the great-grandson of the 2nd Earl Grey, Prime Minister of the U.K. 1830-1834. During his ministry the Great Reform Act of 1832 was passed. Earl Grey tea was named after him. Earl Grey’s monument in Newcastle Upon Tyne stands at the head of Blackett Street. His father, the 1st Earl, was also an ancestor of Anthony Eden (later Lord Avon), Prime Minister 1955-1957, Sir Alec Douglas-Home, Prime Minister 1963-1964, and of Diana, Princess of Wales.

But back to those Blacketts who bore the name….

Sir Walter Blackett, who was born Walter Calverley and assumed the name of Blackett to comply with the testamentary disposition of his uncle, Sir William Blackett* (Second Baronet) also became Mayor of Newcastle and an M.P. His ancestor, Walter Calverley, achieved notoriety by murdering two of his sons and wounding his wife at Calverley Hall, Yorkshire on 23 April 1605. The episode was the basis for a play “A Yorkshire Tragedy” published in 1608, and attributed (probably in error) to William Shakespeare.

Sir William, who left no male heir surviving him, went to great pains to perpetuate his Blackett direct line. In his Will dated 14 August 1720, he provided that if Sir Walter Calverley should leave no male heir, then his estates were to be entailed to the male children of his sisters, on the same condition (i.e. the child to adopt the surname of Blackett.) On Sir Walter’s death in 1777, the only sister of Sir William with a male heir was Diana, married to Sir William Wentworth, whose son Thomas duly changed his name that year. However, Sir Thomas Wentworth Blackett, (as he had become) died leaving three daughters, and this male line of Blacketts came to an end. However, Sir William Blackett might, perhaps, have taken some consolation had he known that a number of his female descendants were to marry into families with connections to Prime Ministers and to the mother of a future King.

Christopher Blackett (1751-1829) played a significant part in the development of early steam locomotives. As owner of Wylam Colliery, west of Newcastle, in 1805 he ordered a locomotive from the renowned Richard Trevithick, which was built in Gateshead, but after trials Blackett did not accept the locomotive, and it was converted into a blower for the foundry.

In 1813 he asked Trevithick to supply a further locomotive. As Trevithick was too busy, Blackett instructed his colliery superintendent, William Hedley, to build one. The result, after an earlier experiment, was “Puffing Billy”. After nearly 50 years of hauling wagons, it was lent, and later sold, to the forerunner of the Science Museum in London, where it resides to this day. It is the oldest preserved locomotive in the world. Wylam Brewery Ltd. have produced a beer named after it. (See Odds and Ends. [link])

Thomas Oswald Blackett (1790-1847) carried out a number of surveys for the early railway system, and in November 1824, working under George Stephenson, prepared the plans for the Liverpool and Manchester Railway, the first passenger railway in the world. It was a hazardous occupation, as the local landowners, not wishing the railway to pass through their land, employed gangs of men to shoot at the surveyors, who consequently had to work largely at night. The official opening ceremony of the railway in 1830 was marred when the local Member of Parliament was run down and fatally injured by Stephenson’s “Rocket”, thus becoming the world’s first railway fatality. Thomas Oswald Blackett suffered a similar fate in 1847, when he was run down whilst working on the Newcastle to Carlisle line. His son, John Blackett (1818-1893) was also a surveyor and engineer. (See Blackett Aids to Shipping.)

John Stephens Blacket (1833-1922) worked for some years as a surveyor for the East Indian Railway. During his time in the Agra district of India he became caught up in the Indian Mutiny and was forced to take refuge in Agra. His letters describing his experience are held by Durham University.

The only railway locomotive we have discovered containing the name “Blackett” is “Mount Blackett”, operated by East African Railways on the main line between Mombasa and Nairobi between the mid 1950s and the early 1980s. It was named after Mount Blackett in Rift Valley, Kenya. For the technically minded, it was an articulated steam locomotive 4-8-2+2-8-4 built by Beyer Peacock & Co. Ltd. of Manchester weighing 254 tons. Its number was 5922. Mountain Class locomotives were the most powerful metre-gauge steam locomotives ever built.

On 16 May 1811, while in Malta, Lord Byron wrote the following epitaph for Joseph Blackett, (1786-1810) “late poet and shoemaker”:

STRANGER! behold, interr’d together,
The souls of learning and of leather.
Poor Joe is gone, but left his all:
You’ll find his relics in a stall.
His works were neat, and often found
Well stitch’d, and with morocco bound.
Tread lightly – where the bard is laid
He cannot mend the shoe he made;
Yet is he happy in his hole,
With verse immortal as his sole.
But still to business he held fast,
And stuck to Phobus to the last.

Then who shall say so good a fellow
Was only `leather and prunella*?’
For character – he did not lack it
And if he did, ’twere shame to `Black it.

Byron apparently had a club foot, so Joseph must have been a pretty good shoemaker. As to his poetry, some of his letters to Lady Byron, with verses, are held in the Bodleian Library at Oxford University. Lady Byron’s family, the Milbankes, had been patrons of Joseph, and his published work, “Remains”, was dedicated to “Her Grace the Duchess of Leeds, Lady Milbanke and Family, Benevolent Patrons of the Author.” Byron seems, however, not to have been impressed with Joseph’s poetry, and after Jospeh’s death described him as “the laughing stock of purgatory”, though this may have been influenced by Lady Milbanke’s daughter, (whom Byron was courting), having taken Joseph under her wing. In 1809 she stated that Joseph’s poems “display a superior genius and an enlarged mind”. Joseph is buried at Seaham in County Durham.

[*A worsted fabric then used for the uppers of women’s shoes.]

Sarah Blackett, the daughter of John Erasmus Blackett, yet another Mayor of Newcastle, after whom Blackett Street in Newcastle is named, married Cuthbert Collingwood at Newcastle on 16 June 1791. Cuthbert later became Admiral Lord Collingwood, and served as second-in-command to his old friend, Lord Nelson, at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805, taking over command after Nelson’s death. In later life he was appointed commander of the Mediterranean fleet. When his health began to fail he made repeated requests to be allowed to return home. His pleas were finally answered, but he died of cancer on board HMS Ville de Paris having just set sail from Port Mahon en route for Britain, without seeing Sarah and their two daughters again. Lord Collingwood’s statue stands at the mouth of the River Tyne, looking out to sea.

Approximately 200 years after Trafalgar, Commodore Jeff Blackett, then Commander of HMS Collingwood, the Royal Navy’s Weapons Electrical Training Establishment in Fareham, Hampshire, was asked to name newly built cabin accommodation. He decided to call it the “Sarah Blackett Suite” after Lord Collingwood’s wife, thus inviting the charge that he had named it after his own wife, Sally (a derivitive of Sarah)!

Several Blacketts served in the Royal Navy. In 1837 Midshipman John Charles Blackett, father of Admiral Henry Blackett, purchased at Pitcairn Island the medical book of H.M.S. Bounty from a descendant of Fletcher Christian. (The book is now held by the National Maritime Museum.) Blackett Strait in the Solomon Islands, the scene of the sinking in 1943 of PT109, commanded by a young John F. Kennedy, later 35th President of the United States, may be named after him.

In “My Name is Blacket” Nick Vine Hall recounts how he learned of a family story about “Ma coosin Jarmie Cook” the famous explorer. Details of the link between Captain Cook and the Blackets can be found on John Barker’s excellent website, The Lamplugh-Brooksbanks of Cumberland and Yorkshire.

Julian Otto Trevelyan, the 5xg/grandson of Julia Blackett, married Ursula Darwin, the great-granddaughter of the eminent naturalist Charles Robert Darwin, who wrote “The Origin of Species” and “Natural Selection”. Ursula was also (through Emma Wedgwood, the wife of Charles) the 3xgranddaughter of Josiah Wedgwood, founder of the famous pottery and china business. A link to Josiah Wedgwood was already established, however, through Margaret Jean Trevelyan, a 3xg/granddaughter of Julia Blackett, who in 1858 married Henry Thurston Holland, Josiah’s great-great nephew. Charles Darwin’s grandfather, Erasmus Darwin, was a close friend of Josiah Wedgwood, and Charles Darwin’s marriage to Emma Wedgwood was not the only link between the two families.

Edmund Thomas Blacket (1817-1883) was one of the foremost 19th century architects in New South Wales, Australia. Born in Southwark, the son of a cloth merchant, he worked on the Stockton and Darlington Railway as an engineer and became a skilled draftsman and surveyor. He emigrated to Australia in 1842, following a marriage of which his father disaproved, and for much of the next forty years he dominated architecture in New South Wales. For an example of Edmund’s work see Blacket(t)s Down Under in the Odds and Ends section.

Edmund was not the only architectural Blackett in Australia. William Arthur Mordey Blackett (1873-1962) had an architectural practice in Victoria from 1899 to the early 1940s. He was a founder and first president of the Royal Australian Institute of Architects.

Patrick Maynard Stuart Blackett (1897-1974), later Lord Blackett, became a world famous physicist, and the author of a number of scholarly books. He too was descended from Nicholas Blackett and Alice Tempest and was a great-nephew of Edmund Thomas Blacket.

After distinguished service in the Royal Navy in World War I, he went on to obtain a Fellowship at King’s College, Cambridge. He worked as an experimental physicist in the laboratory of Professor Rutherford, and in 1933 made his most spectacular achievement when he discovered the positive electron. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1948. He did important work in cosmic ray research and rock magnetism, and from 1942 to 1945 he was Director of Operational Research with the British Admiralty. There is a Blackett Memorial Hall at Manchester University, and a Blackett wing at Imperial College, London.

Cuthbert Blackett (1840-1891) was the illegitimate son of Elizabeth Blackett (1814-1873). In 1864 he was charged with the manslaughter of John Emmerson at Crook, Co. Durham, but was acquitted. He then seems to have embarked on a life of crime, though not too successfully, as he was convicted of stealing in 1871, 1873 and 1877. In 1881 he was a guest of Her Majesty in Portland Prison, Dorset.

Cuthbert was not the first Blackett to fall foul of the law, as the following extracts from Durham Quarter Sessions Rolls show:-

- Edmund Blacket of Stanhope, yeo., on 4 July 1555 at Brandon Field lay in ambush on the highway to kill Nicholas Barrow of Woodcroft, lab., and assaulted the same.

- Edmund Blacket of Stanhope, yeo., on 18 July 1555 with force and arms broke and entered the close of Nicholas Blacket of Woodcroft, gen., and lay in wait to kill and assaulted Nicholas Barrow.

- Richard Blackett of Sowandburn in the parish of Stanhope, co. Durham, yeo., and Edmund Blackett of the same, yeo., with 4 other unknown malefactors on 20 Sept. 1555 assembled rioutously by the special order and procurement of William Blackett of Sowandburn at Ferrefeilde in the parish of Stanhope and assaulted Alice Maddyson, widow, so that her life was despaired of.

- Thomas Blackett of Woodcroft, gen., [and 11 other accused], with 30 unknown malefactors with force and arms, namely swords, sticks, knives, bows and arrows [etc.] in warlike fashion on 3 May 1556 assembled at the manor of John Lumley, knt., Lord Lumley, at Butterby, being a pernicious example to all such delinquents.

- Thomas Blackett of Woodcroft, co. Durham, gen., on 2 Dec 1599 assaulted Cuthbert Morgaine in the parish church of Stanhope, seated at the time of common prayer.

A burial entry at Stanhope records that “Thomas Morgan ye sonne of John Morgan of Mill Howses was buried the 17th June 1619. Ther was great disorder committed in the churche at this burial about ye grave making in ye stall that belongs to Woodcroft & Mill Howses which disorder was committed by ye Blacketts.”

On 4 Aug 1792 William Blacket Stephenson appeared at Durham Assizes accused of “pulling up, cutting and destroying trees grown on the plantation of Anthony Leaton esq., of Hoppiland”. As outlined in Blackett Properties, Hoppyland had been sold by the Blackett family in 1768, and the connection, if any, between it and William Blacket Stephenson is not known, nor the outcome of his 1792 trial. However, the following year Hoppyland was destroyed by fire, believed to be arson. Could the arsonist have been William, perhaps seeking revenge for the accusation levelled against him the previous year? We have found no evidence to suggest that this is so, but there’s no smoke without fire…

The earliest Blackett transgression discovered, however, took place on 24 July 1307 when Richard de Blachved and others forcibly entered lands in Middleton –in-Teesdale belonging to Guy de Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick, and “plundered those lands of the earl’s beasts.” At his trial three years later, Anthony Beck, Bishop of Durham, was a co-defendant. They got off.

Lest it be thought that all early Blacketts were rogues, a number of them were church wardens, among them:-

Hamsterley/Witton le Wear

Parcival/Percival Blackett 1st March 1618/9 Christopher Blackett 1609

John Blackitt February 1637/8

Christopher Blacket 1638

William Blackett 1742

William Blackett 1743

In addition, several Blacketts were Anabaptists, including Thomas Blackett (1722-1806), a weaver, who recorded in his diary a visit to St. James’s Church, Hamsterley, where he witnessed “ye fighting of the parsons and people in the church, ye congregation being more like a Mob, then (sic) a congregation that met to serve the Lord”. Thomas did not record whether the fighting members of the congregation were Blacketts continuing the tradition of more than a century earlier.

More information on Thomas Blackett can be found in “My Name is Blacket” by the late Nick Vine Hall. [Image courtesy of Family Tree Scriptorium]

Thomas Blackett. Reproduced from DUL ADD.MS 13OO,no 135.

The all time record for time spent by a Blackett in prison must surely go to Thomas Blackett, who is believed to have served 27 years in Durham gaol as a debtor. Thomas is shown in a notebook as being from Woodcopt or Woodcroft and may have been connected to the prosperous Blacketts of Northumberland. Life for most inmates of Durham gaol was harsh in the extreme, but Thomas seems to have had a more comfortable time, possibly through his family or friends supporting him, though clearly not to the extent of paying off his debts. As the above pencil and watercolour depiction shows, he hardly seems to have existed on a diet of bread and water! In 1830 a visitor to the gaol described seeing two fat men, one of whom had been imprisoned for debt. This may have been Thomas, and gives a clue to the time he was incarcerated. Certainly he does not appear as a prisoner in the 1841 census. We have not so far succeeded in placing Thomas in the family tree, and if any visitor to this site can shed light on this please email us through the Contact Us page. Many of the drawings of Joseph Bouet are in Durham University Library, a selection of which are reproduced in Dr. David Cross’s book, entitled “Joseph Bouet’s Durham drawings from the age of reform”, published jointly by Durham County Local History Society, in association with Durham University Library. Details of how to obtain copies of this interesting and informative book can be found at http://www.durhamweb.org.uk/dclhs/PUBLICATIONS.html or
http://www.dur.ac.uk/library/asc/about/publications.htm/ Our thanks are due to Dr. Cross for permission to draw on his book for the narrative above.

Sir John Blaket, “the hero of Agincourt”, is shown in many publications, including Burke’s Landed Gentry, as being one of the Blacketts of Woodcroft and Wylam, and the grandfather of Nicholas Blackett. Much is known of Sir John. He is listed among the retinue of King Henry V at the Battle of Agincourt on 25 October 1415. He had charge of one man-at-arms and six archers during the battle, and was knighted by the King shortly afterwards. According to the expenses claim he put in, (a copy of which is held at the Public Record Office), Sir John received a total of £54 7s 8d in cash and “precious objects” for him and his men, though there seems to have been a later dispute with the King over various items that should have been returned. Sir John died in 1430, and his tomb is in the Chapel of the Blessed Mary at Icomb, Gloucestershire. Icomb, (pronounced "Ickum"), is the village where the original Tom, Dick and Harry lived.

All of which is very exciting and glamorous, except that we have found no evidence that he had any connection whatsoever with the Blacketts of North-East England. The Wills of Sir John and his son Edmund, together with the Writs of Diem Clausit Extremum issued after the deaths of Edmund and Sir John’s last wife, Elizabeth, and Elizabeth’s Inquisition Post Mortem have been examined and contain no mention of any property in North-East England, nor the names of any of the Blakheved (as the name was then spelled) family who are known to have lived at, or owned, Woodcroft at that time. It seems that Sir John has been confused with John Blakheved (1360-1418) who died “fuit seisitus de Wodecroft”, and indeed some references to Sir John erroneously show his date of death as 1418. The 45th Annual Report of the Deputy Keeper of the Public Records, 1884, contains an unbroken line of Inquisitions Post Mortem passing down Woodcroft to each successive heir. This starts with the Inq. p.m. of Richard Blachved (sic) dated 30 November 1349 and extends down to that of John Blakheved dated 24 January 1462/3, whose heir was John, aged 24. Sir John Blaket does not appear in this line of ownership of Woodcroft.

Nonetheless, there has been a family belief in a connection to Sir John since at least as far back as the early 19th century, and if anyone can provide information enabling us to establish a link please contact us.

In 1831 Henry Ralph Beaumont, great-grandson of Diana Blackett, married Catherine Cayley, daughter of Sir George Cayley. Sir George was a Fellow of The Royal Society, and in 1853 organised the first true (though non-powered) aeroplane flight in history, 50 years before the Wright brothers, at Brompton Hall, Yorkshire. Rather than fly the monoplane himself, he instructed his coachman, John Appleby, to pilot it. After the inevitable crash, Appleby gave notice to his employer, stating “I was hired to drive, not to fly!”

This silhouette is the only known image of Robert Surtees as an adult. (Courtesy of The Surtees Society)

In 1801 Alice Blackett (1781-1827) married Anthony Surtees, a distant relative of Robert Surtees, the great historian and genealogist of North East England. Robert Surtees was born in 1779 in Durham and trained as a lawyer, though he never practiced law. On the death of his father in 1802 he inherited the family seat of Mainsforth Hall, near Sedgefield, and lived there for the rest of his life. (It was demolished in 1962.)

By 1804 he was gathering material for what would become “The History and Antiquities of the County Palatine of Durham”. The first volume was published in 1816 and three further volumes followed, the last of which was published posthumously in 1840.

Although he did not enjoy robust health, Surtees and his wife, Ann Robinson, whom he married in 1807, enjoyed entertaining, and their guests at Mainsforth frequently included the novelist and poet, Sir Walter Scott. Surtees had a well-developed sense of humour, and was good enough at writing ballads to deceive Sir Walter into thinking that “The Ballad of Featherstonehaugh”, which Surtees had written himself, was an ancient song. Sir Walter included it as such in his “Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border”, along with two other “forgeries” by Surtees, and even went so far as to include in the 1810 edition a memorandum by “my friend and correspondent R. Surtees” purporting to explain many of the “ancient” references in the ballad.

In January 1834 Surtees complained of a cold, and complications developed. He died at Mainsforth on 11th February with Ann at his bedside. Later that year, The Surtees Society was established in his honour. It is the oldest historical publishing society of its type in England.

In addition to his published works, Surtees conducted a vast amount of genealogical research, including much on the Blackett family. In 2007 a bundle of old Blackett family papers was acquired at auction, and found to include several Blackett family trees compiled by Surtees. These have enabled us to ascertain the links between the various major branches of the family and combine them into the tree which forms part of this site. The original papers have since been donated to Durham University. ¹Robert Smith Surtees

Robert was not the only author to bear the name Surtees. His distant cousin, Robert Smith Surtees (1805-1864), the second son of Anthony Surtees and Alice Blackett, was a well known author of many humorous books on fox-hunting and country life, some of which are still on sale today. In 1885 his younger daughter, Eleanor, married John Gage Prendergast Vereker, 5th Viscount Gort. Their elder son, John Standish Surtees Prendergast Vereker VC, the 6th Viscount, (widely known as “Lord Gort”), became a Field Marshal and was Commander-in-Chief of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) in France in 1939-40. He is credited by most commentators with responsibility for saving the BEF from likely capture by withdrawing most of his forces to Dunkirk. As Winston Churchill later said of Lord Gort’s decision: “At this moment here was the only hope of saving anything from destruction or surrender.” ²

¹ Details can be found in Durham University’s handlists. (When the page opens please click on “Add.MSS.1601-”)

² “The Second World War” by Winston S. Churchill.

On the evening of 22 October 1641 the infant, Henry Blackett, was being put to bed by a servant in Belfast, Ireland, (some sources say Dublin), where his parents had been living for some years.

The servant, a Catholic girl, had learned of an impending attack by Catholics on Dublin Castle at midnight that night which was intended to spark a rebellion across the whole of Ireland, and lead to what has become widely known as the Irish Massacre. This caused great distress to the servant, who was fearful for the pious family for whom she worked, and particularly for Henry, to whom she was warmly attached, and with whom she usually slept.

As she was bending over Henry she was seen to be weeping and was heard to say “My dear Henry, farewell. I shall never sleep with you again!” On learning of this, Henry’s parents anxiously enquired the reason for her grief. “Fordyce’s History of Durham” contains an account (which could have been written by Barbara Cartland!) of what happened next. “She hesitated. Fear for her own life, fidelity to the party she was connected with, affection for the family she served, and warm attachment to her little charge, all these combined, wrought powerfully within her throbbing bosom; and at length, humanity and endearment triumphing over her religious scruples and bloody fidelity, she divulged the Roman Catholic secret of the intended attack on the Protestants of Dublin next day.” Henry’s parents immediately made preparations to leave Ireland for England, which they did on 23 October.

Henry eventually became a draper in County Durham, and for more than 40 years was an Anabaptist pastor, living at Bitchburn, near Witton le Wear. He was an elder of the church and in 1689 was a “messenger” at the Anabaptist General Assembly in London. Services and meetings were held regularly at his Bitchburn home. He died on 23 October 1704, exactly 63 years after his family’s flight from Ireland.

As well as preaching for the church, he was kindly to his Christian friends, accomodating in his house those who had come a great distance to the services. A traditional saying of his, repeated down the years among his descendants was:

“I have room in my stable for your horses; I have room in my house for yourselves; but I have still more room in my heart.”

Henry Blackett

Image courtesy of Heather Hicks

In addition to the link to H.M. The Queen (see next section), there is another link, albeit illegitimate, to the British monarchy, in this case to the House of Hanover.

In 1803 Sir Godfrey Bosville Macdonald, great-grandson of Diana Blackett, married Louisa Maria la Coast, the illegitimate daughter of Prince William Henry Hanover, grandson of King George II and younger brother of King George III. Illegitimacy was no stranger to this part of the family, as Louisa’s mother, Lady Almeria Carpenter, daughter of the 1st Earl of Tyrconnell, was a descendant of an illegitimate child of a Prince of Orange, and Prince William, at the time of his affair with Almeria, was married to Maria Walpole, the illegitimate granddaughter of Sir Robert Walpole, 1st Earl of Oxford and Prime Minister 1721-1742.

Prince William Henry Hanover

The Blacketts’ connection with H.M. The Queen (see caveat on family tree) goes back to King Malcolm III of Scotland and Queen (and later Saint) Margaret. The Queen has at least three lines of ancestry back to Malcolm, only one of which is so far recorded in the tree. Malcolm’s line can be traced back to his father, Duncan, (who was killed by his cousin, Macbeth, in 1040, only to be avenged by Malcolm 17 years later,) and beyond, and Margaret’s to beyond Alfred The Great. The wider descendants of Malcolm and Margaret have not been entered in the tree.

Some 19th century Blackett researchers believed that descent from William the Conqueror could also be claimed through his daughter Maud, who married Malcolm’s son, David. Sadly, however, despite the inscription on her grave, she was probably William’s step-daughter.

Several sources claim that one of Malcolm’s descendants, Robert, Earl of Huntingdon, was the real Robin Hood. He certainly seems to have had his lands confiscated by King John, while King Richard was away at the Crusades, but that may not have been a unique experience during those times.

In Kirklees Park, Yorkshire, is an inscription on a wall which translates as:

Here underneath this little stone
Lies Robert Earl of Huntingdon
Never was there an archer so good
And people called him Robin Hood
Such outlaws as he and his men
Will England never see again
December 1247

Unfortunately, the stone is believed to date from the 17th century, so, in genealogical parlance, Robin Hood’s connection to the Blacketts may not be fully secure.

Sir Basil Phillott Blackett, KCB KCSI, another great-nephew of Edmund Thomas Blacket, was a senior civil servant and an expert on international finance. As First Controller of Finance at the Treasury he was largely responsible for the British economy in the difficult years of 1919-1922. In the latter year he went to India as finance member of the Viceroy’s council and over the next five years proved to be an outstanding financial administrator, introducing several major reforms. In 1928 he left the Treasury for the City and became a director of the Bank of England. He was a strong proponent of the “sterling area” and popularised the phrase. He was a keen student of Blackett genealogy.

The Blackett Observatory at his old school, Marlborough College, is named after him, (see Odds and Ends.) He was killed in a motor accident in Belgium in 1935. There is a memorial window to him in the North Transept of Durham Cathedral.