(Bluett in Leland’s list) from Briqueville-la-Blouette, in Normandy. This name was still represented there in the last century. “Blouet de Cahagnolles,” belonging to the Bailiwick of Caen, sat in the great Assembly of the Norman nobles in 1789. Richard Blouet is on the Dives Roll; and Ralph Bloiet was an undertenant in Hampshire in 1086. He is mentioned in the Monasticon Anglicanum (Ib. i. 118) as a benefactor to Gloucester Abbey. Robert Blouet was Bishop of Winchester in the time of William the Conqueror. (Order. Vit. 763). The family long remained of eminence in the West of England; and Collins, misled by an Elizabethan herald, Hervey, Clarencieux-King-of-Arms in 1584 (the epoch of mendacious genealogies), claims for their ancestor the title of Earl of Sarum or Salisbury. This is a purely gratuitous assumption, as there is no record of any prior grant of the Earldom that was bestowed by the Empress Maud on Patrick D’Evreux early in the twelfth century.

The son or grandson of this fabled Earl, Sir Roland Bluet, became Lord of Raglan in right of his wife Lucretia, and his posterity held the castle for several generations. William Bluett was summoned with other barons to march against the Welsh in 1256. Another descendant acquired Holcombe Rogus, Devonshire, by marriage with a co-heiress of Chiselden in the fifteenth century; and a third (the younger brother of a Sir Roger Bluett, who died in 1566), married a Cornish heiress, the daughter of Roger Colan, and “from him,” says Gilbert, “all the Bluetts of Cornwall are since descended.” There must, however, have been an earlier connection with the county, for I find John Bluett served as Sheriff 21 Henry VI. The direct line of the Devonshire branch ended in 1656 with another John Bluett, who is said to have owned one of the largest estates in the West, and left four daughters, married into the families of Jones, Wallop, Louthall, and Basset. They have been generally called his co-heiresses; but it is clear that Halcombe, at least, passed to a cousin of the same name, the son of his uncle Francis, who had been killed at the siege of Lyme in 1644. This cousin died s. p. in 1700, the last heir male of the elder line, and bequeathed his estate to the representative of the Cornish branch, Robert Bluett of Colan. Robert’s son Buckland again proved childless, and “made a long but fruitless search to ascertain the existence of any male descendants of his family. One Roger Bluett (the son of Sir Roger’s youngest son Nicholas) had five sons living at the time of the Visitation of 1620, but no trace could be found of this branch.”—Lysons. At length, in default of evidence, he had to accept “the presumption that Peter Bluett, then of Falmouth, might be descended from one of the sons of a half-brother of Colan Bluett, who lived in the early part of the seventeenth century,” and left him Holcombe Court at his death in 1786. It is still held by his posterity.

I find mention of several other branches of this old house. There was one in Somersetshire, seated at Hinton Blewett, where they held one knight’s fee of Le Despencer, and continued as late as 38 Henry VIII. (vide Collinson). In Hampshire, Ralph Bluet of Anne occurs during the fourteenth century.

In Leicestershire an earlier “Ralph Bloet was seized of the manor of Daglingworth, temp. Henry II.; which King had a natural son by the wife of Ralph. This son was named Morgan, and was elected Bishop of Durham, but was denied a dispensation by the Pope, as the canons require in case of bastardy, because he persisted to own himself the King’s son, and not Bloet’s, and so lost his bishopric.”—Nicho;'s Leicestershire. His descendant Ralph, forfeited his estate for rebellion under Edward II.; but was restored on the accession of Edward III. Sir John, his son, left an heiress named Elizabeth, married to James de Berkeley, who died 6 Henry IV. Daglingworth had been in the family for two hundred and fifty years.