This surname is derived from a nickname. 'Blondel' or 'Blundel,' the blonde, a sobriquet of complexion, 'yellow-haired.' the French Blond or Blund (which see), with terminative 'el' as in Russell and Burnell, all names of the same class. 'le Blund' was the English register form; hence Blundell is more common than Blondell. A like change is seen in other colour names found also as personal names; compare Brown, Burnell, and Burnett.

Walter Blundel, Oxfordshire, 1273. Hundred Rolls.

Geoffrey Blondel, Huntingdonshire, ibid.

Geoffrey Blundel, Leicestershire, Henry III—Edward I: Testa de Nevill, sive Liber Feodorum, temp. Henry III-Edward I.

Nicholas Blundel, Lancashire, 20 Edward I: Placita de Quo Warranto, temp. Edward I-III.

Robert Blundell, Bedfordshire, ibid.

Amicia Blondelle. History of Norfolk.

Theodora Blundell, Pat. Roll, 2 Elizabeth Boneface Blondell, or Blundell, 1456: Register of the University of Oxford.

Blondel de Nesle is reputed to have been the faithful minstrel of Richard Coeur de Lion.

Three names of complexion, Russell, Plunket, and Blundell, have made themselves conspicuous amongst English county families.

“This family came to England with William Malet; and William Blondel in 1165 held three knight’s fees of the Honour of the Malets at Eye (Liber Niger): and Robert de Crek held two more fees from Blondel. In Salop this family was seated before 1250 (Eyton). Sir Robert Blundell witnessed a charter of Abberbury Abbey there (Mon. i. 606).”—The Norman People. In Lancashire “the Blundells, from the time of the Conquest, are said to have been lords of Ince Blundell. William Blundell had a seat here in the reign of Henry III.; from him it descended to John Blundell, the plaintiff against John de Chatherton and Katherina his wife at Westminster in 49 Ed. III. for the manor of Ince juxta Sefton .... which the same John and Katherina remitted and quit-claimed to him and his heirs for ever, in consideration of 100 marks of silver. The pedigrees of this family are very obscure, and cer­tainly not very accurate, for none of them notices this John, so incontestably proved by this instrument to have held Ince in the reign of Ed. III. In the pedigree of Blundell of Crosby, Alice, daughter of Nicholas Blundell, 4 Ed. III., and sister of Henry, living 26 Henry VI., is stated to be the first wife of Blundell of Ince. As there is an interval of a century and a half between Nicholas and Henry, it is not improbable” (the gentle irony of this is delightful) “that the Crosby pedigree is also erroneous; but this is the first mention of the Ince branch in the family papers. After this nothing is certain until the time of Robert Blundell, who died 1763, and was succeeded in Lydiate and Lostock by Henry Blundell, who married Agnes, daughter of Sir George Mostyn, of Telacre in Flintshire, and died in 1810, aged eighty-six. His representative is Charles Blundell, Esq., owner of the greater part of the township, but the manorial rights are claimed by him and the Earl of Sefton.”—Baine's Lancashire. Charles Blundell died s. p. in 1838. The Crosby line ended with Nicholas Blundell in 1737; and in 1772 the son of his second daughter, Frances Pippard, assumed the name and arms of Blundell, and is still represented. The grandfather of the last male heir, William Blundell of Crosby, was a captain of dragoons under Sir Thomas Tildesley, in the Royalist army of 1642, and had his thigh shattered by a musket shot at the assault on Lancaster. “My equipage for the war,” he says in one of his letters, “was far above my fortune. But in the first day of my services, before I had mustered the 100 dragoons which I was, by commission, raising, I lost the use of my limbs by a shot, and could never recover them since.” The ‘Note Book’ of this gallant Cavalier, published in 1880, shows him to have been a man of sense and wit, a strict Catholic, and honourable, true and loyal to the core. He lost his father when he was eleven years old, and his grandfather, anxious to re-settle the estate during his own lifetime (for two-thirds of the landed property of recusants then lay absolutely at the mercy of the Crown), married him at fifteen to a daughter of Sir Thomas Haggerston, of Northumberland.

“You will remember,” he writes in after years to his mother-in-law, “what a pretty, straight young thing, all dashing in scarlet, I came to Haggerston.” Anne Haggerston proved an exemplary wife. “And now,” he says in another letter, “when I speak of your ark, I must here acknowledge that the dove which was sent from thence, some 30 years ago, hath saved from sinking our little cock­boat at Crosby “It is very well known” (he says elsewhere) “that ye small township above said was many years remarked for these things, - “‘That it had not a beggar: That it had not an ale-house: That it had not a Protestant in it.’” in many a storm.”

His troubles commenced betimes; for he was barely twenty-two when he became a cripple for life, nicknamed Halt-Will by his tenants; and upon this first misfortune followed the plunder of almost all his goods, and the sequestration of his lands, which continued for ten long years. “Thus,” says he, “I was in the prime of my youth confined to my plundered bare walls and a pair of crutches;” but it was, he adds emphatically, “for the noblest cause in the world.” He was four times imprisoned during the Commonwealth; once for ten weeks in “a loathsome prison” at Liverpool; and twice paid ransom, till at length he never ventured near his own home, from the fear of being again apprehended. Crosby was left in charge of his wife and sister; and so exposed were these poor women "while the war lasted, to domiciliary visits, in which the soldiers carried off anything they could lay their hands on, that they were obliged to bury their bread from meal to meal.” At length, in 1653, he obtained leave to compound for his estate, that is, to re purchase his own life interest in it with money borrowed from his friends; and in addition found himself saddled with arrears of rent due to the Crown (arising from frequent grants for recusancy), some of which dated back to the reign of Queen Elizabeth, and were detailed in a portentous bill—a roll twenty feet long—that is still shown at Crosby. The Restoration brought him no compensation; and he in fact remained, on account of his religion, constantly more or less under suspicion, and sometimes under persecution, to the end of his life. He writes in 1679, “I was troubled a little some months agoe to see my trusty old sword taken from me (wch had been my companion when I lost my limbs, my lands, my liberty for acting against the rebels in the King’s behalf) by an officer appointed for ye purpose, who in that former old war had been a captain against the King.” He underwent his fifth term of imprisonment in 1689, and died in 1698, an old man fast approaching eighty. It is remarkable that though he loved books, and was himself an author, with a talent for poetry, he appears never to have read Shakespeare, and only knew (and heartily disliked) the prose writings of Milton.

One of these Blundells settled in Bedfordshire, where the name is found in a list of the principal gentry of the county in the time of Henry VI. Fuller, in quoting this catalogue from an ancient record, says, “Hungry Time has made a glutton’s meal on this catalogue of gentry, and hath left but a little morsel, for manners, remaining; so few of these are found extant in this shire, and fewer continuing in genteel equipage; among whom I must not forget the family of the Blundells, whereof Sir Edward Blundell behaved himself right valiantly in the unfortunate expedition to the isle of Roe.” This was the expedition to the isle of Rhée, under the Duke of Buckingham. The family thence migrated to Ireland. Francis, brother and heir of Sir George Blundell, of Cardington, Bedfordshire, was appointed Irish Secretary in 1619, created a baronet in 1620, and had a grant of a manor in the Queen’s County, to which he gave his own name. Sir Montague, his great grandson, was raised to the peerage of Ireland in 1720 as Baron of Edenderry and Viscount Blundell, but left no surviving son to inherit his titles on his death in 1756. One of his daughters was the grandmother of Mary, Baroness Sandys, who became the wife of the second Marquess of Downshire.

In Lancashire the old name is affixed not only to Ince-Blundell, but to Blundellsands, near Liverpool.

Blondel well-known in France, in both ancient and modem times, and rendered romantic by the fidelity of Blondel de Nesle, the minstrel of Cceur de Lion, is a personal name-a diminutive of Blond, fair-haired or light-complexioned. As an Eng, surname it dates beyond the XIV, cent.

(Northen French) From Blund or Blond, fair—haired, and having the same signification, only in a lesser degree. Blundell, a little fair—haired, so Russell, from Rous—red.

Blondell: came to England with the Conqueror. The name is descriptive and diminutive—“the little fair-haired fellow.” The family was long estated in Lancashire, but, being Roman Catholic, was cruelly oppressed and robbed in the reign of Elizabeth. Blundell, a merchant, founded a school at Tiverton.

Blundell is also a Lancashire name, and reference to it will be found under that county. The Blundells of Cardington and elsewhere in the county of Bedfordshire, were an influential family during last century; and one of them served as high sheriff in 1731 (H.).

Blundell: The Blundells were an ancient and distinguished family of Crosby Hall in Sefton parish two centuries ago; they held extensive property in that parish as far back as the reign of Henry III. (B.). They are still seated in the parish of Sefton, but reside now at Blundell Hall in Ince Blundell. Richard Blundell of this county contributed £25 to the Spanish Armada Fund in 1588 (Sp.). Bryan Blundell was mayor of Liverpool in 1721 and 1728 (B. L.). Blundel is an ancient name in other parts of England, having been represented in Shropshire, Oxfordshire, and Bucks, in the 13th century (H. R.). The name is also now represented, though scantily, in Beds. Blundellsands is a place in Lancashire.