BLUDWORTH, Thomas, of Holt, Hants.

Bludworth was descended from Sir Thomas Bludworth, M.P. Southwark 1661 and lord mayor of London in 1666, but nothing is known about his parentage. He was a well-known lady-killer. It was reported in September 1730 that ‘the Duchess of Marlborough left Tunbridge in a great hurry upon receiving a letter from an unknown hand that Lady Die [Spencer] would marry Bludworth’, which ‘intelligence came but just time enough to prevent it’. In 1736 he married Lady Louisa Bertie with a fortune of £20,000.Hanbury Williams, Works, i. 130; HMC Hastings, iii. 3; Gent. Mag. 1736, p. 355. Entering the household of Frederick, Prince of Wales, in 1731, he assisted in the removal of the Princess from Hampton Court to St. James’s for her confinement in 1737, ‘lugging her downstairs and along the passages’. Returned for Bodmin in 1741 as the Prince’s candidate, he voted with the Opposition on the chairman of the elections committee in that year, but was absent from the subsequent recorded divisions of that Parliament. In 1747 he appeared on the list of ‘persons to be brought into Parliament by His Royal Highness, who are not able to bring in themselves’, contesting Queenborough unsuccessfully on the Prince’s interest. On the death of the Prince in 1751 he was given the ‘sole direction’ of the Princess’s stables, which he retained until her death in 1772. The date of his death is unknown.Hervey, Mems. 757-8; HMC Fortescue, i. 108; Walpole, Mems. Geo. II, i. 96.