Background
WELD-BLUNDELL, Charles Joseph was born in 1845. Son of Thomas Weld (secretary to his uncle, Cardinal Weld), who succeeded to the Ince Blundell Estates in Lancashire in 1840, and assumed additional name of Blundell.
WELD-BLUNDELL, Charles Joseph was born in 1845. Son of Thomas Weld (secretary to his uncle, Cardinal Weld), who succeeded to the Ince Blundell Estates in Lancashire in 1840, and assumed additional name of Blundell.
Studied at Stonyhurst College, Lancashire. Christ Church, Oxford.
Travelled widely with especial view to Natural History and Botany. After 3 years in Spanish America, where he made a special study of the question Scent v. Vision in Birds of Prey, he published a compendium of his arguments in favour of the latter view in the Times, October 1872.
In Bolivia he was entrusted with a special mission to report to Lord Clarendon as to the advisability of renewing diplomatic intercourse with that Republic, and held a commission to report upon and examine the country between the Vermejo and Pilcomayo Rivers, and the country of the Abas, from the Government of Melgarejo.
At 40 marrying, and soon after succeeding to the Lancashire estates, he abandoned travel for Art, Politics, and Journalism, lecturing on Tithes, writing for Dublin Review, Tablet, Liverpool Mercury, and Catholic Times, for which paper he wrote a series of Polemical Articles, afterwards published in book form, The Church of the Tithe. Contested Preston, 1885.
Defeated at Preston, he was offered Chatham as a solatium by the Liberal Caucus. But through his holding strong views against the then Liberal crusade against the Peers, and in general against the Newcastle programme, was tabooed by the Liberal Caucus.
Since when he has been mainly employed in developing his Lancashire estates, and after a protracted study of the foreign methods of forestry, has succeeded in clothing the bare sandhills of his coast between Southport and Forrnby Point with pines.
He resides a great part of the year at Lulworth Castle, the splendid home of his ancestors in Dorset, to which estates he is the next male heir, and where he received his present Majesty in Coronation year. His Lancashire seat has a European reputation for its art treasures, which comprise by far the largest private collection of antique marbles in the country.
Clubs: Travellers’, Brooks’son
Spouse 1884, Charlotte, daughter of Colonel Honourable Chas. LaneFox, b. of Lord Conyers.