Blundell was a Roman Catholic from an old Lancashire family. A passionate Royalist in the English Civil War, he was commissioned as a Captain of the Dragoons and was captured by the Parliamentarians and imprisoned at Liverpool. Repeatedly fined for refusing to abandon his Faith, he fled abroad and joined Charles II’s exiled court at Breda in the Netherlands. Returning with the King on the Restoration, he was caught up in the Popish Plot when he and his Jesuit friends were accused of Papist plotting by Titus Oates. He survived into the reign of James II. These extracts from BlundelWilliaml’s writings give a triple portrait of a loyal Cavalier, a devout Catholic and a country gentleman in the late 17th century.