William Blundell of Crosby
William Blundell (15 July 1620/1625 – 24 May 1698), sometimes styled "of Crosby", was an English landowner and topographer and an officer in the Royalist army during the English Civil War. Life William was born at Crosby Hall, Lancashire, the son of Nicholas Blundell by Jane, daughter of Roger Bradshaigh, of Haigh, near Wigan, into a family of ancient landed gentry. The Blundells were recusant Roman Catholics and William was probably sent to be educated at one of the schools that were then secretly maintained by Catholics in various parts of England. At the age of fifteen, around 1640, he married Ann, daughter of Sir Thomas Haggerston, Bart., of Haggerston, Northumberland, and Alice, née Banaster. At the outbreak of the Civil War in 1642, William accepted a captain's commission from Sir Thomas Tildesley, authorising him to raise a company of one hundred dragoons for the Royal cause. He joined in the march to Lancaster, where he received a serious wound when his thigh was shattered by a musket-shot. From then until the end of the war his life was marked by privation and financial anxieties. Under a law of 1646 by which no Papist delinquent could compound for his estate,