Sir William Blackett, 1st Baronet, of Newcastle

Sir William Blackett, 1st Baronet (May 1621 – 16 May 1680) was a businessman who founded a mercantile and industrial base in Newcastle and a politician who sat in the House of Commons from 1673 to 1680.

Early life Blackett was the third son of William Blackett and his wife Isabella Crook and was born in Gateshead. His father, was a successful businessman at Jarrow and Gateshead and retired to Hoppyland, County Durham. Blackett was apprenticed to a merchant at Newcastle in 1636 and became merchant trading with Denmark. The following story about him was printed in the Newcastle Daily Journal of 18 April 1893.

Sir William, soon after he commenced business risked his little all in a speculation in flax, and having freighted a large vessel with that article received the unpleasant intelligence that the flax fleet had been dispersed in a storm, and most of the vessels either lost or captured by the enemy. He took his accustomed walk next morning, ruminating on his loss, and was aroused by the noise of a ship in the river. He jumped upon an adjoining hedge, hailed the vessel and found it to be his own, which had without difficulty weathered the storm. He instantly returned and hiring a horse rode in a very short time to London and hastened to the exchange, found the merchants in great alarm about the loss of the flax fleet and speaking of the consequent high price of flax. On informing them that he dealt in that article and had a large quantity to dispose of, speculators soon flocked around him and he sold his whole cargo at a most extravagant price, and the produce of that adventure laid the foundation for one of the largest fortunes acquired in Newcastle. Sir William (and also his children) is said to have regarded with a kind of veneration the hedge from which he first perceived the vessel and made it the extent of his future morning walks.

Business and political career Blackett was a member of Merchant Adventurers at Newcastle in 1645 and became freeman in 1646. He became a common councilman of Newcastle in 1648. In 1653 he was a member of the Eastland Company and the Hostmen of Newcastle-upon-Tyne. He played no apparent part in the English Civil War or interregnum politics until the time of the Restoration. He was succeeded as baronet by his son by his first wife Edward to whom he left a substantial fortune. He also left a fortune to his third son William who acquired the Wallington estate.