In 1822, Bligh played for the Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) in a first-class match, batting twice and scoring 2 each time. Numerous members of his family were involved in cricket.[5]
Career
Bligh entered the diplomatic service and was sent as attaché to the embassy in Vienna in 1820.[2] Three years later he was transferred to Paris and in 1826 a special mission led him to Russia, where he attended the coronation of Emperor Nicholas I.[2] Afterwards he returned to France and became secretary of legation in Florence in 1829.[6] In the following year Bligh was attached to The Hague as secretary of embassy.[7] He served as envoy ad interim from July 1832[8] and came to Saint Petersburg in September,[9] acting as ambassador.[10]
On 19 December 1835, he married Elizabeth Mary Gisborne, the only daughter of Thomas Gisborne and Elizabeth Fyche (née Palmer) Gisborne, at the parish church of Allestree.[17] Their only child was a daughter, named after her mother:
Elizabeth died two years later and Bligh remained a widower until 1865, when he remarried his cousin Anne Julia Brownlow, fourth daughter of Francis Brownlow at Ardbraccan Rectory on 28 November.[18]
Bligh died at Sandgate, Kent in 1872 and was survived by his second wife for ten years.[1]
^"Marriages". The Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser. 21 May 1836. p. 3. Retrieved 20 December 2009.
^Sylvanus, Urban (1866). The Gentleman's Magazine. Vol. part I. London: Bradbury, Evans and Co. p. 118.
References
Bindoff, Stanley Thomas (1934). Elizabeth Frances Malcolm-Smith and Sir Charles Kingsley Webster (ed.). British diplomatic representatives, 1789–1852. Edinburgh: Royal Historical Society.