Walter Blith

Walter Blith (1605–1654) was an English writer on husbandry and an official under the Commonwealth.

Blith was baptised in Allesley, Warwickshire, as the fourth and youngest son of John Blith (died 1626), yeoman, a prosperous cereal and dairy farmer, and Ann, daughter of Barnaby Holbeche of Birchley Hall, Fillongley. Walter's elder brother Francis became a lawyer and married into the gentry. Blith and his wife Hannah, daughter of John Waker of Snitterfield, near Stratford upon Avon had three sons and four daughters.

Blith farmed his land diligently and carefully. During the English Civil War he became a captain in the parliamentary army and also solicitor and sequestrator of royalist land in Warwickshire and Coventry, as well as a rent collector from lands of the bishop and dean and chapter of Worcester, and in 1649 and 1650 a surveyor of confiscated crown lands in Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire, Huntingdonshire and Norfolk. He himself bought confiscated crown land at Potterspury, Northamptonshire and was described in the conveyance as a gentleman of Cotesbach, Leicestershire.

Blith was living at Cotesbach when he made his will in 1650. He died in Lincolnshire, leaving sums between £260 and £340 apiece to his children, to be employed "either in a way of grazing or merchandizing". He was a member of the circle around Samuel Hartlib, the polymath, who described him as a "very loving and experienced friend".

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