BLAGRAVE, Daniel (1603-68), of Southcote, Reading, Berks.

The Blagraves were one of the major families in Reading throughout the seventeenth century. Only the Knollys and the Vachells were more dominant. Since the previous century the Blagraves had owned the manor of Southcote on the edge of the town and this MP’s uncle, Anthony Blagrave†, had represented Reading in the 1601 Parliament. But Daniel was only the fifth son of a fourth son.18Vis. Berks. i. 174, ii. 72. His father, Alexander Blagrave, had however prospered as a local clothier and had inherited Southcote while his elder brothers got lands elsewhere in the county. It was therefore this branch of the family which, for the next couple of generations, represented the family interest in Reading. But with five brothers and seven sisters, Daniel’s inheritance was less impressive. When he died in 1612, Alexander naturally left the house at Southcote to his eldest son, John; Daniel received a bequest of just £50 when he came of age.19PROB11/120/434.

In time, Blagrave would find a livelihood through the law and politics. Yet the most striking feature of his life is that he turned to the law when he had already on the verge of his middle age. He did not enter the Inner Temple (by special admission) until he was aged about 35, when he was married and the father of a young family.20I. Temple database. This was not a casual decision; he clearly intended to pursue this as a career, for ten years later he was called to the bar. In the meantime, however, the civil war had brought about a refinement to Blagrave’s plans. From the start, he was an active and committed supporter of Parliament. This would be all the more important because Berkshire saw much military action throughout the course of the war and Parliament needed as many loyal supporters in the county as it could find. Blagrave quickly established himself as one of its more dependable agents. On 8 June 1643 the Commons specifically ordered that Blagrave and John Venn, the governor of Windsor Castle, should be added to the Berkshire assessment and sequestration commissions.21CJ iii. 120a. Thereafter Blagrave was regularly included on those bodies.22A and O. In time he would become the sequestration commission’s treasurer, an important office in a county in which control of territory often changed hands, and also one in which it was easy to make enemies.23CCC 517; Mystery of the Good Old Cause, 6. On the other hand, this made him a key figure among the leading Berkshire parliamentarian. It is possible that his fifth son, Cornelius, born in 1646, was a godson of another of those key figures, the New Windsor MP, Cornelius Holland*.24St Mary’s, Reading par. reg. But he had royalist friends as well. In February 1648 he met and befriended his kinsman, Elias Ashmole.25Elias Ashmole ed. C.H. Josten (Oxford, 1966), ii. 472, 508, 521. He would soon begin to turn to Ashmole on a regular basis for astrological advice about his unfolding parliamentary career.

Blagrave’s local power base had been enhanced in December 1644 when he had been elected as a member of the Reading borough corporation.26Reading Recs. iv. 131. This strengthened the pro-parliamentarian faction on the corporation at a time when Parliament had only relatively recently regained control of the town. Over the next few years Blagrave figured in the corporation minutes mainly in connection with attempts to recover money owed to the town. Thus, in June 1645 he was the person despatched to speak to the governor of the castle, Arthur Evelyn, about rents owed by Vincent Goddard*.27Reading Recs. iv. 132, 138, 152. Then, in October 1645, he was appointed by the corporation as their steward, the town’s equivalent of recorder. He took the oath of office on 14 January 1646 after first agreeing to drop a legal case he had been pursuing against the corporation.28Reading Recs. iv. 166, 180-1. This appointment was a bold and unusual move, bearing in mind that he had not yet qualified as a barrister. In December 1647 he was a member of the delegation sent to ask Sir Thomas Fairfax* to reduce the number of troops quartered in the town.29Reading Recs. iv. 280.

Given this existing involvement with the town’s civic affairs, Blagrave was in a strong position to claim one of the Reading seats in the by-election in the summer of 1648. On 19 June he and George Starkey* were returned by the corporation. Blagrave agreed to serve without claiming a wage.30Reading Recs. iv. 298-9. But there was a double return. The Commons however found in Blagrave’s favour and on 11 July 1648 he was given permission to take his seat.31CJ v. 631b.

His initial committee appointments in his first few months as an MP made use of his extensive experience as a sequestrator.32CJ v. 641b; vi. 10b. It was also with that local knowledge in mind that he was paired with Peregrine Hoby* in November 1648 as the MPs sent to instil some urgency into the collection of the assessments in Berkshire.33CJ vi. 87b. He then survived the purge of the Commons on 6 December and later, on 25 December, he dissented from the vote of 5 December which had triggered the purge.34PA, Ms CJ xxxiii, p. 490; [W. Prynne], A Full Declaration of the True State of the Secluded Members Case (1660, E.1013.22), 21. But, not only did Blagrave oppose further negotiations with the king, he would soon prove himself to be one of those who wanted to see Charles I brought to justice. On 29 December he was included on the committee considering the bill paving the way for the king’s trial.35CJ vi. 106a. Eight days later, when that bill was passed, he was named in it as one of the commissioners who were to preside over it.36A and O. Unlike many thus named as commissioners, Blagrave accepted this responsibility willingly and would carry out the duty of sitting in judgment on the king enthusiastically. During the course of the trial, he attended most of the sessions. Even more crucially, he signed the death warrant.37Muddiman, Trial, 195-7, 201, 203, 208-10, 212, 222, 224-7. Equally, he supported the various related measures, such as the ban on the proclamation of any successor and the abolition of the House of Lords.38CJ vi. 124a, 132b. Less than six months after taking his seat he had already played his part in one of the most momentous decisions ever implemented by Parliament.

The purge of the Commons had left the membership of any of its committees much depleted, so Blagrave was one of those who, in the first week of January 1649, was added to them to make up the numbers. Over the course of a few days, he found himself being appointed to a wide range of important committees, including those for the Army, Compounding, Indemnity and Plundered Ministers.39CJ vi. 107b, 109a, 112b, 113b; CCC 137. Over the next three years those and a host of other committee appointments would keep him busy.

He was certainly active on the Committee for Compounding. In September 1649 his colleagues asked him to report to Parliament on a case involving its Dorset committee.40CCC 152. Several weeks later he and Edward Ashe* were asked by Parliament to report from the Committee for Compounding about sums of money it still owed.41CJ vi. 308a; CCC 158. However, in September 1650 the London-based Committee had to intervene to block moves by the Berkshire sequestration committee to appoint him as the manorial steward for the sequestered estates controlled by them. This was deemed to be an unacceptable conflict of interest.42CCC 308. Yet in December 1651 Blagrave seems to have had hopes of securing another (unspecified) job in the gift of the Committee for Compounding.43Ashmole ed. Josten, ii. 594-6. Sequestration issues also came up in Parliament. In January 1651 Blagrave was included on the committee to receive claims under the bill for the sale of delinquents’ estates.44CJ vi. 528a. The following year he supported the moves to prevent delinquents voting in corporation elections.45CJ vii. 187b. Meanwhile, he also took an active part on the Indemnity Committee.46CCAM 1193, 1272. This was why in the summer of 1652 Blagrave and William Say* prepared the bill to appoint commissioners to take over the powers of that committee and that June Blagrave secured Parliament’s agreement to the amendments made to it.47CJ vii. 131a, 144b. Everything suggests that he was fully committed to making the new republic work.

Several other themes emerge from his activity in the Rump. One was his interest in legal matters, partly relating to the loose ends resulting from the Long Parliament’s earlier reforms and from the regicide. The abolition of the Council of the North had left the inhabitants of Yorkshire without a convenient local court, while in London provision had to be made for the former officials of the court of wards which no longer existed. Blagrave sat on both the relevant committees.48CJ vi. 251b, 260a, 293b, Sometimes he even took the lead, as in late 1649 and early 1650 when he was almost certainly the main advocate of the bill for the registration of conveyances.49CJ vi. 275b, 354b, 358a. This was because he hoped to become the registrar himself.50Ashmole ed. Josten, ii. 556, 617. In June 1650 he was also included on the committee to print a collection of statutes for use by justices of the peace.51CJ vi. 427b. Later, in the autumn of that year, he sat on the committees on the bill to discharge the lords of liberties from accounting to the exchequer, to investigate abuses by gaolers and on law proceedings.52CJ vi. 467a, 487b, 488a. His knowledge of the law was recognised, or at least rewarded, for it was probably during these years that he was appointed as the exegenter of the court of common pleas and as an extraordinary master in chancery.53Mystery of the Good Old Cause, 6; Ath. Ox. ii. 97.

Another bill considered by the Rump in which Blagrave can be shown to have taken a special interest was that against sabbath breaking, swearing, drunkenness and whoredom. Having first been appointed to the committee considering this bill when it was set up in November 1649, he reported the proposed amendments to the House on 14 and 21 June 1650.54CJ vi. 317b, 424a, 427b. Given this, it is not too surprising that he was named, also on 14 June, to the committee created to consider how to suppress licentious and impious religious practices.55CJ vi. 423b. He equally supported the sales of the dean and chapter lands, the bill to suppress seditious news and the moves to support a preaching ministry in Colchester.56CJ vi. 116a, 276a, 416a. That Blagrave would soon be associated with the Berkshire mystic, John Pordage, may make such evident support for orthodox godliness seem inconsistent. But as late as August 1649 Blagrave had chaired the meeting of the Berkshire county committee at which Pordage was interrogated on a charge of blasphemy.57J. Pordage, Innocencie appearing (1655), 6; C. Fowler, Daemonium Meridianum (1655-6), pt. i. 46. The suspicion that Blagrave’s own views were heterodox would only come later. Not that he had much sympathy with the Scottish Presbyterians. In 1650 and 1651 he enthusiastically backed Oliver Cromwell’s* war against them, sitting on the committee to consider the bill to prohibit trade with Scotland, organising the ringing of the bells in Reading to celebrate the news of the victory at Dunbar in September 1650 and, in the wake of the battle of Worcester, supporting the bill confirming English rule over their northern neighbours.58CJ vi. 444b, 618b; vii. 14a; Reading Recs. iv. 377.

For Blagrave, the final months of the Rump were overshadowed by formal allegations submitted to Parliament against him. On 9 February 1653 Samuel Oneale appeared before the House to voice them, although their nature is unknown. The next day Blagrave got his chance to defend himself by making a statement. The matter was then referred to a committee.59CJ vii. 257a, 257b; Ashmole ed. Josten, ii. 638. The chances are that this was still unresolved when the Rump was dismissed two months later. In May 1653 Blagrave remained worried that ‘the soldiery’ would charge him.60Ashmole ed. Josten, ii. 638. Since late 1651 he had also been concerned about the possibility that the Rump might be dissolved.61Ashmole ed. Josten, ii. 591. In February 1652 he had got Ashmole to cast a horoscope to discover, ‘Whether the soldier shall overcome the Parliament or the Parliament the soldier’.62Ashmole ed. Josten, ii. 605. In April 1653 Cromwell answered that question.

As the case of Pordage in 1649 had shown, Blagrave was willing to take a hard line against those he regarded as religiously unsound. He would be remembered as a ‘great persecutor of the ministers of Reading’.63Mystery of the Good Old Cause, 6. But that reputation was about to backfire on him. And the cause of that would be his alleged friendship with Pordage. By 1654 Pordage had ingratiated himself with several members of the Blagrave household at Southcote. Those alleged to be close to him included his wife, their son, Daniel junior, and one of their servants, Margaret Pendar, who was believed by some to have been bewitched by Pordage.64Pordage, Innocencie appearing, 15, 52, 60, 66-7, 81; Fowler, Daemonium Meridianum, pt. i. 24, 81-2, 86-7, 91-2. In late 1654 the Berkshire committee for scandalous ministers took action against Pordage. According to one of the witnesses, Blagrave had admitted that Pordage held ‘strange opinions’, including denying the divinity of Christ. This and other evidence gathered by the committee tended to indicate that Blagrave did not share Pordage’s views and that he had tried to dissuade those around him from coming under his influence.65Pordage, Innocencie appearing, 81; Fowler, Daemonium Meridianum, pt. i. 41-4. But Blagrave’s own evidence created a rather different impression. He refused to testify in person and instead, on 28 November, sent a letter contradicting most of the other witnesses. He defended Pordage, doing so not by justifying his alleged views, but by denying that Pordage held such views.66Pordage, Innocencie appearing, 67, 81-3; Fowler, Daemonium Meridianum, pt. i. 95-6, pt. ii. 9. The committee did not believe him. They found Pordage guilty as charged and ejected him from his living. The suspicion therefore was that Blagrave had lied and, worse, that he had done so to assist someone who was thoroughly heretical. Personality factors undoubtedly played a part in all this. Pordage’s leading critic, Christopher Fowler, the vicar of St Mary’s, Reading, admitted that Blagrave had nursed a grudge against him since the 1648 by-election.67Fowler, Daemonium Meridianum, pt. ii. 8. Fowler and his friends almost certainly saw Pordage as a particularly convenient weapon to be used against Blagrave.

The Pordage case weakened still further Blagrave’s already precarious relationship with the Reading corporation. Even while serving as MP, Blagrave had remained an active figure on the corporation. In the summer of 1650 he had been asked to obtain statutory confirmation from Parliament of the town’s charter, although nothing had come of this, and in January 1652 he had been asked to seek assistance from the Berkshire justices of the peace for the many maimed soldiers passing through the town.68Reading Recs. iv. 370, 381, 424. Throughout 1653 and 1654 he represented the corporation in their dealings with the commission of charitable uses over the town’s main charitable fund, that of John Kendrick.69Reading Recs. iv. 487, 490-1, 509, 511, 518-19, 536, 552. But, in June 1654, most of the senior members of the corporation preferred to elect Robert Hammond* as their MP for the first protectorate Parliament. Relations became even more strained as a result of a case in chancery over rent payments Blagrave owed to the corporation as part of the endowment of the bequest from his late uncle, the noted mathematician, John Blagrave (d. 1611).70Reading Recs. iv. 553-4; Berks. RO, R/AC 1/1/5, pp. 252, 257, 265. By early 1656 Blagrave showed signs of being willing to pay at least some of the money.71Berks. RO, R/AC 1/1/6, ff. 28v, 32, 33. The corporation had also still consulted him on unrelated matters.72Berks. RO, R/AC 1/1/6, ff. 10, 19v, 22, 23.

In March 1656 his enemies on the corporation struck: on the 17th he was dismissed from all his civic offices. The official reason for his removal as steward was ‘his insufficiency and neglect of his office’, while he was dismissed as an assistant ‘for his absence and residence forth of this borough’. Richard Bulstrode, a cousin of the town’s high steward, Bulstrode Whitelocke*, replaced him as steward.73Berks. RO, R/AC 1/1/6, ff. 34, 36v, 38v, 39, 40; Whitelocke, Diary, 439. Blagrave refused to go quietly. He counterattacked by obtaining a writ of mandamus from chancery ordering his reinstatement.74Berks. RO, R/AC 1/1/7, ff. 41v, 43, 43v. Then, in July 1656, with this litigation still unresolved, Blagrave stood in the town’s parliamentary election against the corporation’s candidate, Sir John Barkstead*. One of Blagrave’s more vocal supporters, Thomas Coates†, reportedly saw his decision to stand as a blow against ‘the Presbyterians’.75TSP v. 314. The result was a double return, with Blagrave and Barkstead being named in separate indentures.76Berks. RO, R/AC 1/1/7, ff. 47, 48. As Barkstead had also been elected for Middlesex, he seems to have chosen to sit for that seat, but no new writ was issued for Reading and the issue of who was the Reading MP seems never to have been considered by Parliament. This probably made little immediate difference to Blagrave. He was no friend of the protectorate and was determined to remain true to the principles of 1649. Recognising this, the government since 1653 had taken care not to appoint him to any county offices, including the commission of the peace. Had he actually been elected in 1656, it can with some certainty be assumed that he would have been another of those MPs excluded by the protectoral council.

Blagrave’s dispute with the Reading corporation was far from over. During the Michaelmas term of 1656 he obtained another mandamus.77Gray’s Inn, MS 33, pp. 272-3. This may have had the intended effect, as, at some point during 1657, he was reinstated as their steward. The earliest firm evidence for this dates from August 1657, but there are hints of a rapprochement from several months earlier. In May 1657 the corporation persuaded him to pay money due to another of John Blagrave’s legatees and that same month, in his capacity as a chancery master, he took their answer to a bill in an unrelated chancery case.78Berks. RO, R/AC 1/1/7, ff. 76, 76v, 78v. But the only reason that it is known that Blagrave had been reinstated as their steward by August 1657 is that he was then dismissed again. That decision involves a minor puzzle. In dismissing Blagrave on 10 August, the corporation acted in accordance with an order from Parliament. At that meeting the town’s common seal was solemnly affixed to their copy of that order to signify their implementation of it.79Berks. RO, R/AC 1/1/7, f. 85. But no record of that order survives in the Commons’ Journal. Two months later Bulstrode was reinstated as Blagrave’s replacement.80Berks. RO, R/AC 1/1/7, f. 88. The corporation meanwhile agreed to sue Blagrave for the money due under the terms of John Blagrave’s will, which Blagrave had promised and failed to pay in 1656.81Berks. RO, R/AC 1/1/7, f. 89v; R/AC 1/1/8, f. 102. Blagrave’s response to this second dismissal was exactly the same as the first time – he applied for and obtained a writ from the court of common pleas ordering his reinstatement. The corporation simply stalled for time.82T. Siderfin, Les Reports des divers special Cases (1683), 6-7, 49-50, 72-3; Gray’s Inn, MS 34, pp. 328-9, 349; Berks. RO, R/AC 1/1/8, ff. 91, 92, 93v, 103v-104v. Eventually, in the spring of 1658, the courts ruled that the corporation could appoint whomsoever it wished.83Gray’s Inn, MS 34, pp. 361-2.

The parliamentary election in December 1658 took place against the backdrop of this continuing infighting between the different factions on the corporation. On 17 December one group had attempted to dismiss the mayor, Joel Stephens. The immediate pretext for this was an argument over the law suit Blagrave had brought concerning the previous election.84Berks. RO, R/AC 1/1/8, f. 116; R/AC 1/1/9, f. 2. The attempt to remove Stephens was resisted and he was able to preside over the election on 30 December. That resulted in the return of Blagrave and Henry Neville*.85Berks. RO, R/AC 1/1/9, f. 1. However, Stephens’s opponents then organised a separate return in favour of the rival candidates. The Commons ruled for Blagrave and Neville.86CJ vii. 596a-b, 620a; Burton’s Diary, iii. 16-17; iv. 202; Whitelocke, Diary, 506. Encouraged by this, Stephens and his friends implemented a purge of the corporation on 12 February 1659. Among those dismissed was Bulstrode, with Blagrave being immediately appointed to take his place.87Berks. RO, R/AC 1/1/9, f. 2.

In the meantime, Blagrave had been able to sit at Westminster and he spoke on 21 March 1659 in the debate on the Scottish and Irish MPs, possibly doing so on a procedural point.88Burton’s Diary, iv. 204. The dissolution of this Parliament proved to be no more than another temporary interlude in his parliamentary career, for, as a Rumper, he was able to take his place in the recalled Rump in May 1659. Despite the sneer from Arthur Annesley* that he was ‘better known at Reading’ than at Westminster, Blagrave made full use of this opportunity over the next five months.89[A. Annesley], Englands Confusion (1659), 10 (E.985.1). Several of his old interests, such as indemnity and sequestration, were again to the fore.90CJ vii. 654b, 791b. His own knowledge of the law courts explains why he sat on the committee concerning the appointment of probate judges and, as an officeholder himself, he had a vested interest in the proposal that officials of the law courts should advance their salaries as a loan to the government.91CJ vii. 657a, 691a. He clearly had a specific interest in the petition from the London customs officials as he was one of only two MPs added to the committee for inspections when the petition was referred to it. Several days later he was also appointed to the committee to consider whether the excise and customs bill should be amended.92CJ vii. 685a, 689a. Other petitions of interest to him seem to have been those from the inhabitants of Colchester, from the prominent London alderman, Thomas Andrewes, and from the 5th earl of Pembroke (Philip Herbert*).93CJ vii. 666a, 698b, 714b. His disapproval of the now defunct protectoral court was expressed in his support for the planned sales of Whitehall and Somerset House.94CJ vii. 656a. He quite possibly sympathised with those prisoners held in custody for reasons of conscience.95CJ vii. 648a. On 28 July 1659 he and Neville arrested a royalist agent in Berkshire who was carrying correspondence to those planning the imminent royalist uprising. As rewards for this diligence, the council of state granted him lodgings in Whitehall (which was not to be sold after all) and sent him a ‘fat buck’.96CSP Dom. 1659-60, pp. 49-50, 55, 98, 566.

During this period the Reading corporation made full use of Blagrave’s services as their steward. Both MPs were asked by the corporation to use their influence to obtain the money due to the corporation from the bequest of the late Richard Aldworth. In Blagrave’s case, this included applying pressure to Christ’s Hospital in London.97Berks. RO, R/AC 1/1/9, ff. 12, 15, 16v; R/AC 1/1/10, ff. 2v, 16. Blagrave and Neville were also consulted over the moves to dismiss George Starkey* as the corporation’s counsel.98Berks. RO, R/AC 1/1/9, f. 16. Blagrave seems to have been sufficiently confident of his position as steward in August 1659 to float the idea that he should hold this office for life.99Berks. RO, R/AC 1/1/9, f. 14.

Blagrave returned to Westminster in the early weeks of 1660 to serve out his time in the Rump’s final period of resurrected existence.100CJ vii. 811a, 818a, 843b. His last recorded appearance there was on 16 February when he reported from the committee of inspections on proposals for the uncovering of delinquents’ estates.101CJ vii. 845a.

Even he must have had some awareness of just irrelevant this would soon become. Within the year it would be the estates of regicides like Blagrave that would be under threat of confiscation and Blagrave himself would be in exile, an outlaw in flight for his life. He was still in Reading in April 1660 to attend meetings of the corporation.102Berks. RO, R/AC 1/1/10, f. 20. But he must have escaped abroad soon after. He would never return and, like so many of the other exiled regicides, largely disappears from the records. According to Anthony Wood, he died ‘in an obscure condition’ at Aachen in 1668.103Ath. Ox. ii. 97. He was certainly dead by 1672 when his widow gave one of his gold rings to Whitelocke.104Whitelocke, Diary, 797.

His lands had been confiscated by the crown in 1660. Those in Berkshire were estimated to be worth £98 6s a year, although they were said to be ‘clogged with many encumbrances’.105LR2/266, f. 4. Blagrave was survived by seven sons – Edward, Obadiah, Daniel, Charles, Cornelius, Joseph and Benjamin. They each received legacies of £5 from their uncle John Blagrave in 1669.106PROB11/331/206. Other members of the family had not compromised themselves in the way Blagrave had done, so the senior branch retained their lands in Reading and remained a dominant force in the town. One of his cousins, John Blagrave†, represented the borough in Parliament four times between 1660 and 1681 and John’s son, Alexander†, would do so again in the eighteenth century.