Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Blagrave, Daniel

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1311872Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900, Volume 05 — Blagrave, Daniel1886Edward Maunde Thompson

BLAGRAVE, DANIEL (1603–1668), the regicide, was a nephew of John Blagrave of Reading, the mathematician [q. v.] He was born in 1603, and was bred for the bar. He sat in parliament 3 Nov. 1640 for the borough of Reading, and five years later was recorder of the same town, being dismissed the office in 1656, but reinstated in 1658. During the trial of Charles I he attended the high court of justice, and was one of those who signed the king’s death-warrant. He was appointed by the parliament to the office of exigenter of the court of common pleas, said to have been worth 500l. per annum, and also became a master in chancery. He was also parliamentary treasurer for the county of Berkshire, and in 1654 was named one of the commissioners for the ejection of scandalous and inefficient ministers, in which capacity he is accused by his enemies of using undue severity and of proving a vexatious persecutor of the clergy. By the means which he had acquired from his different offices he was able to purchase the fee-farm rent of the manor of Sunning, Berkshire, and other estates, as it is said on easy terms. He sat in the Convention parliament of 1658; but on the Restoration he fled the kingdom and settled at Aachen, where he died in 1668.

[Wood's Athenæ Oxon. (ed. Bliss), ii. 97; Noble's Lives of English Regicides, i. 95; Coates's Hist. of Reading, 1802, p. 433.]

E. M. T.

Dictionary of National Biography, Errata (1904), p.29
N.B.— f.e. stands for from end and l.l. for last line

Page Col. Line  
156 ii 8 f.e. Blagrave, Daniel: for sat in parliament 3 Nov. 1640 read was elected to parliament 8 May 1648
7 f.e. for five years later read three years before
157 i 14-15 for in the convention parliament of 1658 read in the parliaments of 1656 and 1658