Family and Education

b. c.1549, 1st s. of George Blagge^† of Kent by Dorothy, da. of William Badby of Essex. m. 1571, Hester, da. of Sir Ambrose Jermyn by his 1st w. Anne, 2s. 2da. suc. fa. 1551.

Offices Held

Biography

Blagge inherited lands in Shefford and Dartford, Kent when he was only two, on the death of his father, a gentleman of the bedchamber to Henry VIII. He probably moved to Suffolk shortly afterwards, when his mother, a former maid of honour, married Sir Ambrose Jermyn: he was certainly living there in 1571 at the time of his own marriage. In 1594 he succeeded to Little Horningsheath, which Sir Robert Jermyn had settled on his mother in l580. He also possessed the site of the monastery of Bury St. Edmunds, granted to him by the Badby family in 1581, which he conveyed in 1592 to Sir Robert Jermyn. Blagge twice came into Parliament for Sudbury, a long way from his estates. It looks as though the Jermyn connexion was responsible.1

Blagge, like the Jermyns, was a puritan, and in the articles issued by the bishop of Norwich against Sir Robert Jermyn and John Heigham in 1582 he was accused of abusing the bishop’s commissary ‘in railing terms and violence’, and describing another anti-puritan official as a Jesuit. On 16 Dec. 1584 he was added to a Commons committee considering a puritan petition, and referred to Whitgift’s reply to it as ‘the cardinal and metropolitical answer’.2

He was buried at St. Mary’s church, Bury St. Edmunds on 22 Apr. 1596, and was succeeded by his son Ambrose. His will was proved at Norwich in the same year.3

Ref Volumes: 1558-1603

Author: J.H.

Notes

• 1. J. Gage, Hist. Suff. Thingoe Hundred, 519, 520; C142/93/114.
• 2. Egerton 1693, f. 89; Collinson thesis, 900-2; SP12/175/51; D’Ewes 340, where the printed version calls him in error master of requests, cf. Harl. 74, f. 191d.
• 3. Norwich Wills (Norf. Rec. Soc. xxi), 20.