George Blagge
[6] The entry in Wriothesley's Chronicle dealing with his trial, before he reached the zenith of his wealth, describes Blagge as a "gentleman, a man of faire landes.
[1] As with many minor member of the landed gentry, Blagge's early career consisted mainly of a search for patronage from a great man who might provide openings and opportunities for advancement.
Both a poet, though unpublished in his lifetime, and a diplomat, Wyatt was an important influence on Blagge, who sought to emulate his style and dabbled in poetry.
Immediately after the death of Catherine of Aragon, during the genesis and outbreak of the Italian War of 1536–38, an English embassy was sent to Paris, apparently to negotiate a French alliance.
However, Cromwell's protection allowed him to emerge as Henry's resident ambassador to Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor, in 1537, although his chances of high office in England were ruined.
Blagge was the earl's senior by a few years and was not afraid to rebuke him for his erratic behaviour – a fact noted by Millicent Arundel, a witness before the Privy Council when, in March 1543, it investigated and punished Surrey's and Thomas Wyatt the Younger's rioting in London, which involved shooting in the streets as well as glass breaking.
[15] He and Sir George Carew were nearly killed by sniper fire when they were inspecting a forward trench at the siege of Landrecies, a town occupied by the French early in the campaign.
However, the post had previously been held by his friend, Thomas Wyatt and the terms of the grant made clear that Blagge was appointed in his place.
[18] At some point before 1547,[2] probably through Surrey's influence and contacts, Blagge was made an esquire of the body, a member of the Privy Chamber of Henry VIII, who used to call him 'Pig'.
[21] However, Sir Francis Bryan, who knew Blagge well from his diplomatic service alongside their mutual friend Wyatt, was influential in the borough and may already have been its recorder, as he certainly was in the next reign.
[2] Towards the end of Henry VIII's reign, Blagge allegedly attracted attention because of his sacramentarian beliefs about the Lord's Supper, denying the Roman Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation.
The chronicle makes clear that the situation was desperate, as the entire case was overshadowed by that of Anne Askew, who was burnt for her sacramentarian beliefs after being prosecuted by Thomas Wriothesley.
Like Charles Wriothesley, Foxe sets the drama against the backdrop of Anne Askew's sensational trial and execution to make clear that the threat to Blagge was real enough.
[29] However, the words imputed to him at his trial seem little more than a couple of weak jokes – one, which he denied uttering, raising the implications of a mouse nibbling the consecrated Host.
In court, Blagge averred that Surrey had often boasted of the power the Howards would wield after Henry's death, when Edward would require a regency.
[30] Blagge lent himself, whether from conviction or from convenience, to the idea that there was a conspiracy to deny the Evangelicals a predominance in the next reign and his evidence seemed the more valuable because he could be seen as a victim of it.
Surrey addressed his old friend in one of his last works, a paraphrase of Psalm 73: The name Blage has replaced the word blame in earlier editions of the poem.
[33] At some point in the same year he stood alongside the mainstays of the régime, as well as performing a service for his own relatives, by acting as feoffee in an important property transfer.
Blagge stated in evidence: Although his downfall was postponed, the Admiral's own rashness led him to attainder and execution in the following year, some months after Catherine Parr's death after childbirth.
Blagge and John Dudley, 2nd Earl of Warwick, made depositions in relation to the attainder in January 1549,[41] alleging that Thomas Seymour had threatened to stab anyone who attempted to arrest him.
Early in 1550, after the fall of Protector Somerset and the coming to power of Warwick, Blagge began to gather tangible rewards for his continuing loyalty to the Protestant order.
[43] Maidstone college itself had been dissolved in one of the first acts of the new Protestant government and it was granted on 10 May 1549 to George Brooke, 9th Baron Cobham,[44] Blagge's cousin.
Beyond Kent, there was also a brewery called the "Bolte and Tunne" in Fleet Street that had previously belonged to the Carmelites of Whitefriars, London: like most of the other properties, however, it had sitting tenants, whose interests were protected.
[46] After the dissolution of the monasteries the estate had been granted to Geoffrey Chamber, who worked for the Court of Augmentations, and then in January 1547 to Sir Pedro Gamboa, a Spanish soldier in the service of the English government.
[48] When the manor of Maidstone was granted to Robert Wyatt the Younger on 13 June 1550, as part of a general disposal of former ecclesiastical property, Blagge's interests were scrupulously protected.
[49] In 1551 Blagge was appointed a commissioner for the relief for both Kent and Middlesex,[50] one of those responsible for ensuring this archaic due, which still formed an important part of the English fiscal system, was collected in full.
Blagge was called upon to give evidence in proceedings against Stephen Gardiner, the bishop of Winchester and formerly Henry VIII's secretary and his chief adviser during the persecution of Protestants in the mid-1540s.
They include verse on Catherine Parr and Jane Seymour, although the best known is a mordant epitaph for Wriothesley: Blagge's most important contribution to English poetry was his habit of collecting his friends' poems.
Goodrich was a staunch Protestant and an eminent Gray's Inn lawyer, active in drafting ecclesiastical reforms under Edward VI, and he had taken part with Blagge in proceedings against Bishop Gardiner.
Dorothy then married Sir Ambrose Jermyn,[60] an elderly, wealthy landowner and courtier of Rushbrooke, Suffolk, another staunch Protestant.
