The Reverend Bragg Blagden (1715-1781)
Bragg was the son of George Blagden , described in sources variously as
gentleman, mercer and alehouse keeper, and his wife Jane, née Bragg, who
married at Pagham on 2 November 1712. George was fairly prosperous and had
a house in the Pallant in Chichester. Jane came from a well-established and
prominent Chichester family which had included Mayors of Chichester in the late
seventeenth century.
Bragg was born in Chichester, probably in 1715, and was baptised in St
Andrew’s Church, now the Oxmarket Centre of Arts. He went to ‘Mr Dove’s’
school in the city. He was admitted to St John’s College, Cambridge in 1735 at
the age of twenty, was ordained deacon on 23 December 1739 by the Bishop of
Norwich and licensed to the curacy of Aspall, near Debenham, in Suffolk. He was
ordained priest on 6 September 1741 by the Bishop of Chichester, indicating
that he had by now returned to the south coast.
He became a prominent local clergyman and a fine example of an eighteenth
century pluralist, holding a number of different benefices in the diocese of
Chichester during a long career. He was Prebend of Hampstead in the diocese of
Chichester with a stall in Chichester Cathedral, curate at Mid Lavant from 1752,
and certainly rector of the parishes of Slindon and All Saints, Chichester. There
are also occasional references in sources to the livings of Slinfold and Singleton
too but these may well be confusions with Slindon. From at least 1764 Bragg
was also chaplain to Charles Lennox, the third Duke of Richmond (1735-1806)
who succeeded to the dukedom in 1750 and whose sister, Sarah, was the
subject of the Prince of Wales’, later George III’s, awkward attentions before he,
George, was persuaded instead to marry Princess Charlotte of MecklenburgStrelitz.
Bragg married Mary Pannell in All Saints Church in the Pallant, Chichester on
24 July 1746. The Pallant is the south-east quarter of historic Chichester. There
are references to the place name as early as 1193. It may mean ‘a fenced
place’. It was certainly extra-parochial and independent of the jurisdiction of
both the Dean and Chapter and the city, being part of the outlying estates of the
Archbishops of Canterbury until the mid-sixteenth century. All Saints still stands
in the West Pallant, denuded of any curtilage and heavily restored. It is
deconsecrated and occupied now by a firm of independent financial advisers. The
interior has not been despoiled however and it is still possible to imagine what it
was like when it was one of the city’s many Medieval churches.
The rectory was adjacent to the west front of the church in what is now the
yard of Prezzo, the former White Horse public house. It was not demolished until
the early twentieth century but whether Bragg lived there for long is doubtful. It
is clear from photographs that the timber-frame building on what looks like a
brick base was neither large nor elegant and by the time he died, Bragg owned
two considerable properties in the Pallant which is still dominated by some of the
finest Georgian houses in the city. One of the properties he owned has been
identified in the North Pallant. It is a large, three-storey brick building with
cellars, a garden, and stabling to the rear. It has been the subject recently of a
major restoration but this is to get ahead of ourselves.
Both Bragg and Mary are described on the occasion of their marriage as ‘of
this parish’. The All Saints parish registers record the Blagden family baptisms,
marriages and burials from the late seventeenth until the early nineteenth
centuries. Bragg also recorded, in a miscellaneous entry in his own hand, in the
back of one of the All Saints registers, the births of his own children: Mary, born
26 April 1747 in ‘the Pallant’ (probably the adjacent rectory); George born at
Slindon on 1 October 1749; Richard born 31 March 1752 in ‘St Martins
Chichester’ (the parish adjacent to All Saints which at some point was united
with its neighbour with Bragg as incumbent); John born 12 May 1754 in the
Pallant; Philip and James, twins, born 31 January 1756 in the Pallant; Lydia born
7 January 1758 in the Pallant and Hannah born 4 August 1760 in the Pallant.
Sadly, the twins and Hannah all died before their fifth birthdays and were buried
by their father in the family vault.
Bragg also noted in the All Saints registers that in April 1762 there were 3,636
inhabitants in the parish and, in 1775, 4,213. There are also some interesting
notes on small-pox deaths in his handwriting. He was a wealthy man when he
died on 3 February 1781 and was buried in All Saints Church. Besides the two
houses in the Pallant, he owned the freehold of land in the parish of St Peter the
Great, also known as the Subdeanery in the north-west quarter of Chichester.
He also left large sums of money to his different children.
Bragg’s widow, Mary, was buried in All Saints Church on 26 October 1795. She
was probably the daughter of John Pannell, a Chichester merchant. Before her
marriage she held copyhold lands called Ryth farm in the manor of Bosham
worth £1,000 which, on her marriage, she ‘surrendered to our joint use and to
use of my will’. Of Bragg’s and Mary’s surviving children, George qualified as an
attorney at law but cannot have practised for long as he was buried in All Saints
Church in February 1773. Richard became a prosperous surgeon in Petworth
whose own son, Richard Junior, also had a distinguished career in London as a
surgeon and accoucheur i.e. obstetrician to Queen Victoria and the Duchess of
Kent. John was set up in an unspecified trade by his father. Mary married but it
is not clear whether Lydia did so. However she was generously provided for by
her parents in their wills.
I know nothing of Bragg’s churchmanship. The registers and surviving
churchwardens’ accounts, where they exist, might be useful in this respect. My
major source of information for these notes is a piece of research undertaken by
Debretts for my mother-in-law, Betty Quail née Blagden, who was descended
from Bragg Blagden through his son Richard. Debretts made extensive use of
original material in the West Sussex Record Office.
Sarah Quail.