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Daniel Blagrave, the regicide, was the son of Alexander Blagrave of Southcote Manor, the famous Chess-Player, and his wife, Margaret. His uncle and patron was John Blagrave of Southcote Manor, near Reading, the famous mathematician. He was born in 1603 and was bred for the bar. He sat in Parliament from 3rd November 1640 for the Borough of Reading and allowed the Earl of Essex to use his home, Southcote Manor, as the Roundhead headquarters during the Siege of that same town in April 1643. Two years later, he was Recorder of Reading, being dismissed from the office in 1656, but reinstated in 1658.

During the trial of King Charles I, Blagrave 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 £500 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 was 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 Sonning, in Berkshire, and other estates, as it is said, on easy terms. He sat in the Convention parliament of 1658; but, upon the Restoration, he fled the Kingdom and settled at Aachen, where he died in 1668. By his wife, Elizabeth Hull, he left a number of children.

Edited from Leslie Stephen's 'Dictionary of National Biography' (1886).