John Blagrave
David Harber is not the first gnomonics expert in his family. While researching the mathematician and dialist Sir John Blagrave (1561-1611) David unearthed the astonishing fact that this celebrated Elizabethan was a direct ancestor of his.
David comments: “Blagrave's astrolabe is one of the all-time great scientific instruments, often referred to and discussed in dialist circles, so to discover from my father that he was family and was born in Sonning, under 10 miles from my workshop, was astonishing.”
Moved by this discovery, David has recreated as faithfully as possible a replica of the original Mathematical Jewel, shown left.
John Blagrave was an esteemed Tudor mathematician and designer of astronomical instruments. Born to John and Anne Blagrave of Bulmershe Court near Sonning, John Blagrave was educated at Reading School and St John's College, Oxford from where he left without graduating.
Having turned his genius to mathematics, he led a retiring life at Southcote Manor, Reading, where he
devoted his time to study and contemplation.
He designed and made instruments and sundials
including an astrolabe which he described in The Mathematical Jewel and his Familiar Staff.
He was married to Dorothy. His nephew, Daniel Blagrave, to whom he eventually bequeathed his
lands at Southcote, was one of the signatories to the death warrant of King Charles I.
Blagrave wanted to show that the mathematical sciences were not mere amusements for
scholars and speculative persons but of "general advantage and indispensable in many
necessary conveniences of life".
This view informs all his best known works.
John Blagrave was recognised for the concern he showed for the wellbeing of others. To his local town of Reading he left several legacies including one to enlarge the market place and another which provided the sum of twenty nobles to be competed for by three maid servants of good character and of five years' service under one master and which were to be selected by the three parishes of the town. Lots were cast on Good Friday to select the recipient of the money.
He was buried in St Lawrence's Church: under his bust is a plaque with this epitaph:
Here lyes his corpes, which living had a spirit wherein all worthy knowledge did inherit by which with zeale our God he did adore left for maidservants and to feed the poore his virtuous mother came of worthie race a Hungerford, and buried neere this place when God sent death their lives away to call they beloved and died bewayld of all deceased the IXth of August
Anno Domini MDCXI
