hostage, a diplomatist and a pilgrim. The 2nd Lord Gray was his grandson Andrew (d. 1514), and the 4th lord was the latter’s grandson Patrick (d. 1582), a participant in Scottish politics during the stormy time of Mary, queen of Scots. Patrick’s son, Patrick, the 5th lord (d. 1609), married Barbara, daughter of William, 2nd Lord Ruthven, and their son Patrick, known as the “Master of Gray,” is the subject of this article. Educated at Glasgow University and brought up as a Protestant, young Patrick was married early in life to Elizabeth Lyon, daughter of Lord Glamis, whom he repudiated almost directly; and afterwards went to France, where he joined the friends of Mary, queen of Scots, became a Roman Catholic, and assisted the French policy of the Guises in Scotland. He returned and took up his residence again in Scotland in 1583, and immediately began a career of treachery and intrigue, gaining James’s favour by disclosing to him his mother’s secrets, and acting in agreement with James Stewart, earl of Arran, in order to keep Mary a prisoner in England. In 1584 he was sent as ambassador to England, to effect a treaty between James and Elizabeth and to exclude Mary. His ambition incited him at the same time to promote a plot to secure the downfall of Arran. This was supported by Elizabeth, and was finally accomplished by letting loose the lords banished from Scotland for their participation in the rebellion called the Raid of Ruthven, who, joining Gray, took possession of the king’s person at Stirling in 1585, the league with England being ratified by the parliament in December. Gray now became the intermediary between the English government and James on the great question of Mary’s execution, and in 1587 he was despatched on an embassy to Elizabeth, ostensibly to save Mary’s life. Gray had, however, previously advised her secret assassination and had endeavoured to overcome all James’s scruples; and though he does not appear to have carried treachery so far as to advise her death on this occasion, no representations made by him could have had any force or weight. The execution of Mary caused his own downfall and loss of political power in Scotland; and after his return he was imprisoned on charges of plots against Protestantism, of endeavouring to prevent the king’s marriage, and of having been bribed to consent to Mary’s death. He pleaded guilty of sedition and of having obstructed the king’s marriage, and was declared a traitor; but his life was spared by James and he was banished from the country, but permitted to return in 1589, when he was restored to his office of master of the wardrobe to which he had been appointed in 1585. His further career was marked by lawlessness and misconduct. In 1592, together with the 5th Lord Bothwell, he made an unsuccessful attempt to seize the king at Falkland, and the same year earned considerable discredit by bringing groundless accusations against the Presbyterian minister, Robert Bruce; while after the king’s accession to the English throne he was frequently summoned before the authorities on account of his conduct. Notwithstanding, he never lost James’s favour. In 1609 he succeeded his father as 6th Baron Gray, and died in 1612.
Gray was an intimate friend of Sir Philip Sidney, but, if one of the ablest, handsomest and most fascinating, he was beyond doubt one of the most unscrupulous men of his day. He married as his second wife in 1585 Mary Stewart, daughter of Robert, earl of Orkney, and had by her, besides six daughters, a son, Andrew (d. 1663), who succeeded him as 7th Baron Gray. Andrew, who served for a long time in the French army, was a supporter, although not a very prominent one, of Charles I. and afterwards of Charles II. He was succeeded as 8th Lord Gray by Patrick (d. 1711), a son of his daughter Anne, and Patrick’s successor was his kinsman and son-in-law John (d. 1724). On the extinction of John’s direct line in 1878 the title of Lord Gray, passed to George Stuart, earl of Moray. In 1606 Gray had been ranked sixth among the Scottish baronies.
Bibliography.—Article in Dict. of Nat. Biog., and authorities there quoted; Gray’s relation concerning the surprise at Stirling (Bannatyne Club Publns. i. 131, 1827); Andrew Lang, History of Scotland, vol. ii. (1902); Peter Gray, The Descent and Kinship of Patrick, Master of Gray (1903); Gray Papers (Bannatyne Club, 1835); Hist. MSS. Comm., Marq. of Salisbury’s MSS.
GRAY, ROBERT (1809–1872), first bishop of Cape Town and
metropolitan of South Africa, was born at Bishop Wearmouth,
Durham, and was the son of Robert Gray, bishop of Bristol.
He was educated at Eton and Oxford, and took orders in 1833.
After holding the livings of Whitworth, Durham, 1834–1845, and
Stockton-on-Tees, 1845–1847, he was consecrated bishop of Cape
Town in 1847; the bishopric having been endowed through the
liberality of Miss (afterwards Baroness) Burdett-Coutts. Until
1853 he was a suffragan of Canterbury, but in that year he
formally resigned his see and was reappointed by letters patent
metropolitan of South Africa in view of the contemplated
establishment of the suffragan dioceses of Graham’s Town and
Natal. In that capacity his coercive jurisdiction was twice
called in question, and in each case the judicial committee of the
privy council decided against him. The best-known case is that
of Bishop Colenso, whom Gray deposed and excommunicated in
1863. The spiritual validity of the sentence was upheld by the
convocation of Canterbury and the Pan-Anglican synod of 1867,
but legally Colenso remained bishop of Natal. The privy council
decisions declared, in effect, that the Anglican body in South
Africa was on the footing of a voluntary religious society. Gray,
accepting this position, obtained its recognition by the mother
church as the Church of the Province of South Africa, in full
communion with the Church of England. The first provincial
synod was held in 1870. During his episcopate Bishop Gray
effected a much-needed organization of the South African church,
to which he added five new bishoprics, all carved out of the
original diocese of Cape Town. It was also chiefly owing to his
suggestions that the universities’ mission to Central Africa was
founded.
GRAY, SIR THOMAS (d. c. 1369), English chronicler, was a
son of Sir Thomas Gray, who was taken prisoner by the Scots
at Bannockburn and who died about 1344. The younger Thomas
was present at the battle of Neville’s Cross in 1346; in 1355,
whilst acting as warden of Norham Castle, he was made a prisoner,
and during his captivity in Edinburgh Castle he devoted his
time to studying the English chroniclers, Gildas, Bede, Ranulf
Higdon and others. Released in 1357 he was appointed warden
of the east marches towards Scotland in 1367, and he died about
1369. Gray’s work, the Scalacronica (so called, perhaps, from
the scaling-ladder in the crest of the Grays), is a chronicle of
English history from the earliest times to about the year 1362.
It is, however, only valuable for the reigns of Edward I. and
Edward II. and part of that of Edward III., being especially
so for the account of the wars between England and Scotland, in
which the author’s father and the author himself took part.
Writing in Norman-French, Gray tells of Wallace and Bruce,
of the fights at Bannockburn, Byland and Dupplin, and makes
some mention of the troubles in England during the reign of
Edward II. He also narrates the course of the war in France
between 1355 and 1361; possibly he was present during some
of these campaigns.
The Scalacronica was summarized by John Leland in the 16th century; the part dealing with the period from 1066 to the end, together with the prologue, was edited for the Maitland Club by J. Stevenson (1836); and the part from 1274 to 1362 was translated into English by Sir Herbert Maxwell (Glasgow, 1907). In the extant manuscript, which is in Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, there is a gap extending from about 1340 to 1355, and Gray’s account of this period is only known from Leland’s summary.
GRAY, THOMAS (1716–1771), English poet, the fifth and sole surviving child of Philip and Dorothy Gray, was born in London on the 26th of December 1716. His mother’s maiden name was Antrobus, and in partnership with her sister Mary she kept a millinery shop in Cornhill. This and the house connected with it were the property of Philip Gray, a money-scrivener, who married Dorothy in 1706 and lived with her in the house, the sisters renting the shop from him and supporting themselves by its profits. Philip Gray had impaired the fortune which he inherited from his father, a wealthy London merchant; yet he was sufficiently well-to-do, and at the close of his life was building a house upon some property of his own at Wanstead. But he was selfish and brutal, and in 1735 his wife took some abortive
