GRAY, Henry

A member of a prominent family, Henry is a surprisingly obscure figure for one so well connected. The nephew of Thomas Mowbray, duke of Norfolk, he was also the brother of William Gray, bishop of Lincoln (who made him his residuary legatee in 1436) and the uncle of William’s namesake, who became bishop of Ely in 1454. Bishop Gray of Ely was a son of Henry’s eldest brother, Sir Thomas Gray, executed for his part in the Southampton Plot of 1415.7 Norf. Archaeology, iii. 274; xxvi. plate facing p. 328; Reg. Chichele, ii. 545. The MP is sometimes confused with another nephew, Henry Gray, Lord Tancarville (d.1450), the son of another elder brother, John (d.1421): CIPM, xxi. 702; C139/140/30; CP, vi. 137-8. Henry’s father, another Sir Thomas, was an important Northumbrian knight. In the autumn of 1399, while he was away attending Parliament, the Scots seized his castle of Wark and captured his children (probably including a very young Henry), for whom he was forced to pay a ransom.8 The Commons 1386-1421, iii. 224; CPR, 1399-1401, p. 287.

Perhaps influenced by his Mowbray relatives, Henry chose to settle in Norfolk, where he acquired a manor at Ketteringham, a property said to have come to him in marriage.9 F. Blomefield, Norf. v. 91-92. If Emma Appleyard did bring this manor to Gray in marriage, it is curious that Robert Fitzralph and Margaret his wife made a quitclaim of it to him alone in 1433: CP25(1)/169/187/93. As a landowner, he easily qualified for the honour of knighthood, since his estates were valued at £67 p.a. for the purposes of the subsidy of 1436.10 E159/212, recorda Hil. rot. 14(xii). The Commons 1386-1421, ii. 45, citing Blomefield, v. 91, refers to Gray as ‘Sir Henry’ but his brass shows that he was never knighted: Norf. Archaeology, xxvi. plate facing p. 101. The fact that he attested the election of Suffolk’s knights of the shire to the Parliament of the following year suggests that he held lands in that county as well.

No doubt Gray’s connexion with the Mowbrays explains how he came to stand surety for two Nottinghamshire lawyers, John Manchester* and William Neville, in June 1431, when the Crown granted them a farm of properties in Derbyshire, since his aunt, Elizabeth, dowager duchess of Norfolk, had employed Manchester as one of her attorneys.11 CFR, xvi. 41; JUST1/1537, rot. 25d. By this period Gray was also a feoffee for Walter, Lord Fitzwalter, and he obtained the farm of Fitzwalter’s manor at Fincham in south-west Norfolk after the peer’s death at the end of 1431, to hold from the Crown until Walter’s daughter and heir, Elizabeth, came of age. Fitzwalter had campaigned in France, and it is possible that Gray had spent part of his early years as a member of his retinue there.12 CPR, 1429-36, pp. 208-10; CP, v. 480-3; CFR, xvi. 87-88.

The 1430s were a busy decade for Gray, for he served two terms in each of the offices of sheriff and escheator in Norfolk and Suffolk, sat briefly on the bench in the former county and was appointed to the first two of his known ad hoc commissions.13 There was also a Henry Gray who sat on the Essex bench during most of the 1440s but the MP is not known to have possessed interests in that county. In April 1434, during his second term as sheriff, he was among those who entered into a bond for 40 marks with Thomas Wetherby* of Norwich, as did William Appleyard esquire, evidently one of his in-laws. While its purpose is unknown, this security may have had a connexion with the affairs of the Appleyards, from whom Wetherby had bought the manor of Intwood near Norwich. By 1442 Wetherby had begun legal proceedings on the strength of the bond, although relations between him and Gray were sufficiently cordial for him to appoint the latter as a feoffee to the use of his last will of 1444.14 C241/230/64; Blomefield, v. 40, 42; C1/26/281.

By the early 1440s, Gray was one of the bailiffs in Norfolk of the Huntingdonshire abbey of Ramsey. In the same period he witnessed several conveyances of lands on behalf of the Woodhouses of Kimberley and acted as a feoffee for the lawyer, William Dalling of Fordham.15 CCR, 1435-41, pp. 127, 469; 1441-7, pp. 36, 40; Blomefield, vii. 395; E13/142, rot. 19. Gray is said to have handed over a petition of Dalling’s against William Paston to Parl. in ‘1434’ (Norf. Archaeology, xxii. 272), but no Parl. sat in that year and there is no trace of any such petition in the Parliament rolls. He was an associate well worth having,16 All the more so, if he was the Henry Gray who joined the Household in the mid 1440s, and wore the livery of a royal esquire until at least 1452: E101/409/16; 410/1, 3, 6, 9. given his connexions with the Mowbrays and others, and his links with John Mowbray, duke of Norfolk, helped to secure his entry into the Parliament of 1450. During the elections to this assembly, the leader of the opposition to the government, Richard, duke of York, ‘laboured’ hard to ensure the return of men sympathetic to his cause, and in East Anglia he had the assistance of his then ally, the duke of Norfolk. The two dukes met at Bury St. Edmunds to discuss suitable candidates a few days before the shire election in Norfolk, and they decided upon Gray and Sir William Chamberlain. In the event, there were limits to the dukes’ influence, since (Sir) Miles Stapleton* was the man returned with Gray. It is unlikely that Mowbray could have brought as much influence to bear on the electors without the support of York, for he was often an inept lord, who quarrelled with some of his retainers and was unable to control others. One of the most lawless of his followers was Robert Lethum, whose activities drove Gray and other Mowbray men to join members of the rival de la Pole affinity in laying a formal complaint against him in the court of King’s bench in the mid 1450s.17 M.H. Keen, Eng. in the Later Middle Ages, 439; Paston Letters ed. Davis, ii. 54-55; H.R. Castor, King, Crown and Duchy of Lancaster, 112-13, 116-17; Paston Letters ed. Gairdner, ii. 307-8.

During the second half of the same decade, Gray was caught up in at least two Chancery suits. In one the plaintiff was Humphrey Bourgchier*, a younger son of Henry, earl of Essex. He was a family connexion of Gray’s, since his mother, Isabel, sister of the duke of York, was formerly the wife of the MP’s eldest nephew.18 Hist. Northumb. xiv. ped. facing p. 328. Bourgchier’s bill concerned the manor of Brundall near Norwich, a property that had belonged to the late Thomas Wetherby. He claimed to have bought the reversion of the manor (to vest after the death of Wetherby’s widow) from the dead man’s executors, and he alleged that Gray and other feoffees of Wetherby’s last will were refusing to make a release to him.19 C1/26/281. The plaintiffs in the second suit, John Kyng and his wife Mary, were also family connexions, since she was formerly the wife of William Appleyard, apparently Gray’s associate in the bond of 1434. The Kyngs’ bill is mutilated and hard to decipher although it concerned the Appleyard manor at East Carleton, also near Norwich. Presumably their complaint arose from an alleged refusal by Gray and several co-defendants to allow them possession of the manor, which they held as the late William’s feoffees.20 C1/26/255.

The last few years of Gray’s life were troubled by the activities of his son and namesake, who had come of age by the early 1460s.21 If not sooner; it is not clear whether father or son sat on the Norf. bench during the last few months of Henry VI’s reign. Like his father, the younger Henry was associated with the Mowbrays, although he was also among those to whom John de la Pole, duke of Suffolk, is said illegally to have granted liveries in 1469.22 KB27/839, rex rot. 32. It appears that he was the Henry Gray whom Edward IV made keeper of the armoury at the Tower of London in late 1461.23 CPR, 1461-7, p. 89; CCR, 1461-8, p. 35. It is unclear whether it was the younger Henry, his father the MP or a namesake who owned a townhouse in the parish of St. Anne and St. Agnes in Aldersgate ward, London, in the late 1450s: CP40/798, rot. 130d. He was also one of the unsuccessful candidate knights of the shire at the controversial and violent hustings in Norfolk prior to Edward IV’s first Parliament.24 Paston Letters ed. Davis, ii. 238; K.B. McFarlane, Eng. in the 15th Cent. 7-9. The men returned, John Paston* and John Berney†, were afterwards accused of securing election with the help of an armed mob, but it is far from likely that the younger Henry’s own conduct during the election was unimpeachable. He was certainly not above breaking the law, since one Chancery suit accused him of conniving in the holding of an illegal inquisition,25 C1/29/157-8. and a couple of others, filed after the MP’s death, which occurred in about 1463,26 HP Biogs. ed. Wedgwood and Holt, 397, states that Gray was dead by Sept. 1454, a mistaken assumption resting upon a letter which William Paston† wrote to his brother John that month: Paston Letters ed. Davis, i. 155. In the letter, William informed John that Edmund, Lord Grey of Ruthyn, was seeking to have his ward, ‘Harry Gray’, married to a Norfolk gentlewoman, but, as R.I. Jack, ‘Greys of Ruthin’ (London Univ. Ph.D. thesis, 1961), 295n, points out, the ward’s true identity has proved ‘surprisingly elusive’. HP Biogs. assumes that he was the MP’s son and namesake, but this is far from certain. First, the name was a common one; secondly, Chancery litigation shows that Henry Gray ‘senior’ of Ketteringham died in about 1463: C1/28/333; 32/137-42. If one follows HP Biogs., this senior Henry would have to be the MP’s son and the younger (and adult) Henry Gray who features in the same litigation his grandson, but the evidence strongly suggests that Henry Gray senior should be identified with the MP. of imprisoning and mistreating his father.

In the first of the latter two suits, the plaintiffs were the elder Henry’s son-in-law, Robert Martin of Sutton, Suffolk, and his wife Eleanor, the MP’s daughter. In a bill of 1464, the Martins accused the younger Henry of having in August the previous year intercepted the MP, Eleanor Martin and her seven children with a band of armed men at Caistor St. Edmund near Norwich, while they were travelling from that city (where the elder Gray was then residing) to Sutton. Having apprehended the family party, he had sworn at and rebuked his sister (declaring that he would have cut off her husband’s head had he been present) before taking his prisoners, along with certain goods and documents they had with them, to his ‘place’ at Ketteringham. Although he had released them after some 24 hours, he had retained the goods and writings, which he had deposited in a locked chamber. He had given the keys to the chamber to his father, promising not to remove anything from it without his consent. Upon their release, the MP and his daughter had complained to the duke of Norfolk about the incident, but to no avail since the younger Henry had simply ignored repeated summons to appear before the duke to explain his conduct. The duchess of Norfolk had spoken to him afterwards, and he had promised her that he would not remove any of the documents, save any his father might send for, from the chamber. He had not kept his promise, for when the duke had gone to Ketteringham at the MP’s request to recover the goods and documents, he found that the younger Henry had broken down the door of the chamber and carried its contents away. The Martins concluded their bill (the purpose of which was to recover the stolen items) by alleging that the ‘grete unkyndnes’ which the MP had suffered at the hands of his son had precipitated his last illness and death, since which time the younger Henry had compounded his misbehaviour by occupying certain lands belonging to them.27 C1/28/333. The dating of the bill and of the ambush at Caistor is based on KB27/828, rot. 79.

In the second of the Chancery suits brought after the MP’s death, Robert Martin was the sole plaintiff. In a bill of about 1467, he accused Thomas Ellis†, who had completed his second term as mayor of Norwich the previous year, and Robert Heigham, the city’s common clerk, of misconduct in office. Referring to a deed of 9 Aug. 1460, by which his father-in-law had made over all of his goods and chattels to him, Martin claimed that the MP had had the deed enrolled in the city of Norwich, only for the defendants subsequently to cancel the enrolment without just cause. In this suit, the defendants’ answers and other subsidiary documents have survived. Ellis and Heigham admitted that Gray had asked to have the deed enrolled in the city’s records during Ellis’s first term as mayor (1460-1), but said that he had never appeared in person to acknowledge it as his, as required by custom. Some two years later, moreover, Ellis had entertained the MP, along with Humphrey Bourgchier (by then Lord Cromwell) and his mother, to dinner at his house in Norwich. During the dinner, he had raised the matter of the deed, but Gray had declined the opportunity to acknowledge it. After beginning his second term as mayor, therefore, he had commanded Heigham to erase it from the city’s records. In a replication to the defendants’ account, Martin asserted that the deed had been properly enrolled, and he pointed out that Ellis had denied (‘with open othe and voyce’) ordering Heigham to cancel it when the earl of Oxford and others examined him about the matter. Given the purpose of the deed, it is hardly surprising that Martin was anxious to have its validity upheld. To demonstrate that it represented Gray’s true wishes, he emphasized the good relationship he and Eleanor had enjoyed with her father. He informed the court that they and all their children had resided with him at Norwich for some two years in the early 1460s and that he had spent his last days with them at Sutton, where he had died.28 C1/32/137-43.

The outcome of neither this nor the Chancery case of 1464 is known, although in the suit in which he was sole plaintiff Martin referred also to a verdict he had won at common law over the goods (valued at 300 marks) and writings his brother-in-law had seized in the ambush near Norwich. Yet, as the patent rolls record, the younger Henry had succeeded in having either this or another verdict arising from litigation at common law between him and Martin overturned in November 1466.29 CPR, 1461-7, p. 535. Later that decade, the younger Henry and his wife, Joan, sued Martin and several associates in King’s bench. In pleadings of Easter term 1468, the couple claimed that the defendants had maliciously accused Joan of having taken goods belonging to Martin at Caistor St. Edmund in August 1463. As a result, she had suffered imprisonment in Norwich castle for several weeks in early 1466 before securing her acquittal and release. The defendants responded by referring to an agreement by which the two sides had settled their differences, but the Grays said that this related to an assault an associate of Martin had committed on one of their servants, and not to the present case.30 KB27/828, rot. 79; 843, rot. 25. In this suit, there is no direct reference to the ambush of the MP and his daughter at Caistor in the plea roll, but it is clear that the accusations against Joan relate to that incident. During the early 1470s, the relentless younger Henry sued the lawyer John Jenney*, a supporter of the Martins, for maintenance.31 KB27/848, rot. 26d. Later in the same decade, he himself supported one of Jenney’s opponents, John Selot, archdeacon of Sudbury and master of St. Giles Hospital, Norwich, in a separate, unrelated quarrel between Jenney and Selot.32 C. Rawcliffe, Medicine for the Soul, 150-1; CPL, xiii. 727; CCR, 1476-85, no. 610.

It is impossible exactly to ascertain what lay behind the bad blood between the Martins and the younger Henry, but it is more than likely that the latter was jealous of the favour the MP had shown the couple and feared that he might lose some of his inheritance to them. Whatever the case, the incident at Caistor and the fact that the MP had lived away from Ketteringham (perhaps to avoid the younger Henry) at the end of his life indicate a poor state of relations between him and his son. In later years the younger Henry would attain far greater eminence than his hated brother-in-law, Martin, since he was knighted after fighting for the Yorkists at Tewkesbury in 1471, served with Edward IV in France and was a ‘King’s servant’ under Richard III.33 Paston Letters ed. Davis, ii. 594; CPR, 1467-77, p. 516; 1476-85, p. 538. It appears that he was still not reconciled with the Martins when he died, without children, in 1496.34 CIPM Hen. VII, i. 1228.