GRAY, Ralph I

A lawyer, Ralph came from an old family that had held property at Brent Pelham since the thirteenth century or earlier but was of no particular prominence.6 VCH Herts. iii. 251; iv. 94. His father John served as one of the coroners of Essex and Hertfordshire but the Crown considered him too old and sick to exercise his duties by February 1412, when it ordered the sheriff of those counties to hold an election for a new coroner, and he was dead by September 1416.7 CCR, 1409-13, p. 267; 1413-19, p. 320. John’s widow Joan enjoyed possession of ‘Chamberleynes’ and ‘Greyes’, the Gray manors at Brent Pelham, during her widowhood, meaning that their son did not immediately succeed to his whole inheritance.8 C140/17/27. Ralph inherited at least two other manors, situated at Reed, a few miles south of Royston, and at Clavering in Essex, but there is no evidence that his wife brought him any lands. An obscure figure, Elizabeth Gray probably had a connexion with Berkshire, for in the late 1430s she and Ralph conveyed lands at ‘Chipping’ Lambourn and elsewhere on the Berkshire Downs to John Roger I*. Associated with them in this transaction were John Barnard and Margaret his wife, possibly Elizabeth’s sister.9 VCH Berks. iv. 255; CCR, 1435-41, pp. 119-20, 129; CP25(1)/13/83/21.

Coroners were not necessarily lawyers,10 VCH Wilts. v. 29. so it is unclear if Ralph was following his father by entering the legal profession. It is likely he was still a minor when John Gray died, since there is no known reference to him predating 1433. In the autumn of that year he acquired from the Crown temporary interests in lands belonging to other families. First, in October he and another lawyer, Walter Taylard*, obtained the keeping of the estates of the late Richard Rede. Although ‘of Ireland’, Rede held three small manors in Essex, and presumably it was these properties that came into the hands of the co-grantees. Gray and Taylard subsequently agreed to pay the Exchequer an annual farm of 20 marks for their grant, which they were to hold until Richard’s son and heir came of age.11 CCR, 1429-35, p. 239; CFR, xvi. 173, 196-7; CIPM, xxiv. 29-33. Secondly, in November, Gray gained a share of the wardship of Robert Danyell, including the keeping of Bonhunt, a manor held of the duchy of Lancaster in the same county to which the boy was heir.12 DL42/18, f. 7.

Ralph’s legal qualifications ensured for him a role in local government as a j.p. and commissioner. He began his career as a j.p. in July 1439 and was appointed to his first ad hoc commission in the following year, shortly after the dissolution of the Parliament of 1439. It is through this commission (to distribute an allowance of a tax granted in that assembly), that we know that he sat in the Commons, because the relevant election return has not survived. For lack of evidence, it is impossible to tell whether he enjoyed the support of a noble patron when he stood for Parliament or relied on his own local standing to gain his seat.

Like other lawyers, Ralph was frequently a feoffee, witness, surety or counsellor for various individuals and institutions, among them Sir William Phelip†, John Fray†, Thomas Fynderne*, Robert Morley, 6th Lord Morley, (Sir) Thomas Tyrell*, Ralph Butler, 7th Lord Sudeley, John Say II*, King’s College, Cambridge, and Westminster Abbey. However it came about, his retainer with the abbey lasted for at least a decade (1448-59), if not longer.13 CFR, xvii. 83-84; Hatton’s Bk. of Seals ed. Loyd and Stenton, no. 484; C148/43; CCR, 1435-41, p. 98; 1476-85, no. 345; CPR, 1441-6, p. 183; CAD, i. C1358; iii. D465; Reg. Whethamstede ed. Riley, i. 367; Essex Feet of Fines, iv. 22, 25, 34, 48; King’s Coll., Cambridge, GRA/227; J.H. Baker, Men of Ct. (Selden Soc. supp. ser. xviii), i. 785. He seems to have enjoyed a cordial relationship with John Say in particular, since in October 1453 he and Say, along with John Cheyne II*, obtained the keeping of the estates of the late Philip Butler* during the minority of the latter’s son and heir, John.14 CPR, 1452-61, pp. 155. Ralph was one of the beneficiaries of a similar grant in July 1458, when he and Thomas Urswyk II*, recorder of London, acquired the wardship of John Harleston (grandson of John Harleston II*). In the event, this second grant proved short-lived, since in the following October the Crown recommitted the wardship to Thomas Drury and William Chapman.15 Ibid. 434, 459.

In his later years, Ralph served briefly as a j.p. in Cambridge and as an apprentice-at-law for the duchy of Lancaster, which paid him a retainer during the period 1460-3. There is no evidence that he had any property interests in Cambridge, although he was among those to whom Thomas Outlaw of Exning, Suffolk, had made a release of lands in the town and several neighbouring villages in November 1456. His retainer was not his first association with the duchy, which in March 1455 had committed the farm of land at Silkestone, Yorkshire, to him and William Leventhorpe, receiver of its honour of Pontefract and almost certainly a member of the prominent Hertfordshire family of that name. The land had belonged to one of the duchy’s tenants, the late John, Lord Darcy, and the farm was to last for the minority of his heir.16 R. Somerville, Duchy, i. 454, 516; CCR, 1454-61, p. 204; DL37/23/5.

Late in life, Gray pursued a lawsuit in the court of common pleas against the estate of the late Richard Alrede, a former receiver-general of the duchy. When the suit reached pleadings in Hilary term 1464, he alleged that he and Henry Langley had taken a bond from Alrede in London 20 years earlier. As recorded on the plea roll, the pleadings are incomplete and do not reveal whether the bond concerned duchy business or a private matter. According to Gray, Alrede had undertaken to pay him and Langley 100 marks but had handed over only half of this sum.17 CP40/811, rot. 325d. Gray himself did not live beyond 1464, for he died on 31 Dec. that year. His successor was his eldest son, another Ralph, then aged 24.18 C140/17/27. The latter had a younger brother, Richard, who was provided for early in the following year when the manor at Layston in east Hertfordshire (presumably a property that the MP had either inherited or purchased) was settled on the widowed Elizabeth Grey for life, with remainder to Richard.19 DE/H/643. As for the rest of the Gray estates, the younger Ralph disposed of part of his inheritance by selling the manor at Reed but he was by no means a lesser landowner than his father, since he came into possession of several other manors and lands in Hertfordshire, Leicestershire and Sussex through his marriage to Joan, the daughter of John Burgh. Following his death in 1492, he was buried in the parish church at Brent Pelham, the MP’s likely resting place.20 CIPM Hen. VII, ii. 68, 104; H. Chauncy, Herts. i. 284. Joan took a second husband, Edward Goldesborough. When she herself died five years later, the heir to the Gray estates was the MP’s great-grand-daughter, Elizabeth, who subsequently married Anthony Waldegrave of Bures, Suffolk.21 VCH Herts. ii. 197; iv. 82; CIPM Hen. VII, ii. 69. VCH Herts. iv. 94 asserts that the younger Ralph became a baron of the Exchequer. In fact, he did not although Edward Goldesborough certainly attained that position: Judges of Eng. comp. Sainty (Selden Soc. supp. ser. x), 119.