BRAY, Thomas I, of ’Treskellow’, Cornw.

This Member may have been the Thomas Bray who appears in the pedigree of the family of Bray of St. Cleer and Lanivet, Cornwall, as the son and heir of Gervase Bray† by his wife Elizabeth, daughter of Sir Richard Hewes. Certainly, the family had been connected with Helston since the early 14th century, Gervase himself having represented the borough in five Parliaments between 1311 and 1315; and that the association had continued is indicated by the appearance of one Benedict Bray as a portreeve of the town in 1389, only a year after Thomas’s election to Parliament.1Vivian, Vis. Cornws. 54; J. Maclean, Trigg Minor, ii. 132-3; CAD, v. A12061. An Edmund Bray stood surety for the Helston MPs in 1413 (C219/11/1). But it was as ‘of Treskellow’ (by Treneglos) that in the 1390s Thomas Bray was outlawed for failing to appear in court to answer at the suit of members of the Hervy family for chattels worth £40. His co-defendants, John Batyn of Treneglos and John Bray of Scarzick, both obtained pardons for their outlawry, in 1394 and 1398 respectively, but there is no evidence that he himself ever did so.2CPR, 1391-6, p. 399; 1396-9, p. 304.