The Grays of Heaton in Wark had experienced considerable fluctuations in their fortunes in the generations before our MP. His great-great grandfather, Sir Thomas Gray (d.1369) served extensively on the Scottish borders in the mid-fourteenth century and is best remembered as the author of the Scalacronica; and his great-grandfather, also Sir Thomas†, prospered as soldier and diplomat and made an excellent marriage to a daughter of John, Lord Mowbray (d.1368). In 1399 he supported Henry of Bolingbroke (no doubt swayed by Richard II’s treatment of his brother-in-law, the duke of Norfolk, who was exiled by the King in 1398), and when he died the following year his son and heir was brought up in the royal household.
The young Ralph, his father’s treachery expunged, was among those knighted by the young King at the Leicester Parliament in May 1426, and soon after he made a good marriage to Elizabeth, one of the daughters of the Yorkshire baron, Henry, Lord Fitzhugh. As Fitzhugh had been a trusted servant of Henry V, serving alongside the King in Normandy and being appointed as one of his executors in 1422, the marriage of his daughter to the son of one of the Southampton plotters marked the complete rehabilitation of the Grays back into Lancastrian service. Sir Ralph went on to play an important part in the defence of the Anglo-Scottish marches at a time when both the great northern dynasties of Neville and the Percy seem to have been reluctant to take up the responsible duties of warden of the marches. In September 1435 he defended the strategically vital castle of Roxburgh against James I of Scotland; and between April 1438 and April 1440, he shared with another of the leading Northumberland gentry, Sir Robert Ogle II, the wardenship of the east and middle marches, offices that were generally the preserve of greater men.
Although Elizabeth was seemingly able to raise a large sum to acquire her son’s marriage and held the Gray lands at below their annual value, her financial security was compromised by the debts owed to her late husband from his tenure of Roxburgh. This matter had been raised in the Parliament of 1442, when Ogle sat as one of the knights of the shire for Northumberland, and for the next few years Elizabeth and her late husband’s executors petitioned the King to be allowed to recover their debts.
Gray came of age in 1448 and soon became involved in northern affairs. On 28 Jan. 1449 he was elected for Northumberland to the Parliament summoned to meet at Westminster the following month, alongside an experienced parliamentarian, John Heron*.
By this stage of his career Gray’s service was no longer confined to the borders. On 1 Mar. 1453 he had been present at Newcastle to attest the parliamentary election for Northumberland, and he appears to have been present in Westminster during the Parliament’s second session where, on 10 July, he and one of the elected knights of the shire for Northumberland, Gerard Widdrington*, entered into a recognizance to Thomas Thorpe*, Speaker of the Commons and one of the barons of the Exchequer.
It was these extraordinary expenses on top of the usual problem of receiving payment for the safeguard of Roxburgh that lay behind the petition Gray presented to the King during the Coventry Parliament of 1459. No returns survive for the Northumberland elections to the so-called ‘Parliament of Devils’, but given Gray’s connexions to the royal court and his own pressing financial affairs it seems likely that he travelled to Coventry as one of its knights of the shire (interestingly, his stepfather (Sir) Edmund Mountfort sat in the Parliament, as MP for Warwickshire). The petition took the form of draft letters patent setting out a list of revenue sources that Gray wished to be assigned for the payment of the moneys due to him from the Crown. Its preamble outlined the terms of the indentures he and Lord Fauconberg had sealed with the King in 1452 and claimed sums in excess of £4,000. Fauconberg, Gray continued, was no longer resident in Northumberland but was ‘in othre parties oute of this youre Reaume’ (in fact he was in exile in Calais where he served as lieutenant to his nephew, the town’s captain, Richard Neville, earl of Warwick). The draft letters patent then detailed the arrangements for the payment of £2,000, the amount owed to Gray. While 200 marks of the sum due was to be collected each year from the customs in Newcastle, the rest was assigned on various manors and other revenues seized from the attainted earl of Salisbury.
Gray’s part in the civil war of 1459-61 is only partially revealed in the surviving records. The Flemish chronicler, Jean de Waurin, mistakenly conflates him with Edmund, Lord Grey of Ruthin, in identifying the knight who betrayed Henry VI’s army at the battle of Northampton in July 1460.
This, together with Edward IV’s general policy of conciliation to those northerners who had fought against him explains why Gray was so quickly able to win the new regime’s acceptance. Indeed, by the end of the 1461 he was one of the stars of the Yorkist court and on 4 Dec. the Burgundian knight, Louis, seigneur de Gruythuse, received a safe-conduct to visit England in order to tilt with him.
Alnwick was not to remain in Yorkist hands for long. On 25 Oct. 1462 Queen Margaret, accompanied by Pierre de Brézé and a force of some 800 Frenchmen, landed at Bamburgh. Dunstanburgh also soon fell and before long the Yorkist garrison at Alnwick too had surrendered. Gray managed to escape and by early December he was with John Neville, Lord Montagu, laying siege to Bamburgh. On 26 Dec. the defenders agreed terms and left the castle, and by early January 1463 all the northern strongholds were back in Yorkist hands. At Durham Edward IV granted the captainship of Alnwick to the Garter knight, Sir John Astley, while Gray was to serve as its constable. The King and the earl of Warwick then returned south for the burial of the duke of York at Fotheringay on 30 Jan. and the earl of Salisbury on 15 Feb. In March Queen Margaret, at the head of a joint Lancastrian and Scottish army, again crossed the border. Sir Ralph Percy, who had been accepted into Edward’s allegiance in January, returned to the Lancastrian fold and surrendered Bamburgh and Dunstanburgh. Soon afterwards Gray too changed sides. He apparently tricked Astley into opening the gates of Alnwick castle, thus allowing Robert, Lord Hungerford and Moleyns, and the remnants of de Brézé’s force to enter unopposed. Astley was delivered into French captivity from where he was released only after the payment of a large ransom more than a year later. The reasons for Gray’s defection are unclear. Perhaps he was angered by Edward’s decision to entrust Alnwick castle to Astley rather than to him, but it may simply be that he retained an affection for Henry VI, in whose household he had served in his youth, and felt guilt at having abandoned him.
Edward IV now moved quickly to crush Lancastrian support in Northumberland. On 26 May Lord Montagu was appointed as warden of the east and middle marches. Five days later news of Gray’s defection reached the King and on 3 June the earl of Warwick left for the north to join his brother at the head of a large royal army. When it arrived on the border Warwick’s army quickly broke the Scottish siege of Norham castle. Without the prospect of Scottish support Queen Margaret fled for France and negotiations began between Warwick and the Scottish ambassadors for a truce. On 3 Dec. 1463 the two parties agreed a cessation of hostilities which was to last until October 1464, leaving the Lancastrian defenders of Alnwick, Bamburgh and Dunstanburgh isolated. In January 1464, however, the Lancastrians received a boost when Henry Beaufort, duke of Somerset, who had also been received into Edward’s allegiance at Durham the previous year, reneged on his oath and travelled north, eventually (after a narrow escape at Durham) joining the defenders of Bamburgh. Between the beginning of February and the end of March, accompanied by Gray, Sir Ralph Percy and Lords Hungerford and Roos, Somerset conducted a campaign which resulted in the capture of Norham castle as well as the Northumbrian towns of Bywell, Hexham, Langley and Prudhoe. On 25 Apr. Lord Montagu was en route to meet representatives of the Scottish king when he was intercepted by a Lancastrian force, commanded by Somerset, at Hedgley Moor. The battle was a short one: the Lancastrians commanded by Hungerford and Roos fled, the vanguard, commanded by Percy, was overwhelmed and Percy killed, but Somerset and Gray escaped. Somerset regrouped at Alnwick, but on 15 May his army was surprised at Hexham by a Yorkist force commanded by Lords Montagu, Greystoke and Willoughby, and he was captured and executed the following day. Yet Gray managed to escape once again and fled, alongside Sir Humphrey Neville, to Bamburgh.
Gray’s position was, however, now almost hopeless. On 11 June he and Neville were exempted from a pardon offered to rebels by the King, and 12 days later Alnwick surrendered to the Yorkists without a fight. Dunstanburgh soon followed, and on 25 June Montagu arrived before Bamburgh. Two heralds were sent with pardons for its defenders with the exception of Gray and Neville. Gray replied that he would fight to the death if necessary, earning the retort that the King would demand a head for every cannon shot that damaged the walls, beginning with that of Gray himself. Montagu had with him the royal artillery train, transported north from the Tower of London and Calais, and this was now turned on the defenders of Bamburgh. Dijon, a large Burgundian bombard captured during the siege of Calais in 1436, ‘smote thouroughe Sir Rauf Grey’s chamber oftentymes’ and he was badly injured. With the castle’s commander incapacitated, Neville saw his chance and offered to surrender Bamburgh in exchange for pardons for all except Gray. Gray’s fate was now sealed. He was tied to a horse and taken to Doncaster, where he was tried before the constable of England, John Tiptoft, earl of Worcester. Worcester rehearsed how he had borne arms against the King and had betrayed Astley with the result that Sir John was now a prisoner of the French. Notwithstanding ‘they noble grauntfader’, Sir Thomas (exec. 1415), who ‘suffrid trouble for the Kynges moost noble predeceseurs’, he was to be deprived of his knighthood: his spurs were to be struck off by the master cook, and his coat of arms torn off by the King’s officers of arms; another coat, with the arms reversed, was put upon him as he was drawn to the scaffold. On 10 July 1464 Gray was duly beheaded and his head placed upon London Bridge, while his body was buried at the Greyfriars in London.
Gray’s lands were initially taken into royal hands. In the previous January the Newcastle merchant and Warwick’s servant, John Colt, had been granted £51 8d. out of Gray’s forfeited estates to meet his expenses in victualling the King’s household, but it seems they were soon restored after his death.