One of the most influential lawyers to serve the Crown during the first half of the 15th century, Fray rose from relative obscurity to become chief baron of the Exchequer, and thus provides us with a particularly striking example of the ‘self-made man’ whose success was achieved through a combination of talent, hard work and personal ambition. Nothing is known for certain about his early life, although he may well have been the son of the John Fray who appears in 1384 as the owner of property in both Great Waltham, Essex, and the Hertfordshire village of Cottered (where he either bought or inherited land of his own). His family certainly had a longstanding connexion with Great Waltham, and he himself was living there when, in the spring of 1408, he assumed the trusteeship of land belonging to the London merchant, William Sudbury. Fray had probably just completed his legal training, since he began over the next few years to play an increasingly active part in the local property market, being employed as a feoffee-to-uses by a number of landowners, among whom were the Londoners, Drew Barantyn and William Waldern. Anne, dowager countess of Stafford, and her husband, Sir William Bourgchier, also engaged Fray in this capacity, and it was thus that he established an association with the powerful house of Stafford which was to last for the rest of his career. In June 1409, one year after he had served on his first royal commission, Fray and the King’s clerk, John Hannbury, were made joint farmers of the possessions of the alien priories of Panfield in Essex and Well Hall in Norfolk, and within a few months the tenancy arrangement was extended to include Sir William and the countess. Perhaps the MP had already become a member of the Stafford council, although no specific references occur to him as such until July 1421, when he and Robert Frampton undertook to search the records of the duchy of Lancaster for evidence concerning the countess’s share of the de Bohun inheritance. Both men were later made executors of her will, and it is interesting to note that by 1416, if not before, Fray began to acquire trusteeships in conjunction with Sir William Bourgchier.
By the time of his first return to Parliament, Fray had also built up a considerable reputation for himself in London, where, from October 1409 onwards, he was in great demand as a feoffee-to-uses. His appointment first as common serjeant and then as recorder of the City followed naturally upon his growing popularity among the leading members of the merchant class, with whom he maintained close relations from the very beginning of his legal career. Fray was first invited to arbitrate in a civic dispute in February 1416, and did so on many other occasions afterwards. He was, moreover, on friendly terms with John Browne, an esquire of the body to Henry V, who, in his will of 1418, left him a bequest of £15.
Fray’s first experience of the Hertfordshire parliamentary elections occurred in the autumn of 1414, when he witnessed the return of the shire knights. By the time of his own election in 1419, he had already been appointed to the local bench, and was also acting as a custodian of the Hertfordshire and Buckinghamshire estates of Sir William Argentine, whose son was a royal ward. Together with John Hotoft and the mercer, Thomas Aleyn, Fray undertook to farm the property at an annual rent of 200 marks. He and Aleyn were evidently anxious to extend their possessions in this way, for in March 1420 they became lessees of the inheritance of the young John Tyringham. The farm of his various manors in Bedfordshire, Buckinghamshire and Lincolnshire was eventually fixed at 80 marks p.a., above a further sum of 200 marks which they paid for the boy’s marriage. This arrangement brought them into conflict with the trustees of the Tyringham estates, against whom they began an action for waste in the court of Chancery. Meanwhile, in October 1420, Fray obtained yet another preferential lease at the Exchequer, this being of the land in Middlesex held by the Crown during the minority of Helming Leget’s son, Thomas.
Fray did not sit again as a shire knight after 1420, at which point his professional status began suddenly to improve. He held a series of important appointments, culminating in 1448 with his elevation to the rank of chief baron of the Exchequer. During this period he served on no less than 59 royal commissions, and was constantly employed as a j.p. in East Anglia and the home counties. He was also a member of Henry VI’s council, and as such received instructions to deal with any petitions still outstanding when the first session of the 1427 Parliament came to an end. Although Fray complained at least once that his ‘greet labour and diligence’ was not adequately rewarded, the emoluments of office were great: besides the leases of crown property which came his way from time to time, he received an annuity of 110 marks in 1436, a yearly grant of two pipes of Gascon wine together with revenues totalling 40 marks p.a. from the manor of Aber in Caernarvon in 1437, and another annuity of 100 marks in 1443.
Fray died on 1 July 1461, having just recovered the loan of £200 which he had made to Edward IV and the late Edmund, earl of Rutland, presumably in support of the Yorkist cause. He was buried in the church of St. Bartholomew the Less, London, where his daughter Margaret, the wife of Sir John Leynham, subsequently endowed a family chantry. He left five daughters in all, each of whom was able to make a lucrative marriage as a result of his wealth and position. His widow, Agnes, the elder sister of the distinguished lawyer Sir Robert Danvers, and half-sister of Sir Thomas and Sir William Danvers, found herself in an even more advantageous situation, and took two more husbands before her death in June 1478. The first, John, Lord Wenlock, was killed at the battle of Tewkesbury in 1471, and the second, Sir John Say, predeceased her by just a few weeks. She was buried beside Fray in London and is depicted, along with two of their daughters, in a stained-glass window at Long Melford church in Suffolk.