GRAY, Ralph II

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.9 The Commons 1386-1421, iii. 322-5. For the hist. of the fam. to 1415: A. King, ‘Scaling the Ladder’, in North-East Eng. ed. Liddy and Britnell, 57-74. Despite the favour shown to him by the Lancastrians, this next Sir Thomas, our MP’s grandfather, was led into treachery. In 1411 his young son and heir was contracted in marriage to Isabel, daughter of Richard, earl of Cambridge, and four years later Sir Thomas foolishly allowed himself to be drawn into the earl’s conspiracy to kill Henry V and replace him as King with Edmund Mortimer, earl of March. He and the other conspirators were executed at Southampton as the King prepared to depart for war in France. Fortunately for the family’s future Sir Thomas’s younger brother, Sir John, was trusted by the King, who granted him the custody of the family estates. He repaid that trust by serving with energy and distinction in the war in France, being created earl of Tancarville before his death at the battle of Baugé in 1421. The Gray estates then passed to Thomas, Sir John’s nephew and the eldest son of the man executed in 1415, and then, on his childless death before June 1426, to his younger brother, Ralph.10 Hist. Northumb. xiv. 328; DURH3/2, ff. 173v, 180, 235, 244v; CP, vi. 137; T.B. Pugh, Southampton Plot, 104.

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.11 Three 15th Cent. Chrons. (Cam. Soc. ser. 2, xxviii), 165-6; E101/69/1/279; E403/733, m. 4; EHR, lxxii. 613-14. Sir Ralph died on 17 Mar. 1443, according to one tradition while serving in France. This is certainly possible, for he had travelled to Normandy in June 1441 under the new lieutenant-general, Richard, duke of York, and in the following October he was serving in the garrison at Mantes.12 E101/53/33, m. 7; Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris, Fr. 25776/1538. However this may be, at his death he left a son, our MP, then aged about 14, as heir to his extensive estates lying largely in Northumberland but extending into the palatinate of Durham.13 DURH3/164/52; CIPM, xxvi. 108. On 6 July 1443 the custody of the lands in Northumberland were granted to Ralph’s mother, Elizabeth, to hold during the minority at an annual farm of only £42, a marked undervaluation, and in the following November she paid a more realistic 400 marks for her son’s marriage.14 CFR, xvii. 268-9; CPR, 1441-6, p. 258.

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.15 E159/223, brevia Easter rot. 7; E403/743, m. 16. Her salvation finally came in 1445 when she secured a position for herself in the household of the new queen, Margaret of Anjou. She was probably among those English ladies sent to France to receive Margaret and she appears to have remained with the queen until at least 1452.16 A.R. Myers, Crown, Household and Parl. 182, 224. Ralph was himself admitted to the King’s household as an esquire, and in June 1445 the two were granted letters of protection, Elizabeth ‘being daily attendant on the queen’s person’ and her son being ‘far from his possessions and ignorant of the wrongs which could be done to himself, his tenants and servants’.17 CPR, 1441-6, p. 353. Further signs of royal favour followed. In October Elizabeth was pardoned of the annual payment of £40 made for the custody of her son’s inheritance; on 29 June 1447 she and her late husband’s executors secured a general pardon; and in the following month the King issued a writ of non molestatis at the Exchequer concerning her custody of the Gray estates.18 E159/223, brevia Easter rot. 7; C67/39, m. 4. She also owed her second marriage to this household service: by Michaelmas term 1449 she had married Edmund Mountfort*, who was later to hold high office at Court.19 CP40/755, rot. 457d. Ralph too married within the royal circle. His wife, whom he seems to have wed in the early 1450s, was a ‘damicellae Regine’ named Jacquetta. Her precise identity is unknown. There were at least two Jacquettas among the queen’s ladies, one of whom was a Stanlowe –perhaps the daughter of William Stanlowe, a lawyer and servant of the treasurer, Ralph, Lord Cromwell. In 1451-2 she received a silver cup decorated with pearls worth £8 2s. 8d. on the occasion of her marriage (and her departure from Queen Margaret’s service).20 E101/409/17; 410/8.

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*.21 C219/15/6. The circumstances of his election are unknown, but it may be that he owed his return to his place in the Household. At the end of the Parliament’s first session he probably returned to the north-east to enter his inheritance. On 16 May he was finally granted livery of his estates in the palatinate of Durham, although it was not until 20 Dec. that he was licensed to enter his father’s estates in Northumberland.22 DURH3/45, m. 2; CPR, 1446-52, p. 220. After the end of the Parliament in July 1449 Gray took joint responsibility, with his kinsman Sir Robert Ogle, for the defence of Roxburgh. This was a prime consideration in the ensuing months. In 1448 the Scots had invaded and burnt the Percy castles of Warkworth and Alnwick. With William Neville, Lord Fauconberg, absent in France (where he was captured in May 1449), the defence of the borders devolved principally upon the warden of the east march, Lord Poynings, and a small group of leading Northumberland gentry. In May 1452 the Crown wrote to Gray, along with Poynings, Ogle and Heron, ordering them to refrain at all costs from retaliating against the earl of Douglas’s recent raids into their county.23 R.A. Griffiths, Hen. VI, 409; PPC, vi. 126. Two months earlier Gray’s status had been confirmed when he and Fauconberg indented for the custody of Roxburgh castle for 12 years. They were to receive £1,000 p.a. in time of peace and double that amount in wartime, assigned principally on the customs in the port of Newcastle-upon-Tyne. The initial responsibility almost certainly fell on Gray, as Fauconberg’s main concern appears to have been the payment of his ransom. Gray was well placed to take command of this strategically vital fortress on the Scottish border. Not only had his father served as keeper, but his distant kinsman, Andrew, Lord Gray of Roxburgh, master of the household to the Scottish king James II, was his counterpart across the border. In March 1455 the financial arrangements for Roxburgh were confirmed, allowing Gray and Fauconberg to collect the sums directly from the merchants rather than having to wait for payment to be made by the collectors of customs.24 Rot. Scot. ii. 360-1; CCR, 1454-61, p. 13; CPR, 1452-61, p. 213; CP, vi. 98-99.

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.25 C219/16/2; E159/229, recogniciones Trin. In November 1454 he was appointed to his first ad hoc commission in Northumberland and a year later he was pricked as sheriff there.26 CPR, 1452-61, p. 220; CFR, xix. 144. Further occasional commissions followed, but Roxburgh and the borders remained his principal responsibility. In March 1456 a Scottish force invested the castle, but withdrew on the approach of an English army commanded by the duke of York.27 John Benet’s Chron. (Cam. Misc. xxiv), 217; Griffiths, 812. In July 1457 Gray was appointed as one of the conservators of the new truce brokered with the Scots, and a year later, along with (Sir) John Heron, he was commissioned to inquire into breaches of marcher law on both sides of the border.28 Rot. Scot. ii. 383, 387. At the same time a commission was also appointed to inquire into the repairs Gray had made at Roxburgh, a move no doubt inspired by his own desire to receive compensation for the costs involved. The commissioners’ findings in September 1458 reveal the considerable personal expenses Gray incurred at Roxburgh. According to the jurors, on 10 Mar. 1457 the tower known as ‘le Kynges Toure’ and the adjacent walls collapsed and as a result for the following 20 weeks Sir Ralph was forced to keep 100 extra soldiers there while the walls were repaired. This cost him £166 13s. 4d. in additional wages paid out of his own pocket, while he spent a further £269 13s. on the building works themselves.29 CIMisc. viii. 246.

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.30 SC8/113/5622D; Rot. Scot. ii. 392-3. The success of this petition, together with his earlier appointment as sheriff of Northumberland just four days before the Parliament opened, suggests Gray was identified, despite his connexions with the Nevilles, as a supporter of Lancaster. His appointment in June 1460 alongside two committed Lancastrians, Sir John Heron and Sir Ralph Percy, to arrest the Neville retainer Sir John Middleton, argues to the same purpose.31 A.J. Pollard, ‘Northern Retainers’, Northern Hist. xi. 67; CFR, xix. 252; CPR, 1452-61, p. 609.

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 1460.32 J. de Waurin, Chrons. ed. Hardy, v. 295, 298, 300. There is, however, no evidence to suggest that Gray conducted himself other than as loyal Lancastrian. The fact that, as sheriff, he convened the Northumberland election to the Yorkist Parliament of the following October, and returned two Neville sympathisers, Thomas Weltden* and Robert Manners*, says nothing about his own sympathies; and, although there is no certain evidence that he fought for Lancaster at any of the battles of 1460-1, the probability must be that he did. Indeed, his name, mistakenly as it transpired, appears in two lists of those killed on the Lancastrian side at the decisive battle of Towton on 29 Mar. 1461.33 C219/16/6; Paston Letters, ed. Gairdner, iii. 268; Three 15th Cent. Chrons. 160. Waurin too imagined Gray to have been killed at Towton, but on the Yorkist side: Waurin, v. 341. None the less, although Gray almost certainly fought for Lancaster, there seems, even before the change of regime, to have been a perception on the Yorkist side that his adherence might be won. On 6 Mar. 1461 the new King ordered that the tenants of three named northern lords, Gray among them, were not to be molested.34 CCR, 1461-8, p. 55-56.

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.35 C76/145, m. 10. As the situation worsened in the north, he took up arms for York in earnest. In July 1462 he travelled north with William, Lord Hastings, and (Sir) John Howard* to lay siege to Alnwick castle, which had been held by William Tailboys* for the Lancastrians since the previous November. By the end of the month Tailboys appears to have surrendered the castle without a struggle to Gray, who was given temporary control there. From there Gray moved on to join the successful siege of Dunstanburgh held for the Lancastrians by Sir Richard Tunstall† and (Sir) Philip Wentworth*.36 C.L. Scofield, Edw. IV, i. 246-9, 264; Letters and Pprs. Illust. Wars of English, ed. Stevenson, ii. [779]; Three 15th Cent. Chrons, 157.

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.37 Three 15th Cent. Chrons. 176; Historical Collns. Citizen London, 220; A.J. Pollard, North-Eastern Eng. 292-3, 298-9.

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.38 C. Ross, Edw. IV, 58-60; Scofield, i. 329-30, 333-4.

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.39 J. Warkworth, Chron. Reign Edw. IV (Cam. Soc. x), 37-39; Scofield, i. 336-8; Three 15th Cent. Chrons. 179; Historical Collns. Citizen London, 227.

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.40 CPR, 1461-7, p. 294. The normal process necessary to ensure the descent of the Gray patrimony to his son, Thomas, then aged about eight, was instituted in the palatinate of Durham, Northumberland and Newcastle-upon-Tyne, and on 9 Feb. 1465 his widow was licensed to enter the manor of Chillingham and other Northumberland property she held in jointure.41 CFR, xx. 144; C140/17/27; DURH3/4, f. 23; CPR, 1461-7, p. 388. She died in the autumn of 1469, and on 20 Nov. 1473 her son Thomas had royal licence to enter freely into all of which his father had been seised and which should descend to him.42 CFR, xx. 246; C140/41/11, CPR, 1467-77, p. 401. He continued the family tradition of service on the borders and was among those knighted by Henry Percy, earl of Northumberland, in August 1481. By 1483 he had entered the earl’s retinue and remained his servant until Northumberland’s murder six year later. He himself died in 1498.43 Hist. Northumb. xv. 328; Northern Hist. xiv. 106. The family long survived in the male line and, in the person of Sir William Gray†, was elevated to the peerage in 1624.44 The Commons 1604-29, iv. 477-8; CP, vi. 168-70.