WRAY, John (1619-64), of Glentworth, Lincs.

As the eldest son of Lincolnshire’s foremost godly knight, Wray’s decision to side with Parliament in the civil war was probably a foregone conclusion. In December 1642, he was commissioned as a captain of horse under Theophilus Clinton, 4th earl of Lincoln, and by April 1643 was serving under another of the county’s parliamentarian peers, Francis Willoughby, 5th Baron Willoughby of Parham.1E113/9; SP28/33, ff. 410-11. Captured by the Newark Cavaliers in May 1643, he was still a prisoner in March 1644, when one of the parliamentarian newsbooks lamented that more effort had not been made to secure the release of ‘one of so religious a temper, so firmly spirited in the cause’.2Mercurius Britanicus no. 28 (18-25 Mar. 1644), 220 (E.39.5); Dalton, Wrays of Glentworth, ii. 6-7. It is possible that he was still a prisoner by July 1644, when his troop was ‘otherwise disposed of’.3E113/9. In October 1645, he stood as a candidate in the recruiter election at Great Grimsby, although his main aim in doing so was probably to assist his uncle, Sir Christopher Wray*, in defeating a challenge from the Wrays’ local rival, Colonel Edward King.4Supra, ‘Great Grimsby’.

Although Wray was added to the Lindsey commission of the peace at the height of the Presbyterian ascendancy at Westminster in the spring of 1647, he emerged as a leading opponent of Colonel King and his attacks on the county committee for its willingness to put the collection of assessments for the New Model before local liberties.5C. Holmes, ‘Col. King and Lincs. politics, 1642-6’, HJ xvi. 451-84. In March and April 1647, Wray signed letters to Parliament from the Lincolnshire county committee denouncing King as a delinquent.6C231/6, p. 51; Bodl. Nalson VI, f. 72; Tanner 58, f. 39. Wray retained his place on the Lindsey bench after the regicide and was named to several assessment commissions under the Rump, although there is no evidence that he was active in local government.

Wray probably welcomed the establishment of the protectorate, and in the elections to the first protectoral Parliament in the summer of 1654 he was returned for one of Lincolnshire’s ten county seats, apparently in last (i.e. tenth) place.7Supra, ‘Lincolnshire’. He probably owed his election to the strength of his father’s interest in the county and as one of its leading landowners – Sir John having settled lands in Lincolnshire on him worth £2,500 a year.8C7/424/11. His only appointment in this Parliament was on 31 October 1654, when he was named to a committee concerning the draining of the Lincolnshire fens.9CJ vii. 380a. He stood for Lincolnshire again in the elections to the second protectoral Parliament in the summer of 1656, but received only about 150 votes, which was not sufficient to place him among the ten successful candidates.10Supra, ‘Lincolnshire’.

Wray seems to have been well regarded by the restored Rump, for in the summer of 1659 he was appointed a colonel of horse and added to the Yorkshire, Derbyshire and Norfolk militia commissions.11CSP Dom. 1659-60, p. 564; CJ vii. 732a, 744b. Why he was thus favoured by the Rump is not clear, but it seems to have earned him the suspicion of the crown, and by 1661 he had been omitted from all local commissions.

Wray died suddenly and intestate in the autumn of 1664 and was buried at Glentworth on 29 October.12Dalton, Wrays of Glentworth, ii. app. p. 15. His estate passed in rapid succession to his younger brothers Sir Christopher Wray and Sir Bethell Wray – neither of whom sat in Parliament – and then, following the latter’s death without issue in 1672, to Sir John’s daughter.13Lincs. fams. temp. Charles II’, 126; J.T. Cliffe, The Puritan Gentry Besieged (2002), 52.