Sir Edward Bray ( – ) was an English lawyer and judge who served as a judge in Birmingham and London and as Controller of Contracts in the Indian Army Headquarters during World War I. He played

cricket Cricket is a bat-and-ball game played between two teams of eleven players on a field at the centre of which is a pitch with a wicket at each end, each comprising two bails balanced on three stumps. The batting side scores runs by striki ...

during the 1870s.Edward Bray (born 1849)
CricketArchive. Retrieved 2020-06-13. . Bray was born at Shere in

Surrey Surrey () is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in South East England, bordering Greater London to the south west. Surrey has a large rural area, and several significant urban areas which form part of the Greater London Built-up Area. ...

in 1849, the son of Reginald Bray, a solicitor and

Justice of the Peace A justice of the peace (JP) is a judicial officer of a lower or ''puisne'' court, elected or appointed by means of a commission ( letters patent) to keep the peace. In past centuries the term commissioner of the peace was often used with the sa ...

.Venn J, Venn JA (1940) '' Alumni Cantabrigienses'', part II, vol I, p.366. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Available online
Retrieved 2020-06-13.) He was educated at Westminster School, where he played cricket in the school XI.Sir Edward Bray

CricInfo ESPN cricinfo (formerly known as Cricinfo or CricInfo) is a sports news website exclusively for the game of cricket. The site features news, articles, live coverage of cricket matches (including liveblogs and scorecards), and ''StatsGuru'', a d ...

. Retrieved 2020-06-13.Bray, His Honour Sir Edward
Obituaries in 1926, '' Wisden Cricketers' Almanack'', 1927. Retrieved 2020-06-13. He went on to study at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he gained cricket

Blues Blues is a music genre and musical form which originated in the Deep South of the United States around the 1860s. Blues incorporated spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts, chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads from the Afr ...

in 1871 and 1872. Bray had already played for

Surrey County Cricket Club Surrey County Cricket Club (Surrey CCC) is a first-class club in county cricket, one of eighteen in the domestic cricket structure of England and Wales. It represents the historic county of Surrey, including areas that now form South London ...

and made his first-class cricket debut in 1870, and made a total of 30 first-class appearances between 1870 and 1879, the majority for his county side or Cambridge University. Bray's family was descended from Thomas More, and he qualified as a

barrister A barrister is a type of lawyer in common law jurisdictions. Barristers mostly specialise in courtroom advocacy and litigation. Their tasks include taking cases in superior courts and tribunals, drafting legal pleadings, researching law and ...

Lincoln's Inn The Honourable Society of Lincoln's Inn is one of the four Inns of Court in London to which barristers of England and Wales belong and where they are called to the Bar. (The other three are Middle Temple, Inner Temple and Gray's Inn.) Lincoln ...

in 1875. He served as a

County Court judge There are various levels of judiciary in England and Wales—different types of courts have different styles of judges. They also form a strict hierarchy of importance, in line with the order of the courts in which they sit, so that judges of ...

in Birmingham between 1905 and 1908 before returning to London as a judge at

Bloomsbury Bloomsbury is a district in the West End of London. It is considered a fashionable residential area, and is the location of numerous cultural, intellectual, and educational institutions. Bloomsbury is home of the British Museum, the largest mus ...

and

Brentford Brentford is a suburban town in West London, England and part of the London Borough of Hounslow. It lies at the confluence of the River Brent and the Thames, west of Charing Cross. Its economy has diverse company headquarters buildings whi ...

. During the First World War he served as the Controller of Contracts in the Indian Army Headquarters. He received a knighthood in the

1919 New Year Honours The 1919 New Year Honours were appointments by King George V to various orders and honours to reward and highlight good works by citizens of the British Empire. The appointments were published in ''The London Gazette'' and ''The Times'' in Jan ...

. Bray's son, Sir Edward Hugh Bray, also served in India during the war and played first-class cricket for

Middlesex County Cricket Club Middlesex County Cricket Club is one of eighteen first-class county clubs within the domestic cricket structure of England and Wales. It represents the historic county of Middlesex which has effectively been subsumed within the ceremonial ...

and Cambridge University.Edward Bray (born 1874)
CricketArchive. Retrieved 2020-06-13. . Bray died at

Kensington Kensington is a district in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea in the West End of London, West of Central London. The district's commercial heart is Kensington High Street, running on an east–west axis. The north-east is taken up b ...

in London in 1926 aged 76.

References

External links

* 1849 births 1926 deaths English cricketers Surrey cricketers Cambridge University cricketers Marylebone Cricket Club cricketers Gentlemen of the South cricketers County Court judges (England and Wales) {{England-cricket-bio-1840s-stub