Sir Reginald Bray (c. 1440 – 5 August 1503) was an English administrator and statesman. He was the
Chancellor of the Duchy and County Palatine of Lancaster under
Henry VII, briefly
Treasurer of the Exchequer
The post of Lord High Treasurer or Lord Treasurer was an English government position and has been a British government position since the Acts of Union of 1707. A holder of the post would be the third-highest-ranked Great Officer of State i ...
, and one of the most influential men in Henry VII's government and administration. He was an estate officer and senior councillor to both
Henry VII and the king's mother,
Margaret Beaufort
Lady Margaret Beaufort (usually pronounced: or ; 31 May 1441/43 – 29 June 1509) was a major figure in the Wars of the Roses of the late fifteenth century, and mother of King Henry VII of England, the first Tudor monarch.
A descendant of ...
. He was a major benefactor to
St George's Chapel, Windsor
St George's Chapel at Windsor Castle in England is a castle chapel built in the late-medieval Perpendicular Gothic style. It is both a Royal Peculiar (a church under the direct jurisdiction of the monarch) and the Chapel of the Order of the Gart ...
, where some of the building work for which he provided funds can still be seen and identified.
Life before 1485
Reginald (Reynold) Bray was born about 1440 in
St. John Bedwardine parish, then outside of
Worcester
Worcester may refer to:
Places United Kingdom
* Worcester, England, a city and the county town of Worcestershire in England
** Worcester (UK Parliament constituency), an area represented by a Member of Parliament
* Worcester Park, London, Engla ...
, the second son of Richard Bray, a surgeon,. He was the eldest son born of his father's second marriage to Joan Troughton.
[DeLloyd J. Guth, 'Climbing the Civil-Service Pole during Civil War: Sir Reynold Bray (c.1440-1503)', in Sharon D. Michalove and A. Compton Reeves, eds., ''Estrangement, Enterprise & Education in Fifteenth Century England'', Stroud (1998) , pp. 54-56.] With his younger brother, John, Bray entered the service of
Margaret Beaufort
Lady Margaret Beaufort (usually pronounced: or ; 31 May 1441/43 – 29 June 1509) was a major figure in the Wars of the Roses of the late fifteenth century, and mother of King Henry VII of England, the first Tudor monarch.
A descendant of ...
during the period of her first marriage to Sir Henry Stafford, acquitting himself sufficiently well to become the couple's receiver-general by 1465.
Margaret sent Bray several times on missions to her son by
Edmund Tudor. For example, in 1469 he brought the young
Henry Tudor a gift of money from his mother to enable the boy to purchase a bow and arrows.
Bray continued in Margaret Beaufort's service after Stafford's death in 1471, and by 1485 had been her estate officer for more than twenty years, serving both Margaret and her successive husbands, Henry Stafford and
Thomas, Lord Stanley.
He had a leading role in the various conspiracies of 1483-1485 whose aim was to place
Henry Tudor on the English throne. Bray would continue as Margaret Beaufort's receiver-general until his own death in 1503.
Career 1485-1509
Bray was quickly established at the administrative and financial heart of the new regime. He enjoyed extraordinary and trusted access to the king whom he had first met as a boy. On 13 September 1485, Bray was appointed as
Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster
The chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster is a ministerial office in the Government of the United Kingdom. The position is the second highest ranking minister in the Cabinet Office, immediately after the Prime Minister, and senior to the Minist ...
. He retained the office for life. The office brought immense patronage and responsibilities, both judicial and financial, as well as prestige and profit to its holder. Bray was one of the seven men created a
Knight of the Bath
The Most Honourable Order of the Bath is a British order of chivalry founded by George I on 18 May 1725. The name derives from the elaborate medieval ceremony for appointing a knight, which involved bathing (as a symbol of purification) as on ...
at the coronation of
Henry VII.
In the autumn and winter of 1485 he was employed doing one of the things he did best, raising money for the king. To this end, he acted jointly with the merchant Avery Cornburgh as under-treasurer of the Exchequer from mid-October 1485; and, on 28 February 1486, he replaced
Archbishop Thomas Rotherham as
Treasurer
A treasurer is the person responsible for running the treasury of an organization. The significant core functions of a corporate treasurer include cash and liquidity management, risk management, and corporate finance.
Government
The treasury ...
, serving until July 1486. He retained some fiscal responsibility until his own death in 1503. He was Treasurer of War for the king's invasion of France in 1492. Peace with France brought him personal profit in the form of a pension from the King of France.
In 1494, he was elected Steward of the
University of Oxford
, mottoeng = The Lord is my light
, established =
, endowment = £6.1 billion (including colleges) (2019)
, budget = £2.145 billion (2019–20)
, chancellor ...
, a position which carried judicial responsibilities. He was elevated to be a knight banneret after the
battle of Blackheath in 1497. In 1501, he was elected as a
Knight of the Garter
The Most Noble Order of the Garter is an order of chivalry founded by Edward III of England in 1348. It is the most senior order of knighthood in the British honours system, outranked in precedence only by the Victoria Cross and the George ...
. He was M.P. for
Newcastle-under-Lyme in 1478, and for Hampshire in 1491, 1495, and 1497.
Neither Bray’s office of Chancellor of the Duchy, nor the various receiverships, stewardships, custodianship of castles, and the like, to which he was appointed by the king, fully explain his influence. He was above all the king’s councillor, one of many, but one of the most important. Under the king, from c. 1499 he led the development of the Council Learned, which met in the Duchy chamber at Westminster. His methods prefigured those of the notorious
Empson and
Dudley
Dudley is a large market town and administrative centre in the county of West Midlands, England, southeast of Wolverhampton and northwest of Birmingham. Historically an exclave of Worcestershire, the town is the administrative centre of the ...
, although his authority and responsibilities were greater than both. As such, modern historiography casts him as one of Henry VII’s ‘
new men
New men is a term referring to various groups of social mobility, the socially upwardly mobile in Kingdom of England, England during the House of Lancaster, House of York and Tudor period, Tudor periods. The term may refer to the new aristocrac ...
’. The nineteenth century compared him to a Prime Minister. He was a known source of patronage and of intercession with the king. This spilled over into personal profit, whether such minor gifts as food and drink, or larger rewards of money and appointments to estate office and trusteeship by those seeking his favour.
The nineteenth century classed Bray as an architect. It would be more accurate to call him a prodigious builder, both on his own behalf, and by funding and assisting friends and projects in which he took an interest. He built, for example, at his houses of
Edgcote
Edgcote is a village and former civil parish, now in the parish of Chipping Warden and Edgcote, on the River Cherwell in south-west Northamptonshire, England. The parish was bounded by the river to the north and by one of its tributaries to the ...
, which Henry VII briefly visited in 1498, and at Eaton, now known as
Eaton Bray
Eaton Bray is a village and civil parish in Bedfordshire, England. It is situated about three miles south-west of the town of Dunstable and is part of a semi-rural area which extends into the parish of Edlesborough. In the 2011 United Kingdom ...
, in Bedfordshire. His presence among the donor portraits in the great ‘Magnificat’ window at
Great Malvern Priory
Great Malvern Priory in Malvern, Worcestershire, England, was a Benedictine monastery (c. 1075 – 1540) and is now an Anglican parish church. In 1949 it was designated a Grade I listed building. It is a dominant building in the Great Malvern ...
suggests that he part funded the costs. He contributed to
Jesus College in Cambridge and lent his assistance to
Bishop Oliver King for building works at
Bath Abbey. In January 1503 he helped to lay the foundation stone of the
king’s new chapel in
Westminster Abbey
Westminster Abbey, formally titled the Collegiate Church of Saint Peter at Westminster, is an historic, mainly Gothic church in the City of Westminster, London, England, just to the west of the Palace of Westminster. It is one of the Unite ...
. The major beneficiary, however, was
St George's Chapel, Windsor
St George's Chapel at Windsor Castle in England is a castle chapel built in the late-medieval Perpendicular Gothic style. It is both a Royal Peculiar (a church under the direct jurisdiction of the monarch) and the Chapel of the Order of the Gart ...
, both during Bray’s life, and under the terms of his will.
Personal life
Bray married, about 1475, Katherine Hussey (d.1506), the younger of the two daughters and coheirs of Nicholas Hussey of
Calais, by whom he had no issue. Katherine brought him lands in
Harting
Harting is a civil parish in the Chichester District of West Sussex, England. It is situated on the northern flank of the South Downs, around southeast of Petersfield in Hampshire. It comprises the village of South Harting and the hamlets of ...
, Sussex, and claims to lands in Berkshire and Hampshire. The bulk of Bray's large estates, however, were acquired after 1485, some gained by exploiting his position and privilege.
Bray died without issue on 5 August 1503, and was buried in
St George's Chapel, Windsor
St George's Chapel at Windsor Castle in England is a castle chapel built in the late-medieval Perpendicular Gothic style. It is both a Royal Peculiar (a church under the direct jurisdiction of the monarch) and the Chapel of the Order of the Gart ...
. Bray had a brother of the whole blood, John Bray, and an elder half brother, also named John Bray. After litigation, Reginald Bray's estates were divided between his nephew,
Edmund Bray
Edmund Bray (1686–1725) of Barrington Park, Gloucestershire was a British politician who sat in the English House of Commons from 1701 to 1708 and in the British House of Commons from 1720 to 1722.
Bray was baptized on 7 September 1678, a you ...
, eldest son of his brother of the whole blood, John Bray, and
William Sandys, 1st Baron Sandys
William Sandys, 1st Baron Sandys (1470 – 4 December 1540), KG, of The Vyne in the parish of Sherborne St John, Hampshire, was an English diplomat and was a favourite of King Henry VIII, whom he served as Lord Chamberlain. In the 1520s he bui ...
, who had married Margery Bray, the daughter of Bray's elder brother of the half blood, John Bray.
After-Life
No tomb is extant for Bray, although a coffin said to be his was found in 1740. The extent of his financial contribution to the building works for the completion of the chapel first begun at Windsor by
King Edward IV is, however, marked by repeated stone bosses and other decoration in stone, metal, and other materials. They display his coat of arms or his initials within the garter, and above all, his
rebus
A rebus () is a puzzle device that combines the use of illustrated pictures with individual letters to depict words or phrases. For example: the word "been" might be depicted by a rebus showing an illustrated bumblebee next to a plus sign (+ ...
of the hemp-brake or hemp-bray. The hemp-bray was a fairly crude implement used to separate the fibres of hemp from the tough outer coating of the dried stems of the plant, and was an effective pun on Bray's name. By one count, one hundred and seventy five examples are found in the Chapel. A further ten such images, carved in wood, have recently been added by way of embellishments to the new furniture created by Treske of Thirsk for the Bray Chapel. In the twenty-first century Bray was again remembered and memorialised for his benefaction. As part of a fundraising effort for major works, the dean and canons established a 'Bray Fellowship' with
HRH Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, as honorary senior fellow, recognising the contributions of ten major donors to the works. A Canadian Bray fellowship was also established, with similar aims. In 2017 the
Royal Mail issued a commemorative set of
postage stamps
A postage stamp is a small piece of paper issued by a post office, postal administration, or other authorized vendors to customers who pay postage (the cost involved in moving, insuring, or registering mail), who then affix the stamp to the f ...
celebrating
Windsor Castle
Windsor Castle is a royal residence at Windsor in the English county of Berkshire. It is strongly associated with the English and succeeding British royal family, and embodies almost a millennium of architectural history.
The original c ...
and
St George's Chapel in which one of the quartet of stamps showing the Chapel was an illustration of a stone roof boss carved with Bray's initials set within the garter.
Notes
References
*
* https://archive.org/details/bray005/page/n3/mode/2up
*
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Bray, Reginald
1440s births
1503 deaths
People from St John's, Worcester
Chancellors of the Duchy of Lancaster
Knights banneret of England
Knights of the Garter
Knights of the Bath
16th-century English people
Burials at St George's Chapel, Windsor Castle