BRAY, William (1682-1720), of Great Barrington, Glos.

Published in The History of Parliament: the House of Commons 1715-1754, ed. R. Sedgwick, 1970
Available from Boydell and Brewer

Constituency

Dates

1715 - 15 Apr. 1720

Family and Education

bap. 1682, 2nd s. of Reginald Bray of Great Barrington, Glos. by Jane, da. of William Rainton of Shilton, Warws.; bro. of Edmund Bray. unm. suc. e. bro. at Great Barrington 1712.

Offices Held

Cornet R. Horse Gds. 1700, capt. 1706; lt.-col. 7 Drags. 1711, renewed 1715.

Biography

Bray, whose family had acquired Great Barrington by marriage in the sixteenth century, owned the quarries that provided the stone for the building of Blenheim palace.1 An army officer, he served in Flanders under Marlborough. His brother Edmund married the heiress of Llantarnam in Monmouthshire. Returned for Monmouth as a Whig in 1715 with the support of John Morgan of Tredegar, he voted with the Administration on the septennial bill in 1716 and on the repeal of the Occasional Conformity and Schism Acts in 1719, but against them on the peerage bill. He died 15 Apr. 1720.

Ref Volumes: 1715-1754

Author: Eveline Cruickshanks

Notes

  • 1. Bristol & Glos. Arch. Soc. Trans. lvii. 158-75.