Title:
CHARLES GRAY OF COLCHESTER
Level: Category
Estate and Family records
Level: Fonds
CHARLES GRAY OF COLCHESTER
Scope and Content:
Key to Classification
D/DRg 1 Gray MSS (miscellaneous)
D/DRg 2 De Vere - Bayning documents
D/DRg 3 Simonds d'Ewes papers
D/DRg 4 Charles Gray correspondence, 1728-1780
D/DRg 5 Petkum diplomatic correspondence, 1706-1719 (transferred to British Museum, February 1948)
D/DRg 6 Medieval deeds of Colchester
D/DRg 7 Further medieval deeds of Colchester

The history of this extremely miscellaneous collection is obscure, but it was probably formed artificially in the 18th century by Charles Gray, lawyer, antiquary, and MP for Colchester. It includes the majority of the documents found at Birch Hall by Dr J.H. Round and catalogued by him for the Fourteenth Report of the Historical Manuscripts Commission (1895), but some items then catalogued were missing when the first part of the collection was deposited in the Essex Record Office in 1946 (A1104). Among these were a quitclaim with autograph of Richard Earl of Warwick, 1465 [held by the British Library], and Charles Gray's parliamentary notebook, 1747-1775 [still missing,1967, and not traced by secretary of the History of Parliament Trust].

Dr Round's catalogue was selective, and there is a considerable number of additional documents in the collection which he either did not see or chose not to include in his catalogue. He did, however, include a few which evidently belong, not to the artificial collection, but to the Round family muniments [D/DR, D/DRb, D/DRc], e.g. D/DRg 1/2, 1/16-23, 1/50, 1/123-145, and perhaps others. Charles Gray's own correspondence (a small portion of which is in D/DRb ...) was also included in the HMC Report, and will accordingly be found here.

In this catalogue the more important items have been described in some detail, but for some of them there are much fuller entries in the HMC Report. A copy of the Report, numbered in accordance with the following list, and with notes of a few errata, is available in the Essex Record Office Library.

Documents relating to the De Vere and Bayning families, including some catalogued in the HMC Report, have been placed in a separate section (D/DRg 2). They may have been acquired by Charles Gray through acting as attorney to the Rt Hon. Richard Rigby, by whom part of the De Vere - Baying estates was purchased.

Certain items are initialled 'M' by Philip Morant, who, in the preface to his History of Colchester, acknowledges his indebtedness to his friend Charles Gray for 'several curious materials'.

A second group of records, added to this deposit in January 1954 (A2529), included several additional documents catalogued in 1895 for the HMC Report. Among them were a rental of the Hundreds of Ongar and Harlow with account of the 'wardstaff of Ongar', 1542-1546 (D/DRg 1/197), papers in the case of Sir John Shaw v. Mayor and Corporation of Colchester, 1676-1677 (D/DRg 1/201), a petition from free burgesses of Maldon, 1679 (D/DRg 1/202), warrants relating to naval affairs in Essex, 1702-1708 (D/DRg 1/203-206), and papers relating to petition against return of Sir Thomas Webster, baronet, as MP for Colchester, 1706 (D/DRg1/207).

An interesting series of medieval deeds relating to Colchester was not catalogued by Dr Round in the HMC Report. They include:
the foundation charter of John of Colchester's chantry in St Helen's chapel, Maidenburgh Street, 1322 (see Philip Morant, History and antiquities of the county of Essex (London 1768), volume 1, pp. 153-154, and a translation in W. Gurney Benham, The Oath Book of Colchester, p.199) (D/DRg 6/1); and
2 licences in mortmain for Joseph Elianore's chantry in the church of St Mary-at-the-Walls (see Morant, volume 1, p. 155), 1338 (D/DRg 6/3,4).

Two documents relate to the Crutched Friars: the confirmation by the Guild of St Helen of Thomas Godston's chantry, 1510 (D/DRg 6/8), and the grant of the advowson of the chapel to the Bailiffs of Colchester, 1392 (D/DRg 6/9) (see Morant, volume 1, pp. 149-150). Morant seems to have owned the former document, although he dates it to 1509. Morant does not mention a grant of an annual rent to St Botolph's Priory for the obit of Edmund Haverlond, 1413 (D/DRg 6/6,7), although he mentions the establishment of a chantry in 1431 by the will of Edmund Haverland, in the Crutched Friars, subsequently absorbed into the Guild of St Helen.

The medieval deeds of Colchester in this second deposit were placed in a separate section (D/DRg 6), but the remaining deeds and papers were added to the existing sections D/DRg 1, D/DRg 2 and D/DRg 4 (Miscellaneous, De Vere - Bayning, and Charles Gray Correspondence respectively).
Admin History:
For Charles Gray MP (1696-1782) of Hollytrees, Colchester, lawyer, magistrate and antiquarian, see:
Oxford Dictionary of National Biography;
The History of Parliament: the House of Commons 1715-1754, ed. R. Sedgwick (1970) and The History of Parliament: the House of Commons 1754-1790, ed. L. Namier and J. Brooke (1964), both available from the website www.historyofparliamentonline.org (consulted 26 January 2018); and
John Bensusan Butt and Shani D'Cruze, Essex in the Age of Enlightenment. Essays in historical biography (2nd edition, 2009), pp. 61-85.
Related Unit of Description:
A Book of Common Prayer and New Testament (1666 editions, bound together), heavily annotated by Charles Gray in an anti-Catholic spirit, were offered for sale by Bernard Quaritch Ltd in January 2018 (list 2018/4, item 14). They were not bought by the Essex Record Office.