Reginald Bray

Biography

Reginald More Bray was the elder son and heir of Reginald Bray, JP, FSA, of Shere, Surrey, and of Frances Bray, née Longman, of the publishing family. The Bray family was one of the oldest in England, being able to trace its descent from the time of the Conquest. The manor of Shere, whose lordship Bray inherited from his father, was first granted to Sir Reginald Bray by Henry VII and has been in the family ever since. Among his ancestors were Sir Thomas More, in whose honour he received his middle name, while his paternal grandmother was a sister of the political economist the Rev Thomas Malthus. A man with strong local connections, Bray was appointed Deputy Lieutenant of Surrey in 1902.

After attending Harrow School, Bray went up to Trinity College, Cambridge as a scholar, graduating as twelfth wrangler 1865. A pupil of Wakin Williams, he was called to the Bar at the Inner Temple in 1868. He then joined the South-Eastern Circuit, and for several years 'devilled for J. P. Murphy QC. He built a "substantial, if not a commanding" common law practice, He became Recorder of Guildford and a bencher of the Inner Temple in 1891, and a Queen's Counsel in 1897, after an unusually long time at the junior bar. In his last year at the bar, he won, in quick succession, three cases in the House of Lords after losing in the Court of Appeal, which was said to have played a role in his rapid promotion to the bench from the time he took silk.