suc. fa. 29 July 1674 as 2nd Bar. GREY of Warke
First sat 10 Nov. 1674; last sat 9 June 1675
bap. 27 Oct. 1630, 3rd but o. surv. s. of William Grey, Bar. Grey of Warke1 and Cecilia, da. of Sir John Wentworth of Gosfield, Essex; bro. of Hon. Thomas Grey‡. educ. St Paul’s 1647.2 m. bet. 1649 and 1654, Catherine (d.1682), da. and h. of Sir Edward Ford of Harting, Suss., wid. of Hon. Alexander Colepeper, 3s. 1da. d. 15 June 1675; will 7 Jan., pr. 18 June 1675.3
Asst., Royal African Co. 1674-5.4
Associated with: Epping Place, Epping, Essex;5 Up Park [Uppark], Harting, Suss.6
Likenesses: oil on canvas by Sir Peter Lely, c.1675, English Heritage, Audley End, Essex.
Ralph Grey became the 2nd Baron Grey of Warke through the death in quick succession of his elder brother Thomas Grey‡ in February 1672 and then of their father William Grey, Baron Grey of Warke, in July 1674. At the death of Thomas Grey, a commissioner for trade and plantations and a gentleman pensioner, his father was left with only two surviving children – Ralph and his sister Catherine – from a brood which he claimed at one point had numbered nine sons and eight daughters.7
Grey of Warke appears to have been devastated by the loss of his favourite son Thomas and according to later accounts held a deep affection both for his only surviving daughter Catherine and her husband from 1667, Sir Charles North, later Baron Grey of Rolleston and 5th Baron North, who lived with his father- and brothers-in-law in their house in Charterhouse Square.8 Grey of Warke may well have seen the couple as his preferred heirs rather than Ralph and he was able to arrange that Sir Charles North be created Baron Grey of Rolleston by writ of summons on 24 Oct. 1673. The timing and name of this new title were hardly fortuitous, coming a little over a year after Thomas Grey’s death and celebrating the name and lucrative dower estate of Grey of Warke’s daughter, Catherine Grey. The title was, in effect, an indirect ennoblement of the old Baron’s daughter and perhaps a snub to his actual heir apparent, Ralph.
When he succeeded to his father’s title, Ralph came into the possession of substantial property in both the north and south of England. There were the Grey estates in Chillingham in Northumberland, as well as Up Park at Harting in Sussex which he had acquired through his marriage in the early 1650s to Catherine Ford, widow of the eldest son of John Colepeper, Baron Colepepper, and heiress in 1670 to her father’s estate in Sussex. Most controversially, there were the estates acquired by his father in Epping and by his brother Thomas in Gosfield, both in Essex. The 2nd Baron’s possession of these latter properties was to prove contentious within the Grey family for many decades. At dispute was whether Thomas Grey had bought the property for himself with money supplied by his father as an advance, or whether his father had intended Thomas to purchase the property in trust for himself. After Thomas’s death, the 1st Baron Grey of Warke had, in a settlement of 1672, placed his Gosfield and Epping property in trust. Nevertheless, at his coming to the title the 2nd Baron Grey of Warke took possession of the Gosfield estate himself, claiming that it had been his brother’s property, and not his father’s to put in trust, and that he took it as his brother’s rightful heir. When he began to charge the estate with debts and legacies, his recently ennobled brother-in-law, Grey of Rolleston, initiated an action in chancery to protect what he saw as his wife Catherine’s interests. He alleged that the second Baron had destroyed the first Baron’s original will and had forged a new one to deprive his sister Catherine of the Essex estates her father had promised her. In 1680 Grey of Rolleston, now 5th Baron North, was still accusing the 2nd Baron’s widow and son Ford Grey, 3rd Baron Grey of Warke, of trying to defraud his wife of the lands due to her by her father’s settlement.9
The 2nd Baron Grey of Warke took after his father in his devotion to Parliament, but his career there was cut short by his unexpected death less than a year after succeeding to the title. He only sat in one session, that of April-June 1675, but during that period he attended every single meeting of the House. Other than sitting constantly, he does not appear to have taken an active role. He was nominated to only six committees, two of them on private bills and the others on more general bills, such as those to prevent frauds (15 Apr.), to clarify a previous act against recusants (21 Apr.), to confirm augmentations made to small vicarages (18 May), and to regulate fishing (31 May). Grey of Warke died on 15 June 1675, less than a week after the prorogation of this session. Upon his death he left £2,000 each to his two younger sons, Ralph Grey, later 4th Baron Grey of Warke, and Charles and an additional £2,000 to his daughter Catherine, which money was to be levied from the disputed Gosfield estate.10 He was succeeded in the barony and his far-flung estates by his eldest son Ford, who was still a minor.
C.G.D.L.- 1 J. Hodgson, History of Northumberland, xiv. 328-9.
- 2 St Paul’s School Regs, 182.
- 3 TNA, PROB 11/348.
- 4 Davies, Royal African Company, 382.
- 5 Essex Arch. Trans. n.s. xxv. 330-1.
- 6 VCH Suss. iv. 10-11.
- 7 Bodl. North mss c.4, ff. 283-4.
- 8 Bodl. North mss adds. c.11, f. 30; TNA, DEL 1/155.
- 9 North, Lives, iii. 249-51; TNA, C6/62/53, 54; C22/788/54; C6/35/100.
- 10 C6/76/84, 62, 65, 71.