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Sir Reginald Brayor Reynold Bray ( – 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, 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, Lady Margaret Beaufort. He was a major benefactor to St George's Chapel, Windsor, where some of the building work for which he provided funds can still be seen and identified.
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.
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 Thomas Rotherham as Treasurer, 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, a position which carried judicial responsibilities. The History of the University of Oxford, Vol II, ed. J. I Catto and T. A. R.Evans (Oxford, 1992) , pp. 743-45 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. 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 he led the development of the Council Learned, which met in the Duchy chamber at Westminster. His methods prefigured those of the notorious Richard Empson and Edmund Dudley, although his authority and responsibilities were greater than both. As such, modern historiography casts him as one of Henry VII's 'new men'. The nineteenth century compared him to a Prime Minister. "Complete peerage of England, Scotland, Ireland, Great Britain and the United Kingdom, extant, extinct, or dormant, Volume 2", George Edward Cokayne. G. Bell & sons, 1889. p. 11 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, which Henry VII briefly visited in 1498, and at Eaton, now known as Eaton Bray, in Bedfordshire. His presence among the donor portraits in the great 'Magnificat' window at Great Malvern Priory suggests that he part funded the costs.Bray is the third figure on the viewer'
Retrieved 21 September 2020. He contributed to Jesus College in Cambridge and lent his assistance to 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. The major beneficiary, however, was St George's Chapel, Windsor, both during Bray's life, and under the terms of his will.
Bray died without issue on 5 August 1503, and was buried in St George's Chapel, Windsor. 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, eldest son of his brother of the whole blood, John Bray, and William Sandys, 1st Baron Sandys, who had married Margery Bray, the daughter of Bray's elder brother of the half blood, John Bray.
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