Gray, Thomas (chronicler)

He was born in the 1310s, according to other sources, around 1328 ^[3] in the castle Heaton ( Cornhill-on-Tweed , Northumberland ), in the family of the knight Thomas Gray and Agnes de Bales ^[4] .

Thomas Gray Sr. actively participated in the Anglo-Scottish wars under Edward I and Edward II ^[5] . In May 1297, he almost died in a skirmish with William Wallace under the walls of Lanark , but managed to survive, and for a long time participated in military campaigns.

In May 1303, he was captured by the Scots at Melrose Abbey , and after his release in the spring of next year, he was under siege of the castle of Sterling , where he saved the life of Baron Henry de Beaumont , with whom he maintained close relations for most of his military career.

Under Bannockburn, Thomas Gray Sr. was again captured by the Scots in a skirmish on June 23, 1314, on the eve of the main battle. From 1319 to 1331, he served as the sheriff and horse of the castle of Nore , and died shortly before March 12, 1344 ^[6] .

Thomas Gray, Jr. was knighted during the life of his father, and perhaps already in the 1330s he served with him in Scotland. He probably got his first military experience in August 1332 , participating in the Scottish expedition of the English nobles and gentry , known as the "legacy campaign" and culminating in the battle of Dapplin-Moore .

In June 1338 he accompanied William Montague , 1st Earl of Salisbury on a military expedition to Flanders , and in 1340 served on the Scottish border.

In March 1344 , as a reward for his faithful service, he was appointed manager of the Middlemast Middleton manor in Northumberland , which the king inherited as a result of confiscations. On January 8, 1345, he was appointed the cannabis of the castle of Norem , and on April 10 of the same year he received the Heaton estate for service , where he later rebuilt his own castle.

In 1345, he participated in an unsuccessful expedition against Slays in Flanders, and in October 1346 he fought at the Battle of Neville Cross , for which he received a personal letter of thanks from King Edward III .

In August 1355 , during a sortie from Norem Castle, Thomas Gray, along with one of his sons, was captured by the Scots after the Battle of Nesbit-Moore . He was held in Edinburgh Castle , and on November 25, 1356, wrote a letter to King Edward III asking for help in raising money for the ransom. On August 15, 1357, he was released, and in October 1357 he was placed under the guardianship of John Gray, one of the hostages instead of the King of Scotland, David Bruce .

In August 1359, he accompanied Edward the Black Prince on a campaign to France. In October 1367 he was appointed guardian lord of the Scottish stamps .

He probably died on October 22, 1369.

The ancestral castle of Gray Heaton in 1496 was destroyed by the Scottish army of King James IV and now stands in ruins.

The main historical work of Thomas Gray is "Skalachronika" ( Scalacronica ) in five parts, written in English and Norman and covering the events of the history of England and Scotland from legendary times until 1363 ^[7] . The name of the chronicle is supposedly derived from lat. scala - letters. the Latin translation of the author’s family name (English-norm. gree - “ladder”), or is an allusion to the biblical ladder , which the chronicler himself allegedly saw in a dream.

Gray began to write it as early as 1356 , while in captivity, at Edinburgh Castle, continued after liberation, and finished about 1363. In the preface to her, he tells that he became interested in history, reading “from boredom” prose and rhymed chronicles in Latin , Anglo-Norman and Old English from the castle library ^[8] .

The first books of Gray’s writings are unoriginal and are based mainly on the reports of the book of Guild of the Wise “On the Ruin of Britain” (VII century), “Church History” of Beda Venerable (VIII century), “History of the Britons” by Galfried of Monmouth , “The Chronicles of Tisilio” Walter of Oxford (XII century), “Polychronikon” by Ranulf Higden (1347), “Golden History” by John from Tynmouth (middle of the XIV century), as well as the lost chronicle of the Franciscan Thomas from Otterburn ^[9] .

The chronicle is of great value in the sections devoted to the events of the reign of kings Edward I , Edward II and Edward III , which were compiled by the author as an eyewitness, and also based on the stories of his father.

The only known manuscript of the Gray Chronicle is preserved in the collection of Christ College in Cambridge under the number MS 133, where it was handed over by the famous manuscript collector, Archbishop of Canterbury Matthew Parker . In the reign of Henry VIII, it was used by royal antiques John Leland in compiling the work “Journey and a thorough study of English antiquities” (1549), which lost one of its parts, but managed to outline it ^[10] .

In 1836, it was published with its own comments in Edinburgh by archaeographer and archivist Joseph Stevenson , and in 1907 published in Glasgow, the famous Scottish politician, writer and publicist Baronet Herbert Maxwell .

Around 1353, Thomas Gray married Margaret de Presson, daughter and heiress of the Northumberland knight William de Presson. They had at least one son and three daughters:

• Thomas Gray 3rd (1359–1400), who married Joanna de Mowbray (d. 1410), sister of Thomas de Mowbray , 1st Duke of Norfolk, and daughter of Baron John de Mowbray (d. 1368) and Elizabeth de Segrave.
• Elizabeth Gray (d. August 11, 1412), who married Lord Philip Darcy (d. April 24, 1399).
• Agness Gray (d. 1420), who married Baron Thomas Umfraville (d. 1391).
• Joanna Gray (d. 1434), first married to Sir John Heron (d. 1386), and second marriage to Baron Ralph de Cromwell.

Gray had four sisters who married the knights of John de Eyre, William de Felton, William Heron and Gerald Salvine.

• Anglo-Scottish Wars
• Centennial war

• Maxwell, Herbert, trans. Scalacronica. The reigns of Edward I, Edward II and Edward III as Recorded by Sir Thomas Gray . - Glasgow: James Maclehose & Sons, 1907.

• Gene Bernard. History and historical culture of the Medieval West / Transl. with french E.V. Baevskaya, E.M. Beregovskaya. - M .: Languages ​​of Slavic culture, 2002. - 496 p. - (Studia historica). - ISBN 5-94457-023-7 .
• Kalmykova E.V. Images of war in historical representations of the British of the late Middle Ages. - M.: Quadriga, 2010 .-- 684 p. - (Historical research). - ISBN 978-5-91791-012-3 .

• Archer, Thomas Andrew. Gray, Thomas (c. 1369?) // Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900. - Vol. 23. - London: Smith, Elder & Co, 1890. - P. 21–22.
• King, Andy. Scaling the Ladder: The Rise and Rise of the Grays of Heaton, c. 1296-c. 1415 // North-east England in the Later Middle Ages. - Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2005. - P. 57–74.
• King, Andy. Sir Thomas Gray's Scalacronica, 1272–1363. - Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 2005.
• Richardson, Douglas. Magna Carta Ancestry: A Study in Colonial and Medieval Families, ed. Kimball G. Everingham. - 2nd. - Salt Lake City, 2011 .-- Vol. II. ISBN 1449966381
• Richardson, Douglas. Magna Carta Ancestry: A Study in Colonial and Medieval Families, ed. Kimball G. Everingham. - 2nd. - Salt Lake City, 2011 .-- Vol. III. ISBN 144996639X
• Thiolier, JC Gray, Sir Thomas (d. 1369) // Dictionary of National Biography, 2004.

• Remains of Heaton Castle, probably built by the chronicler, Sir Thomas Gray Ruins of Heaton - the Grey's Ancestral Castle