Gray, Andrew, seventh Baron Gray d. 1663, was the eldest son of Patrick, sixth lord Gray [qv.], better known as Master of Gray, and his second wife, Lady Mary Stewart. He succeeded as Lord Gray in 1612, and on 22 Feb. 1614 received a crown charter of the lands of Fowlis and others to himself and his wife, Margaret Ogilvie, daughter of Walter, lord Deskford, and relict of James, earl of Buchan. On the re-formation of the company of Scots gens d'armes in France in 1624, under the captaincy of Lord Gordon, earl of Enzie, Gray was appointed lieutenant, and rendered considerable service in the French wars of that period. On the outbreak of hostilities between England and France in 1627 he came to England, and there married Mary, lady Sydenham, widow of Sir John Sydenham, she being fourscore, and he four-and-twenty, writes a correspondent to Edmund Parr (State Papers, Dom. 1628, p. 58). But the writer must have been mistaken, at least about the age of Gray. In the following year both Lord and Lady Gray were convicted of being popish recusants, and the lady's estates in Kent and Somersetshire were seized by the king, who decided to accept two-thirds thereof in payment of all forfeitures (ib. 1629, pp. 447, 522).
     In 1628 Gray subscribed, with several other Scottish barons, a submission in reference to his teinds in favour of Charles I at Whitehall. He was also prevailed upon by the king to resign his hereditary sheriffship of Forfarshire for fifty thousand merks (about 2,900l. sterling), and obtained the king's bond for that sum, but the money was never paid. In 1628, also, Charles ordered the Scottish council of war to admit Gray as one of their number, whose affection to his service he attests; and in 1630 Gray sat as one of the Scottish parliamentary commissioners on the Fisheries Treaty. When Charles took arms against the Scots in 1639 he employed Gray, then on leave of absence from service in France, to obtain information about the progress of his opponents in Scotland. Gray met the king at York on his return, and reported the advance of the covenanters upon Berwick and their strength. On 29 May he received a passport to repair to his charge under the French king, in whose service at that time he commanded a regiment of a thousand foot (W. Forbes Leith, The Scots Men-at-Arms and Life Guards in France, ii. 211). In the following August, however, he was again in England (State Papers, Dom. 1639, pp. 58, 67, 139, 247, 449).
     Gray was a strong royalist, and was implicated with Montrose in some proceedings against the covenanters. He was excommunicated as an obdurate papist by the general assembly in 1649 (Lamont, Diary, p. 12). Under the Commonwealth he was fined 1,500l. sterling, by Cromwell's act of grace and pardon, in 1654. The fine was reduced in the following year to 500l., for payment of which, probably, he borrowed from his brother-in-law, David, second earl of Wemyss, the sum of ten thousand merks (about 556l. sterling); the earl wrote off that amount in 1677 as a desperate debt (Sir William Fraser, Memorials of the Family of Wemyss of Wemyss, i. 287). At the request of Charles II and his brother James, duke of York, while they were in exile in France, Gray resigned his lieutenancy of the Scots gens d'armes in favour of Marshal Schomberg, to the great regret of many of the Scots, as the office had always formerly been held by a Scotchman, and was never recovered. He lived in Scotland after the Restoration, and was in 1663 appointed a justice of the peace for the county of Perth. He died in the course of that year.
     By his first marriage Gray had issue one son, Patrick, who was killed, between 1630 and 1639, at the siege of a town in France, and one daughter, Anna, who was styled Mistress of Gray. On his visit to Scotland in 1639 Gray married his daughter to William Gray, the son and heir of his kinsman, Sir William Gray of Pittendrum, and, resigning his honours and estates into the king's hands, obtained a new patent in favour of himself in life-rent and the heirs male of his daughter and her husband in fee; this arrangement was ratified by parliament in 1641. Gray, however, married again, his third wife being Catherine Cadell, and by her he had a daughter, Frances, who in 1661 was seized in London, on her way to France, at the instigation of Chancellor Glencairn, and sent to Newgate until she found bail, which she pleaded she could not do, being a stranger and destitute of friends (State Papers, Dom. 1661). She afterwards married Captain Mackenzie, son of Murdoch Mackenzie, bishop of Moray and Orkney. Gray was succeeded by his grandson, Patrick, the son of his daughter Anna.

Sources:
     Acts of Parl. Scotl. vols. vi. vii.
     Earl of Stirling's Reg. of Royal Letters, pp. 169, 253, 675
     State Papers, Dom. 1628-61.

Contributor: H. P. [Henry Paton]

Published: 1890