“Father Braye Jesuyte”

Abstract

Fr. John Rogers S.J., on entering as a young man of twenty the English College, Rome, stated that whilst in the service of Lady Stourton he had chanced to meet “a very aged priest named Father Richard Bray, who had lived for ten years at Douay”, by whose means he had become a Catholic (Foley. IV, 419). This would have occurred at some date not far distant from 1604, the date of John Rogers’ statement. Beyond the fact that a certain Richard Bray, of Herefordshire, entered the English College, Douay, on 28 April, 1583, and received the first tonsure in the following September (Knox. 1st & 2nd Douai Diaries, 195, 198) – he may or may not have been the same man – one knows no more of Fr.Richard Bray.