Author: Gray, James
Biography:
GRAY, James (c. 1770-1830: ODNB)
No birth or baptismal records have been located but he was probably born in 1770 in Duns, Berwickshire. His parents were Thomas Gray, a shoemaker, and his wife Sarah Norrie; James was the eldest of their six children. He was educated at the parish school and apprenticed to his father before attending classes at Edinburgh university. He did not graduate but he is also thought to have studied for the ministry of the Church of Scotland. In Apr. 1794 he was made rector of Dumfries grammar school and there he met Robert Burns (q.v.) whose children he taught. On 30 Nov. 1795 he married Mary Phillips (1773-1806); they had five sons and three daughters. In Sept. 1801 he became classics master at the Edinburgh high school where he became known for opposing corporal punishment and for promoting the Lancastrian monitorial system of education. In Edinburgh he met James Hogg (q.v.) who included a portrait of Gray in his Queen’s Wake. Gray contributed to Hogg’s The Spy, to Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, and to numerous other publications. His wife died in Nov. 1806 and he married Mary Peacock in Edinburgh on 25 Oct. 1808; there were no children. Mary also wrote poetry and contributed to The Spy. Gray’s Cona, or the Vale of Clwyd was first published anonymously in 1814; reviews singled out his handling of the Spenserian stanza form for praise. It was followed in 1821 by his edition of the poems of Robert Fergusson (q.v.), to which he added a life of the poet and commentary on his writings. In Dec. 1822 the family moved to Belfast where Gray took up the post of principal to the Belfast Academy. The work did not suit him and, after being ordained an Anglican deacon in 1824, he applied for a chaplaincy with the EIC. With Mary—who was already ill and died on 26 June 1829—he travelled to Bhuj, Kutch, India, where he took on the post of chaplain and served as tutor to the young rao. He worked on translating the gospels into Kutchi and his Gospel of Matthew was published after his death in 1834. He died at Bhuj on 25 Sept. 1830 and was buried beside his wife. (ODNB 25 Oct. 2024; ancestry.co.uk 25 Oct. 2024; William Steven, History of the High School of Edinburgh [1849])