THOMAS BRAY

PRIEST AND MISSIONARY (15 FEB 1730)

In late 17th England they started running out of places to bury people. Consequently, people would dig up coffins and take the bones to a 'bone-house' and reuse the grave. When reopening these coffins, 1 out of 25 coffins were found to have scratch marks on the inside and they realized they had been burying people alive. So the clergy decreed that they should tie a string on the wrist of the corpse, lead it through the coffin and up through the ground and tie it to a bell. Someone would have to sit out in the graveyard all night (hence the 'graveyard shift') to listen for the bell. Thus, someone could be 'saved by the bell'.
Thomas Bray, whose life and ministry we celebrate today, was born in Marton, near Chirbury, Shropshire in 1658. He was educated at Oswestry School and Oxford University, where he earned a B.A. degree with All Souls College and a M.A. with Hart Hall. Around that time, in 1696, Thomas Bray, by now an English Country Parson, was invited by the Bishop of London to be responsible for the oversight of Church work in the colony of Maryland. Three years later, in 1699, as the Bishop's Commissary, he sailed to America for his first, and only, visitation. He failed to attract the better-off young clergy for America and sailed with two poor priests, but this increased his resolve to establish libraries for clergy and pious lay-folk.
As an aside, This sounds like the original brain drain. For those of you not in the know, the Brain Drain was a emigration, in the 1950's, of well trained, highly skilled U.K. citizens to the U.S. and the British Commonwealth.

Bray was deeply concerned about the neglected state of the American churches, and the great need for the education of clergymen, lay people, and children. At a general visitation of the clergy at Annapolis, before his return to England, he emphasized the need for the instruction of children, and insisted that no clergyman be given a charge unless he had a good report from the ship on which he came over. "whether.... he gave no matter of scandal, and whether he did constantly read prayers twice a day and catechize and preach on Sundays, which, notwithstanding the common excuses, I know can be done by a minister of any zeal for religion."
Bray envisioned a library for each parish in America, funded by booksellers and stocked with books donated by authors. These libraries were meant to encourage the spread of the Anglican church in Britain's colonies, and thus were heavily weighted with religious texts, but also included a large number of books on politics, law, history, mathematics, medicine, trade and commerce, carpentry and home building, poetry and other practical and entertaining works. Though he spent only ten weeks in Maryland, he founded many lending libraries as well as numerous schools. It was a major endeavour, as at the time the only other public libraries in the American colonies were at a small number of universities. His first American lending library on the American continent was established in Annapolis, Maryland, with 1,095 volumes. It was set up with a contribution from Princess Anne, the heir to the throne, and fifty others followed for which he collected £1,500 giving £500 himself.

Recognizing the need for missionary teachers, he returned to England in the summer of 1700 to form the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, (SPG) with the Archbishop of Canterbury as its head. The SPG won the full financial support of both the church and the crown and, in the ensuing seven decades, it established about 170 schools stretching from the northern reaches of New England to Georgia and South Carolina and westward into Pennsylvania. More than 80 teachers and 18 religious instructors helped teach thousands of children to read, write, calculate and pray in English and assured the place of English as the dominant language in colonies peopled by French, Dutch, German, Native Americans and African slaves, as well as English. The SPG remained a major force in education until the end of the Revolutionary War, when American colonists severed their official ties to the mother church as well as the mother country.

As well as the founding the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel he was also instrumental in founding the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, which was formed to raise funds to establish libraries and encourage education and conversion to the Anglican church of the children in the colonies. Both of these organizations are still effectively in operation after two and a half centuries of work all over the world.

From 1706 to 1730, Bray was the rector of St. Botolph Without, in Aldgate, London where until his death he served with energy and devotion, while continuing his efforts on behalf of black slaves in America and in the founding of parochial libraries.

When the deplorable condition of English prisons was brought to his attention, he set to work to influence public opinion and to raise funds to alleviate the misery of inmates. He organized Sunday "Beef and beer" dinners in prisons, and advanced proposals for prison reform.

It was Thomas Bray who first suggested the idea of founding a humanitarian colony for the relief of honest debtors, but he died before the Georgia colony became a reality.

Thomas Bray died on the 15th of February, 1730 at the age of 72, without having received any adequate recognition, save in the many good works with which his name is connected.