Page 6 - Bulletin 3 1999

3

Early Career

Robert Gray was born in Bishop Wearmouth, near Sunderland, county Durham, on 3 October

1809, the son of the Revd. Robert Gray (afterwards Bishop of Bristol), and his wife,
Elizabeth Camplin. His paternal grandfather - another Robert Gray - was a London

silversmith, while his mother’s father was an Alderman in the city of Bristol.

He was one of fourteen children, a sickly child, whose formal schooling was cut short when

he was a 16 or 17 year old schoolboy at Eton, when he was badly injured by a crowd of boys
who trampled him underfoot. For many months thereafter he was forced to move about in a

wheelchair, or with the help of crutches. Together with his sister Fanny, and an elder brother,
Edward, he was sent on an extended trip to the Barbados, where his sister died. Returning

home, he went next to France and Switzerland, before entering University College, Oxford,

matriculating on 25 June 1827, and achieving a somewhat ignominious honorary fourth class
in 1831. He travelled once more in France, Switzerland and Italy during 1832, then came

back home to be ordained deacon, in St. Margaret’s Church, Westminster by his father, the
Bishop of Bristol, on 3 March 1833. The next year was eventful: he was priested by the

Bishop of Bath and Wells on 11 January, proceeded MA, was offered and accepted the living

of Whitworth in the diocese of Durham and, on 28 September, lost his father. At the end of
the year Robert went north to take up his career as a priest of the Established Church.

He was married on 6 September 1836 to Sophia Wharton Myddleton (“Sophy”), the daughter

of Robert Wharton Myddleton, of Grinkle Park, Yorkshire, and Old Park, Whitworth in
county Durham.

In 1840 Robert became a Local Secretary of the SPG, and in 1845 he was presented to the
living of Stockton-on-Tees. He was made an Honorary Canon of Durham Cathedral.

Anglicanism in South Africa before Gray’s Arrival

Traditionally, the first Anglican service conducted at the Cape is said to have taken place on

20 April 1749 when a Church of England chaplain, on his way home from India, landed and