Zachary Grey
Zachary Grey (6 May 1688 – 1766) was an English priest, controversialist, and conservative spokesman for the Church of England. He was also an editor, commentator on William Shakespeare, and critic of dissenter historians.
Life
Grey was the son of an Anglican priest and graduated from
Grey died in Ampthill in 1766 and was buried at his church in Houghton Conquest. His wife survived him for five years, and, after her death, a large portion of Grey's papers were purchased by John Nichols.
Works
Grey was an extensive collector of pamphlets from the Republican side in the
In 1723, Grey also began countering historians whose accounts of the Civil War praised the Republican side. He produced a volume reproducing many of the sermons of Puritan ministers during the Long Parliament in A Century of Eminent Presbyterian Preachers. This was written to target Edmund Calamy, but Grey countered John Oldmixon as well. His most consistent opponent, however, was Daniel Neal, and Grey wrote a series of pamphlets from 1723 – 1739 attacking Neal. He also countered Sir Isaac Newton's work with Examination of the 14th chapter of Sir Isaac Newton's observations upon the prophecies of Daniel. Grey showed the shallowness of Newton's biblical scholarship and accused him of Arianism. Finally, in 1744 Grey's A Review of Mr. Daniel Neal's History of the Puritans concluded the battle with Neal. For Grey, all of these historians, including Newton, were glorifying the regicides, whom Grey considered murderers, and trying to swing the public mood back to 1649. The stakes, therefore, were very high.
Grey's anti-Puritanism showed in his more literary efforts as well. In 1744, he produced an edition of Samuel Butler's Hudibras. Because of his elaborate background knowledge of the period of the Civil War, Grey's edition featured a vast array of notes and other apparatus to make the identifications in the poem explicit and to portray Butler's targets in the most unflattering light. However, this edition engendered a new quarrel. William Warburton had supplied some notes for the edition to a mutual friend, and Warburton claimed that the notes were used without explicit permission, and Warburton said that the edition was an "execrable heap of nonsense."
Grey fought back against Warburton. He issued three pamphlet replies, and in 1747 he produced Remarks upon a Late Edition of Shakespeare in response to Warburton's Shakespear. In it, he accused Warburton of sabotaging
References
- ^ "Grey, Zachary (GRY704Z)". A Cambridge Alumni Database. University of Cambridge.
- Mandelbrote, Scott. "Zachary Grey." In Matthew, H.C.G. and Brian Harrison, eds. The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. vol. 23, pp. 898 – 90. London: Oxford University Press, 2004. The first edition of this text is available at Wikisource: . Dictionary of National Biography. London: Smith, Elder & Co. 1885–1900.