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.

Grey was the son of an Anglican priest and graduated from Trinity Hall, Cambridge, getting his LL.B. in 1709 and LL.D. in 1720. He was ordained a priest by the Bishop of London in 1711, and he left Cambridge to take up two livings: Houghton Conquest, in Bedfordshire in 1725, and the parish of St. Giles and St. Peter in Cambridge. He served in Cambridge during the winter months and lived most of the year in the town of Ampthill, which put him near Houghton Conquest. Grey had a first marriage that ended quickly, and then he married Susanna Hatton, daughter of a Cambridge tavern keeper, in 1720, and the couple had two daughters to survive, and both of these married clergy.

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.

Grey was an extensive collector of pamphlets from the Republican side in the English Civil War, and he used this reading to combat, often with great hostility, Puritan historians and ministers. In 1720, he wrote A Vindication of the Church of England, against James Peirce, and in 1722 he wrote Presbyterian Prejudice Display'd. In reply to Jean Barbeyrac, he wrote The Spirit of Infidelity Detected, which he republished in 1735. These works were aimed primarily at rebutting the adversaries of the Established Church, as well as at vilifying Puritanism.

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