Sir Cecil Wray, 13th Baronet

Sir Cecil Wray, 13th Baronet (3 September 1734 – 10 January 1805) was an English landowner and politician, and one of the Wray baronets.

Wray was born into an old Lincolnshire family as the eldest and only surviving son of Sir John Wray, 12th Baronet (died 1752), who had married Frances (died 1770), the daughter and sole heiress of Fairfax Norcliffe of Langton, Yorkshire. Cecil was educated at Westminster School (1745) and Trinity College, Cambridge (1749).

On the death of his father in 1752 Cecil succeeded to the baronetcy and to large estates in Lincolnshire, Norfolk, and Yorkshire. He lived in a large house on the north-east side of Eastgate, Lincoln, but, through annoyance from ‘the clanging of anvils in a blacksmith's shop opposite, got disgusted’ with it. He also procured the demolition of the four gatehouses across Eastgate. From 26 December 1755 to 20 December 1757, he was a cornet in the 1st dragoons, and on 17 June 1778 he was appointed captain in the South Lincolnshire militia. He was also captain of a troop of yeomanry.

In 1760, Wray built a ‘Gothic castellated building,’ which he called Summer Castle, after his wife's name, but it has long been known as Fillingham Castle. It stands on a hill about ten miles from Lincoln.

He contested and won the Parliamentary seat of the borough of East Retford in 1768 as ‘a neighbouring country gentleman and a member of the Bill of Rights Society’ against the interest of the Duke of Newcastle and the corporation, and sat for it in the two parliaments from 1768 to 1780 (Oldfield, Parl. Hist. iv. 340). He acted as chairman of the committee for amending the poor laws, and was one of the strongest opponents of the American war.

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