Background
Grey was born on 11 February 1778, at Alnwick, Northumberland, where his father was a medical practitioner. His education was chiefly left to his mother, who had an early breach with his father, and moved with her son to Edinburgh.
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Henry Grey
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Grey"s sympathies were wholly with the evangelical portion of the church, then gradually acquiring position and power. He gained attention and preferment: his first charge was the parish of Stenton in East Lothian. This was a quiet place, where he spent 12 years.
Grey"s discourses were presented in a scholarly style and fervent manner, leading the way for Andrew Mitchell Thomson and Thomas Chalmers.
Apocrypha Controversy
In 1821 Grey was appointed to the New North Church, one of the parish churches of Edinburgh, and four years after to Saint Mary"s, a church recently erected by the town council in a new part of the town. In the ecclesiastical struggle of the next few years, Grey opposed the civil courts.
In the year after the disruption, 1844, he was chosen to fill the chair of the church"s General Assembly. Grey had taken part in agitation against slavery in the West Indies.
Grey died suddenly in his eighty-first year, on 13 January 1859.
He is buried in Street Cuthbert"s Churchyard at the west end of Princes Street. A marble bust of Henry Grey stands in New College, Edinburgh, sculpted by Patric Park in 1853.
Politics
A political reformer, he was the target of adverse criticism from some who agreed with his religious views.
