Reginald More Bray was born of distinguished lineage. He inherited his first name from a 15th Century estate manager, and courtier who had supported Henry Tudor's seizure of the throne from Richard III. This ancestral Reginald (sometimes referred to as "Reynold", an older form of "Reginald") fought at Bosworth: in some accounts, it was he who plucked the crown from a hawthorn bush). He then worked as an administrator for the new King Henry VII, contributing to the modernisation of the royal finances, and becoming extremely wealthy in the process. He was also involved in the construction of the Lady Chapel at Westminster and of St George's Chapel, though accounts differ as to whether he was the actual architect for these buildings. Reginald More Bray’s second name pointed to a legal pedigree, for the "More" in question was another Tudor ancestor, Thomas More, the brilliant but stubborn Lord Chancellor who had been successively loyal supporter, unswerving opponent, and martyred victim of Henry VIII. The Brays claimed that their ancestors had come to England with William The Conqueror, and they had been Lords of the Manor at Shere, south-east of Guildford, since the first Sir Reginald (or Sir Reynold) had bought the estate in the 1490’s. Reginald More Bray was born at Shere in 1842. His father - yet another Reginald - was a London solicitor. It was said that, when he died aged eighty-two, he was one of the oldest solicitors in practice. He was also one of the first solicitors to become a magistrate, after the abolition of a bar on solicitors holding the post. Reginald married Frances Longman, of the Longman publishing family, and, relatively late in life, inherited Shere from his older brother. Reginald More was Reginald and Frances’s eldest son.

Such trespassers became a recurrent problem at Shere and on neighbouring estates, particularly when campfires which they started ran out of control. In 1905, Bray and Lord Onslow established The Surrey Anti-Vagrant & Prevention Of Heath Fires Association, which employed patrols to chase off gypsies and other campers. This worked well for a while, but had to be abandoned when the men on the payroll joined up during the Great War. Bray's heir as Lord of the Manor eventually tackled the problem from a completely different angle, establishing an official campsite and charging for pitches.

Perhaps the distractions of overseeing the running of the family estates contributed to the sedate progress of Bray's professional career. He was not appointed Queen's Counsel until 1897, in the same year as T.G. Carver, a rather more prominent practitioner in commercial cases. Bray was already in his mid-fifties by then, a comparatively advanced age to become leading counsel. The change of status did not radically alter the nature of his practice, which continued to have a broad common law base, with a commercial side to it. But it did give him the opportunity on occasion to lead his younger brother Edward, who later became a County Court Judge in London. He also began to argue more cases in the Court of Appeal, Privy Council, and House of Lords.

Bray was not a showy advocate, and his powers of persuasion were based on closely reasoned argument, rather than oratorical flourish. The 'Solicitors' Journal' thought that he had a shorter temper and a less courteous manner than some of his contemporaries. These were attributes which might quickly antagonise a jury and lose a case. They were not exactly an asset in front of a Judge either. But Judges could slap down rudeness in a way which juries could not, and were less likely to let it influence their decision. Perhaps this was one reason why Bray was considered more effective in actions before a Judge alone than in jury trials. This made the Commercial Court, where juries were rare, a good environment for him, and he had a steady profile there, if a fairly low one, from 1895. But his best-remembered case concerned a building contract, rather than a bill of lading. Mr Sumpter contracted to build two houses with stables on Mr Hedges’ land for a lump sum of £565, payable on completion. Part way through the project, Mr Sumpter ran out of money and walked off the job. Both Bruce J and the Court of Appeal accepted Bray’s argument, on behalf of Mr Hedges, that Mr Sumpter was not entitled to a quantum meruit for the work which he had done. Sumpter v Hedges [1898] 1 QB 673 is now generally perceived as an early restitution case, and an illustration of the principle that restitution cannot be used to sidestep a contractual bargain.

The legal press thought that the choice was a good one: The 'Law Times' compared him to Phillimore and Walton, while The 'Law Journal' described him as "one of the soundest lawyers and keenest advocates at the Common Law Bar". In a two-part process, Bray was sworn-in privately, in Halsbury's rooms at the House of Lords, then publicly, at the Royal Courts of Justice. He was then promptly packed-off on Circuit, to try criminal cases at Northampton.

The fact that Bray filled the vacancy left by Gainsford Bruce is fitting, for, like Bruce, Bray is one of the more anonymous of the early Commercial Court Judges. His career on the Bench rather reflected his time at the Bar. He had good all-round abilities, and the law reports record him dealing with a range of King's Bench business, from crime to taxation, and from local government to railways. As at the Bar, he dealt with a number of cases about land. But although Bray was never a commercial specialist in the way that his judicial contemporaries Mathew, Kennedy, Bigham, and Walton were, a seam of decisions on bills of lading and charterparties, sale of goods and insurance, and bills of exchange and banking runs through his body of judicial work. He sat recurrently in the Commercial Court throughout his career, and was plainly sufficiently highly thought of as a commercial lawyer to be ranked among the regular Commercial Judges. His decision in Moel Tryvan v Andrew Weir [1910] 2 KB 844 that a voyage charterer with a contractual right to cancel if the ship does reach the loadport within the laydays cannot be forced to elect whether or not to exercise the right until the ship actually arrives was endorsed by the Court of Appeal and is still cited by modern textbooks as a significant case.

Bray was regarded as an even-tempered and courteous Judge, if rather austere. He seems to have been an object more of respect than affection, but counsel appreciated the fact that he actually listened to their argument before making his mind up. He does not appear ever to have been considered a serious candidate for a permanent position in the Court of Appeal (as with Arthur Channel, his comparatively advanced age when he began his career may have hindered his promotion prospects). But he spent much of his judicial career in the Court of Criminal Appeal (which, at that time, was composed entirely of King’s Bench Judges), and sat as an additional Judge in civil appeals during busy periods, particularly during the Great War. Prominent among Brays’ criminal appeals was R v Bottomley (1922) 16 Cr App R 184. The colourful and crooked Horatio Bottomley enjoyed a richly varied career, which included banking, journalism, politics, and fraud. During the Great War, he used his magazine ‘John Bull’ as a platform for violent anti-German rhetoric and for the promotion of “Victory Bonds”, the proceeds from which were supposed to help the war effort, but largely ended up in Bottomley’s own pocket. Bottomley’s argument that he could not be guilty of stealing money which subscribers had contributed voluntarily did not convince Bray and his colleagues. Bottomley was expelled from the House of Commons (for the second time: a decade earlier, his first term as an MP had come to a premature end when he had been made bankrupt), and spent five years in prison.

Bray’s guest appearances in the civil Court of Appeal included Sanday v British & Foreign Marine [1915] 2 KB 781, an important authority on the meaning of "restraint of princes" in maritime contracts. Bray was a member of the majority which upheld Clement Bailhache's decision that the phrase did not necessarily imply an actual exercise of force, and that there had been a "restraint" when the planned voyage of a British ship to Hamburg had been rendered unlawful at common law by the outbreak of war. His conclusion was upheld in the House of Lords ([1916] 1 AC 650).  

Bray maintained his reputation for hard work and dedication to duty to the very end. When he fell ill during the day's first case on 8th March 1923, he was determined to carry on. But his condition deteriorated, and he had to be carried from Court. For a few days, he appeared to be rallying. But he died at his London home in Kensington a fortnight later. Reginald Bray was buried at Shere, commemorated by a plaque in the family chapel in the Parish Church. His wife Emily Octavia, whom he had married in 1868, at the very start of his career, and six of their eight children survived him. So did the Manor of Shere, which is still owned and manged by the Bray family.