Ray was a member of the well-known ‘Gentlemen's Society’ of Spalding, to which Newton, Pope, Bentley, and Gay sometime belonged [see Johnson, Maurice].
He was secretary in 1735, and afterwards vice-president, and exhibited at meetings of the society many antiquities of great value and interest (Stukeley, Diaries and Letters, Surtees Soc.
He communicated a paper by himself on ‘The Truth of the Christian Religion demonstrated from the Report propagated throughout the Gentile world about the birth of Christ, that a Messiah was expected, and from the authority of Heathen Writers, and from the Coins of the Roman Emperors.’ It was not printed.
To the Royal Society Ray sent ‘Account of a Waterspout raised upon Land in Lincolnshire’ (Phil.
271), which Maurice Johnson described to Dr. Birch as ‘the most remarkable phenomenon communicated to us since Newton's time.’ Ray was also an authority upon coins (Gent.
He is described as a ‘most ingenious and worthy man, possessed of good learning, but ignorant of the world, indolent and thoughtless, and often very absent.’ Some amusing instances of his absence of mind were communicated to Nichols by his friend, Samuel Pegge (Illustr.