After some schooling at Campden, Gloucestershire, under Robert Morse, and at Stratford-on-Avon, he was sent to Pembroke College, Oxford, but left without taking a degree.

Besides amassing materials for an elaborate historical pedigree of his own family, he made large collections in illustration of the history and antiquities of the hundred of Kiftsgate, Gloucestershire, and of the several places where his estate lay, which he designed a little before his death to arrange in three folio volumes on the plan of Bishop Kennett's ‘Parochial Antiquities.’ He intended in particular to publish what he called a ‘History of the Vale of Evesham.’ Graves gave Thomas Hearne, his Oxford friend, several manuscripts annotated by himself and edited by Hearne.

He died suddenly at Mickleton on 18 September 1729, and was buried in the north aisle of the parish church.

Graves had also a cabinet of about five hundred coins, chiefly Greek and Roman, which were purchased after his death by another friend, Roger Gale [q. v.] His second son, the Rev.

Richard Graves the younger [q. v.], is said to have sketched his father in the ‘Spiritual Quixote’ under the name of ‘Mr.