Richard Grey (priest)

Through the same influence Grey obtained the little rectory of Steane Chapel, and in 1725 the additional living of Kimcote, near Lutterworth, Leicestershire.

[3] Grey was a friend of Philip Doddridge, was well known to Samuel Johnson, who admired his learning, and was intimate with John Moore.

Grey's system consisted in changing the last syllable of names into letters which represented figures according to an arbitrary table, and in stringing together the new formations in lines with a hexameter beat.

The 'Memoria Technica' was applied to the dates and figures of chronology, geography, measures of weight and length, astronomy, and so on, and though uncouth and complicated met with great favour.

According to Francis Fauvel Gouraud, Grey indicated that a discussion on Hebrew linguistics in William Beveridge (bishop)'s Institutionum chronotogicarum libri duo, una cum totidem arithmetices chronologicæ libellis (London, 1669) inspired him to create his system of mnemotechniques which later evolved in to the Mnemonic major system.

In 1730 he published A System of English Ecclesiastical Law, extracted from the "Codex Juris Ecclesiastici Angli" of Bishop Edmund Gibson, for the use of students for holy orders.

Three pedagogic works on Hebrew were A New and Easy Method of Learning Hebrew without points, to which is added by way of Praxis the Book of Proverbs divided according to the metre, with the Masoretical readings in Roman letters (1739, 3 parts), Tabula exhibens Paradigmata Verborum Hebraicorum (1739), and Historia Josephi Patriarchi; praemittitur nova methodus Hebraice discendi.

The Last Words of David, divided according to Metre, with Notes Critical and Explanatory and the 1754 Of the Immortality of the Soul, from the Latin of I. H. Browne were translations.