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BRAY, a maritime town in the barony of Rathdown, twelve miles S.E. from the General Post Office, partly in county Dublin, partly in county Wicklow, the river of Bray, here crossed by a stone bridge, being the boundary between the two counties, and dividing the Wicklow, or larger portion of the town, from the Dublin portion, or Little Bray.
In 1173 the manor was granted by the Earl of Pembroke, then Lord Deputy, to Walter de Riddlesford, one of the early Norman adventurers. In 1215 the Abbot of the Monastery of St. Thomas, near Dublin, obtained it at a rent of three, and a ?ne of 60 marks. In these as well as in subsequent times, it was frequently assailed by the mountain septs of the O’Byrnes and O’T0oles. In 1316 they destroyed the castle, but were defeated on the same day by an English force under Edmund Le Boteler. In 1402 it was the scene of a great battle between the before-named septs and the citizens of Dublin, headed by John Drake, their Provost. At the dissolution of religious houses the manor, among other lands of the Abbey of St. Thomas, was granted to Sir Thomas Brabazon, an ancestor of the Earl of Meath, who enjoys in fee at the present time the greater part of the town. The population of the parish, according to the Census of 1851, was 3,156 ; the population of the town, by the Census of 1831, was 4,373, inhabiting 724 houses.
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