AIRAY, Henry, D.D. This celebrated Puritan president of Queen’s College, Oxford, was born at Kentmere, near Windermere, but no record remains of the date of either birth or baptism. Anthony à Wood names Westmoreland as his birthplace. In the well-known Life of Bernard Gilpin it is told that when he was making preparations for martyrdom, he “received the account with great composure; and immediately after called up William Airay, a favourite domestic, who had long served him as his almoner and steward.” From the great kindness shown to our Airay by Gilpin, and from the vicinity of Kentmere to the Rectory, it does not appear to be hazarding too much to assume that this William Airay was his father, and that the family tradition is right in assigning Kentmere, not Barton or Wilford, as his birthplace. The truly apostolic man’s bounty showed itself in sending Henry and a (probable) brother Ewan or Evan to his own endowed school, where they were fully educated “in grammatical learning,” and were in attendance at Oxford when Gilpin lay a-dying. From the Athenae we glean the details of Array’s college attendance. He was “sent,” says Wood, “to St Edmund’s Hall in 1579, aged nineteen or thereabouts.” “Soon after,” he continues, “our author, Airay, was translated to Queen’s College, where he became pauper puer serviens; that is, a poor serving child that waits on the fellows in the common hall at meals, and in their chambers, and do other servile work about the college.” His transference to Queen’s College is explained by its having been Gilpin’s own college, and by his Westmoreland origin giving him a claim on Eaglesfield’s foundation. He proceeded B.A. on June 19, 1583. On June 15, 1586, he passed M.A.; B.D. in 1594; and D.D. on June 17, ...