The Reverend Dr Thomas Bray (1658 – 1730) was an English clergyman. Henry Compton, Bishop of London, appointed him in 1696 as his commissary to organize the Church of England in Maryland, and he was in that colony in 1699–1700. Whilst out there he organised a scheme with four laymen for establishing parish libraries in England and America, out of which grew the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge. Its object was to encourage Christian education and literature in both Britain and America.
Bray took a great interest in colonial missions, especially among the Native Americans and in 1702 he founded the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts to provide a ministry to English settlers in North America after becoming aware, whilst touring Maryland, of the weakness of the Church of England in the American colonies.