Charles Bray - The Brays' "Rosehill Circle" in Coventry, Warwickshire

The Brays' "Rosehill Circle" in Coventry, Warwickshire

The Brays' home "Rosehill" (in Coventry, Warwickshire) was a haven for people who held and debated radical views. People who participated in the "Rosehill Circle" included (among many others) social reformer Robert Owen, philosopher/sociologist Herbert Spencer, Harriet Martineau, and transcendentalist Ralph Waldo Emerson. Most of the people who participated in the Rosehill Circle tended to have theologies that were considerably more liberal than the average (for example, many participants cast doubt on the supernatural elements of Bible stories).

The core group of the Rosehill Circle consisted of Charles Bray, his wife Caroline, and some of the members of Caroline's immediate family along with several of their close friends. The core group members from Caroline's immediate family were her sisters Mary Hennell (May 23, 1802 - May 16, 1843) and Sara Sophia Hennell (Nov. 22, 1812 - March 7, 1899), and her brother Charles Christian Hennell (March 30, 1809 - Sept. 2, 1850). Charles Hennell was a writer on theological and philosophical topics whose most important work was An Inquiry Concerning the Origin of Christianity (London, 1838). Although Caroline's father James Hennell (Oct. 8, 1782 - Jan. 30, 1816) was a devout Unitarian who raised his children as Unitarians, his 3 children who were core members of the Rosehill Circle all entertained serious reservations about many Unitarian beliefs.

On Nov. 1, 1843 Charles C. Hennell married Elizabeth Rebecca "Rufa" Brabant (Sept. 28, 1811 - March 1, 1898), another core member of the Rosehill Circle. Elizabeth's father, physician Robert Herbert Brabant (Nov. 14, 1781 - May 13, 1866), was a core member as well. Elizabeth, in the months immediately preceding her engagement and marriage to Charles Hennell, had been under commission (by a private group associated with the Rosehill Circle) to translate into English the great theological treatise Das Leben Jesu, kritisch bearbeitet by David Friedrich Strauss (1808–1874). As soon as it had been first published (in Tübingen, Germany - vol. 1 in 1835, and vol. 2 in 1836), Strauss' Das Leben Jesu was recognized internationally as one of the most revolutionary and important theological treatises of the 19th-century. Not surprisingly, the members of the private group which had commissioned the translation, led by the radical politician Joseph Parkes (1796–1865), were very eager to be able to read this great work in their native English. However, once it was realized that Elizabeth's marriage would mean an end to her translation work, in January 1844 it was decided that Mary Anne Evans (1819–1880) (later known as the novelist George Eliot) would take up the translating where Elizabeth had left off at the time of her marriage (which was about half way through volume 1 of Das Leben Jesu). Mary Anne had quickly become an integral part of the Rosehill Circle after she met and befriended Charles and Caroline Hennell in November 1841. Somewhat later she became an intimate friend of Elizabeth Brabant as well (Mary Anne served as a bridesmaid at Elizabeth's wedding in 1843). Mary Anne worked on the translation of Strauss' Das Leben Jesu (fourth German edition, 2 vols., 1840) for over 2 years, and in June 1846 the fruit of her (and Elizabeth's) labor was finally published (as an anonymous translation) under the title The Life of Jesus, Critically Examined (3 vols., London: Chapman Brothers, 1846).

As a leading light in the Coventry 'intelligentsia,' Bray helped to found The Coventry Labourers & Artisans Co-operative Society Circa 1840-60, which provided gardens for working men and a co-op store. Inspired by the cottage factories in Coventry, he drew up a plan for a small community based on the same system - squares of 3-400 houses, each with their own steam engine to provide power and would be surrounded by enough land for each house to have its own allotment.