Vicar of Bray

/ breɪ /

noun

1. a vicar (Simon Aleyn) appointed to the parish of Bray in Berkshire during Henry VIII's reign who changed his faith to Catholic when Mary I was on the throne and back to Protestant when Elizabeth I succeeded and so retained his living

2. Also called: In Good King Charles's Golden Days. a ballad in which the vicar's changes of faith are transposed to the Stuart period

3. a person who changes his or her views or allegiances in accordance with what is suitable at the time

Example Sentences

One of the many works Solnit revisits is Orwell’s 1946 essay “A Good Word for the Vicar of Bray,” which touches on, among other subjects, the idea that planting a tree is a “botanical contribution to posterity.”

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Collier combined Dutch origins with Scottish ancestry, and so was, like an illusionistic Vicar of Bray, a supporter of both the Stuart and the Orange cause.

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The vicar of Bray will be vicar of Bray still.

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He had, however, some of the dexterity of the Vicar of Bray; when the cause he had reviled was nearly won he founded a "Washington" college in Maryland.

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This was probably the tenor of the sermons of the Vicar of Bray, and this was the way that he strove to save souls.

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