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Background
Born around June 1729, John William Grey was the second child of the
Duke and Duchess of Pardloe, Gerard and Benedicta Grey. The couple's
first child is John's elder brother, Harold. In addition to Harold,
John had two other siblings—half brothers from his mother's earlier
marriage to Captain DeVane—Paul and Edgar DeVane.
John's godfather immediately enrolled John into the Beefsteak Club after his birth. John was taught the use of a blade starting from age three. When John was seven, his godfather began taking John to the Beefsteak Club every Wednesday for lunch. At age ten, he called Edgar's fiancée an "overbearing doggess" and was severely hit.
On his 12th birthday, John was given a pocket watch by his father,
who supposedly shot himself the day after to escape being charged as a Jacobite. Afterwards, John was sent to Aberdeen.
Due to the scandal surrounding the death, John's older brother Harold
had instead taken their father's second title, Earl of Melton. John, on
the other hand, still preferred to be called Lord John Grey, as was
befitting a duke's younger son.
Career
In 1745, when John was sixteen, he informally joined the 46th Regiment,
which his older brother Harold had raised to restore the family's
reputation. John was not given many duties, except perhaps as a scout.
He came across Jamie and Claire Fraser while exploring the hills
surrounding the English campsite.
Soon after, John took up a commission and trained with a gun crew of the Royal Artillery for six months. He then re-joined the 46th Regiment and later fought at the Battle of Culloden.
In 1755, by which time he had risen to the rank of major,
John served a year and a half as the Governor of Ardsmuir Prison,
Scotland, where he met Jamie Fraser again. In 1756, after the prison
was successfully rebuilt into a fortress, John arranged for Fraser to
be sent to Helwater, under the eye of family friend Lord Dunsany,
instead of the American colonies.
In 1757, while in London, he helped solve the murder of a fellow
soldier, who was suspected of espionage. Later that year, he accepted a
posting as the English liaison officer to the Imperial Fifth Regiment of Hanoverian Foot.
In 1758, after John returned to the 46th Regiment, it was assigned to fight under Duke Ferdinand of Brunswick and chased French and Austrian troops around in the Rhine Valley for weeks until the Battle of Krefeld. During the battle, John took charge of a gun crew that had lost its commander and the cannon blew up after a few shots. The Royal Commission of Inquiry started an investigation over the blown-up cannon and John was called to stand before a tribunal a few months after the battle.
In 1765, John, by then a lieutanent-colonel, had retired from military life and was appointed the Governor of Jamaica. He eventually left Jamaica for Virginia and settled down there.
Personal life
John is homosexual, though he has had sex with a few female prostitutes and the two women he married.
His first lover was Hector, a twenty-year-old lieutenant in the 46th Regiment who died in the Battle of Culloden.
At eighteen, John entered into a relationship with George Everett,
who took him to the Lavender House—a discreet club in London that
catered to gay men—for the first time. The relationship seemed to have ended by 1755, when a scandal involving George Everett caused John to be reassigned to Adsmuir.
After meeting Jamie Fraser again at the prison, John became friends
with Fraser over their weekly dinners and even fell in love with him.
John made advances towards Fraser but was rejected. Nonetheless, he
would remain in love with Fraser throughout the Outlander series.
In 1757, John began investigating Olivia's fiancé, Joseph Trevelyan, whom John suspected to have syphilis. John visited the Lavender House during the course of his investigation and had an one-night-stand with a young man there. Due to the investigation, John lost his old valet, but gained a new one, Tom Byrd, who was Jack Byrd's younger brother.
In 1758, John was formally introduced to Percy Wainwright, the
stepson of General Sir George Stanley, who was John's new stepfather.
John and Wainwright had actually met a year before at the Lavender
House and became romantically involved after their formal introduction.
The relationship ended when Percy was discovered in flagrante delicto with another man by John and several other soldiers, but John, nonetheless, helped Percy escape to Italy in order to avoid being hanged.
John later married Isobel Dunsany, the daughter of family friend
Lord Dunsany, mainly because he wanted to help take care of Jamie
Fraser's illegitimate son, William. The boy was left in Isobel's care
because his mother Geneva Dunsany—Isobel's sister—had died soon after
giving birth to him and her husband, the Earl of Ellesmere, was shot
dead by Fraser in the ensuing scuffle.
During John's journey to Jamaica, he met Claire Fraser again, and
was later re-acquainted with Jamie in Jamaica. Afterwards, Isobel and
William went to join John in Jamaica, but Isobel died during the sea
voyage. At the end of his governorship, John took William with him to
visit Jamie Fraser at Fraser's Ridge, en route to a Virginian
plantation that belonged to William. Later, John went to North Carolina
to visit Jocasta Cameron, Jamie's aunt, and was introduced to a very
pregnant Brianna Fraser, to whom John became temporarily engaged so
that she would not be bombarded by suitors.
While in Virginia, John kept up a correspondence with the Frasers
and bought for Claire several of the ingredients she needed to create ether. He also became involved with a Native-American man called Manoke, who took a job at the plantation as John's cook.
After the American Revolutionary War broke out, John went to Philadelphia
to check on the status of his nephew Henry, who was wounded in the war,
with the bullets still stuck in him. Claire, who was also visiting
Philadelphia at the time, was able to operate on Henry and save his
life. John and Claire then received the (erroneously reported) news of
Jamie's death, and John later married Claire to keep her from being
arrested as an American spy.
Hobbies
Although John was a member of White's Club, he usually dined at the Beefsteak Club instead. Some of John's hobbies were horse-racing, the theater and French novels.
