George Hay

George Hay (24 August 1729 – 15 October 1811) was a Scottish Catholic prelate and writer who served as Vicar Apostolic of the Lowland District from 1778 to 1805.

Biography

Early life

Hay was born in Edinburgh on 24 August 1729. His parents, James Hay and Mary Morrison, were Jacobites and members of the Scottish Episcopal Church; James Hay had been involved in the Jacobite rising of 1715. George Hay began his studies at the University of Edinburgh, intending to pursue a medical career.

During the Jacobite rising of 1745, when he was sixteen, Hay was summoned to attend wounded soldiers after the battle of Prestonpans. He afterwards followed the victorious Jacobite army of Charles Edward Stuart for some months; but before the decisive fight at Culloden, illness compelled him to return to Edinburgh. at the age of 20. before accepting an appointment as surgeon on a trading vessel bound for the Mediterranean. While in London, on his way to join his ship, he became acquainted with Richard Challoner, Vicar Apostolic of the London District. The result of their intercourse was that Hay determined to enter the priesthood, and on the arrival of his vessel at Marseille, Hay journeyed to Rome. There, in 1751, he enrolled in the Scots College, where he studied for nearly eight years. Among his fellow-students was the future Cardinal Erskine. to the titular see of Daulia.

Vicar Apostolic Hay succeeded Grant in 1778 as Vicar Apostolic, and nominated his friend John Geddes as his coadjutor. Hay ran the diocese strictly, antagonizing many of his subordinates. Among these was Alexander Geddes, whose Bible translation Hay rejected as latitudinarian.

Hay was highly politically active in his position, befriending politicians including Edmund Burke. He violated the penal laws by distributing 10,000 catechisms and, during the Highland Clearances assisted persecuted Catholics in emigrating to Canada. In February 1779, the chapel and house Hay had recently built in Edinburgh were burned in retaliation for his political activism intended towards achieving Catholic Emancipation and for the Papists Act 1778. The outbreak of the Gordon Riots in England, in 1780, further delayed relief, but Hay was able to negotiate compensation from Parliament and the city of Edinburgh.

Since about 1770, Hay had been distancing himself from his youthful Jacobite allegiances, and in the annual clergy meeting of 1779 he proposed and passed a bill recognizing the sovereignty of George III. On the other hand, a 1772 letter from Hay to Charles Edward Stuart privately expressed his support for the Jacobite cause, leaving his actual sympathies unclear.

Hay made efforts to place the college at Rome under the control of Scottish superiors. His efforts on behalf of the institute in Paris were interrupted by the French Revolution, in which it was swept away. Hay's last public work was the foundation of a new seminary at Aquhorthies College, in Aberdeenshire, and here, after transferring, with the sanction of Pius VII, the government of the Lowland District to his coadjutor, Bishop Cameron, he died at the age of eighty-two.

Works

George Hay published the first English Catholic Bible printed in Scotland; but the work which secured his own reputation as a religious writer was his cycle of Catholic doctrine entitled The Sincere Christian, The Devout Christian, and The Pious Christian, published 1781–86.