Thomas Hay, 9th Earl of Kinnoull

Thomas Hay, 9th Earl of Kinnoull, PC (4 July 1710 – 27 December 1787), styled Viscount Dupplin from 1719 to 1758, was a Scottish peer, British politician, and scholar.

Family and education

Hay was the eldest son of George Hay, 8th Earl of Kinnoull, and Abigail, daughter of Robert Harley, 1st Earl of Oxford and Earl Mortimer.

He was educated at Westminster School and then at Christ Church, Oxford.

On 12 June 1741, at Oxford Chapel, Marylebone, he married Constantia Ernle, the only daughter and heiress of John Kyrle Ernle of Whetham House, near Calne, Wiltshire. Her great-grandfather was Sir John Ernle, who served as Chancellor of the Exchequer between 1676 and 1689.

They had a son, born 12 August 1742, who died 14 October 1743. She died in July 1753, and was buried in Calne. He took a prominent part in the efforts to improve the condition of Nova Scotia. In 1754, Thomas Pelham-Holles, 1st Duke of Newcastle made him a Lord of the Treasury. He also served joint Paymaster of the Forces from 1755 until 1757.

He was well known in political and literary circles, and his friends included Philip Yorke, 1st Earl of Hardwicke, William Murray, 1st Earl of Mansfield, and the Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Secker. He was also acquainted with Alexander Pope, who used him as a model for the character Balbus in his Epistle to Dr Arbuthnot. I continue secluded from Mankind in our old and Mouldering Castle, which is situated two miles from Perth on a bold projecting rock, and commands an extensive view of the Town and its delightful Environs... You can form no idea sufficiently hideous, of its dungeon like form. It is actually perched on a Rock to appearance so totally inaccessible, that I expected to have been pulled up by a rope. Today, Kinnoull Tower is more easily accessible, via a winding footpath through Kinnoull Hill Woodland Park. Another of the 9th Earl's lasting legacies is the Perth Bridge over the River Tay, "the Auld Brig" in the local Scots dialect, which he helped fund. Construction commenced in 1766 and was completed in 1771.

Duplin County, North Carolina, was named for Viscount Dupplin, as the 9th Earl was known when he served on the Board of Trade and Plantations in the 1740s. Lempster, New Hampshire, was briefly named Dupplin from 1753 to 1767.