# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Hay, George (d.1588)

​HAY, GEORGE (d. 1588), Scottish controversialist, second son of Dugald Hay of Linplum, was parson both of Eddlestone and of Rathven (sometimes confounded with Ruthven), Aberdeenshire, holding the two benefices by dispensation from the pope. He conformed at the Reformation, but continued to hold both charges. As commissioner for the diocese of Aberdeen and Banff, he along with other ministers, at the meeting held in the house of James M'Gill in 1561, supported the proposal to deprive the queen of the mass (Knox, ii. 291). In 1562 he was appointed by the assembly to preach in the unplanted kirks of Carrick and Cunningham, Knox preaching in the adjoining district of Kyle and parts of Galloway, the result of their joint labours being the subscription on 4 Sept. by many of the principal gentry and burgesses of the districts to a band at Ayr to uphold the Reformation (ib. p. 348). Knox states ​that when shortly afterwards the Abbot of Crossraguel presented himself in Maybole to dispute about the mass, the ‘voice of Maister George Hay so effrayed him that efter ones he wearyed of that exercise’ (ib. p. 352). Hay published the substance of his discourses as ‘The Confutation of the Abbote of Crossraguell's Masse set forth by Maister George Hay, 1563.’ He seems for some time to have held some official position resembling that of chaplain in connection with government ceremonials. In a minute of the general assembly, 30 Dec. 1563, he is styled ‘Minister to the Privy Council’ (Buik of the Universal Kirk, i. 42), and by the ‘courtier’ party ‘George Hay, then called the minister of the court,’ was sent to the assembly of 1564 to require ‘the superintendents and sum of the learned ministers to confer with them’ (Knox, ii. 423). The Earl of Morton requested him at the conference to reason against Knox in regard to the obedience due to magistrates. Maitland of Lethington, the secretary, remarked, upon his declining to do so, ‘Marye, ye ar the weall worst of the twa; for I remember weill your ressonyng whan the Quene wes in Caryke’ (ib. ii. 435). Hay took a prominent part in the discussions of succeeding assemblies, and was a member of the principal committees and commissions. In 1567 he obtained the third of the stipend of both parsonages on condition that he caused his charge where he did not reside to be sufficiently served and charged no further stipend. In 1568, on complaint that he neither preached nor administered the sacraments in the parish of Eddlestone, he was sharply rebuked. Though not always approved by the church courts, he was on 5 March 1570–1 elected moderator of the assembly. In 1576 he published a book against Tyrie the jesuit, which a committee of the assembly was directed to revise (Calderwood, iii. 363). In the following year he was appointed one of the deputies to the general council at Magdeburg for establishing the Augsburg confession. On 25 Jan. 1578 he was appointed one of the visitors of the college of Aberdeen. He died in 1588. He had a brother, William Hay of Eddilstoun, from whom the family of Leith Hay of Rannes is descended.
[Knox's Works; Calderwood's Hist. of the Kirk of Scotland; Melville's Autobiography; Wodrow's Miscellanies; Hew Scott's Fasti Eccles. Scot. i. 239–40, iii. 677–8.]
T. F. H.