Thomas Hayter
|
The Right Reverend and Right Honourable Thomas Hayter |
|
|---|---|
| Lord Bishop of London | |
| See | London |
| Installed | 1761 |
| Term ended | 1762 |
| Predecessor | Thomas Sherlock |
| Successor | Richard Osbaldeston |
| Other posts | Bishop of Norwich |
| Personal details | |
| Born | 1702 |
| Died | 9 January 1762 (aged 59–60) |
| Buried | All Saints Church, Fulham, London |
Thomas Hayter FRS (1702 – 9 January 1762) was an English whig divine, who served as a Church of England bishop for 13 years, was a royal chaplain. As a party advocate of the Pelhamites and a friend of the Duke of Newcastle, the erudite churchman was at the height of his powers in the 1750s. A renowned scholar in his days, it was for his divinity that he was recommended, but his friendship with the court and royalty that exemplified his true powers. Tolerant and eclectic, learned and intelligent he came to symbolise a golden age of aristocracy for Anglicanism.
He was born in Chagford, Devon, officially the son of George Hayter. It has often been claimed that Lancelot Blackburne was his father, but there is no conclusive evidence either way because the Hayters had occupied the area since 1637. Although he did not identify Hayter as his son, he did leave a sizeable portion of his estate to Hayter. Hayter studied at Blundell's School, Tiverton, and matriculated at Balliol College, Oxford on 30 May 1720, and graduated BA on 21 January 1724. He took further degrees at Emmanuel College, Cambridge (MA 1727) and DD (1744).
He was ordained deacon and priest in 1727). He was appointed private chaplain to Archbishop Lancelot Blackburne of York, then made Prebendary of York (1728-1749), Prebendary of Southwell (1728-1749), Rector of Kirkby Overblow, Yorkshire (1729-1749), Sub-dean of York (1730-1749), Archdeacon of York (1730-1751), Rector of Etton, Yorkshire (1731), Chaplain to the King (1734-1749), Vicar of Kirkby-in-Cleveland, (1737-1749) and Prebendary of Westminster (1739-1749). Holding three prebendal stalls in succession in the northern episcopate marked him out for high promotion as he rose through the York chapter. He was Bishop of Norwich from 1749 to 1761. He had been elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in March 1750 he secured the dismissal of two Jacobite tutors in 1755 named Stone and Scott for seditious attempts to influence the Prince George in the ways of Jacobitism. In later life George III was a self-evident Tory but had learnt a hard lesson in politics from his learned counsel. He was a revelatory evangelist at the pulpit, a doctinal latitudiarian, condemned mishandling of the poor, and urged temperance, and wider acceptance of clandestine marriages. "...the very ideas we form of them arise from their being distributed among Men in various Degrees and Proportions. They are indeed by the Appointment of God, adjusted by the Scheme of Things in this world only", exemplified a sophisticated aristocratic notion of how Man came down. However he then went on to qualify his remarks "...The Original quality of Human nature still subsists under all these external Distinctions..." his theology strongly upheld the in the goodness of human sensibilities as it permeates human consciousness. Yet he was a Man of the World "protecting the Innocent, countenancing the Virtuous, and spreading Prosperity, through Whole Nations." Warning of the uneasiness of vice, he yet remained uncloistered and enlightened. A moderate whig he asked the eternal question Does Temperance injure the Mind? asking those difficult questions posed by London living. In 1758, Hayter asked noted surgeon Benjamin Gooch to visit all the great hospitals in London with a view to building a general hospital for the County of Norfolk and the City of Norwich jointly. After Bishop Hayter's death in 1762, a friend and wealthy landowner, William Fellowes of Shotesham Park, stepped in "to revive the plan" and Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital was founded in 1771.
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