Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 25.djvu/296

This page has been validated.
Hayes
290
Hayes

the library of the Temple of Jerusalem which had been omitted in making up the Old Testament canon. Nichols remarks that Hayes spent much time in philosophical experiments. Hayes found favour with his contemporaries from his ‘sedate temper’ and clear method of exposition; and Hutton, who was twenty-three years old at Hayes's death, remarks that he had ‘great erudition concealed by modesty.’ Hayes died at his chambers in Gray's Inn on 18 Dec. 1760.

[Gent. Mag. 1761, pp. 543–6; Nichols's Lit. Anecdotes, ii. 322–6.]

R. E. A.

HAYES, EDMUND (1804–1867), Irish judge, eldest son of William Hayes of Millmount, near Dublin, was born in 1804. He was educated at the Belfast Academical Institution, and in 1820 entered at Trinity College, Dublin, where he proceeded B.A. in 1825, and LL.B. and LL.D. in 1832 (Todd, Cat. Grad. Dublin, p. 263). In 1827 he was called to the Irish bar, and joined the north-eastern circuit, but subsequently transferred himself to the home circuit. He was appointed by the benchers of the King's Inns lecturer in constitutional and criminal law, wrote a treatise on Irish criminal law (Dublin, 1843, 8vo, 2nd edition), and in 1837 published reports of cases in the Irish exchequer, 1830 to 1832, and in 1843, with Thomas Jones, a continuation from 1832 to 1834. He was appointed a Q.C. in 1852, and was law adviser to the crown under Lord Derby's first administration, and again in 1858, and was subsequently promoted to be Irish solicitor-general. In 1859 he succeeded Mr. Justice Crampton in the court of queen's bench, but was compelled in 1866 to absent himself owing to ill-health, and finally resigned in Michaelmas term of that year, dying at his house at Bray, near Dublin, 29 April 1867. He married, first, Grace Mary Anne, daughter of John Shaw of Donlagh, county Dublin, in 1835, by whom he had nine children; and secondly, Mary Harriett Tranchell, widow of Lieutenant James Shaw, by whom he had one son.

[Law Times, 1 June 1867; Gent. Mag. 1867, i. 826; Times, 1 May 1867.]

J. A. H.

HAYES, Sir GEORGE (1805–1869), justice of the queen's bench, second son of Sheedy Hayes, a West Indian proprietor, by Catherine, daughter of John Westgate, was born in Judd Place, Somers Town, London, on 19 June 1805, and educated at Highgate school and at St. Edmund's Roman catholic college, near Ware. At an early age he renounced the Roman catholic religion, and became a member of the church of England. He was articled to William Francis Patterson, a solicitor at Leamington, and after completing his articles, in November 1824 entered the Middle Temple as a student, and in due course commenced practice as a special pleader. On 29 Jan. 1830 he was called to the bar, joined the midland circuit, and regularly attended the Warwickshire sessions, soon rising into extensive practice as a junior both at sessions and on the circuit. In sessions' appeal cases, a very lucrative part of practice, he was peculiarly successful and very largely employed. In 1856 he was made serjeant-at-law, and on 22 Feb. 1861 obtained a patent of precedence to rank next after Archibald John Stephens, Q.C. In the following December he was appointed recorder of Leicester, and on the promotion to the bench of Mr. Justice Mellor, Hayes henceforth divided the lead of the midland circuit with Kenneth Macaulay, Q.C. For cases before a common jury Hayes was not well adapted, as his reasoning was too subtle and his wit too refined. Before special juries he was much more successful; every word and gesture usually had their effect, and in the famous Matlock will case, where he was the leader, the decision was greatly due to his extensive knowledge of the law and his masterly dissection of the evidence. His knowledge of the English classics was extensive and accurate, and he was well read in Latin, Greek, French, and Italian.

On 9 Aug. 1868, under an act passed for the appointment of additional judges, he was named a justice of the court of queen's bench, sworn in on 24 Aug., and knighted by the queen at Windsor Castle on 9 Dec. On 19 Nov. 1869, after sitting all day in the bail court at Westminster, he was seized with paralysis, and being removed to the Westminster Palace Hotel, died there on 24 Nov. He married, on 3 Sept. 1839, Sophia Anne, eldest daughter of John Hall (or Hill), M.D., of Leicester, by whom he left four sons and four daughters.

He was the author in 1854 of an elegy in which he humorously lamented the extinction of John Doe and Richard Roe from the pleadings in ejectment. His song on the celebrated case of the ‘Dog and the Cock’ was set to music, and occasionally sung by himself.

[Law Mag. and Law Review, 1870, xxix. 114–125; Reg. and Mag. of Biog. December 1869, pp. 304–5; Law Times, 27 Nov. 1869, p. 61; Times, 25 Nov. 1869, p. 9, and 26 Nov. p. 8; Foss's Judges, 1870, p. 333; Illustrated London News, 4 Dec. 1869, p. 578; Ann. Reg. 1869, p. 168.]

G. C. B.

HAYES, JOHN (1775–1838), rear-admiral, grand-nephew of Adam Hayes, master-shipwright of Deptford dockyard, nominally