Charles Petre Eyre

Charles Petre Eyre (d. 1902) was an English Roman Catholic prelate. Born on November 7, 1817, he was the fifth of nine children born to John Lewis Eyre (d. 1880) and Sara née Parker (d. 1825). His father later became a director at the South Western Railway Company. His family was the Eyre family of Derbyshire, a family which had retained Catholicism since the English Reformation and suffered land loss as a result. On March 28 1826, Charles was received into St Cuthbert's College, near Durham. He rose to become a deacon by May 1828, and in the following year, December 1839, entered the Venerable English College, Rome, and was ordained as priest there in the Spring of 1842. He returned to England and took charge of Newcastle in 1843, taking positions at Wooler, Illness and Haggerstone between 1849 and 1856, before returning to Newcastle. He became Vicar-General of the Diocese of Hexham and Newcastle in 1868. Although previously considered for other bishoprics, it was not until November 29, 1868 that he was officially nominated for a prelacy. On January 31, 1869, he was consecrated at Rome as Archbishop of Anazarbus and Administrator-Apostolic of the Western District of Scotland. He travelled to Glasgow in March 1869, charged with organising the re-establishment of Roman Catholic hierarchy in Scotland. After attending the First Vatican Council (1869-70), he returned to Scotland in a mission to build schools and to unite the Scottish catholic community, bitterly divided between Scottish and Irish Catholics. In 1874, he opened a seminary, St Peter's College, Bearsden (now at Cardross). Despite some resistance among Scottish Catholics to a restored hierarchy, on March 15 1878 he became the first restored Archbishop of Glasgow. Six years later he established a cathedral chapter. Archbishop Eyre was successful to a large extent in integrating the new establishment into Scottish society. The University of Glasgow awarded him an Honorary Doctor of Laws in 1892. He was one of the early patrons of Celtic FC, founded in 1888 with a name designed to inspire unity between Scottish and Irish Catholics in the Glasgow area. He died on March 27, 1902, at his house in 6 Bowmont Gardens, Glasgow. He was buried in his seminary at Bearsden. His body was later moved to St Andrew's Cathedral, Glasgow. Archbishop Eyre left a number of religious and historical works, including works on Scottish saints, the medieval church of Glasgow, and St Cuthbert.

References

• McHugh, Mary, "Eyre, Charles Petre (1817–1902)", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 accessed 10 May 2007

External links

• (Archbishop Eyre)
• www.catholic-hierarchy.org (Anazarbus)