Charles Petre Eyre

Charles Petre Eyre (1817–1902) was a Roman Catholic clergyman who served as the Archbishop of Glasgow from 1878 to 1902.

Born at Askham Bryan Hall, Askham Bryan, near York, England on November 7, 1817, he was the fifth of nine children of John Lewis Eyre (died 1880) and Sara Eyre, née Parker (died 1825). His father later became a director at the South Western Railway Company. His family was the recusant Eyre family of Derbyshire, a family which had retained their Roman Catholic beliefs 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 a priest there on March 19, 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. He was appointed Titular Archbishop of Anazarbus and Apostolic Delegate for Scotland on December 3, 1868 . He was consecrated to the Episcopate in Rome on January 31, 1869. The principal consecrator was Cardinal Karl-August von Reisach, Archbishop Emeritus of Munich and Freising, and the principal co-consecrators were Henry Edward Manning, Archbishop of Westminster and Frédéric-François-Xavier Ghislain de Mérode, Titular Archbishop of Melitene.

Following the resignation of Bishop John Gray on 4 March 1869, Archbishop Eyre was appointed the Apostolic Administrator of the Western District of Scotland on 16 April 1869. 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, the Scottish hierarchy was restored by Pope Leo XIII on 15 March 1878. The Western District was elevated to the Archdiocese of Glasgow, with Charles Petre Eyre appointed as its first Roman Catholic archbishop since the Scottish Reformation.

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, aged 84, at his home in Glasgow. He was buried in his seminary at Bearsden; now the site of the new Bearsden Academy building. 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

• Brady, W. Maziere (1876). The Episcopal Succession in England, Scotland and Ireland, A.D. 1400 to 1875. Volume 3. Rome: Tipografia Della Pace. pp. 473–474. http://www.archive.org/details/a548648303braduoft. 
• Archbishop Charles Petre Eyre at Catholic-Hierarchy. Retrieved on 24 September 2010.

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