Author: Hayes, Samuel
Biography:
HAYES, Samuel (1748-95: ancestry.com)
The son of Isabella and Edmund Hayes, he was born in London on 18 May 1748 and baptised at St. James, Piccadilly, on May 31. He attended Westminster School and then Trinity College, Cambridge (matric 1767, BA 1771, MA 1774, Fellow 1772). While still a schoolboy he collaborated with Robert Carr in a tragedy, Eugenia (1766), which is his only known attempt as a dramatist. Most of his poems were submitted in the annual competitions for the Seatonian Prize, which he won seven times (1775-8, 1783-5 inclusive). He was ordained priest in 1772 but chose schoolteaching over parish duties and was employed as an usher at Westminster School from 1770 to 1788. He was by reputation incapable of controlling his pupils and left when he was disappointed in his attempt to be made an under-master. Robert Southey (q.v.), who attended Westminster, gave a vivid account of him in Letter 16 of his Life and Correspondence. Hayes also ran a small boarding-house in Dean’s Yard, Westminster, which he merged with another, Farren’s, and married the owner Elizabeth Farren at St. Margaret, Westminster, in 1788; no record has been found of children. The bookseller and stationer of the same name with premises variously in Holborn and on Oxford Street, active 1777-95, is unlikely to have been the same man. He died in London and was buried at St. Paul, Hammersmith, on 19 Dec. 1795. (ancestry.com 24 Mar. 2022; ACAD; CCEd 24 Mar. 2022) HJ