H E E Hayes
Herbert Edward Elton Hayes (1882-1960), Anglican clergyman and heretic, was born on 31 October 1882 at Greenhithe, Kent, England, son of George Herbert Hayes, carpenter, and his wife Eliza Ann, née Jenkins. Herbert was educated at a local Church of
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Herbert Edward Elton Hayes (1882-1960), Anglican clergyman and heretic, was born on 31 October 1882 at Greenhithe, Kent, England, son of George Herbert Hayes, carpenter, and his wife Eliza Ann, née Jenkins. Herbert was educated at a local Church of England school and at a Nonconformist academy. After five years in the militia, he transferred to the regular army in 1904. When he baulked at military discipline he was sent to Dublin; there he came under the influence of a Protestant mission to Catholics. Quitting the army, Hayes began Baptist theological training at Harley College in 1907, but resigned without completing the course. In 1910 he joined the Egypt General Mission in Cairo; while a genuine missionary, he also acted as an observer for British military intelligence. On furlough in England at the outbreak of World War I, he was called up and served on the Western Front with the Army Ordnance Corps, rising to acting lance sergeant.
During the last years of the war a close association with Rev. P. B. 'Tubby' Clayton—founder of the Toc H movement—led Hayes to change his allegiance to the Church of England. At the war's end he entered Knutsford Ordination Test School. Made deacon in 1919 and ordained priest on 19 December 1920, he returned to Egypt with the Church Missionary Society and took charge of the church and school at Menouf, near Cairo, where he also resumed his undercover work as a political agent. On 15 June 1923 at the British consulate, Cairo, he married Kathleen Blanche Gawler, an Australian-born nurse from the C.M.S. hospital at Menouf. He followed her to her homeland, working his passage as a welfare superintendent in an emigrant vessel.
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