George Durie - Death and Legacy

Death and Legacy

The abbot left for France shortly afterwards, late January 1561. Nicholas Sanders, in his De Visibili Monarchia Ecclesiæ, chap. viii., has included him in the list he gives of the catholic clergy in Great Britain who had been deprived of their benefices on account of their attachment to their faith. Two years after his death he was beatified by the Roman Catholic Church. Dempster and other writers of the same period call him a saint and a martyr.

He left a numerous family in Scotland. His two elder sons, Peter and Henry, were legitimated by an act passed under the great seal, dated 30 September 1543. They appear to have acted as guardians to two younger ones, George and John, who were sent when young to the Scots college at Paris, and subsequently to the Catholic University of Leuven. Several of their letters, dated from Leuven 1571, addressed to their brothers in Scotland, have been preserved in state papers relating to Scotland in the Record Office. John Durie became a Jesuit.

He died in October, 1577, by which time he was suffering from senility.