Msgr. James Dey, D.S.O.
Harold Robbins, in The Last of the Realists, calls Mgr. Dey “the greatest figure thrown up in England by the land movement.” Ordained in 1894 and commissioned as an Army Chaplain in 1903, Dey (1869-1946) served in various posts with the British Armed Forces over the course of twenty-six years. In 1928 he was made a Domestic Prelate; the following year he was appointed Rector of Oscott College, a seminary founded in 1794 for the training of priests for England and Wales, and which was a symbol, during the 19th century, of the renewal of English Catholic life. Thanks to his position as Rector of the College, all the major conferences of the Catholic land movement between 1930 and 1935 were held at Oscott. Dey had been a Distributist from his earliest years, and thus he did all he could to promote the Movement among the Catholic clergy. In 1935 he was made Bishop of Sebastopolis and Ordinary to His Majesty’s Armed Forces.
