Fleming came from St Andrews, a university town in East Fife and was educated at Madras College secondary school. His family had a china and stoneware business, which he sold in 1883 to concentrate on his interests^[1]

In his bequest, he left money to found the Hay Fleming Reference library. The collection was a bequest to the town of St Andrews, in 1932, of the library of Fleming, and consists of c13,000 volumes

His grandson was the historian and economist David Fleming.^[2]

• Guidebook to St Andrews (1881)
• Charters of St. Andrews (1883),
• Guide to the East Neuk of Fife (1886, 2 vol.s)
• Martyrs and Confessors of St. Andrews (1887),
• Scotland after the Union of the Crowns (1890),
• Mary Queen of Scots (1897),
• Scottish History and Life (3 sections, 1902),
• Story of the Scottish Covenants
• The Discipline of the Reformation
• Critical Reviews
• Knox in the Hands of the Philistines

• "Thus it is that history is falsified and good men slandered"

•   This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Cousin, John William (1910). A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature. London: J. M. Dent & Sons – via Wikisource.

• Works by David Hay Fleming at Project Gutenberg
• Works by or about David Hay Fleming at Internet Archive
• David Hay Fleming (1849-1931)
• E-text The Discipline of the Reformation
• David Hay Fleming