He was born in 1734, the youngest of three sons of the Reverend Archibald Inglis,[1] the rector of Glencolmcille and Kilcar, a remote parish in southwest County Donegal, on the west coast of the Irish province of Ulster.

Inglis became rector of Killybegs, Donegal, but in 1755 he sailed to America and worked as a teacher under the auspices of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts.

[2] In 1776, in response to Thomas Paine's Common Sense, Inglis wrote a treatise, The True Interest of America Impartially Stated.

On 11 August 1787, George III created the Diocese of Nova Scotia by Letters Patent, and named Inglis its first bishop.

In 1783, when the outcome of the American Revolution was obvious, Inglis, along with other British elites, wrote to the government in Nova Scotia to petition for the establishment of a college,The founding of a College or Seminary of learning on a liberal plan in that province where youth may receive a virtuous education and can be qualified for the learned professions, is a measure of the greatest consequence, as it would diffuse religious literature, loyalty and good morals among His Majesty’s subjects there.

If such a seminary is not established the inhabitants will have no means of educating their sons at home, but will be under the necessity of sending them to Great Britain or Ireland, which will be attended with an expense that few can bear, or else to some of the states of this continent, where they will soon imbibe principles that are unfavourable to the British tradition.