Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 24.djvu/42

This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.

and a half. On 26 Oct. 1689 he was brought up to the bar of the House of Commons, and ordered to be charged with high treason in being reconciled to the church of Rome (Commons' Journals, x. 274, 275). On 31 Jan. 1689–90 he and Obadiah Walker were brought by habeas corpus from the Tower to the bar of the king's bench, and were bailed on good security; but both were excepted out of the act of pardon dated 23 May following. Eventually Hales obtained his discharge on 2 June 1690 (Luttrell, ii. 50).

Hales proceeded (October) to St. Germains, where he was much respected but little employed by James II; ‘for,’ says Dodd, ‘by what I can gather from a kind of journal of his life (which I have perused in his own handwriting), he rather attended his old master as a friend than as a statesman.’ James rewarded his past services by creating him Earl of Tenterden in Kent, Viscount Tunstall, and Baron Hales of Emley, by patent 3 May 1692. Hasted says that he had been informed on good authority that Hales's son and successor in the baronetcy, Sir John Hales, was offered a peerage by George I, but the matter dropped, because Sir John insisted on his right to his father's titles, and to precedence according to that creation (Hist. of Kent, ii. 577 n.) Sir Edward, in 1694, applied to the Earl of Shrewsbury for a license to return to England, but he died, without obtaining it, in 1695, and was buried in the church of St. Sulpice at Paris. He was scrupulously just in his dealings, regular in his habits, and remarkably charitable to those in distress. By the schedule to his will, dated July 1695, he bequeathed 5,000l., to be disposed of according to his instructions by Bishop Bonaventure Giffard [q. v.] and Dr. Thomas Witham.

By his wife Frances, daughter of Sir Francis Windebank, kt., of Oxfordshire, he had five sons and seven daughters. Edward, his eldest son, was slain in the service of James II at the battle of the Boyne, and John, the second son (d. 1744), accordingly succeeded to the baronetcy, which became extinct on the death of the sixth baronet, Sir Edward Hales, without issue, on 15 March 1829.

Hales left in manuscript a journal of his life, which Dodd used in his ‘Church History’ (see iii. 421, 422, 451, &c.).

[Addit. MSS. 15551 f. 82, 32520 f. 38; Burke's Extinct Baronetcies, p. 234; Burnet's Own Time, i. 660; Butler's Hist. Memoirs (1822), iii. 94; Campbell's Lord Chancellors, iii. 562, 576; Courthope's Synopsis of the Extinct Baronetage, p. 92; Dodd's Church Hist. iii. 451; Echard's Hist. of England, 3rd edit., p. 1077; Foss's Biographia Juridica, pp. 343, 530, 640; Gillow's Bibl. Dict.; Lingard's Hist. of England (1849), x. 208; Luttrell's Hist. Relation of State Affairs, i. 380, 382, 406, 453, 487, 493, 594, 597, ii. 10, 14, iii. 520, iv. 426; Macaulay's Hist. of England; Panzani's Memoirs, p. 346; Wood's Life (Bliss), pp. cv, cix, cxii; Wood's Athenæ Oxon. (Bliss), iv. 441, 442, 553, 774.]

T. C.

HALES, Sir JAMES (d. 1554), judge, was eldest son of John Hales of the Dungeon, near Canterbury, by Isabell, daughter of Stephen Harry. John Hales (d. 1539) was, according to Hasted, uncle of Sir Christopher Hales [q. v.], but Wotton (Baronetage, i. 219) makes them first cousins. John was a member of Gray's Inn, and was reader in 1514 and 1520. He probably held some office in the exchequer, and was appointed third baron 1 Oct. 1522. He was promoted to be second baron 14 May 1528, and held that position on 1 Aug. 1539, but probably died soon after.

James was a member of Gray's Inn, where he was an ancient in 1528, autumn reader in 1533, double Lent reader in 1537, and triple Lent reader in 1540. He was among those appointed to receive the Lady Anne of Cleves on her arrival at Dover (29 Dec. 1539). He was called to the degree of serjeant-at-law in Trinity term 1540, and on 4 Nov. 1544 was appointed king's serjeant. He was standing counsel to the corporation of Canterbury in 1541–2, and he was also counsel to Archbishop Cranmer, though from what date is not clear. He was created a knight of the Bath at the coronation of Edward VI, 20 Feb. 1546–7. In April 1549 he was placed on a commission for detecting and extirpating heresy, on 10 May following was appointed a judge of the common pleas, and in the autumn of the same year sat on a mixed commission of ecclesiastics, judges, and civilians appointed to hear Bishop Bonner's appeal against his deprivation, and which confirmed the sentence. He also sat on the commission appointed on 12 Dec. 1550 to try Bishop Gardiner for his intrigues and practices against the reformation, and concurred in the sentence of deprivation passed against him on 14 Feb. 1550–1; and he was placed on another commission specially directed against the anabaptists of Kent and Essex in January 1550–1. He was also a member of a commission of sixteen spiritual and as many temporal persons appointed on 6 Oct. 1551 to examine and reform the ecclesiastical laws; and on the 26th of the same month he was appointed to hear causes in chancery during the illness of the lord chancellor, Rich. In January 1551–2 he was commissioned to assist the lord keeper, Thomas Goodrich, bishop of Ely, in the hearing of chancery