matters. In 1553 Edward VI determined to exclude both the Princess Elizabeth and the Princess Mary from the succession and settle the crown by an act of council on the Lady Jane Grey. Hales, as a member of the council, was required to affix his seal to the document, but steadily refused so to do on the ground that the succession could only be legally altered by act of parliament. On the accession of Mary (6 July 1553) he showed equal regard for strict legality by charging the justices at the assizes in Kent that the laws of Edward VI and Henry VIII against nonconformists remained in force and must not be relaxed in favour of Roman catholics. Nevertheless the queen renewed his patent of justice of the common pleas; but on his presenting himself (6 Oct.) in Westminster Hall to take the oath of office Gardiner, now lord chancellor, refused to administer it on the ground that he stood not well in her grace's favour by reason of his conduct at the Kent assizes, and he was shortly afterwards committed to the King's Bench prison, whence he was removed to the Compter in Bread Street, and afterwards to the Fleet. In prison he was visited by Dr. Day, bishop of Chichester; his colleague on the bench, Portman [q. v.]; and one Forster. He was at last so worried by their arguments that he attempted to commit suicide by opening his veins with his penknife. This intention was frustrated. He recovered and was released in April 1554, but went mad and drowned himself in a shallow stream on 4 Aug. following at Thanington, near Canterbury. A case of Hales v. Petit, in which his widow, Lady Margaret, sued for trespass done to a leasehold estate which had belonged to him, after his death but before his goods and chattels had been declared forfeit and regranted to the defendant as those of a felo de se, gave rise to much legal quibbling on the point whether the forfeiture took place as from the date of the suicide or only from the date of the grant. The following extract from Plowden's ‘Report’ may confirm the conjecture that Shakespeare took a hint from this case: ‘Sir James Hales was dead, and how came he to his death? It may be answered by drowning; and who drowned him?—Sir James Hales; and when did he drown him?—in his lifetime. So that Sir James Hales being alive caused Sir James Hales to die; and the act of a living man was the death of a dead man. And then after this offence it is reasonable to punish the living man who committed the offence and not the dead man.’
The Lady Margaret referred to was the daughter of Thomas Hales of Henley-on-Thames. By her Hales had issue two sons, Humphrey and Edward, and a daughter, Mildred.
[Hasted's Kent, ii. 576, iii. 584; Burke's Extinct Baronetage, Hales of Woodchurch; Berry's County Genealogies (Kent), 210; Douthwaite's Gray's Inn, p. 49; Chron. of Calais (Camden Soc.), pp. 173, 174; Wynne's Serjeants-at-law; Dugdale's Orig. p. 292; Chron. Ser. pp. 87, 88; Narratives of the Reformation (Camden Soc.), p. 265; Hist. MSS. Comm. 9th Rep. App. 153 b, 154 a, 155 a; Nicolas's Hist. of British Knighthood, iii. xiii; Rymer's Fœdera, ed. Sanderson, xv. 181, 250; Strype's Mem. (fol.), vol. ii. pt. i. pp. 23, 246, 281, 296, pt. ii. pp. 483–4, 487, vol. iii. pt. i. pp. 25, 279–80; Strype's Cranmer (fol.), pp. 223, 225, 270–1; Cobbett's State Trials, i. 630, 715; Burnet's Reformation, vol. ii. pt. i. p. 458; Holinshed, 1808, iii. 1064, iv. 8–9; Foxe's Acts and Monuments, ed. Townsend, vi. 710–15; Plowden's Rep. p. 255; Addit. MSS. 5480 f. 115, 5520 f. 119.]
HALES or HAYLES, JOHN (d. 1571), miscellaneous writer, younger son of Thomas Hales of Hales Place in Halden, Kent, was not educated at any university, but contrived to teach himself Latin, Greek, French, and German. He was lamed by an accident in youth, and was often called ‘club-foot’ Hales. He was clerk of the hanaper to Henry VIII, and afterwaards to Edward VI. About 1543 he published ‘Highway to Nobility,’ and translated Plutarch's ‘Precepts for the Preservation of Health’ (London, by R. Grafton, 1543). He profited by the dissolution of monasteries and chantries, but converted St. John's Hospital in Coventry, of which he received a grant in 1548, into a free school (Dugdale, Warwickshire, p. 179; Tanner, Notitia). By this act he seems to have made himself the first founder of a free school in the reign of Edward VI (Dixon, ii. 508). For the use of this foundation he wrote ‘Introductiones ad Grammaticam,’ part in Latin, part in English. At this time he was also honourably distinguished by his opposition to the enclosure of lands. When Somerset issued his commissions for the redress of enclosures in 1548, Hales was one of the six commissioners named for the midland counties. The commission, and the charge with which, wherever they held session, he was wont to open it, have been preserved (Strype, Eccl. Mem. iii. 145; Cal. of State Papers, Dom. i. 9). By his zeal and honesty he incurred the resentment of Dudley, then earl of Warwick, and the inquiry was checked.
In the parliament of the same year, 1548, Hales, who was M.P. for Preston, Lancashire, made another effort to assist the poor by introducing three bills: for rebuilding decayed houses, for maintaining tillage, against regrating and forestalling of markets. They
