Hale

Hale, SIR MATTHEW, Lord Chief-justice of England, was born 1st November 1609 at Alderley, Gloucestershire. Intended for the church, he was sent to Oxford University in his sixteenth year. But suddenly he abandoned his studious habits, and, joining a company of strolling-players, gave way to a good deal of dissipation. He was on the point of becoming a soldier when Serjeant Glanville induced him to adopt the legal profession. Accordingly in 1628 Hale entered the Society of Lincoln's Inn, and resuming his habits of persevering study was in due course called to the bar (1637). He soon acquired a considerable practice. In the quarrel between king and parliament Hale refrained from identifying himself with either side. When, however, parliament got the upper hand, he signed the Solemn League and Covenant, sat in the Assembly of Divines at Westminster, tried to bring about a settlement between the king and parliament, and ultimately, taking his engagement to the Commonwealth, was made a judge under Cromwell in 1653. He acted as a puisne judge of the Common Pleas till Cromwell's death, but refused to have his commission renewed by Richard Cromwell. After the Restoration he was made Chief-baron of the Court of Exchequer, and eleven years later was transferred to the Chief-justicehip of the Court of King's Bench. As a judge he was acute, learned, and sensible, and set his face against bribery, one of the vices of the age. He was a pious man and a friend of Richard Baxter, but, like Baxter, was not able to rise superior to the belief in witchcraft. He wrote numerous works, as History of the Pleas of the Crown (1739), History of the Common Law of England (1713), and various Moral and Religious Works (ed. by Thirlwall, 1805); and he bequeathed several valuable legal MSS. to Lincoln's Inn. He resigned his office from ill-health in February 1676, and died on Christmas-day of that year. See Lives by Burnet (1682), Williams (1835), Roscoe (1838), and Campbell (1849).