The Original Institution, Power and Jurisdiction of Parliaments. in Two Parts. ... with a Declaration of the House of Commons, Concerning Their ... Being a Manuscript of the Late Judge Hales
Sir Matthew Hale was an influential English barrister, judge and lawyer most noted for his treatise Historia Placitorum Coronæ, or The History of the Pleas of the Crown.
Background
Sir Matthew Hale was born on 1 November 1609 in Alderley, Gloucestershire, United Kingdom. Born to a barrister and his wife, who had both died by the time he was 5.
Hale was raised by his father's relative, a strict Puritan, and inherited his faith.
Education
He entered Magdalen Hall (now Hertford College), Oxford, when he was sixteen years of age. He spent several terms studying theology with the intention of entering the church, but suddenly left school and made up his mind that he would become a soldier.
Career
Hale was called to the bar in 1637 and was almost immediately successful. He was willing to undertake the defense of King Charles I in 1646, but the king refused to submit himself to the court. In 1653 he was appointed a judge in the Court of Common Pleas, and two years later became one of the two members for Gloucestershire in Oliver Cromwell's Parliament. When Richard Cromwell became Lord Protector in succession to his father, in 1659, Hale refused to act as a judge, but sat in Parliament as member for Oxford. He was active in bringing about the Restoration, and in 1660 King Charles II appointed him Lord Chief Baron of the Exchequer and gave him a knighthood, which he accepted reluctantly. One of the reproaches which has been cast upon Hale relates to his credulity, which allowed him to condemn to death as witches two unfortunate elderly women, after he had given his opinion that the existence of witches was proved from Scriptural and other sources. In 1671 he was appointed Lord Chief Justice of King's Bench, an office which he retained until he retired in 1676. Hale possessed a remarkably wide knowledge of the law, and was of the opinion that a judge should be concerned with legal and not political matters. As a result of this he was successful both under the Stuarts and under the Protectorate.
In 1642 Hale married Anne Moore, the daughter of Sir Henry Moore, a Royalist soldier, and the granddaughter of Sir Francis Moore, a Serjeant-at-Law under James I. Moore and Hale had 10 children, but she was evidently a highly extravagant woman, with Hale warning his children that "an idle or expensive wife is most times an ill bargain, though she bring a great portion".
Moore died in 1658, and in 1667 Hale married Anne Bishop, his housekeeper. Descriptions of Bishop differ. Roger North wrote that "[Hale] was unfortunate in his family; for he married his own servant made, and then, for an excuse, said there was no wisdom below the girdle".
Richard Baxter, on the other hand, described Anne as "one of [Hale's] own judgment and temper, prudent and loving, and fit to please him; and that would not draw on him the trouble of much acquaintance and relations".
Hale himself described her as a "most dutiful, faithful, and loving wife" who was appointed an executrix on his death.