Sir Matthew Hale (1 November 1609 – 25 December 1676) was an influential English lawyer, most noted for his treatise Historia Placitorum Coronæ, or The History of the Pleas of the Crown. He occupied various public offices both under the Cromwellian Commonwealth and the Stuart Restoration. From 1671 until his retirement in 1676, he served as Chief Justice of the King's Bench. Hale is widely regarded as one of the key figures in the development of the common law.
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. In 1626 he matriculated at Magdalen Hall, Oxford (now Hertford College), intending to become a priest. He was later persuaded to become a barrister, like his father, by an encounter with a Serjeant-at-Law in a dispute over his estate. On 8 November 1628, he joined Lincoln's Inn, where he was called to the Bar on 17 May 1636. As a barrister, Hale represented several Royalist figures in the prelude to the English Civil War and during the war itself. These included the Earl of Strafford and Archbishop Laud. It has been hypothesised that Hale was intended to represent Charles I at his trial and that he conceived the defence used by the king.
Despite the defeat of the Royalists, Hale's reputation for integrity and his political neutrality protected him under the Commonwealth. He became Chairman of the Hale Commission that investigated law reform. Following the Commission's dissolution, Oliver Cromwell appointed him Justice of the Common Pleas. Hale sat in Parliament, either in the Commons or in the Upper House, in every Parliament from the First Protectorate Parliament (1654–1655) to the Convention Parliament (1660). After the Declaration of Breda, Hale was the Member of Parliament who moved to consider restoring the crown to Charles II. Under Charles, Hale was made first Chief Baron of the Exchequer and then Chief Justice of the King's Bench. In both positions, he was again noted for his integrity, although not as a particularly innovative judge. Following a bout of illness he retired on 20 February 1676, dying ten months later on 25 December 1676.
Hale's published works were particularly influential in the development of English common law. His Historia Placitorum Coronæ, dealing with capital offences against the Crown, is considered "of the highest authority", while his Analysis of the Common Law is noted as the first published history of English law and a major influence on William Blackstone's Commentaries on the Laws of England. Hale's jurisprudence struck a middle-ground between Edward Coke's "appeal to reason" and John Selden's "appeal to contract", while refuting elements of Thomas Hobbes's theory of natural law. Hale influentially wrote that a man could not be charged with marital rape,, a principle famously overturned in the case of R v R. Modern commentators have criticized Hale for presiding over the 1662 Bury St Edmunds witch trial, which led to the execution of two women, and for his argument that capital punishment could extend to those as young as fourteen. In addition to his legal writings, Hale also published several works on Aristotelian physics.
Hale was born on 1 November 1609 in West End House (now known as The Grange or Alderley Grange) in Alderley, Gloucestershire to Robert Hale, a barrister of Lincoln's Inn, and Joanna Poyntz. His father gave up his practice as a barrister several years before Hale's birth "because he could not understand the reason of giving colour in pleadings". This refers to a process through which the defendant would refer a case over the validity of his title to land to a judge instead of a jury, through claiming a (false) allegation about this right. Such an allegation would be a question of law rather than a question of fact, and as such decided by the judge with no reference to the jurors.
Although in common use, Robert Hale apparently saw this as deceptive and "contrary to the exactness of truth and justice which became a Christian; so that he withdrew himself from the inns of court to live on his estate in the country". John Hostettler, in his biography of Matthew Hale, points out that his father's concerns about giving colour in pleadings could not have been very strong "since he not only retired to his estate at Alderley where he managed to live on his wife's inherited income, but also directed in his will that Matthew should make a career in the law".
Both of Hale's parents died before he was five; Joanna in 1612, and Robert in 1614. It was then revealed that Robert had been so generous in giving money to the poor that at his death his estate provided only £100 of income a year, of which £20 was to be paid to the local poor. Hale thus passed into the care of Anthony Kingscot, one of his father's relatives. A strong Puritan, Kingscot had Hale taught by a Mr. Stanton, the vicar of Wotton known as the "scandalous vicar" due to his extremist puritan views. On 20 October 1626, at the age of 16, Hale matriculated at the University of Oxford as a member of Magdalen Hall.
Both Kingscot and Stanton had intended this to be his career, and his education had been conducted with that in mind. He was taught by Obadiah Sedgwick, another Puritan, and excelled in both his studies and fencing. Hale also regularly attended church, private prayer-meetings, and was described as "simple in his attire, and rather aesthetic". After a company of actors came to Oxford, Hale attended so many plays and other social activities that his studies began to suffer, and he began to turn away from Puritanism. In light of this, he abandoned his desire to become a priest and instead decided to become a soldier. His relatives were unable to persuade him to become a priest, or even a lawyer, with Hale describing lawyers as "a barbarous set of people unfit for anything but their own trade".
His plans to become a soldier died after a legal battle concerning his estate, in which he consulted John Glanville. Glanville successfully persuaded Hale to become a lawyer, and, after leaving Oxford at the age of 20 before obtaining a degree, he joined Lincoln's Inn on 8 November 1628. Fearing that the theatre might dissuade him from his legal studies as it had at Oxford, he swore "never to see a stage-play again". At around this time he was drinking with a group of friends when one of them became so drunk he fainted; Hale prayed to God to forgive and save his friend, and forgive him for his previous excesses. His friend recovered, and Hale was restored to his Puritan faith, never drinking to someone's health again (not even drinking to the King) and going to church every Sunday for 36 years. He instead settled into his studies, working for up to 16 hours a day during his first two years at Lincoln's Inn before reducing it to eight hours due to health concerns. As well as reading the law reports and statutes, Hale also studied the Roman civil law and jurisprudence. Outside of the law, Hale studied anatomy, history, philosophy and mathematics. He refused to read the news or attend social events, and occupied himself entirely with his studies and visits to church.
Civil War, Commonwealth and Protectorate
On 17 May 1636, Hale was called to the Bar by Lincoln's Inn, and immediately became the pupil of William Noy. Hale and Noy became close friends, to the point where he was referred to as "the young Noy", and more crucially he also met and befriended John Selden, a "man of almost universal learning, whose theories were to dominate much of [Hale's] later thought". Selden persuaded him to continue with his studies outside the law, and much of Hale's written work is concerned with theology and science as well as legal theory.
Hale gained a good legal practice, although he allowed his Christian faith to govern his work. He sought to help the court reach a just verdict, whatever his client's concerns, and normally returned half his fee or charged a standard fee of 10 shillings rather than allow costs to inflate. He refused to accept unjust cases, and always tried to be on the "right" side of any case; John Campbell wrote that "If he saw that a cause was unjust, he for a great while would not meddle further in it but to give his advice that it was so; if the parties after that would go on, they were to seek another counsellor, for he would assist none in acts of injustice".