Edward Hall
Edward Hall was a notable English historian and parliamentarian born in 1497 in London. He received his education at Eton and King's College, Cambridge, before beginning his legal career at Gray's Inn. Hall entered Parliament around 1523, where he became known for his legal expertise and served multiple terms for various constituencies throughout the 1530s and 1540s. He held several significant legal positions, including common serjeant and undersheriff, and was involved in mediating between debtors and creditors at Ludgate Prison.
Hall is best known for his work "The Union of the Noble and Illustre Famelies of Lancaster and Yorke," which, despite being published posthumously in 1542, was expanded in later editions. This historical account provides vivid descriptions of Henry VIII's court and significant events, although it has been criticized for its accuracy. Despite its distortions, Hall's work is recognized for its early critical evaluation of sources and for analyzing the impact of political changes on the merchant class. His interpretation of history, which suggests a notion of progress, resonates with modern historians while also reflecting his biases in favor of the Lancastrian perspective. Hall's legacy persists today, influencing literary figures such as William Shakespeare and continuing to be of interest to historians.
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Subject Terms
Edward Hall
Historian
- Born: c. 1497
- Birthplace: St. Mildred, Poultry, London, England
- Died: April 1, 1547
- Place of death: England
Biography
Edward Hall was born in the London parish of St. Mildred, Poultry, in 1497, the son of John and Katherine Hall; his father was a successful grocer. He attended Eton before matriculating at King’s College, Cambridge, in 1514. He received his B.A. in 1518, and then went on to study at Gray’s Inn. He probably entered Parliament for the first time in 1523, soon putting his legal expertise to use in the drafting of bills, and firmly established himself as a useful parliamentarian, being reelected for a series of different constituencies in the 1530’s and 1540’s. He did other legal work in parallel; in 1532, he was appointed as a “common serjeant”—a magistrate specializing in the representation of pleas made by commoners—and in 1533 was appointed an autumn reader at Gray’s Inn. In 1535, he was promoted to undersheriff, and in 1542, he became a commissioner at Ludgate Prison, mediating between the debtors imprisoned there and their creditors.
Hall’s only attributable publication, The Union of the Noble and Illustre Famelies of Lancaster and Yorke only extended to 1532 when it was first printed in 1542, but it was augmented in subsequent editions by its printer, Richard Grafton, who extended its record to 1546 in the third edition of 1550. Grafton, who was the printer of the first Book of Common Prayer and had similarly extended John Hardyng’s early fifteenth century Chronicle into modern times, was a significant figure in Henry VIII’s England, but the book would presumably have found favor anyway because of its flattering portrait of the king and its justification of the dubious Lancastrian succession. Its descriptions of Henry’s court and the Field of the Cloth of Gold were sufficiently vivid to inspire many later writers, although their accuracy is dubious in spite of the fact that Hall was undoubtedly an eyewitness to many of the later events that he and his successor recorded.
Hall died in 1547, the year that Henry VIII’s reign ended. His history was banned by Queen Mary, but rehabilitated under Elizabeth; William Shakespeare made extensive use of it in writing his history plays, further exaggerating Hall’s slanderous account of Richard III. It continued to interest modern historians in spite of its distortions because it is the first work of history to attempt some critical evaluaton of its extensively credited sources, and makes valiant attempts to track patterns of historical causation.
Hall’s legal, parliamentary and family background are all reflected in his analyses of the manner in which political developments had impacted upon the merchant class, which make his work a distant precursor of what Herbert Butterfield described—pejoratively—as “the Whig interpretation of history” (i.e., history that embodies some notion of progress, and sees political change as a series of battles between progressive reformers and diehard conservatives). Hall’s notion of “progress” was a corollary of his determinaton to elevate the Lancastrians at the expense of the Yorkists they had rudely replaced, but it appeals nevertheless to modern historians whose concept of progressive change is much broader and differently based.