John Hales | |
|---|---|
 John Hales's former residence, the Whitefriars, where the Marprelate tracts were printed, as it was in 2012 | |
| Died | 1 January 1608 |
| Spouses |
|
| Children | Mary Hales Jane Hales Bethany Hales |
| Parent(s) | Christopher Hales, Mary Lucy |
John Hales (died 1 January 1608) was the owner of the Whitefriars in Coventry at which two of the Marprelate tracts were printed on a secret press. He was the nephew and heir of John Hales, Clerk of the Hanaper, and the nephew of Sir Thomas Lucy of Charlecote.
John Hales was the son of Christopher Hales of Coventry and Mary Lucy, the daughter of William Lucy, esquire, and Anne Fermor, and sister of Sir Thomas Lucy of Charlecote, Warwickshire. [1] [2] [3] [4]
Little is known of Hales's early life. In 1589, at the request of his great-uncle Sir Richard Knightley of Fawsley, [5] he allowed the press on which the Marprelate tracts were being printed secretly to be brought to his house at the Whitefriars in Coventry by Knightley's servant Stephen Gyfford. [6] The first of the tracts, Martin Marprelate's Epistle, had been printed at the home of Elizabeth Hussey in East Molesey. The second tract, The Epitome, had been printed at Sir Richard Knightley's house at Fawsley. At the time, Knightley was married to his second wife, Elizabeth Seymour, a daughter of Edward Seymour, 1st Duke of Somerset, and a cousin of King Edward VI. [7] Two of the Marprelate tracts, Certain Mineral and Metaphysical Schoolpoints and Hay Any Work for Cooper, as well as John Penry's A View, were printed at the Whitefriars by Robert Waldegrave. [8] The secret press was then moved to Sir Roger Wigston's house of Wolston Priory.
Henry Sharpe, who had bound the printed copies of the Marprelate tracts, later gave evidence implicating Hales, Knightley, and the Wigstons, and a special commission appointed on 16 November 1589 by the Privy Council ordered their interrogation, having concluded that:
Sir Richard Knightley, Roger Wigston and John Hales have been acquainted with the printing and publishing of the said books, and have been favourers and abetters of the said Martin Marprelate in his disordered proceedings. [9]
In November 1589 Hales, Elizabeth Hussey, Sir Richard Knightley, and Sir Roger Wigston and his wife were arrested [9] and imprisoned in the Fleet. [10] However, their interrogation failed to elicit the identity of Martin Marprelate, which appears to have been unknown to those who harboured the secret press.
On 13 February 1590 Hales, Knightley, and the Wigstons were arraigned in the Star Chamber. [11] [12] At trial, Knightley admitted to having written to Hales requesting that he provide room for the secret press at Coventry. Despite his plea for the Queen's forgiveness, Knightley was fined £2000, and it was ordered that he be imprisoned at the Queen's pleasure. [13] Hales denied all knowledge of the nature of the books printed on the secret press, and protested, in excuse of his actions, that:
He had great reason, as he thought, to gratify Sir Richard Knightley in anything, to whom he owed much reverence, as he that had married his aunt'. [14]
Hales was fined 1000 marks, and, like Knightley, was ordered to be committed to prison. [15]
Sir Roger Wigston was fined 500 marks, with a similar order for his imprisonment. His wife, who took upon herself the blame for persuading her husband to allow the printing of the tracts at their house, was fined £1000 and similarly imprisoned at the Queen's pleasure. [16]
The latter part of Hales's life appears to have been uneventful. He left a will dated 30 August 1607 in which he named a son, John, and three daughters, Mary, Jane, and Bethany. [17]
Hales married firstly, by settlement dated 18 September 1586, Frideswide Faunt, the daughter of William Faunt, esquire, of Foston, Leicestershire, and his second wife, Jane Vincent (d. 1585). [18] She was the widow of Roger Cotton, esquire. [19]
He married secondly a wife named Avis, who survived him. [20] [21]
Martin Marprelate was the name used by the anonymous author or authors of the seven Marprelate tracts that circulated illegally in England in the years 1588 and 1589. Their principal focus was an attack on the episcopacy of the Anglican Church.
The Marprelate Controversy was a war of pamphlets waged in England and Wales in 1588 and 1589, between a puritan writer who employed the pseudonym Martin Marprelate, and defenders of the Church of England which remained an established church.
John Penry, who was executed for high treason during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, is Wales' most famous Protestant Separatist martyr.
Fawsley is a hamlet and civil parish in West Northamptonshire, England. The population at the 2001 census was 32. At the 2011 census the population remained less than 100 and is included in the civil parish of Charwelton.
This is a list of the High Sheriffs of Northamptonshire.
John Hales was a writer, administrator, and member of parliament during the Tudor period.
Events from the 1580s in England.
Rainald Knightley, 1st Baron Knightley, known as Sir Rainald Knightley, 3rd Baronet, from 1864 to 1892, was a British Conservative Party politician.
Sir Richard Knightley of Fawsley Hall in Northamptonshire was an English Member of Parliament (MP) and leading patron of the Puritans during the reign of Elizabeth I. The Knightleys were one of the leading families of Northamptonshire.
Job Throckmorton (Throkmorton) (1545–1601) was a puritan English religious pamphleteer and Member of Parliament during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I. Possibly with John Penry and John Udall, he authored the Martin Marprelate anonymous anti-clerical satires; scholarly consensus now makes him the main author.
Pasquill is the pseudonym adopted by a defender of the Anglican hierarchy in an English political and theological controversy of the 1580s known as the "Marprelate controversy" after "Martin Marprelate", the nom de plume of a Puritan critic of the Anglican establishment. The names of Pasquill and his friend "Marforius", with whom he has a dialogue in the second of the tracts issued in his name, are derived from those of "Pasquino" and "Marforio", the two most famous of the talking statues of Rome, where from the early 16th century on it was customary to paste up anonymous notes or verses commenting on current affairs and scandals.
William Fleetwood was an English lawyer and politician. He was Member of Parliament for Marlborough in 1558, Lancaster in 1559 and 1567, and for the City of London several times between 1572 and 1592, but his most significant position was as Recorder of London from 1571 to 1591. A lawyer of the Middle Temple, he was a Queen's Serjeant in 1592.
Wolston Priory was a Benedictine priory near Wolston in Warwickshire, England. The earthwork remains of the priory are a Scheduled Ancient Monument. A present grade II* listed house is based on the remains of the rectory.
The buildings known as Whitefriars are the surviving fragments of a Carmelite friary founded in 1342 in Coventry, England. All that remains are the eastern cloister walk, a postern gateway in Much Park Street and the foundations of the friary church. It was initially home to a friary until the dissolution of the monasteries. During the 16th century it was owned by John Hales and served as King Henry VIII School, Coventry, before the school moved to St John's Hospital, Coventry. It was home to a workhouse during the 19th century. The buildings are currently used by Herbert Art Gallery and Museum, Coventry.
Sir Anthony Cope, 1st Baronet of Hanwell in Oxfordshire, was an English Puritan Member of Parliament.
John Udall (1560?–1592) was an English clergyman of Puritan views, closely associated with the publication of the Martin Marprelate tracts, and prosecuted for controversial works of a similar polemical nature. He has been called "one of the most fluent and learned of puritan controversialists".
Sir John Wolley was Queen Elizabeth I's Latin Secretary, a member of her Privy Council, and a member of Parliament from 1571 until his death in 1596.
Robert Waldegrave or Walgrave, the son of Richard Waldegrave of Blockley, Worcestershire, was a 16th-century printer and publisher in England and Scotland. From 1578 to 1588 he printed numerous, mainly religious works in London, and from 1590 to 1603, more than 100 books in Scotland. In 1603, following King James I of England's accession to the English throne, he returned to England, but died later the same year.
George Carleton was a lawyer, landowner and Member of Parliament with strong Puritan sympathies. It has been suggested that he was the secret author of the Marprelate tracts, and both he and his third wife were prosecuted for their involvement in the Marprelate controversy. Ordered to appear daily before the Privy Council in April 1589, he died in early 1590 before a decision in the proceedings against him had been reached.
Elizabeth Hussey, later Elizabeth Crane and Elizabeth Carleton, was a religious activist with strong Puritan sympathies. She and her second husband, George Carleton, were prosecuted for involvement in the Marprelate controversy. The first of the anonymous Marprelate tracts, Martin's Epistle, was printed at her home in East Molesey, Surrey, in October 1588.