HALE, Sir Matthew, the lord chief justice of the King’s Bench in the reign of Charles II., was the son of [7:11:110]Robert Hale, Esq. a barrister of Lincoln’s Inn, and was born in 1609. He was educated at Oxford, where he made considerable progress in learning; but he was afterwards diverted from his studies by the levities of youth. From these, however, he was recalled by Mr John Glanvill, serjeant-at-law; and having applied to the study of the law, he entered himself of Lincoln’s Inn. Noy the attorneygeneral took early notice of him, and directed him in his studies. Selden also distinguished him; and it was this acquaintance which first led Hale to a more enlarged pursuit of learning, having before confined his studies to his own profession. During the civil wars he behaved so well as to gain the esteem of both parties. He was employed in practice by all the king’s party; and he was also appointed by the parliament as one of the commissioners to treat with the king. The murder of King Charles gave him very sensible regret. However, he took the engagement, and was appointed, with several others, to consider of the reformation of the law. In 1653 he was by writ made serjeant-at-law, and soon afterwards appointed one of the justices of the Common Pleas. Upon the death of Oliver Cromwell, he refused to accept of the new commission offered him by Richard, his successor. He was returned as one of the knights of Gloucestershire in the parliament which recalled Charles II. Soon afterwards he was made lord chief baron of the Exchequer; but he declined the honour of knighthood, till Lord Chancellor Hyde, sending for him upon business when the king was at his house, told his majesty that there was his modest chief baron; upon which he was unexpectedly knighted. He was one of the principal judges who sat in Clifford’s Inn about settling the difference between landlord and tenant, after the fire of London; in which capacity he behaved to the satisfaction of all parties concerned. As chief baron he likewise acted with inflexible integrity. A peer of the highest rank went once upon a time to his chamber, and told him, that having a suit in law to be tried before him, he was then to acquaint him with it, that he might the better understand it when it should come to be tried in court. Upon this the lord chief baron interrupted him, and said that his grace (for he was a duke) did not deal fairly to come to his chambers about such affairs, for he never received information of such causes but in open court, where both parties were to be heard alike. His grace then went away not a little dissatisfied, and complained of it to the king as a rudeness which was not to be endured; but his majesty bid him content himself that he was not worse used, adding, that he verily believed Hale would have used him no better if he had gone to solicit him in any of his own causes. Another remarkable incident happened in one of his circuits. A gentleman who had a trial at the assizes had sent him a buck for his table. When Judge Hale heard his name, he asked if he was not the same person who had sent him the venison; and being answered in the affirmative, told him that he could not suffer the trial ιu go on till he had paid him for his buck. The gentleman answered, that he never sold his venison, and that he had done nothing to him which he did not do to every judge who had gone that circuit; which was confirmed by several gentlemen present. The lord chief baron, however, would not suffer the trial to proceed till he had paid for the present, upon which the gentleman withdrew the record. This upright judge was in 1671 advanced to be lord,, chief justice of the King’s Bench; but about four years after this promotion his health declined, and he resigned his high office in February 1676, and died in December following. This excellent man, who was an ornament to the bench, to his country, and to human nature, was the author of, 1. An Essay touching the Gravitation or Non-Gravitation of Fluid Bodies; 2. Difficiles Nugoe, or Observations on the Torricellian Experiment;

3. Observations on the Principles of Natural Motion; 4. Contemplations Moral and Divine; 5. An English Translation of Nepos’s Life of Pomponius Atticus; and, 6. The Primitive Origination of Mankind. At the time of his decease he also left other works, which were afterwards published, viz. 1. Judgment of the Nature of True Religion; 2. Several Tracts, including a Discourse of Religion, under three heads; 3. A Letter to his Children;

4. A Letter to one of his Sons on his recovery from the small-pox; 5. A Discourse of the Knowledge of God and of Ourselves, first, by the Light of Nature, and secondly, by the Sacred Scriptures. All these, under the title of Hale’s Moral and Religious Works, were published by Thirlwall in 1805, in two volumes 8vo, with a life of the author by Bishop Burnet. Of his Law Tracts one only appeared in his lifetime, viz. London Liberty, or an argument of Law and Reason, 1650, reprinted in 1682. After his death were published, 1. Pleas of the Crown, or a Methodical. Summary, 1678, in 8vo, continued by Jacob, and reprinted in 1716; 2. Treatise on the enrolling and registering of all Conveyances of Land, 1694, in 4to, reprinted with additions in 1756; 3. Tractatus de successionibus apud Anglos, or a Treatise on Hereditary Descents, 1700 and 1735, in 8vo; 4. A Treatise on the original Institution of Parliaments, 1707, republished by Hargrave in 1796, 4to; 5. Analysis of the Law, without date; 6. History of the Common Law of England, in twelve chapters, 1713, in 8vo; 7. Historia Placitorum Coronae, or History of the Pleas of the Crown, 1739, in two volumes folio, edited by Emelyn. There are a few other tracts and opinions of his, which have been published by Hargrave and succeeding writers on law in their collections. Sir Matthew Hale, by his will, bequeathed to the society of Lincoln’s Inn his collection of manuscripts, which he had been nearly forty years in making, and on which he had spared neither labour nor expense.