The official career of Sir Christopher Hales, attorney general and master of the rolls under Henry VIII^*

Abstract

Sir Christopher Hales was one of the leading lawyer-administrators of the reign of Henry VIII. He worked tirelessly in the king’s service and was described in 1528 as a man of ‘as greate pain as any be lyvyng’.¹ At various stages in his life, Hales served the king as a member of parliament, justice of the peace, solicitor general, attorney general, justice of assize and master of the rolls.² He also enjoyed local standing in Kent due both to the land he accumulated there over the years and to his prominence in the king’s service.³ It is regrettable, if understandable, that the careers of men like Hales have attracted relatively little attention from historians. Hales wrote no books; he shunned court intrigue; his religious opinions are obscure;⁴ he merely got on with his routine work. And yet, seen from a different angle, he was a leading Crown lawyer during one of the most decisive and dramatic periods of English political history. He helped to orchestrate, not politically but legally, the downfalls of Cardinal Wolsey and Sir Thomas More. He also assisted the Lords in parliament for over fifteen years.⁵ Historians have shown an interest in Hales’s ‘political’ work, most notably his role in the praemunire manoeuvres of 1530–1 and the quo warranto proceedings against the clergy in 1532, subjects that will be revisited below.⁶ This article emphasizes that Hales’s political work represents only a subsection of his official activity. It is therefore best understood in the context of his overall portfolio of responsibilities.

This article is a study of Hales’s official career. Its purpose is to shed light on the workload and responsibilities of an early Tudor lawyer-administrator at the highest echelons of government. It aims to emulate, though on a smaller scale, other studies of Tudor official careers, such as that which John Guy produced on Sir Thomas More.⁷ It is structured around the principal stages in Hales’s career: undersheriff of Kent (1507–8), solicitor general (1525–9), attorney general (1529–36) and master of the rolls (1536–41). The fact that Hales served as undersheriff of Kent is presented here for the first time. Though the article spans the entirety of Hales’s career, it focuses primarily on his tenure as attorney general, and its chief contribution is that it provides a detailed picture of the responsibilities of this office in the early Tudor period.

Although little has been published about the early modern attorney general’s office, several studies exist. In 2011 Paul Cavill published a forensic study of Henry VII’s attorney general James Hobart (in office 1486–1507), which focused on the attorney general’s promotion of praemunire cases and furnished a range of evidence about his duties in the king’s courts.⁸ In 2013 Henry Mares presented the results of an analysis of informations filed at king’s bench by attorneys general between 1592 and 1675, offering a useful explanation of procedure and an overview of the reasons for which informations were filed.⁹ In 2014 David Chan Smith published a brief account of Sir Edward Coke’s work at star chamber as attorney general in the late Elizabethan and early Jacobean period.¹⁰ By widening the scope of the present article to consider the whole range of Hales’s legal work, not only at king’s bench and star chamber but at other courts too, it is possible to gain an even fuller understanding of this important office.

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We do not know Hales’s birth date, but he had been born by 1488, the first son of Thomas Hales of Tenterden and Elizabeth Hales (née Caunton).¹¹ Little is known of his early education. He was apparently not educated at Tenterden Grammar School, as this school was not founded until the 1520s.¹² An entry on the common pleas roll for Easter term 1509 sheds some new light on the earliest stages of Hales’s career. It indicates that he served as undersheriff of Kent under Henry Vane in 1507–8, when he was probably in his twenties, and in all likelihood after he had studied at Gray’s Inn.¹³ The entry in question reads:

Christoforus Hales subvicecomes Henrici Vane vicecomitis comitatus Kanc’ alias dictus Christoforus Hales per attornatum suum optulit se iiij^to die versus Johannem Gloucester nuper de Cantuaria wexchaundeler de placito quod reddat ei quadraginta solidos quos ei debet & iniuste detinet &c. Et ipse non venit. Et preceptum fuit vicecomiti quod summoneat eum &c. Et vicecomes modo mandavit quod nichil habet &c. Ideo capiatur quod sit hic in octabis sancte Trinitatis &c. Ad quem diem vicecomes non misit breve. Ideo sicut prius capiatur quod sit hic a die sancti michaelis in xv dies &c.¹⁴

In other words, Hales appeared at the court of common pleas in 1509 on the fourth day after the issue of an original writ to prosecute an action of debt of 40 shillings, incurred while he was undersheriff, against the wax-chandler John Gloucester; and when the defendant did not appear, a writ of capias issued against him. The fact that Hales appeared by attorney suggests that he was not an attorney himself. The sheriff did not return this writ in the octave of Saint Trinity, so a sicut prius capias was issued for the defendant’s appearance.¹⁵ Sheriffs were appointed annually, so the name of the sheriff allows us to pinpoint the dates of Hales’s undershrievalty as autumn 1507–autumn 1508.¹⁶ No other documents have been found that record Hales’s service as undersheriff, and an examination of likely records has drawn a blank. For instance, undersheriffs sometimes paid in biannual ‘proffers’ (traditional fixed payments) at the exchequer on the sheriff’s behalf, and their names would be recorded on the exchequer memoranda rolls.¹⁷ However, Henry Vane’s proffers were paid by an attorney called John Smyth, so these rolls provide no relevant information.¹⁸ Could this Christopher Hales be a namesake? We cannot entirely rule it out, but no evidence has been found to confirm the existence of any other Kentishmen with the same name in the early reign of Henry VIII, and certainly no known administrators or legal experts.¹⁹ It is most probable that the undersheriff mentioned in the roll was the same man who would later rise to prominence in national administration. The Vane and Hales families were closely acquainted; Thomas Vane prosecuted a lawsuit together with John Hales, Christopher’s cousin, in Trinity term 1509.²⁰ This seems to be a case, then, of a young man with an interest in the law serving as deputy to a family friend in order to gain experience.

Hales would have been assigned a wide range of duties as undersheriff. Some undersheriffs were mere assistants to the sheriff who performed menial tasks and provided support, while others were deputies who executed most of the responsibilities of the shrievalty in return for receiving the profits of office. Each sheriff was free to set the precise bounds of the undersheriff’s duties.²¹ Given his young age, Hales may have served more as an assistant. He would have helped to execute process throughout the county, issue warrants to bailiffs, collect ordinary revenue, keep the county gaol, police the county, and hold the county court (every four weeks) and sheriff’s tourn (biannually, in at least four of Kent’s lathes).²² Vane and Hales seem to have served without complaint, if we except the record of a later suit in the exchequer of pleas related to an annuity that Vane failed to pay to Richard Grey, 3rd earl of Kent, out of the profits of office.²³ Vane was appointed as sheriff again in 1526, when Hales had already gone on to greater things.²⁴

Hales’s early experience as undersheriff helps to explain his detailed understanding of local administration. For instance, after the death of William Kempe, sheriff of Kent in January 1539, Hales (then master of the rolls) wrote to Henry VIII’s chief minister Thomas Cromwell, urging him to appoint a replacement. He suggested that the new sheriff’s patent should bear a fictitious date to avoid error proceedings, and at the same time he demonstrated a close familiarity with the Kent shrievalty:

And to save all thynges from errours the Shireves patent may beare date as nye to the deathe of the olde shireve as shall pleace the kynge to comaund. Ser William Kempe which was shireve dyed on tewysday last, and the verey day of retorne of xv^a Hillarij was the monday before, and the iiij^to die on Thursday last, wherefore that retorne is gode in Mr Kempes name (in my mynde). And the Countye court of Kent is ever on Monday. And I knowe not whether that the Countye day be tomorowe or not, but to be sure it shalbe gode that the Teste of the newe shireves patent be on Friday or Saturday last.²⁵

A man who had experience with the tedium of local administration as well as a knowledge of the finer points of the law was worth his weight in gold to the government. While this new information is only a single jigsaw piece, it helps to explain Hales’s rise to prominence and indicates that unglamorous service in the localities could be the route to a shining legal career, as had been the case for many centuries.²⁶ By 1516 Hales was a member of the governing body of Gray’s Inn, and he was appointed autumn reader in 1524.²⁷ By this stage he was ‘an established [legal] practitioner whose regular clients included the corporation of Canterbury (by 1520), the duke of Buckingham (from 1521), and the Cinque Ports (from 1524)’.²⁸ For example, Canterbury employed Hales as counsel in a legal dispute with the Prior of St. Gregory’s in around 1520.²⁹ He also served as arbitrator in various chancery disputes in the early 1520s.³⁰ Hales must have distinguished himself in his private practice, thereby recommending himself for royal service at a higher level.

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Hales’s first major appointment in the king’s service came on 14 August 1525, when he was appointed as solicitor general.³¹ The office of solicitor general, alternatively known as the office of king’s solicitor until 1536, originated in 1461.³² It was described by Francis Bacon in 1612 as ‘one of the painfulest places in [the] kingdom’.³³ Only a relatively small amount of evidence survives from Hales’s tenure as solicitor general, but it clearly involved a wide range of responsibilities, including the presentation of evidence to juries in felony trials and the examination of suspected offenders.³⁴ At the same time, Hales continued to serve in other capacities, such as learned counsel to Princess Mary and justice of the peace in Kent,³⁵ and in the late 1520s he served as royal surveyor of lands in Calais and Guînes, where he and Sir John Dauntesey concluded that the king was ‘the only patrone of alle the benefices there’, contrary to a claim by Thomas Wolsey to enjoy rights of appointment by virtue of being chancellor.³⁶ In around 1526 the citizens of Canterbury gave Hales a hogshead of wine for his ‘good favour shewed toward the Citie’ in a case involving a forfeited recognizance.³⁷

From the beginning of his career as solicitor general, Hales had a close relationship with Thomas Cromwell, the king’s chief minister from 1534. John Foxe, for one, suggested that Hales recommended Cromwell to the king’s service in around 1530.³⁸ If we were to believe a dull play called The life and death of Thomas Lord Cromwell (1602), Cromwell began his career as Christopher Hales’s servant before being appointed to Wolsey’s service and subsequently to the king’s.³⁹ While this detail is decidedly improbable, Cromwell and Hales did enjoy a warm, intimate relationship, as illustrated by their correspondence.⁴⁰ The first surviving evidence of a relationship between the two men is from 1526, when Hales was serving as solicitor general, but by this stage they were already well acquainted.⁴¹ Later, Hales’s brother-in-law Nicholas Caunton served as Cromwell’s servant.⁴²

Hales was appointed to the superior office of attorney general on 3 June 1529.⁴³ The origins of this office can be traced to the position of king’s attorney, who enjoyed ‘the right of audience in all the royal courts’ from 1399.⁴⁴ The first attorney general known by that name was William Nottingham, appointed in 1450.⁴⁵ By the reign of Henry VIII, the attorney general was the ‘chief representative of the crown in the courts’.⁴⁶ He swore to ‘well and truly serve the kyng … in all his Courtys of Recorde within the realme of Englond, and truly councell the kyng in his matters … and sue the kynges processe after the course of the lawe after [his] connyng’; the final phrase here may suggest that attorneys general had some discretion in fulfilling their responsibilities.⁴⁷ Hales was one of only two Tudor attorneys general who did not have the distinction of being a double reader in an inn of court.⁴⁸ He carried his patent into the exchequer on the same day as his appointment, while the previous attorney general, Richard Lyster, assumed his new position as chief baron of the exchequer.⁴⁹ Hales served as attorney general until 9 July 1536, when he was succeeded by Sir John Baker.⁵⁰

As attorney general, Hales performed a broad and miscellaneous range of legal work on the king’s behalf, as we would expect from the adjective in his title, and indeed as the attorney general still does today. For instance, he acted as party to indentures on the king’s behalf in conveyances by bargain and sale;⁵¹ he arranged punishment for traitors;⁵² served on idiocy commissions;⁵³ made inventories of sequestered religious houses;⁵⁴ and searched the houses of suspected felons.⁵⁵ As an expert assistant to the house of lords, he introduced and emended bills during the Reformation parliament.⁵⁶ Moreover, he continued to serve in a variety of other capacities while attorney general, for instance as coroner of Southwark and justice of the peace in six counties, some of which positions were strictly honorific.⁵⁷ He normally conducted the king’s business from Gray’s Inn, where he shared sleeping quarters with Sir Thomas Neville,⁵⁸ although his job required frequent travelling. When returning to Kent to serve on local commissions, he was able to stay with his family in Hackington.⁵⁹ Sometimes he signed letters from ‘the Chancery Lane ende’, the location of the King’s Head tavern, only a few minutes away from Gray’s Inn.⁶⁰ Hales is known to have frequented this tavern, so he apparently did not like to put his work away at dinnertime.⁶¹ While attorney general, Hales was clearly considered to be a legal authority, for he made it into the penultimate Tudor yearbook (26 Hen. VIII, 1534–5) with his explanation of the formal differences between two types of joinder of issue.⁶² Likewise, at a moot in Gray’s Inn in c.1529 he argued that if an act of parliament ‘is so obscure that its intention cannot be understood by law or reason it is void’ – an argument famously expounded decades later in Bonham’s Case (1610).⁶³ Qualified by his role as attorney general, he also served as a justice of assize on the home circuit under Thomas Englefield J.C.P.⁶⁴

He occasionally initiated legal proceedings by preferring indictments at the king’s courts.⁶⁵ More commonly, however, he did so by filing informations, which served as an efficient alternative to indictments and did not require the assent of a grand jury. He could not proceed by information in cases of felony.⁶⁶ In the reign of Henry VIII, the propriety of using informations to prosecute non-felonious crime is not known to have been challenged, although this was to become a fraught question in the reign of Charles I; at the close of the seventeenth century, such informations were declared valid in Prynn’s Case (1690).⁶⁷ While he was attorney general, Hales was assisted by a clerk named George Stanes, who later drew up a rebel manifesto during the Lincolnshire Rising in 1536, when he was probably out of a job due to Hales’s death in the previous year.⁶⁸

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One of the attorney general’s principal duties was to prosecute infringements of the king’s rights at the revenue side of the exchequer.⁶⁹ As defined in the 1560s, the jurisdiction of this court included ‘all pennall punishments, all Intrusions, Alienacions without license, [and] penall forfeitures upon popular actions’.⁷⁰ Unlike other informers, the attorney general was not entitled to a share of the penalty when a party was judged to have breached a penal statute. Over the course of his career as attorney general (twenty-nine legal terms), Hales filed forty informations on the king’s behalf at the exchequer.⁷¹ In this regard, he was nowhere near as energetic as his predecessor Richard Lyster, who filed fifty-one informations at the exchequer over the course of only thirteen legal terms (about three times as many on average each year).⁷² Some records specifically state that the attorney general delivered an information into the court personally,⁷³ but most do not, so it is possible that he sometimes delivered them by the hands of a servant, but he certainly took responsibility for drafting the informations and for prosecuting suits at later stages. An interesting question is how he learned about infringements of the king’s rights. Intelligence no doubt flowed officially and unofficially from a multitude of sources; the arbitrary and random nature of this process has been well established by previous historians.⁷⁴ For example, John Longland, bishop of Lincoln, conducted visitations of the Priory of Little Marlow in Buckinghamshire in 1527 and 1530. In May 1530 Hales filed an information against the prioress of the same house for intrusion on an escheated manor. It seems likely, in this case, that the attorney general had received a tip-off from the bishop.⁷⁵

The causes of action are miscellaneous. Thirteen of the suits are informations of intrusion: a special personal action in the nature of an action of trespass, designed to serve the purpose of a real action. The crown had the exclusive right to file informations of intrusion at the exchequer, as was still the case centuries later.⁷⁶ Nine informations concern breach of statute; four concern non-payment of export subsidies; and two are informations for concealment of treasure trove concerning gold coins discovered in a shop and an inn in Exeter, respectively. The most dramatic information concerns four men in Chichester who prevented a man from delivering an exchequer subpoena and falsely imprisoned him for two hours.⁷⁷

To understand the attorney general’s work at the exchequer in finer detail, it will help to take a closer look at one example. On 12 October 1531 Hales filed an information against John Crosse, vicar of Hadlow in Kent, for breach of an act of parliament passed in 1529 (21 Hen. VIII, c. 13), which stipulated that no spiritual person should take lands to farm.⁷⁸ The information alleged that after the passage of the act, Crosse had leased the chapel of Sherbourn and its associated lands to Sir Edward Guildford, Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports. In this case, Guildford’s official status suggests that Hales may have learned of the transaction through high-society gossip. On 17 November the exchequer served Crosse with a subpoena, delivered by a yeoman called Lewis Valett, who certified on the following day that Crosse had refused to obey the writ. On 21 November Crosse appeared at court and was committed to the Fleet, and he posted bail eight days later. On 20 January 1532 he pleaded in person that he qualified for the exceptional treatment described in the third proviso of the act, for he kept a household at the vicarage but held insufficient glebe (parish land) to meet his expenses and had only farmed out the chapel to make ends meet. The court adjourned to deliberate until 9 June 1532, when the attorney general pleaded that Crosse did not fall under the terms of the proviso, and issue was joined on the question of whether Crosse kept a household in the manner described. A venire facias was issued to the sheriff of Kent to empanel a jury, and when the jurors failed to appear on 1 July, a writ of distringas juratores was issued for their appearance at Westminster on 6 October, or else before John Hales, second baron of the exchequer, at Rochester on 20 July 1532 (the summer assizes). The jurors appeared before John Hales in July and affirmed that Crosse did not keep a household in the manner alleged.

Then followed an interval of around two years between verdict and judgment, which probably represents an attempt between the parties to come to some agreement out of court. Crosse continued his life in Kent, where he witnessed the signing of a will in May 1533.⁷⁹ On 19 April 1534, however, the attorney general finally prayed judgment. The barons decided that Crosse should forfeit £130, which represented £10 for each of the thirteen months he had held the chapel to farm, as set down in the act. He was sent back to the Fleet on a writ of capias ad satisfaciendum. On 11 November 1534 the defendant arranged for a writ of error to be brought into the exchequer for the proceedings to be reviewed, on account of an alleged error in the original information. By provision of an act from 1515, the proceedings were sent up to king’s bench for review.⁸⁰ However, there is no record of subsequent error proceedings on the king’s bench plea rolls for Michaelmas 1534 or Hilary or Easter 1535, so it may be that the justices declined to proceed.⁸¹ Crosse remained in jail until 20 May 1536, when the warden of the Fleet informed the barons that he was dead.⁸²

Only three of the informations filed by Hales resulted in an eventual judgment against the defendant, and these suits raised a total of £32 18s 4d for the king (assuming all the money was successfully levied). In three more cases, the defendants made fine to avoid any further trouble, totalling £43 of revenue. The greatest part of this total came from a Hull merchant called Robert Dalton in May 1531, who made fine of £40 for exporting goods in a ship called The Mary Edward of Brightlingsea without paying the necessary subsidy.⁸³ In seven of the suits, some or all of the defendants were found not guilty by a jury before the barons or at the assizes. Twenty-five of the exchequer suits initiated by Hales (nearly two-thirds of the total) were discontinued without reason given. The records of some discontinued cases are marked with abbreviations such as ‘R^r’ (respectuatur) or ‘ex⁹’ (exoneratus) in the margin, while others end abruptly with no explanation.

Most discontinued cases were no doubt settled out of court, while others were apparently discontinued because of errors in the original informations. For example, Hales filed an information against Robert Chalfont on 10 July 1532 for selling foreign-made hats at Stourbridge Fair in Cambridge in September 1530, at a price higher than that stipulated by 21 Hen. VIII, c. 9. The parties joined issue on a question of fact and a venire facias was issued to the sheriff of London, but then the proceedings were discontinued and the clerk even dropped his pen mid-sentence (‘Ad quem diem –’), as if he had just been informed that the attorney general did not intend to proceed. The only obvious problem with the information is that it is marginated as ‘London’, when it should have been marginated as ‘Cant.’ because this is where the cause of action had accrued. No doubt this is why Hales had to discontinue the proceedings. On 29 January 1533 Hales filed a new information against Chalfont, which was exactly the same as the first, except that it was now correctly marginated ‘Cant.’, and an even more serious error had been introduced: the new information wrongly identified the year of the statute 21 Hen. VIII, describing it as passed by the parliament that convened on ‘tercio die Novembris anno regni dicti domini regis xxii^do’.⁸⁴ On 13 October 1533 the defendant appeared at court and demurred, probably because his counsel had noticed the blatant mistake, and the proceedings were discontinued once again, never to be revived; our hat-seller seems to have got off the hook.

The high attrition rate of exchequer cases brought by the attorney general perhaps indicates that he was more interested in giving a scare to those who had infringed the king’s rights than in unleashing the full force of the law upon them. Thus, a discontinued case does not necessarily indicate a failure on Hales’s part. We might consider the case of George Langdale, a husbandman from the Langdale valley, who was arrested by the sheriff of Westmorland in 1532 and sent over 250 miles away to London on an information that he had been stealing sheep and cows on the king’s land. He spent two miserable nights in the Fleet, which was not the worst of London’s prisons but still a far cry from the quiet life of a Lake District smallholder, and then he was bailed out by two gentlemen, and the proceedings against him appear to have been discontinued.⁸⁵

Hales was also responsible for prosecuting other lawsuits on the king’s behalf at the exchequer, including qui tam proceedings initiated by third parties. While the attorney general did not have the originating initiative in such cases, he still played an important, if clearly delimited, role. We might take an example from 1529 in which he prosecuted a foreign merchant on the king’s behalf. Thomas Sall of Bristol appeared before the barons of the exchequer on 23 April 1529 and filed an information that he had seized forty-two pieces of broadcloth belonging to the Portuguese merchant Lodowico de Fererro, from a ship called The George, captained by Thomas Howell, on the grounds that they had been purchased overseas and customs charges had not been paid. The exchequer made proclamation that any interested parties should come forward to prove that the goods should not be forfeited. Nobody did so, and so a writ was issued for the goods to be appraised by a panel of three Bristol merchants together with a jury from the same town. The goods were valued at £150. De Ferrero appeared at the court and pleaded that he had bought the goods on 1 April 1529 at Chepstow in South Wales, and he presented detailed information about this borough franchise. The goods were redelivered to him on the condition that he would repay the value of £150 in the event of an unfavourable judgment, and four gentlemen from Somerset, Gloucestershire and Surrey entered into recognizances on De Ferrero’s behalf. On 6 October the attorney general pleaded that De Ferrero’s demurrer was insufficient and prayed judgment. The proceedings were adjourned to the quindene of Easter (1 May 1530), and no further record of the case was enrolled.⁸⁶ Hales’s most important responsibilities at the exchequer were to draft informations impeccably to protect them from being thrown out after judgment on a writ of error, which would be a tremendous waste of time since proceedings could stretch over many years; and to file pleadings on the king’s behalf.

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At the court of common pleas, the attorney general represented the king in litigation and assumed responsibility for issuing process and imposing amercements in suits where the king was not a party but which affected royal rights or involved infringements of the king’s peace. From 1530 Hales assumed responsibility for his own dedicated rotulet(s) on each plea roll, which are inscribed at the bottom: ‘Hales attornatum domini regis’.⁸⁷ For example, on the attorney general’s rotulet for Hilary term 1532 six cases were recorded.⁸⁸ The reasons why the attorney general involved himself with each case appear to be as follows:

1. Contempt of court/breach of the peace: the court ordered the arrest of eighteen men for rescuing a defendant who had been arrested in Norfolk on a capias ad satisfaciendum issued by common pleas.

2. Contempt of court: Sir Henry Fermour, sheriff of Norfolk and Suffolk, was amerced for failing to return a writ of capias ad respondendum.

3. Contempt of court: Sir William Heron, sheriff of Northumberland, was amerced for failing to return a writ of capias ad respondendum.

4. Outlawry: a writ of capias utlagatum was issued against John Hall, merchant of Bristol.

5. Contempt of court: Henry, earl of Cumberland, sheriff of Westmorland, was amerced for failing to return a writ of capias ad respondendum.

6. Contempt of court: Robert Dormer, sheriff of Bedfordshire and Buckinghamshire, was amerced for failing to return two writs of capias ad respondendum.

Hales involved himself with these suits in an administrative rather than a judicial capacity. He was assisted at the common pleas by an under-clerk named Thomas Scotte, who profited by drawing off some fees to his own use.⁸⁹ Scotte was Hales’s countryman, born in Sevenoaks, Kent, and he was also a fellow Gray’s Inn man. Under Hales, Scotte served as ‘de facto clerk of the king’s process’ in common pleas.⁹⁰

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Hales also served royal interests at the court of king’s bench, the highest of all the ancient courts bar the house of lords. He sometimes commenced personal actions by writ,⁹¹ but more commonly he proceeded by information. Over the course of his career, he filed at least fifty-six informations at this court.⁹² Many informations can be traced to both the Indictamenta files (KB 9) and the ‘Rex’ section of the plea roll (KB 27). However, some informations were filed but not enrolled, and others were enrolled but not filed, so we need to consult both series to get a full picture. Two of these were for nuisance,⁹³ while the rest were informations of praemunire⁹⁴ and informations in the nature of a quo warranto. This was a much narrower range of matter than that contained in informations filed by attorneys general from the 1590s, as analysed by Mares.⁹⁵ Many of Hales’s informations were politically motivated, even downright malicious. For instance, he famously filed informations of praemunire against fourteen clerics on 11 July 1530, all of which were ultimately abandoned with the so-called Pardon of the Clergy.⁹⁶

John Guy has argued that the king instructed Hales to file these informations, primarily to ‘reinforce the demand for a clerical subsidy’ in the forthcoming parliament by hanging a Damocles’ sword over leading opponents of the earlier subsidy of 1523, and secondarily to promote English clerical support for the king’s divorce.⁹⁷ However, George Bernard suggests that there is only meagre evidence to suppose that these men were targeted because of opposition to the 1523 subsidy. He rejects the assumption that the king was principally in search of revenue, arguing instead that the informations were designed to ‘put the maximum pressure on the pope to grant his divorce’.⁹⁸ We may note that both interpretations converge in agreement that the informations had a political aim. After the Pardon of the Clergy, six further praemunire informations were filed against clerics in June and July 1531, possibly to punish those who ‘had formed the backbone of resistance in the lower house of convocation to royal supremacy’.⁹⁹ Finally, in November 1533 Hales also filed an information of praemunire against Richard Nix, bishop of Norwich, who had been among the fourteen clerics informed against in 1530.¹⁰⁰ According to Eustace Chapuys, the imperial ambassador, the 1533 proceedings against Nix were a punishment for his support of Catherine of Aragon.¹⁰¹ In any case, the blind, octogenarian bishop was pardoned by act of parliament.¹⁰²

Thirty-two of Hales’s king’s bench informations (60 per cent of the total) were informations in the nature of a quo warranto, designed to compel defendants to demonstrate ‘by what warrant’ they enjoyed certain franchises or privileges.¹⁰³ This procedure was invented by the attorney general John Ernley in 1512 to bypass the need for an original writ of quo warranto.¹⁰⁴ Informations in the nature of a quo warranto remained an important part of the attorney general’s work on into the Elizabethan period.¹⁰⁵ Were Hales’s quo warranto informations motivated by politics to the same degree as his praemunire informations? It can be noted straight away that twenty of them were filed against twenty-one clergy: William Warham, archbishop of Canterbury, eleven abbots, three prebendaries, three heads of colleges, two prioresses and one dean. Most of the informations against clergy came in February 1532 (fourteen) and June 1532 (four).¹⁰⁶ The most telling example is that of Warham, who had denounced the trend towards anti-papalism in the house of lords on 24 February 1532 and fully expected to face praemunire proceedings as a result.¹⁰⁷ No such proceedings were forthcoming, but informations in the nature of a quo warranto were filed against the archbishop on 8 February 1532 (for appointing coroners in Sussex) and 7 June 1532 (for exercising view of frankpledge in two manors in Middlesex).¹⁰⁸ These informations were hardly coincidental, no doubt representing an attempt to pressure or punish an opponent of the king; as it happened, Warham died on 22 August, and thus ‘escaped’ further legal action. As Bernard and others have argued, the procedure of quo warranto does seem to have been weaponized against the clergy.¹⁰⁹

However, it would be wrong to overlook the quo warranto informations filed against laymen, with no obvious political justification. Eight such informations were filed in 1532, and three more between 1534 and 1536. It is unlikely that these were ‘padding’ to hide the attack on the clergy. The 1530s saw a concerted effort to control private franchise jurisdiction. For instance, in 1535 parliament passed the Jurisdiction in Liberties Act, which introduced more regulations governing officers of liberties and forced palatine chanceries to start issuing process in the king’s name.¹¹⁰ In the same year, the king ordered an investigation into the extraordinarily large number of liberties in Yorkshire.¹¹¹ The quo warranto informations formed part of this overall campaign, which had just as much to do with local administration as with national politics, though the clerics were no doubt chosen as priority targets for political reasons.¹¹² Harold Garrett-Goodyear once argued persuasively that Henry VIII’s government did not institute ‘a program of systematic curtailment or elimination of franchises’, but the author perhaps underestimated the level of government initiative.¹¹³ No doubt there were ‘local interests and rivalries’, and no doubt people passed information on to the attorney general to vex their enemies, but he only proceeded in cases where the king’s interests were truly at stake.¹¹⁴ Thus, the attack on franchise jurisdiction was a case of collaboration between local interests and royal government. Admittedly, Hales’s quo warranto proceedings achieved very little from a jurisdictional point of view.¹¹⁵ Only one of the informations was prosecuted to a late stage: by informing against Henry Bourchier, earl of Essex on 15 June 1534, the attorney general managed to prompt him to secure letters patent (dated 5 June 1535) confirming his right to hold a fair in Hoddesdon.¹¹⁶ And yet, even failed quo warranto proceedings could prove useful as an information-gathering exercise, or as a means of sending a general warning to any who exercised franchise jurisdiction without a charter, a patent or the sanction of immemorial usage.

In some cases, Hales proceeded at king’s bench by indictment. His most politically significant work included the indictment of Cardinal Wolsey in October 1529, just four months after Hales had assumed office. Bills of indictment for praemunire were preferred against Wolsey at king’s bench on 9 October and 20 October 1529. On 30 October Wolsey responded to both indictments by putting himself on the king’s grace (‘ponit se in gratiam domini regis’),¹¹⁷ a procedure that substituted ‘the court for the jury as the trier of the facts, and in substance amounts to something very similar to a waiver of trial by jury’.¹¹⁸ The justices ultimately decided that all of Wolsey’s lands and goods were forfeit, and a writ was issued for his arrest.¹¹⁹ However, in Trinity term 1530 the clerk added that Wolsey ‘habet cartam allocandam [that is, a royal pardon] pro praemissis &c’. This pardon had been granted on 12 February 1530, partly thanks to Cromwell’s intercession on Wolsey’s behalf.¹²⁰ Wolsey’s fall has generally been explained either as a royal strategy or as an aristocratic coup engineered by the dukes of Norfolk and Suffolk.¹²¹ As expected, no direct evidence survives regarding who instructed Hales to prefer the indictments against Wolsey. Edward Hall’s chronicle (1548) indicates that there may be some truth to both sides of the debate: he reports that on 1 October the lords and councillors persuaded the king that Wolsey had acted contrary to the statute of praemunire, and that Henry accordingly ‘caused his attorney Cristopher Hales, to sue out a Writte of Premunire against hym’.¹²² If it is accurate, Hall’s report goes some way in harmonizing conflicting accounts of aristocratic influence and royal directive. This evidence also suggests that Hales was given only about a week to draft the indictment. As well as filing informations and preferring indictments, Hales pleaded on the king’s behalf in suits initiated by others, as he did at the revenue side of the exchequer. At king’s bench, he shared responsibility for pleading with the king’s coroner and attorney, William Fermour, who served in that capacity from 1508 to 1542.¹²³ The king occasionally issued privy seal warrants instructing the attorney general not to proceed against certain defendants.¹²⁴

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Of similar political significance to the indictment of Wolsey was Hales’s part in the interrogation and treason trial of Sir Thomas More. In May 1535 Hales was reportedly on the commission of councillors and lawyers sent to the Tower of London to solicit More’s response to the Act of Supremacy, along with the solicitor general, Richard Rich.¹²⁵ More’s trial convened two months later, on 1 July 1535, at Westminster Hall.¹²⁶ The attorney general typically played a central role in state trials for treason, as did John Popham, for instance, who prosecuted the Babington conspirators in 1586.¹²⁷ Hales’s role in More’s trial is mentioned in several surviving sources, most importantly in the so-called Paris Newsletter.¹²⁸ According to More’s indictment, probably also drafted by Hales, he had tacitly breached an act of parliament (26 Hen. VIII, c. 13) by remaining silent when asked by the king’s commissioners for his opinion on the king’s supreme headship.¹²⁹ More pleaded that this was unjust because ‘laws have constituted no penalty for silence’. Hales replied that his silence had indicated ‘malign thinking … because all subjects, being faithful to their prince, when interrogated on their view concerning the statute, are obliged to respond openly’. More responded that silence can indicate approval as well as denial, as stated in the legal maxim ‘One who keeps silent is seen to have consented’ (Qui tacet consentire videtur).¹³⁰ Hernán Corral Talciani has demonstrated that this piece of canon law dates from the thirteenth century. As he shows, More was not merely using the phrase rhetorically but rather to imply that there was no common-law tradition of defining silence as opposition.¹³¹ Unfortunately, the Paris Newsletter fails to record Hales’s counter-response, but it would undoubtedly have made interesting reading. Hales also gave evidence at the treason trial of Lord Dacre in 1534.¹³² He almost certainly played an important role in indicting and prosecuting Bishop Fisher in 1535 and Anne Boleyn in 1536, although he is not mentioned in the rather unreliable narratives printed in the State Trials.¹³³

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Even before the emergence of the court of star chamber as a clearly defined institution in the 1530s, it was common for the attorney general to initiate by information a small number of ‘official criminal prosecutions’ before the council in star chamber as the need arose.¹³⁴ At least three were initiated during the reign of Henry VII (1485–1509): two for riot and one for perjury.¹³⁵ Nine were imitated during the ascendancy of Cardinal Wolsey (1515–29): five for ‘offences against public order and public justice’, two for praemunire, one for wearing a retainer’s livery, and one for murder.¹³⁶ When Hales became attorney general in 1529, he already had experience of star chamber, since in 1524 he had commenced a suit of perjury there against John Cok of Boughton, apparently at the request of the Canterbury magistrates (the relevant bill seems to be lost).¹³⁷ Only two star chamber informations from Hales’s seven-year tenure as attorney general have come to light, but there were probably significantly more than this, since the court’s archive has been partly lost. In 1531 or thereabouts, he filed an information against Sir William Gybson and several other knights for riotous assembly and conspiring to murder the bishop of London so as to avoid paying their share of the 1531 clerical subsidy.¹³⁸

By a stroke of luck, a draft of this information has survived.¹³⁹ It was drawn up in the hand of a clerk with wide line-spacing (as was common in legal drafts) and Hales then made a few corrections and additions in his own hand. For instance, he changed an awkward phrase in the conclusion, ‘you the said lordes of his most honorable counsell shalbe alwayes standyng to reason’, to a more natural alternative: ‘you the said lordes of his most honorable counsell shalbe considred to stonde with reason’.¹⁴⁰ Hales evidently dictated the text to a clerk or lawyer and then checked the written draft personally, before having it engrossed. The second surviving information is related to a false verdict allegedly given by an inquisition in London (the outcome of this suit is unknown).¹⁴¹ Some other star chamber material testifies to the role played by Hales at this court. For example, there is a surviving court order dated 15 February 1530 from a relator suit brought by Hales.¹⁴²

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By 1536 Hales had been serving at the highest levels of government for over a decade, and naturally he continued to command respect as a legal authority; at about this time, his opinions were quoted favourably in William Yelverton’s notebook.¹⁴³ He succeeded Thomas Cromwell as master of the rolls on 10 July 1536, the second lay occupant of the office, and was knighted shortly afterwards.¹⁴⁴ Hales was the first attorney general to be appointed as master of the rolls, but there were to be seven more after him.¹⁴⁵ Although the title ‘master of the rolls’ was only introduced in the late fifteenth century, the office dates back in substance to the thirteenth.¹⁴⁶ The master of the rolls ‘supervised the greater part of the clerical side of chancery, the only officials outside his immediate control being the clerk of the crown, the other masters, and the cursitors’.¹⁴⁷ His responsibilities included keeping custody of the records of chancery and writing documents to be issued under the Great Seal. He had the power to appoint the six clerks and the clerks of the petty bag office, although in practice he was not wholly free in this regard, for appointment to these positions were open to influence from higher up.¹⁴⁸ He also kept the Domus Conversorum, a hospital for converted Jews founded by King Henry III, and accounted for related expenditure at the exchequer: in 1538, for instance, he reported money spent on three women housed therein, Elizabeth Portingale, Katherine Wheteley (alias Ayse Pudewya) and Mary Coke (alias Omell Fait Isaye).¹⁴⁹ The office of master of the rolls was lucrative, with an annual income averaging £300–£330, composed of various sums, including fees for writing and sealing patents.¹⁵⁰

Hales continued to serve as justice of the peace in Kent, Middlesex, Surrey and Sussex, as well as on commissions of oyer and terminer in Kent and at Westminster.¹⁵¹ He was also retained as counsel in the court of augmentations, which paid an additional £7 a year.¹⁵² Only three months after his appointment as master of the rolls, the Pilgrimage of Grace broke out in the north of England and the government made extensive preparations for the protection of the king and security of the country. Hales was sent back to Kent with other gentlemen to ‘sett a staye and good ordre in thabsence of the residence of the noble men’.¹⁵³ He could apparently command a retinue of forty men in the county.¹⁵⁴ After the storms of rebellion had subsided, it was back to business as usual. He continued to play an expert role in parliament. In the seventh parliament of Henry VIII’s reign (1539–40), he was appointed as first receiver of petitions.¹⁵⁵ The receivers and triers of petitions played a merely ceremonial role, having been displaced by procedural developments in the early fifteenth century.¹⁵⁶ As he had done when he was attorney general, Hales introduced bills into the Lords and also helped to emend them, including a bill that became the Statute of Proclamations (1539).¹⁵⁷

Hales’s service as master of the rolls marked the final chapter of a tireless career in the king’s service. This was the stage in his life where he famously gave a curt response to a member of the court of chancery (possibly an usher) for trying to enforce decorum: ‘[Hales], resting at the side bar in Westminster after the Lord Audley, Lord Chancellor, had gone up to sit, and being sent to that it was not his place sedente curia, answered that he wist well enough where his place was’.¹⁵⁸ This reads like the mildly cantankerous response of a man secure in his position. Hales’s career had begun with arresting troublemakers and collecting unpopular rents under the sheriff of Kent in 1507–8, and three decades later, he was on familiar terms with the lord chancellor of England. The dreary tasks of drafting informations and filing pleadings had won him the respect and esteem of his associates. He had also reaped great financial rewards; by his death he held extensive lands, including, to mention only a selection, the manor of Wingate, Littleborne; the manor of Grays, Chistlet (formerly belonging to St. Augustine’s Abbey, dissolved 1538); St. Alban’s Court, Nonington; and the manor of Howfield, Canterbury. His various mansion houses came with adjoining gardens and orchards.¹⁵⁹ After the dissolution of the monasteries Hales had been appointed as chief steward of three dissolved houses: St. Radegund’s Abbey, Dover Priory and St. Gregory’s Priory.¹⁶⁰ He died in 1541, leaving three female co-heirs, and was buried in St. Stephen’s Church, Canterbury, where no monument survives.¹⁶¹

Footnotes