HALL, Edward II (by 1518-?72 or later), of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Northumb.

Published in The History of Parliament: the House of Commons 1509-1558, ed. S.T. Bindoff, 1982
Available from Boydell and Brewer

Constituency

Dates

Family and Education

b. by 1518. ?m. Eleanor.1

Offices Held

Biography

Little has come to light about Edward Hall or his family. He was by occupation a baker, being so described in the election indenture. The mention in 1539 of John and George Hall in the same ward of the town as Edward Hall suggests that he was of local origin. No connexion has been established between him and the family of his name which in the later 16th and 17th centuries was prominent in the merchant adventurers company of Newcastle.2

At a muster held at Newcastle in 1539 Hall was one of the artificers and craftsmen who undertook to provide men and harness for the King’s service. He may have been the Edward Hall, again located in the wards of Alderman Henry Anderson, who was then described as ‘well-furnished, with his servant, with a spear and bill’, but the Edward Hall who appeared with jack, sallet and halbert in the first ward of Alderman Gilbert Middleton was presumably a different man. In 1545 Hall, styled ‘junior’ and a baker, had granted to him by Roger Mitford property in the town at a rent of £1 6s.8d. a year and 8s. payable to the King.3

Hall did not hold any office in Newcastle and he is the only craftsman known to have been returned to Parliament for the town during the century. Municipal dissension was endemic there and relations between the merchant oligarchy and the artisans remained poor following the artisans’ defeat in the Star Chamber in 1515. There is, however, nothing to suggest that Hall’s election was a concession by the merchants, and all that is known of his religious views, which could have entered into the matter, is that he was not among those Members of Mary’s first Parliament who ‘stood for the true religion’, that is, for Protestantism.4

If the Member is to be identified with the Edward Hall who in 1571 sold property in Newcastle to John Michelson, a master mariner, for £37 10s. and who, with his wife, was said in 1572 to hold a messuage and loft on the quayside rightfully belonging to Michelson, these are the last references found to him.5

Ref Volumes: 1509-1558

Author: M. J. Taylor

Notes

  • 1. Date of birth estimated from first reference. Arch. Ael. n.s. xxiv. 129-30.
  • 2. R. Welford, Newcastle and Gateshead, ii. 190-1, 193; Newcastle Merchant Adventurers, ii (Surtees Soc. ci), 210, 219, 226, 257, 265.
  • 3. Welford, ii. 179, 190, 193; Arch. Ael. n.s. xxiv. 128.
  • 4. Select Cases in Star Chamber, ii (Selden Soc. xxiv), pp. xcvi-cii, 75-118.
  • 5. Arch. Ael. n.s. xxiv. 129-30.