HALL, John II

Hall earned for himself a reputation as an argumentative, litigious and grasping individual, capable of insolence even to the King: Edward IV found him to be ‘sedicious, hasty, wilfull and of full unwitty disposicon’. Of obscure background, the MP may have been related to the namesake who had made several appearances at the Wiltshire elections earlier in the fifteenth century: as a mainpernor for Walter Shirley*, MP for Salisbury in 1413, for the shire knights Sir William Sturmy* (1417) and Edmund Cheyne* (1429), and for William Botreaux*, returned for Wilton in 1431, as well as being an attestor of the shire indenture in 1433.12 C219/11/2, 12/2, 14/1, 2. It was probably that older John Hall of Wiltshire who was required to take the general oath against maintenance in 1434.13 CPR, 1429-36, p. 371. However, the name was a common one.

The MP was living in Salisbury by 1444,14 First General Entry Bk. no. 391. and remained resident there until his death. A merchant, more specifically a mercer, he became one of the most outstanding figures in the life of the city, and adopted the status of ‘esquire’ in his later years. His mercantile activities may have begun as early as 1428, when a John Hall was recorded importing wine into Southampton.15 Port Bk. 1427-30 (Soton. Rec. Soc. 1913), 60. Certainly in the 1440s he regularly brought a variety of goods by road from Southampton for sale in Salisbury, including besides wine such food-stuffs as almonds, fruit, oil, herring and salmon and many wagon-loads of tar, soap, wax, madder, woad and iron.16 Brokage Bk. 1443-4, i, ii (Soton. Rec. Ser. iv, vi), passim; Port and Brokage Bks. 1448-9 (Soton. Rec. Ser. xxxvi), passim. Hall had dealings with Italian merchants who came to Southampton to trade, although one of them, a Genoese named Cazano Spinola, later claimed that he had unjustly taken his merchandise. The goods allegedly stolen, in 1457, included sumptuous clothing such as robes and doublets, some lined with wolf or other skins, velvet and linen cloth, beds, bedding and curtains, which together with a bag of documents were said to be worth £90.17 KB27/789, rot. 17.Another lawsuit reveals that Hall’s shop in Salisbury, known as ‘Doggehole’, stocked a large variety of items for sale: cloth (including damasks and velvets), hats, caps, bonnets and other mercery goods, grocery (notably spices) and haberdashery, pitch, tar, flax, woad, madder and several kinds of wine. The stock was described in Hall’s dispute in Chancery with Richard Freeman†. In October 1459 Freeman had entered a bond in statute merchant for £500, guaranteeing that he would pay Hall for all the merchandise, but failed to do so, causing Hall, during his mayoralty of the Salisbury staple in 1465, to send a writ to the sheriff of Wiltshire for Freeman’s arrest. Freeman then sued Hall for breaking a contract to deliver wine, ‘black chalk’ and pouches to him. He said that the bond in £500 had been sealed to ensure he would make quarterly payments of £5 10s. for the merchandise, but the wine, valued at as much as £100, had proved to be of such poor quality that it was worth no more than half that sum. Nevertheless, although he had handed over £80, Hall, ‘having no conscience’, had sued him under the statute merchant for £500, and got his arrest ordered. Hall’s account of their dispute was rather different. He said that he had been persuaded by Freeman, supported by the latter’s father-in-law Simon Poy*, to sell him the contents of ‘Doggehole’, and although he had kept his side of the bargain Freeman had only paid him £47, which is why he sued execution of the statute staple. The suit, becoming the subject of a bill to the chancellor, was heard by him on 7 Feb. 1479, eliciting a ruling that Freeman owed £20 as the residue of the £100 for goods received, but would be quit of the statute staple.18 C241/249/10; C1/67/111-14. The quarrel, prolonged for nearly 20 years, typifies Hall’s tenacity and refusal to compromise.

Hall did not need to depend entirely on shipowners in Southampton for the transport of his wares. He obtained a royal licence to trade overseas in July 1459, and as himself the owner of Le Jesus of Poole (a vessel of 80 tons) he was permitted in April 1462 to use her to convey 100 pilgrims to Santiago de Compostela.19 DKR, xlviii. 437; C76/146, m. 21. He also possessed a carvel called The James, similarly berthed at Poole. Early in 1463 the crew of this vessel captured at sea a Breton ship, Le John de Garaunt, which, unfortunately for Hall, was carrying a cargo of woollen cloth under safe conduct from Edward IV. On 6 Aug. that year he was required to enter recognizances in £400 to return the ship and its cargo to one of the merchants who had hired it (John de la Rouge or Rigge of Bordeaux), and to content him and his colleagues of their costs and expenses. Further recognizances in the same sum were intended to guarantee his appearance in Chancery to make answer. The merchant made a general release of actions against Hall in January 1464, after obtaining satisfaction.20 CPR, 1461-7, p. 234; CCR, 1461-7, pp. 197, 200, 209. Meanwhile, also in August 1463, two Spanish traders had complained that when they were sailing to England under letters of safe conduct, Hall’s carvel had seized their ship and its contents.21 CPR, 1461-7, p. 301. Another dispute with foreign merchants occurred near the end of Hall’s life. Two men of Bordeaux petitioned the King and Council about the breach of an agreement they had made with Hall, that he would purchase from them 16 tuns of red Gascon wine, worth £64, for which they would receive in return £16 in cash and ten yards of cloth of gold and 34 yards of variegated cloth, although in the event they received no more than £15. Hauled before the Council on 20 Oct. 1478, Hall was ordered to hand over the remaining £1 and the cloth, and told that should he fail to do so within ten days he would have to pay not only the arrears of £49 but also £30 for damages and costs. His recalcitrance led to commissioners (a serjeant-at-arms and the mayors of Salisbury and Southampton) being ordered to arrest him and bring him again before the Council, or else to sell his goods for payment of the debt.22 CPR, 1476-85, p. 145. The dispute encapsulates much about Hall’s career: his mercantile activities, the way he did business, his refusal to bow to authority, his independence of mind, and even (as we shall see) his relations with the King.

By the time of this final brush with the central government Hall had been active in the administration of Salisbury for nearly 35 years. On 2 Nov. 1445 he had paid a fee of £4 to be excused from the civic offices of alderman and reeve, and although he did agree to become a member of the council of 48 he sometimes failed to attend convocations.23 First General Entry Bk. nos. 401, 409, 411. After his election to the higher council of 24 in 1447,24 Ibid. no. 415 and passim. he took on the tasks of assessing parliamentary subsidies in the local wards,25 Ibid. nos. 399, 435.and the duties of a constable and briefly a coroner. He regularly contributed to the loans the city made to the Crown.26 Ibid. no. 431; Salisbury ledger bk. 2, f. 3v. As one of the council he participated in Salisbury’s election to the Parliament of 1449 (Feb.), and rode the short distance to Wilton to attest the shire elections too. Though not as an attestor to the indentures, he was also present at Wilton for the elections held in October 1450, then standing surety for Salisbury’s MPs.27 First General Entry Bk. no. 425; C219/16/1. Shortly afterwards, Hall was chosen mayor of Salisbury for the first time. This was during a period of great and continuing unrest in the locality, which had reached a climax that summer with the murder of Salisbury’s bishop, William Aiscough, a crime in which citizens had allegedly been involved. When Hall’s accounts came to be audited at the end of his mayoral term in late October 1451, allowance of £14 was made to him for his ‘great expenses and costs about the visit of the King and his justices for hearing and judging all sorts of treasons, insurrections and felonies’, and also for money disbursed at the installation of the new bishop, Richard Beauchamp.28 First General Entry Bk. nos. 440, 444-6. Hall took out a pardon, as ‘merchant alias mercer alias gentleman alias yeoman alias chapman’, in the following July, as a protection from legal processes.29 C67/40, m. 25.

On 25 Feb. 1453 at a meeting of Salisbury’s convocation, attended by Hall himself, he was elected to the Parliament summoned to assemble at Reading on 6 Mar. In July, during the recess, he was a juror at sessions of oyer and terminer conducted in Salisbury, and on 5 Oct. he was chosen to supervise the assessment of a parliamentary fifteenth in the city.30 Salisbury ledger bk. 2, ff. 4, 4v; KB9/134/2, mm. 106, 141, 147. Probably while Hall was an MP in 1453 the mayor Simon Poy, by the advice of the brethren in common assembly, agreed that he should labour to the King and Council a bill for the welfare and conservation of the peace in the city, and gave him £5 15s. to seek letters patent for their incorporation as ‘mayor and commonalty’. These proved to be the opening shots in the citizens’ challenge to Bishop Beauchamp for their freedom from episcopal control, beginning an epic confrontation in which Hall was to play a leading role.31 Salisbury ledger bk. 2, ff. 21v-23; Wilts. Arch. Mag. xxxix. 233-5. A writ issued from Chancery at the end of the Parliament in April 1454 authorized payment to him and his colleague in the Commons, William Hore II*, of wages for 163 days at the rate of 2s. a day.32 Salisbury ledger bk. 2, f. 8. The Parliament had set up a scheme for naval defence, and the communities of Salisbury, Poole and Weymouth were together required to forward a loan of £50 to help pay for it. Hall himself contributed as much as 26s. 8d.33 Ibid. f. 10.

During the mayoralty of John Wyly*, in 1455-6, Hall continued to be active on the city’s behalf; he received 35s. for a copy of a bill he had procured for the mayor and councillors.34 Ibid. f. 20. Having succeeded Wyly in office, on 14 Sept. 1457, towards the end of this second mayoralty, he was sent royal letters seeking Salisbury’s assistance with regard to the defence of the realm in the face of threatened invasion from France. In response, the city had to raise wages for 60 men to go to Southampton to defend the port for two weeks. Two years earlier he had been named as an arbiter of the quarrels between the then mayor, William Swayn*, and two of their fellow members of the 24, Edmund Penston* and Richard Hayne II*, but now he himself fell out with the irascible Swayn as the two of them began vying for dominance in the city. Their vociferous quarrels interfered with public business, and a special meeting of the convocation was held on 5 Dec. in the presence of Bishop Beauchamp to resolve matters. It was decided that in future none of the councillors might indulge in personal invective under penalty of a fine of 3s. 4d., and if either Swayn or Hall offended again they would be fined £1, if a second time £2 and if a third subjected to imprisonment.35 Ibid. ff. 13v, 28, 31, 31v. For the time being the two kept the peace, although this proved to be a temporary truce.

Save for his appointment to two ad hoc commissions of royal government, so far Hall had not obtained crown office, and even when in May 1459 he was appointed joint alnager of Wiltshire and Salisbury for a three-year term in the event he kept the post for scarcely four months: on 26 Aug. he stood surety for his replacement.36 CFR, xix. 219-20. Perhaps his appointment had been unpopular locally: it transpired that he had caused trouble over the collection of alnage in the previous autumn. The deputy to Hall’s predecessor as alnager, John Manuch, came to the court of the Exchequer in October to complain that Hall, armed with a dagger, had prevented him from carrying out his duties at Salisbury on 29 Sept. 1458. Hall was committed to the Fleet prison, only to be released on bail after pleading his innocence. Delays and adjournments took the case on to Michaelmas term 1468, when Hall produced a royal pardon he had acquired six years earlier, and a writ to the Exchequer not to trouble him further.37 E159/236, recorda Mich. rot. 8; C67/45, m. 23. He had meanwhile taken out other pardons in May 1456 and Mar. 1458: C67/41, m. 2, 42, m. 10.

Hall’s political stance in the years of intense civil war between 1459 and 1461 was affected by events and personal feuds at home in Wiltshire which had simmered for some time. In November 1455 one Davy Howell had robbed his house in Salisbury, allegedly taking goods worth £80. Howell took refuge in the dwelling of Simon Milborne, a Wiltshire esquire, but Hall and his friends managed to inveigle him out and held him captive. Milborne, outraged that his protection had been flouted, persecuted Hall for the next five years, procuring the support of ‘dyvers gret lordes of that countre’ to have him indicted. Whenever they met he maligned Hall, calling him a ‘fals traitour’ and ‘mayntener of fals traitours’ (meaning the duke of York and the earls of Warwick and Salisbury), gathered gangs of armed men to attack him in his home, and after the rout of the Yorkist lords at Ludford Bridge in October 1459 had him charged with treason. Hall spent £400 on his defence, and Milborne’s patron, Robert, Lord Moleyns and Hungerford, put him in such ‘gret fere and drede’ that he sealed a bond in £200 to abide by his arbitration. Only after the Lancastrians had been defeated in the battle of Northampton in July 1460 did Hall dare to ask the new chancellor, George Neville, bishop of Exeter, to authorize the cancellation of the unjustly extorted bond.38 C1/29/484. Significantly, one of those who supported him in his petition to Neville was Walter Clerk of Southampton, his wife’s brother-in-law. Both men, Hall and Clerk, were to sit in the Parliament which assembled at Westminster on 7 Oct., the first to meet after the Yorkist victory.39 Hall was party to his own election, on 6 Sept.: Salisbury ledger bk. 2, f. 41.

Clerk had already involved Hall in the highly-charged disputes which for the previous five years had divided the burgesses of Southampton into factions, with Clerk and his friends ranged against the highly litigious John Payn I* and his followers. Payn alleged in a series of suits brought in the King’s bench from Michaelmas term 1459 onwards that Clerk and Hall had breached the statutes by bringing false indictments before the j.p.s in Middlesex, in which it was alleged that he had assaulted Clerk and his associates.40 KB27/794, rot. 67. Furthermore, Payn lent his support to Gabriel Fleming, who had quarrelled with Clerk over the execution of the will of his father, Southampton’s recorder, John Fleming*. In November 1459 Hall came forward to pledge the good behaviour of Clerk, then a prisoner in the Marshalsea, on pain of £20, but Clerk broke his bond to keep the peace, and a writ was sent to the sheriff of Wiltshire on 12 Feb. 1460 to bring Hall, as his mainpernor, to the King’s bench at Easter. At the same time Hall was attached to answer Gabriel Fleming on charges that he had conspired with Clerk to forge documents to deprive him of his inheritance. Even more damning, the documents concerned (dated 1456) purportedly named the now attainted duke of York as a feoffee of the property in dispute.41 KB27/796, rots. 69, 70d, rex rot. 2d; 797, rot. 9. Such was the situation when, at the end of July, following the triumph of the duke’s allies at Northampton, the Parliament was summoned. Shortly before it met, the lawsuits between the factions at Southampton played their part in provoking the disruption of the mayoral elections at the guildhall, whereby Payn’s supporters imposed their own candidate on the assembly. Clerk’s exclusion from power in his home town led him to seek election to Parliament elsewhere, and perhaps with Hall’s help he was returned for the Wiltshire borough of Chippenham. Clerk no doubt hoped that the privileges enjoyed by Members of the Commons would protect him, at least for a while, from further prosecution in the central courts, but when he arrived at Westminster he was arrested and committed to the Fleet. This caused a ‘grete delaye’ at the start of the business of Parliament, as the Commons protested that they had always been entitled to ‘free commyng, goyng and ... abidyng’ at Parliaments and that Clerk’s imprisonment was injurious to their liberties. Accordingly, the King ordered his release, but with the proviso that the rights of the Crown and his opponents to have justice should be recognized after Parliament was dissolved.42 PROME, xii. 515-16. While Clerk and Hall, as MPs, were temporarily immune from prosecution in the courts, the suits which Payn and Fleming were conducting against their associates continued while Parliament was in session, and Hall, free to go on the offensive, accused Payn’s son of assaulting and imprisoning his servants at Romsey in Hampshire the previous October (1459).43 KB27/798, rot. 18d; 799, rot. 22; CP40/799, rot. 393d. When no longer an MP in 1461 Clerk was imprisoned at Payn’s suit, having been condemned to pay him 40 marks, but at the request of his wife Hall paid Payn the money in order to secure his release. Towards the end of his life Hall complained that he was never fully reimbursed by Clerk’s heir.44 C1/50/182-4. Clerk’s wid. gave a different version of events.

That Hall was persona grata with the new, Yorkist, regime is clear from his appointments on 5 Dec. 1460 and 20 Jan. 1461 (while the Parliament was yet in being) to arrest anyone making illegal congregations in Salisbury, and in particular his old adversary Simon Milborne, who was to be brought before the King’s Council.45 CPR, 1452-61, pp. 657-8. It was he who conveyed to Salisbury a privy seal letter dated 8 Mar. 1461 authorized by the newly-acclaimed King Edward IV, asking for money for a further month’s wages for the men the city had sent north to help him combat his enemies. (They probably fought for him at Towton.) A precept sent for the election of MPs to Edward’s first Parliament, which was then intended to meet on the following 6 July, resulted in Hall’s election with Richard Gilbert† on 27 June. Hall was one of the citizens assigned to raise money for gifts to be presented to the new King on his expected arrival in Salisbury that summer. In the event the Parliament did not meet until 4 Nov. It was dissolved on 6 May 1462, but not until March 1463 did Salisbury’s convocation agree as to how much the MPs should be paid (just 1s. a day each for 55 days’ service), and the assembly delayed until September 1466 before making due allowance to Hall of the £5 10s. owed him.46 Salisbury ledger bk. 2, ff. 48v, 51v, 52v, 63v, 80. Part of the delay was probably due to Hall’s absence from Salisbury in 1465-6.

Meanwhile, Hall had served on the jury at Salisbury at the inquisition post mortem on John Stourton II*, Lord Stourton, in January 1463, and later that year he had been appointed escheator in Hampshire and Wiltshire. His status was now regularly given as ‘esquire’.47 C140/8/18; CFR, xx. 123, 128, 141. But trouble was brewing. In the early years of Edward IV’s reign the deep-seated antagonisms between the citizens of Salisbury and Bishop Beauchamp, arising from the demands of the former to attain control over their affairs free of the interference of the bishop and the bailiff of his liberty, were stirred up by Hall’s provocative actions. In September 1464 he was indicted at the Wiltshire sessions of the peace, presided over by this very bailiff, John Whittocksmead*, for a felony committed on 10 June 1461. The jury alleged that he and a fellow merchant, Thomas Freeman*, leading a gang of malefactors, had broken into two messuages in the city belonging to Whittocksmead. Hall had berated the bailiff in these words: ‘Howe durst thou be so hardy to entre here in oure seid ij dwellyng places hit is the maire and the communis of this cite of Sarum and shall be their successors ... and therfore y charge the go owt therof or ellys the communys of this cite [and] y shall make the go owt therof or ellys thou shalt dye ... How durst thou kepe hit ayenst a acte made in oure semble hows?’.48 KB27/818, rex rot. 26. The property concerned, known as ‘Balle’s Place’, had once been owned by Walter Shirley* (d.1425), who had left instructions that it should be sold after the expiry of the interest for life of three beneficiaries of his will. Whittocksmead had taken it over by 1455 (by what right is unclear), only to be challenged by the citizens, claiming it as a body.49 Wilts. Arch. Mag. lix. 161-2. Re-elected as mayor for the term 1464-5, Hall then went further on the offensive against the bishop and his men, over another issue, which was to exacerbate the quarrel between citizens and bishop and result in nine years of litigation. The pretext for the fresh trouble was the question of ownership of a small plot of land in St. Thomas’s churchyard, which William Swayn obtained from the bishop to build a house for his chantry priest, despite claims in convocation that the plot in fact belonged to the civic body. Two of Beauchamp’s servants alleged that while they were engaged in ‘makyng of a house of the Newe’, Hall the mayor had arrested and imprisoned them without reasonable cause. Both sides presented petitions to the King, with the bishop accusing Hall and previous mayors of continually defying his authority throughout the 14 years of his episcopate, and the citizens requesting full jurisdiction over every aspect of the city’s life in return for payment of a fixed fee farm. On 29 May 1465 convocation allowed Hall expenses of 33s. 8d. for riding to London with a testimonial letter under the seal of the city to treat with the bishop, and two weeks later Swayn was expelled from the council of 24. Hall did not fare well at his personal audiences with the King, who wrote to the citizens on 22 Aug. complaining about his insolent behaviour. Whereas Beauchamp had always ‘right soberly discretely and to the peas therof’ offered to abide by King Edward’s rule in the dispute, Hall ‘of the olde rancour and malice that he hathe borne towarde the said reverende fader’ had switched the argument away from the issues concerning the city to his ‘owne maturs’, in a combative and arrogant manner. Accordingly, Edward had consigned him to prison, and now ordered the commonalty to elect another mayor ‘of sobre and discrete disposicion’, since Hall was not ‘of suche sadnesse and habilite’ as was needed for the politic guiding of the city. When, on 24 Sept., the King learned to his ‘grete mervaile’ that the citizens refused to elect a new mayor, he ordered them to send a group of at least eight representatives to London to explain their actions. Although on 5 Oct. nine citizens were assigned to this task, it seems that they failed to depart, for on 21 Oct. the King again demanded that representatives be sent before him. The convocation provocatively responded seven days later by naming Hall at the head of a delegation of six, and at the mayoral elections a few days later the citizens insisted that he should continue as mayor while the ‘matter’ of the mayoralty (the cause of contention focusing on the oath of fealty demanded by the bishop) was pending ‘in placito’. Not surprisingly, the King’s response, on 14 Nov., expressed his anger at their nomination, since Hall, owing to his offences and ‘riotous menyng’, was still in prison. The citizens capitulated, naming John Chaffyn† in Hall’s place. What happened during the next eight months is something of a mystery, as there is a gap in the record kept in Salisbury’s ledger book until 25 July 1466. However, by that date Hall had not only been released but had resumed his role as mayor. Perhaps he had learned to show due respect to the monarch: he was one of 20 citizens who each contributed £1 towards the gift of £20 made to the queen on her visit to Salisbury that year.50 Salisbury ledger bk. 2, ff. 74v-80v; Wilts. Arch. Mag. xxxix. 237-57; C1/27/474; Benson and Hatcher, 162-6.

Hall attested the Wiltshire elections to the Parliament of 1467 after participating in those of the city. While attempts to bring Salisbury’s quarrel with Bishop Beauchamp to an end met with continued failure, Hall was still fighting his own battles against his bailiff Whittocksmead. In the Exchequer court in November 1468 Hall alleged that four years earlier the bailiff had wrongfully taken from him by force lengths of cloth worth £8 13s. 4d., besides 33s. 4d. in money, and his indictment for the fracas at ‘Balle’s Place’ had still not come to judgement.51 Salisbury ledger bk. 2, ff. 82, 83v; E13/154, rot. 34. At least he was at liberty. He was a juror at the treason trials held in Salisbury in January 1469, when the Crown secured convictions against (Sir) Thomas Hungerford* and Henry Courtenay,52 KB9/320/16, 18. and the pardon which he purchased in June 1470, of all offences committed before the previous Christmas, served its purpose in gaining his acquittal in King’s bench, on the charge of assaulting Whittocksmead in 1461. The pardon is, however, also a reflection of his insecurity at a time when the civil war was erupting again.53 C67/47, m. 2; KB27/818, rex rot. 26. In the course of the year from April 1470 Salisbury often found itself in danger from opposing armies, each of which demanded the citizens’ support and could threaten immediate violence and royal displeasure if it eventually proved victorious. Demands came simultaneously from Edward IV for mounted men to help him combat the rebellious earl of Warwick and duke of Clarence, and from these same rebels to lend them assistance. Thus, in September John Peke† arrived in Salisbury seeking soldiers to support Warwick and Clarence on their return to England, while Thomas St. Leger† rode in with King Edward’s orders to resist the invaders. As a compromise, Salisbury offered Peke 40 marks, and when he refused this and insisted on men, Hall offered to provide them himself, if he was given the money, thus relieving the citizens of formal responsibility. Probably Hall and his force (for which he later claimed to have never received payment) accompanied Warwick north and assisted in his triumph. Edward IV fled abroad and Henry VI was restored to the throne. At Salisbury, John Wyse† was elected mayor in November, but it was Hall, acting as his deputy, who on 14 Apr. 1471 was shown by the duke of Somerset letters of commission in King Henry’s name for men-at-arms to be sent in support of the Lancastrians. Once more Hall raised a body of armed men, but on learning of King Edward’s victory at Barnet sent them to him instead. Hall’s old adversary William Swayn, who attempted to usurp the mayoralty, was forced to relinquish the office on 16 Apr.54 Salisbury ledger bk. 2, ff. 92-100v; Benson and Hatcher, 174-6. Nothing can be firmly deduced from Hall’s behaviour, save perhaps for a pragmatic determination to protect the inhabitants of Salisbury. He thought it prudent to take out another pardon from Edward IV on 26 Nov.55 C67/48, m. 34. The long dispute with Bishop Beauchamp was not brought to an end until June 1474, when the citizens finally gave up the fight: the mayor agreed to take his oath before the bishop and he and 58 citizens, including Hall, formally submitted to Beauchamp’s rule.56 Benson and Hatcher, 183-4. The years of struggle, with Hall leading the vanguard, had proved fruitless.

In his last decade Hall was engaged in a number of lawsuits (besides his on-going quarrel with Richard Freeman) which are further revealing of his character. Richard Smith, a ‘brownbaker’ of London claimed in a petition in Chancery that Hall had maliciously procured his arrest as surety for an ostler on a statute staple of 100 marks entered at the staple of Westminster, and induced the principal debtor to withhold evidences of payment.57 C241/254/119; C1/45/300. Hall himself alleged in the court of the Exchequer in Trinity term 1477 that Thomas Gale*, the former collector of customs in Exeter and Dartmouth, owed him £55 on a bond sealed 11 years earlier. Gale protested that the sum had been paid in instalments, and only £3 was left owing, which he offered in court.58 E13/162, rots. 17d, 18. A petition from Joan, widow of Thomas Pakker of Salisbury, stated that her late husband in his ‘ygnorance and unkunnyng’ had not realized that in saying in his will that he wished to leave her all his goods moveable and unmoveable this did not cover his lands and tenements; after Pakker died Hall had taken his son into his wardship and entered the property in the son’s name, evicting the widow. Another petitioner, a husbandman from Egham in Surrey, said that Hall had wrongly brought a suit against him before the court of the marshalsea, even though neither of them were members of the Household and so entitled to do so.59 C1/22/153; 64/845.

Hall had been assessed for taxation in Wiltshire on lands worth no more than £10 p.a. in 1451, but the fact that he was later distrained to take up knighthood indicates that his holdings were thought to provide an income of at least four times that amount,60 E179/196/118. and there can be little doubt that he prospered. He held many properties and shops in Salisbury,61 Wilts. Arch. Mag. xxxvii. 88-89; Salisbury ledger bk. 2, f. 12; Wilts. Feet of Fines (Wilts. Rec. Soc. xli), 676. chief among them being his principal residence situated by the canal in Winchester Street, which he built in the 1470s. This building, with a fine timbered roof, stained glass windows and a chimney piece carved with Hall’s arms and merchant’s mark, was to be restored by Pugin in 1834, and its entrance incorporated into the Gaumont Cinema (erected in 1931). Hall was among the wealthy parishioners involved in rebuilding the chancel of St. Thomas’s church.62 VCH Wilts. vi. 83, 150; RCHM Salisbury, 103-4. Beyond the city he acquired land not only in Wiltshire (for example in Chicklade),63 E364/100, m. Ed. but also in Hampshire and Middlesex. In 1455 he lent Robert Bodenham £80 on the security of the Hampshire manor of Shipton ‘Berenger’, only for Bodenham to complain to the chancellor later about the ‘sotyll promys’ which would lead to the merchant keeping not only the issues of the property (amounting to 85 marks in the period of the loan), but also £100 ‘by way of usury’. Furthermore, Hall sued on a statute staple for £400, and got him put into prison. In February 1456 on the advice of the judges, counsel and serjeants-at-law it was decided that Bodenham should pay Hall back the £80, and Hall should release him from prison and give up all claims to the manor. Yet it is by no means certain that he complied with the chancellor’s ruling, for he was in possession of Shipton ‘Berenger’ at his death.64 CCR, 1454-61, p. 59; C1/25/128-31; 84/37. Elsewhere in Hampshire Hall and his wife acquired property in Amport in 1469, by which date he had also bought more in Little Somborne and King’s Somborne through an agreement made seven years earlier. He had paid £100 to John Gilbert†, a Somerset gentleman, for the marriage of his ward, Thomas Blawere, intending to marry him to one of his daughters, with the proviso that if Thomas refused the match Hall might keep the profits of the property until he recouped his money. Thomas did indeed refuse to wed, but Hall kept the estate until he had received £104. He was required by the chancellor to return it to feoffees in the summer of 1477, yet a year later he brought a suit in the Exchequer court against Gilbert, not only suing on the bond for £100 but also claiming that Gilbert’s servants had stolen three of his horses, worth £16, along with other goods and some £9 in cash, and seeking damages amounting to 60 marks.65 CCR, 1468-76, no. 319; C1/58/8; C4/3/7; E13/163, rot. 15. In Middlesex he operated a mill at a place called Gravelond in Staines, but was accused in the court of the steward of the abbot of Westminster of keeping it in poor repair, and for leaving the ditches blocked so that the land and roads nearby were flooded and the footpath rendered unusable.66 KB27/880, rex rot. 20. This continued to be a problem long after Hall’s death: KB27/933, fines rot. In his later years Hall had risen to wealth and consequence. Whether for the daughter spurned by Blawere or another he made a prestigious match: probably before his death she was married to Sir Thomas Hungerford† (d.1494), the son and heir of Sir Edmund* and grandson of the first Lord Hungerford.67 RCHM Salisbury, 103-4.

Hall died on 18 Oct. 1479, leaving as his heir his son William, aged 24.68 C140/70/33. Three years later, his widow Joan petitioned the chancellor regarding possession of his capital messuage in Salisbury, known as Hall’s Place, which she said was worth £10 p.a. According to her, the MP had enfeoffed this son William and one Nicholas Martyn in trust to perform his will, which was that Joan should have a moiety of the messuage for life, with remainder after her death to Hall’s younger son Reynold and his issue, but the feoffees had allowed Reynold to take all the revenues.69 C1/34/49; 61/7. She was still alive in November 1484. For participating in the rebellion against Richard III, William Hall had suffered attainder in the Parliament held earlier in that year, and his lands were declared forfeit. Jurors at Winchester said that by John Hall’s gift the traitor’s stepmother Joan ought to receive £10 p.a. rent for life from his Hampshire lands.70 PROME, xv. 25-27; CIMisc. viii. nos. 498, 501. William, whose attainder was reversed in Henry VII’s first Parliament, represented Salisbury in that of 1487, but did not fully recover his inheritance until 1501.71 PROME, xv. 102-5; CFR, xxii. no. 729.