HALES, Sir Robert, 1st bt. (c.1610-93), of Howletts, Bekesbourne, Kent.

The Hales family had an auspicious pedigree both in Kent and within the legal profession, and had long served in local administration and in Parliament. Our MP’s great-great grandfather, John Hales†, was a baron of the exchequer during the reign of Henry VIII, and his grandfather, Sir Charles Hales of Thanington (d. 1623), eldest son of the baron’s second son Thomas Hales†), had established a branch of the family at Howletts.29Hasted, Kent, iii. 271; CB; HP Commons 1509-1558. Hales’s long-lived father, another Thomas Hales, acquired through his wife Anne Peyton (whom he married in 1598), further illustrious Kentish and City of London connections; in 1626 he was granted the wardship of her nephew Sir Thomas Peyton*, who was brought up in his household.30St Peter le Poer, London, par. reg.; Baronetage of Eng. rev. W. Betham (1901-5), ii. 112; Coventry Docquets, 463. Robert Hales himself was called to the bar of the Inner Temple in 1637, by which time he had already married into a prominent Oxfordshire family, itself well-connected in legal circles. His mother-in-law was a Temple of Stowe, while one of the trustees for the settlement made at his marriage to Catherine Ashcomb, who brought a portion of £500, was the future Speaker of the Commons, William Lenthall*, whose son John Lenthall* married one of Catherine’s five sisters.31Cent. Kent. Stud. U1255/T19.

Despite his family’s prominence within Kent, and his own connections, Hales does not appear to have sought election to either the Short or Long Parliaments, perhaps preferring at that date to devote his energies to his legal career. Nevertheless, he maintained a regular correspondence with Sir Thomas Peyton, who informed him of news from Parliament in the early 1640s.32HMC 10th Rep. VI, 85; Add. 44846, f. 23v. However, Hales did not share Peyton’s royalism. From June 1644 he was placed on numerous Kentish commissions, and from the late spring of 1645 he began to play a prominent part in the work of local parliamentarian committees, particularly in relation to the sequestration of delinquents.33C231/6, p. 3; A. and O.; E. Kent RO, H1257, unfol.; SP28/130/3, f. 103v; SP28/210a, unfol.; SP28/210B, unfol.; SP28/234, unfol.; F. Hull, ‘The Tufton sequestration papers, 1644-7’, in A Seventeenth Century Misc. (Kent Arch. Soc. xvii), 49. He even served as a captain of a troop of horse in the county in the aftermath of the second civil war.34HMC 10th Rep. VI, 95-6. During the republic, if not before, Hales was also on the commission of the peace for Oxfordshire, and he ought probably to be regarded as a conformist supporter of the regime, since he augmented his personal estate from former dean and chapter lands in Kent, on which he spent over £6,000 in 1650.35C193/13/3, f. 61v; C193/13/4, f. 78v; Cent. Kent. Stud. U1255/T1, 3, 11.

Hales reached the zenith of his legal and political career during the protectorate. He benefited from attempts to implement legal reform, being made one of the Three Clerks in the Act for Regulating Chancery (21 Aug. 1654), and he subsequently endeavoured to protect his fees from those who sought further change.36CSP Dom. 1654, p. 320; 1655-6, p. 149. His business also included appointment that December (when he was described as late of Alvescot, Oxfordshire, and now of Howletts, Kent) as the administrator of the Pym family estates in Kilkenny, Co. West Meath, probably through his younger brother Stephen, who settled in the area.37Som. RO, DD/BR/ely/3/2, 7-8. Hales’s friend and kinsman Henry Oxinden* described him as a man of ‘power and credit’ in the summer of 1656, but he disappointed connections like Sir Thomas Peyton who were imprisoned by the Cromwellian regime.38Add. 28003, ff. 390, 407; Oxinden and Peyton Lttrs. ed. Gardiner, 219-20. Peyton complained that Hales had used ‘bitter words’ about him, observing

though I cannot say but I have been beholden to him for some actions of his in my behalf, for which also I have been fain to entreat hard, yet I was never over-charged with his kindnesses to me throughout these many years of my troubles. I remember very well I could not prevail with him to be present at Rochester at my composition in [16]42, though his father stood by and helped to persuade him.39Add. 28003, f. 332; Oxinden and Peyton Lttrs. ed. Gardiner, 212.

Hales’s addition in March 1658 to the Kent commission for ejecting scandalous ministers was apparently on the recommendation of Major-general Thomas Kelsey*.40SP25/78, p. 500.

It was in his capacity as a senior lawyer that Hales attended the funeral of Oliver Cromwell* in 1658.41SP18/182, f. 158. He had already shown himself a defender of religious orthodoxy in his patronage of Nathaniel Chewney.42N. Chewney, Anti-Socianism (1656), sig. A3 (E.888.1). That autumn he made the ostensibly surprising presentation to the rectory of Adisham of the once sequestered Peter du Moulin, an anonymous apologist for the monarchy and an open advocate of episcopacy, but perhaps the minister came on the more moderate recommendation of the Boyle family, to whom he had been tutor in Ireland and England.43LPL, COMM/2/8; ‘Peter Du Moulin’, Oxford DNB. Hales’s loyalty to the protectoral regime resulted in his being granted a baronetcy in December 1658, an honour which duly appeared in Bekesbourne parish register entries from that month, and it was as a ‘court’ candidate that he stood for election at Hythe in January 1659.44Bekesbourne par. reg. In an election which was heavily contested, and in which concerns regarding the threat to the church proved a significant factor, Hales’s letter to the town, together with the support of the mayor, effected his return alongside William Kenwricke*, nephew of his kinsman Sir Edward Hales*.45E. Kent RO, H1211, pp. 153-4; Wilks, Barons of the Cinque Ports, 83-4; Add. 28004, ff. 41, 49; The Gen. n.s. viii. 104. Nevertheless, Hales made no impression on the proceedings of Richard Cromwell’s* acrimonious Parliament.

Following the Restoration, in July 1660 Hales’s Cromwellian baronetcy, which was not recognised by the Stuart regime, was granted afresh, indicating acknowledgement of particular service, and he was regularly named to local commissions in the decades which followed.46CTB i. 356. Nevertheless, he appears to have played little substantive role in public affairs, retiring instead to the life of a country lawyer and squire, having inherited the family estate sometime after the summer of 1662.47Add. 28004, ff. 340, 372; Add. 28008, ff. 101; Cent. Kent. Stud. U1255/T83. Indeed, he may always have been viewed with suspicion by the authorities. In July 1683 he was described as one who had been ‘an active man for above 40 years, and a constant conventicler to the last… a very dangerous person’.48CSP Dom. 1683, p. 37. However, he was eventually nominated as a deputy lieutenant in February 1688.49CSP Dom. 1687-9, p. 141. Hales died in December 1693, and having outlived his eldest son Sir Thomas Hales†, the estate passed to a grandson, Robert Hales. Hales’s descendants continued to represent constituencies in Kent and elsewhere during the eighteenth century.50Bekesbourne par. reg.; PROB11/430/252; Cent. Kent. Stud. U1255/T107-8; HP Commons, 1690-1715; HP Commons 1715-1754; HP Commons 1754-1790.