HALL, Joseph (1609-69), of Mylor, Cornw.

Joseph Hall was the second son of Dr Joseph Hall, bishop of Exeter and later Norwich. Hall’s early life is obscure. He was born at Waltham Abbey in Essex – a living held by his father for 22 years – and he was probably educated by his father, whose attitude to his children was unusually warm.10J. Maynard, The Parish of Waltham Abbey (1865), 59. According to Bishop Hall’s own account, when a ‘great man’ visited the family at Waltham, he

seeing all my children standing in the order of their age, and stature, said ‘These are they that make a rich man poor’. But he straight received this answer, ‘Nay, my lord, these are they that make a poor man rich, for there is not one of these whom we would part with for all your wealth’.11J. Hall, The Balme of Gilead (1660), 211.

The family’s relative poverty perhaps explains why Hall did not attend a university or an inn of court; nor did he train as a civil lawyer. When Hall’s father was consecrated as bishop of Exeter in December 1627, the family’s fortunes suddenly improved. In May 1629 Hall was appointed bailiff of the lands of the bishop in the city of Exeter, and keeper of the bishop’s prison.12Exeter Cathedral Archives, MS 3601, pp. 123-4. While his brothers all acquired clerical positions in the cathedral and its diocese (Robert became a canon in 1629 and archdeacon of Cornwall in 1633; George was a prebend in 1639, and then archdeacon; Samuel was sub-dean), Hall was granted impropriated estates, including the tithes and glebe lands of St Breock in Cornwall, which he farmed out to three local men in an agreement dated June 1640.13C10/7/57; Oxford DNB. He also held a lease of the manor of Petershayes in Yarcombe, Devon.14Exeter Cathedral Archives, MS 3601, pp. 156-8. Among the episcopal properties almost certainly enjoyed by Hall at this time was the vicarage of Mylor – a living in the gift of the bishop, which incorporated much of the manors of Penryn Borough and Penryn Foreign, owned by the bishop but leased to third parties.15Parochial Hist. Cornw. iii. 388; Oliver, Bishops of Exeter, 149. On 2 May 1640 Bishop Hall had leased both manors to Francis Godolphin II* for three lives.16Exeter Cathedral Archives, MSS 3601, pp. 106-7. The timing of this new lease suggests that the deal depended on the return of the bishop’s son for the borough in the Short Parliament elections, which had been held on 26 March 1640.

Nothing is known of Hall’s activities in the Short Parliament. He may have kept his head down as his father had become something of a hate-figure for those disappointed in his decision not to join the attack on the Laudian church. Hall was not returned for Penryn in the elections for the Long Parliament, and the remainder of his life was uneventful. He was made registrar of Exeter Cathedral in May 1641.17Exeter Cathedral Archives, MS 3557, p. 252. He played no part in the civil war, but was still regarded as a royalist by the parliamentarian authorities. In October 1648 he begged to compound on the Truro Articles of 1646, claiming that he had never borne arms against Parliament, yet had suffered the plundering of his plate, the burning of his houses, and the sequestration of his estate. His fine was set at £97 in November 1648, and then increased to £210 in January 1649, and in February 1651 the Devon county committee investigated whether his house in the cathedral close at Exeter should be included in the sale of the bishops’ lands.18CCC 1858-9. Although he managed to retain his property in Exeter, Hall was ousted from his Cornish lands, and it was only when his father died in 1656, leaving him a copyhold manor and other properties in the parishes of Waltham Cross and Much Bentley in Essex, that his financial position improved somewhat.19PROB11/258/175. Hall was apparently still a resident of Exeter in 1669, when he died and was buried in the Cathedral.20Exeter in the Seventeenth Century, 16; Regs. of Exeter Cathedral, 62 He was not married and left no direct heirs.