Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 24.djvu/106

 HALL, THOMAS, D.D. (1660?–1719?), catholic divine, born in London about 1660, was son of Thomas Hall, a cook, who resided for some time in Ivy Lane, near St. Paul's Cathedral, and brother of William Hall [q. v.], prior of the Carthusians at Nieuwpoort. He studied in the English College at Lisbon till he had completed his study of philosophy, when he was sent to Paris to study divinity, and to take his degrees. After about six years he was admitted B.D. and received deacon's orders. In October 1688 he became professor of philosophy in the English College at Douay, where on 24 Sept. 1689 he was ordained priest. In the following year he returned to Paris, and was created D.D. Afterwards he laboured on the English mission for several years, and finally retiring to Paris, died there about 1719. Dodd describes him as a person of extraordinary natural parts, and an eloquent preacher. He left in manuscript the following works: 1. ‘A Treatise of Prayer.’ 2. ‘Spondani Annales,’ a translation, 2 vols. fol. 3. ‘The Catechism of Grenoble,’ a translation, 3 vols. 8vo. 4. ‘A Collection of Lives of the Saints,’ a translation, left incomplete.

[Dodd's Church Hist. iii. 482; Gillow's Bibl. Dict. iii. 95.]  HALL, TIMOTHY (1637?–1690), titular bishop of Oxford under James II, the son of a wood-turner and householder of St. Katharine's, near the Tower, a precinct of St. Botolph, Aldgate, was born probably in 1637, within the area now covered by the docks. He was admitted student of Pembroke College, Oxford, in 1654, then under presbyterian influences. He took no degree but that of B. A. Afterwards he obtained the livings of Norwood and Southam (, Register, p. 922), from which he was ejected in 1662. In 1667, having complied and signed the articles (11 Jan.), he was presented to the small living of Horsendon, Buckinghamshire. He became perpetual curate of Princes Risborough in 1669, vicar of Bledlow in 1674, all of which benefices he relinquished in 1677 for the city living of Allhallows Staining. He seems to have acted as broker for the Duchess of Portsmouth in the sale of pardons.

Under James II he published the royal declaration for 'liberty of conscience' (1687), and on the death of Bishop Parker he was nominated (18 Aug. 1688) to the see of Oxford; but though duly consecrated at Lambeth on 7 Oct. he was refused installation by the canons of Christ Church, and consequent admission to the temporalities, while the university refused to create him doctor of divinity, though he had a mandamus (, Relation, i. 457). After the revolution he was reduced to hopeless poverty. At first he refused to take the oaths to the new king and queen, but yielded at the last moment (ib. ii. 6), and retained his title till his death. There is no valid ground to charge him with actual perversion to Romanism. His death is thus recorded in the registers of St. John, Hackney: 'The rt. Revd. Father in God, Timothy (Hall), late Ld Bpp. of Oxford, dyed the 9th & was buried the 13th of April 1690.'

Hall is described by Kennett as 'one of the meanest and most obscure of the city divines, who had no merit but that of reading the king's declaration' (Complete History iii. 491). He was author of two funeral sermons, printed respectively in 1684 and 1689; and he appears to have obtained a regular grant of arms (see Rawlinson MS. 128 B., Bodleian Library).

[Wood's Athenae Oxon. iv. 875, ed. Bliss; Lysons's Environs of London, ii. 500 ; Macaulay's Hist. of England; Browne Willis's Survey of Cathedrals, iii. 437.]  HALL, WESTLEY (1711–1776), eccentric divine, son of Thomas Hall of Salisbury, matriculated at Lincoln College, Oxford, on 26 Jan. 1730–1, aged 20, and became a pupil of John Wesley. He took no degree. Wesley describes him as a student ‘holy and unblamable in all manner of conversation,’ and he was always noted for his plausibility. He became intimate with Wesley's family, and visited Wesley's parents at Epworth, Lincolnshire. Early in 1734 he was ordained, and about the same time secretly engaged himself to Martha (b. 1707), Wesley's elder sister. A few months later he proposed marriage to Keziah (b. 1710), Wesley's younger sister, and was accepted, with the consent of her family, as her future husband. Thereupon Martha revealed her own engagement with him, and he, throwing over Keziah, straightway married Martha. The brothers Charles and Samuel Wesley denounced Hall's conduct, the former in a poem, and the latter in letters to his family, in which he described Hall as a smooth-tongued hypocrite. John Wesley afterwards declared that his sister Keziah never recovered from the effects of Hall's duplicity. Verses, however, published in the ‘Gentleman's Magazine’ for September 1735, soon after the marriage, eulogised both Hall and his wife as models of virtue and piety. In October 1735 Hall and his wife arranged to accompany John Wesley to Georgia, but Hall suddenly changed his mind, and took a curacy at Wootton Rivers, Wilt-