Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 24.djvu/107

 shire. Keziah Wesley consented to reside with the Halls, and in 1737 her mother, Susanna Wesley, who had become a widow in 1735, joined them. The whole household removed to London in 1739, where Hall took an active part in the management of the Wesleys' newly formed methodist society. He insisted on the expulsion of two members on the ground that they had disowned the church of England, and in September 1739 converted Susanna Wesley to her son's doctrine of ‘the witness of the Spirit.’ In 1740 he preached at Fetter Lane, but joined John Wesley in warning his auditors of the Moravian ‘leaven of stillness.’ In 1741 he adopted the whole of the Moravian tenets, in spite of the Wesleys' opposition; but when, in the same year, John Wesley and Whitefield quarrelled over the doctrine of free grace, he persuaded Whitefield to abandon his intention of publicly preaching against Wesley. In 1742 he removed with his family to the Foundry, the Wesleys' residence, and during Wesley's absence in the north on an organising tour, openly denounced his management of the society and his religious views. Charles Wesley spoke of him at the time as ‘poor moravianised Mr. Hall.’

Hall returned to Salisbury in 1743, and formed a new religious society. He and his congregation formally left the church of England, and he quarrelled with his wife because she declined to abandon it. In 1745 he wrote long letters to the Wesleys, urging them to follow his example, and pointing out the inconsistency of their continued connection with the church. Hall, indefatigable ‘in field and house preaching, drew multitudes of the meaner sort …’ to attend him; but his views changed rapidly. He began to preach pure deism; recommended polygamy, and was personally guilty of gross immorality. On 20 Oct. 1747 he took leave of his followers at Salisbury, and boldly defended his evil practices (cf. Gent. Mag. 1747, p. 531). John Wesley solemnly remonstrated with him by letter on his degraded conduct and neglect of his wife, but he persisted in his loose kind of life apart from his family, chiefly in London. In 1750 and 1751 he made himself conspicuous by disturbing Charles Wesley's prayer-meetings at Bristol, and Charles Wesley attacked him violently in his ‘Funeral Hymns,’ 1759, No. xi. Hall afterwards migrated with a mistress to the West Indies, but soon returned home, and died at Bristol on 3 Jan. 1776. His wife and her brothers, in spite of his gross misconduct, treated him with kindness to the last. Mrs. Hall, the last survivor of the Wesley family, died on 12 July 1791, and was buried in the burial-ground attached to the Wesleys' chapel in the City Road, London. Besides illegitimate issue, Hall had ten children by his wife. They all died young. The longest-lived—a son, Westley—was the subject of one of Charles Wesley's ‘Funeral Hymns’ (1759), No. x. For the use of ‘Westley Hall, jun.,’ his father printed in a broadside sheet ‘The Art of Happiness, or the Right Use of Reason,’ in which all religious belief was attacked. The boy died of small-pox at the age of fourteen.

[Tyerman's Oxford Methodists, 1873; Adam Clarke's Memoirs of the Wesley Family.] 

HALL, WILLIAM (d. 1718?), Carthusian monk, brother of Thomas Hall, D.D. [q. v.], was educated in the English College at Lisbon, and after being ordained priest was sent back to the mission. In the reign of James II he was appointed one of the royal chaplains and preachers in ordinary. Wood, in his description of the king's reception, relates that on Sunday, 4 Sept. 1687, his majesty went to the catholic chapel recently set up by the dean of Christ Church in the old Canterbury quadrangle, ‘where he heard a sermon preach'd by a secular priest called William Hall, … which was applauded and admired by all in the chapell, which was very full, and [by those] without that heard him’ (Autobiography, ed. Bliss, p. cix). The king used to say that as Dr. Ken was the best preacher among the protestants, so Father Hall was the best among the catholics. At the revolution Hall withdrew to the continent, and, after paying a visit to James at St. Germain, became a monk in the convent of the Carthusians at Nieuwpoort in Flanders. He was for some time prior of that house, where he died about 1718.

He was the author of: 1. ‘A Sermon [on John xvi. 23, 24] preached before Her Majesty the Queen Dowager, in her Chapel, at Somerset House, upon … May 9, 1686,’ London, 1686, 4to, reprinted in ‘A Select Collection of Catholick Sermons,’ 1741, ii. 183. 2. ‘Collections of Historical Matters,’ manuscript folio.

[Dodd's Church Hist. iii. 482; Gillow's Bibl. Dict.; Wood's Athenæ Oxon. (Bliss), iv. 450, 548; Wood's Autobiography (Bliss), p. cxii.] 

HALL, WILLIAM (1748–1825), poet and antiquary, was born on 1 June 1748 at Willow Booth, a small island in the fen district of Lincolnshire. His parents were very poor, and he himself at a very early age married a girl named Suke or Sukey Holmes, and became a gozzard, or keeper and breeder of