Hall, Arthur – Grantham MP had a hill named after him

Arthur Hall  (1539-1605)

Arthur Hall was an MP, courtier and translator who lived at Grantham House, Castlegate, which was then called Hall Place. He also owned the fields to the east of the town and Hall’s Hill is named after him.

He was often in serious trouble with Parliament and among the accusations in a privilege case was his attitude to Magna Carta.

He also produced the first substantial translation of The Iliad into English.

The son of Francis Hall who was surveyor of Calais, he was born in the French port where his father’s principal estates were, and where the family lived.

On his father’s death when he was 12 or 13, he became a ward of Sir William Cecil, and was brought up in the household with Thomas Cecil. He seems to have studied for a short time at St John’s College, Cambridge, but took no degree.

When he was 19, Hall asked Sir William Cecil for an allowance, either to go to France—as he and his mother wished—or else to study at an inn of court. This casts doubt on the identity of the Arthur Hall admitted to Gray’s Inn in 1556. At any rate, by the time he came of age in 1560, Hall had lost the lands he inherited in France.

In Lincolnshire he held lands estimated at about £148pa and a ‘great rabblement’ of houses in Grantham—reputedly over 90 of them.

In 1564 or 1565, Hall exchanged Cecil’s service for that of the Queen. He was already in financial difficulties, and though twice granted crown protection from his creditors, was soon imprisoned for debt.

After his marriage to a goldsmith’s daughter, he went on a tour of France, Spain and Italy, leaving his wife and child in England.

He sent intelligence reports to Cecil, visited Constantinople, and returned to England by way of Hungary and Germany.

He also held the lordship of Knoke in Wiltshire. He was not rich, but he would have been adequately provided for had his tastes been moderate. But he was, in his own words, ‘overweening of himself, which bring many infirmities to the person which is infected with that canker, furious when he is constrained, without patience to take time to judge or doubt the danger of the sequel … [and] implacable if he conceive an injury’, an honest description, save that he was also an exhibitionist and gambler. More than one MP considered him insane. One of his sons was mentally retarded.

Roger Ascham encouraged him in his studies, and about 1563 he began a translation of Homer into English. Subsequently he travelled in Italy and south-east Europe. In January 1569 he returned to England from Constantinople (Istanbul).

In 1571 he was elected MP for Grantham, and the following year was returned to the parliament which sat till 1583.

Nine days after his second election the House of Commons ordered him to answer at the bar of the house a charge of having made lewd speeches both within and without the house. Witnesses were directed to meet at Westminster, and deliver their testimony to the speaker in writing.

On 19 May Hall was brought by the serjeant-at-arms to the bar. He apologised for his conduct, and was discharged after the speaker had reprimanded him.

In the following year he was in more serious trouble.

He was playing cards in Lothbury (16 December 1573), when he quarrelled over the game with one of his companions, Melchisedech Mallory.

A temporary truce was patched up, but the quarrel soon broke out with renewed violence.

According to Mallory, Hall declined to fight but on 30 June 1574 a serious affray between the disputants and their followers took place at a tavern near Fleet Bridge, and in November Edward Smalley, and other of Hall’s servants, attacked and wounded Mallory in St Paul’s Churchyard.

Mallory obtained a verdict in a civil action against Smalley, and Hall began a libel suit against Mallory.

But while the suit was pending, and before Smalley had paid the damages, Mallory died on 18 September 1575. Mallory’s executor failing to receive the damages from Smalley caused him to be arrested.

As the servant of a member of parliament, he claimed immunity from arrest, and the House of Commons ordered his discharge, at the same time directing the serjeant-at-arms to rearrest him, on the grounds that he was fraudulently seeking to avoid the payment of a just debt.

A bill was introduced, but was soon dropped, providing that Hall should pay up, and be disabled for ever from sitting in parliament. Finally, Smalley and Matthew Kirtleton were committed to the Tower of London for a month by order of the house, until Smalley gave security for the payment.

On 27 November 1585 Hall was elected for a third time MP for Grantham; but on 12 December notice was given to the House of Commons that he had not attended during the session.

To the parliament returned in October 1586 he was not re-elected, but he brought an action against the borough of Grantham for arrears of wages due to him as member in an earlier parliament.

On 2 December 1586 Hall’s claim was referred to a committee of the House of Commons, and he agreed to forego the demand on 21 March 1587.

Hall was in trouble again in 1588. He was in the Fleet Prison as early as June, and in October he wrote to Burghley from prison regretting that he had left Burghley’s service, and that the Queen was incensed against him.

Hall’s chief literary work was Ten Books of Homer’s Iliades, translated out of French, dedicated to Sir Thomas Cecil, London 1581.

This is the first attempt to render Homer into English. Hall closely follows the French verse translation of the first ten books by Hugues Salel (Paris, 1555), but occasionally used some Latin version. Hall’s copy of Salel’s translation is in the British Museum, with his autograph on the title-page and the date 1556 affixed.

His verse is rhymed fourteeners; the work if clumsy held its own till superseded by George Chapman’s translation.

At the very end of his life, in 1597, Burghley interceded for him with the barons of the Exchequer over £400 owed to the Crown.

On 28 November 1604 he pointed out, in a letter to James I, the corruptions prevalent in the elections to the newly summoned parliament, and advised an immediate dissolution. His son Cecil married Elizabeth, daughter of Sir Griffin Markham.

At Grantham, too, Hall was unable to live at peace either with his neighbours or with the bishop of Lincoln, who complained of him to the Privy Council.

But by 1601 Burghley was dead, and Hall was imprisoned for debt. He was still in prison in the next reign, when he tried to attract attention by writing an attack on the trading companies, and the abuses in parliamentary elections. It is not known whether he was ever released.

He died on 29 Dec. 1605 and was buried at Grantham on 7 January 1606.