Joseph Hall (bishop) - Priest

Priest

Having taken holy orders, Hall was offered the mastership of Blundell's School, Tiverton, but he refused it in favour of the living of Hawstead, Suffolk, to which he was presented (1601) by Sir Robert Drury. The appointment was not wholly satisfactory: in his parish Hall had an opponent in a Mr Lilly, whom he describes as a "witty and bold atheist", he had to find money to make his house habitable, and he felt that his patron Sir Robert underpaid him. Nevertheless in 1603, he married Elizabeth Wynniff of Brettenham, Suffolk.

In 1605, Hall travelled abroad for the first time when he accompanied Sir Edmund Bacon on an embassy to Spa, with the special aim, he says, of acquainting himself with the state and practice of the Roman Catholic Church. At Brussels, he disputed at the Jesuit college on the authenticity of modern miracles, until his patron at length asked him to stop.

His devotional writings had attracted the notice of Henry, Prince of Wales, who made him one of his chaplains (1608). Hall preached officially on the tenth anniversary of King James's accession in 1613, with an assessment in An Holy Panegyrick of the Church of England flattering to the king.

In 1612, Edward Denny gave him the curacy of Waltham-Holy-Cross, Essex, and, in the same year, he received the degree of D.D.. Later he received the prebend of Willenhall in the collegiate church of Wolverhampton, and, in 1616, he accompanied James Hay, Lord Doncaster to France, where he was sent to congratulate Louis XIII on his marriage, but Hall was compelled by illness to return. In his absence, the king nominated him Dean of Worcester, and, in 1617, he accompanied James to Scotland, where he defended the Five Articles of Perth, five points of ceremonial which the king desired to impose upon the Scots.

In the next year he was chosen as one of the English deputies at the Synod of Dort. But he fell ill, and was replaced by Thomas Goad. At the time (1621–2) when Marco Antonio de Dominis announced his intention to return to Rome, after a stay in England, Hall wrote to try to dissuade him, without success. In a long-unpublished reply (printed 1666) De Dominis justified himself in a comprehensive statement of his mission against schism and its limited results, hampered by Dort and a lack of freedom under James I.