Joseph Hall
1574–1656
Bishop of Exeter then Norwich; senior moderate-Calvinist Episcopalian.
Biography
Of Emmanuel Cambridge under William Chaderton — one of the most Puritan of the early-Stuart Emmanuel cohort — Hall served as Dean of Worcester, then Bishop of Exeter (1627) and finally Norwich (1641). He was the senior moderate-Reformed bishop of his generation and a devotional writer of distinction whose Meditations and Vowes (1605), Heaven upon Earth (1606), and Contemplations on the Holy History (1612-15) anticipated the genre of structured devotional meditation that Bunyan and the later Puritans absorbed. His Episcopacie by Divine Right (1640) — written at Laud's request — was the immediate provocation for the Smectymnuan reply (1641). Named to the Assembly but loyal to episcopacy, he refused to sit. The Long Parliament impeached him in 1641 (he was briefly imprisoned in the Tower) and sequestered his episcopal estates in 1647; he lived his last years on the parish living at Higham. His Hard Measure (1647) chronicles the sequestration. Died in September 1656.
Principal works
- Meditations and Vowes (1605)
- Episcopacie by Divine Right (1640)
- Hard Measure (1647)
Named in the ordinance
The 1643 ordinance that summoned the Assembly named some 121 divines. A number — chiefly episcopalians and royalists who heeded the King's proclamation forbidding the Assembly — never took their seats or sat only briefly; a few were later expelled. They are listed here for completeness as part of the originally-summoned roster.