THE

CABINET PORTRAIT GALLERY

OF

BRITISH WORTHIES.

VOLUME VIII.

LONDON:

CHARLES KNIGHT & CO., LUDGATE STREET.

1846.

MATTHEW HALE was born on the 1st of November, 1609, at Alderley, a small village situated in Gloucestershire, about two miles from Wotton-under-Edge. His father, Robert Hale, was a barrister of Lincoln's Inn, and his mother, whose maiden name was Poyntz, belonged to an ancient and respectable family which had resided for several generations at Iron Acton. Hale's father is represented to have been a man of such scrupulous delicacy of conscience, that he abandoned his profession, because he thought that some things, of ordinary practice in the law, were inconsistent with

VOL. VIII.

B