Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Halle, John
HALLE, JOHN (d. 1479), merchant of Salisbury, was possibly a son of Thomas Halle of that city, who was a member of the corporation from 1436 to 1440. John Halle is first mentioned in 1444 as a collector of a subsidy. He was admitted member of the common council in 1446, became alderman in 1448, and was constable of New Street ward in 1449. He was elected mayor in 1451, 1458, 1464, and 1465, and represented the city in the parliaments of 1453, 1460, and 1461. In 1465 the corporation became involved in a quarrel with Richard de Beauchamp [q. v.], bishop of Salisbury, and Halle, taking an active part in it, was imprisoned in London, and the corporation were ordered to elect a new mayor, which they refused to do. Halle was eventually released, and the dispute with the bishop was arranged. In 1470 Halle found forty men on behalf of the city to accompany Warwick the kingmaker for a payment of forty marks. Aubrey says that ‘as Greville and Wenman bought all the Coteswolde, soe did Halle and Webb all the wooll of Salisbury plaines.’ He was a merchant of the staple, and apparently acquired considerable wealth. In 1467 he purchased a site in the street now called the New Canal, where shortly after he built a residence, the hall of which still remains. Until early in this century it was partitioned into rooms, but was then restored. The old stained glass remains in the windows, and Halle's arms and merchant's mark appear in them and on the chimney-piece. Halle died on 14 Oct. 1479, at which time he held property at Salisbury and at Shipton Bellinger in Hampshire (‘Inquisitiones post mortem,’ in appendix to Duke, Prolusiones). He was apparently married to Joan Halle, and had a son William, who was attainted in 1483 for taking part in Buckingham's rising. This sentence was reversed in 1485 (Rot. Parl. vi. 246, 273). William Halle's daughter and heiress married Sir Thomas Wriothesley, Garter king-at-arms in the reign of Henry VII. John Halle had also a daughter Chrystian, who married Sir Thomas Hungerford, son of Sir Edmund Hungerford, and grandson of Walter, lord Hungerford [q. v.]
[Duke's Prolusiones Historicæ; or Essays illustrative of the Halle of John Hall, &c. vol. i. (no more published); Gent. Mag. 1837, pt. i. 172; Hatcher's Old and New Sarum in Sir R. C. Hoare's Modern Wiltshire.]