The Dictionary of Australasian Biography/Hale, Right Rev. Matthew Blagden
Hale, Right Rev. Matthew Blagden, D.D., late Bishop of Brisbane, descends from the family of the celebrated Sir Matthew Hale, and is the third son of the late Robert H. Blagden Hale of Alderley, Gloucestershire, and Cottles House, Wilts, by his marriage with Lady Theodosia Bourke, daughter of the 3rd Earl of Mayo. He was born in 1811 at Alderley, and educated at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he graduated B.A. in 1835 and M.A. in 1838. Having been successively curate of Tresham and Wotton-under-Edge in Gloucestershire, he was in 1839 appointed to the incumbency of Stroud in the same county. The next year he married Sophia, daughter of George Clode, of London, on whose death in 1845 he resigned Stroud, and was subsequently rector of Alderley, and then of Atworth and Wraxall in Wilts. In 1847 he met the late Bishop Short of Adelaide at a friend's house, and the latter persuaded him to go out to South Australia as his archdeacon. They went out in the same ship, and landed at Adelaide in Dec. 1847. The next year Archdeacon Hale accompanied the bishop on a visit to Western Australia, which at that time was included in the diocese of Adelaide. Here he married Sabina, eldest daughter of Lieut.-Colonel Molloy, an old Peninsular and Waterloo officer. In 1850 the archdeacon established the well-known aboriginal mission station at Poonindie, near Port Lincoln, S.A., and acted as its superintendent till 1856, when he resigned the archdeaconry of Adelaide on his being appointed first bishop of the newly constituted see of Perth, W.A. After paying a second visit of some months to Western Australia, Bishop Hale proceeded to England, and was consecrated in the chapel of Lambeth Palace on July 25th, 1857. He administered the diocese of Perth till 1875; when, on the unanimous nomination of the bishops of Australia and Tasmania, he was translated to the bishopric of Brisbane, Qd., rendered vacant by the retirement of Dr. Tuffnell. In March 1885 Bishop Hale resigned the latter see, and returned to England, where he officiated for some time as rector of Ozleworth, Gloucestershire. He has latterly resided at Cheltenham.