The bishops petitioned to have council assigned them, in which they were indulged, in order to answer to the charge of high treason. A day was appointed, the bishops were brought to the bar, but nothing was effected; the House of Commons at last finding that there could be no proof of high treason, dropt that charge, and were content to libel them for a misdemeanor, in which they likewise but ill succeeded, for the bishops were admitted to bail, and no prosecution was carried on against them, even for a misdemeanor.
Being now at liberty, the greatest part of them retired to their dioceses, 'till the storm which had threatened them should subside. Bishop Hall repaired to Norwich, where he met, from the disaffected party, a very cold reception; he continued preaching however in his cathedral at Norwich, 'till the order of sequestration came down, when he was desired to remove from his palace, while the sequestrators seized upon all his estate, both real and personal, and appraized all the goods which were in the palace. The bishop relates the following instance of oppression which was inflicted on him; 'One morning (says his lordship) before my servants were up, there came to my gates one Wright, a London trooper, attended with others requiring entrance, threatening if they were not admitted, to break open the gates, whom, I found at first sight, struggling with one of my servants for a pistol which he had in his hand; I demanded his business at that unseasonable time; he told me he came to search for arms and ammunition, of which I must be disarmed; I told him I had only two muskets in the house, and no other military provision; he not resting upon my word, searched round about the house, looked into the chests and trunks, examined the vessels in the cellar; finding no other warlike furniture, he asked me what horses I had, for his commission was to take them also; I told him how poorly I was stored, and that my age would not allow me to travel on foot; in conclusion, he took one horse away.'
The committee of sequestration soon after proceeded to strip him of all the revenue belonging to his see, and as he refused to take the covenant, the magistrates of the city of Norwich, who were no friends to episcopal jurisdiction, cited him before them, for giving ordination unwarrantably, as they termed it: to this extraordinary summons the bishop answered, that he would not betray the dignity of his station by his personal appearance, to answer any complaints before the Lord Mayor, for as he was a Peer of the realm, no magistrate whatever had a right to take cognizance of his conduct, and that he was only accountable to the House of Lords, of which he was one. The bishop proceeds to enumerate the various insults he received from the enraged populace; sometimes they searched his house for malignants, at other times they threatened violence to his person; nor did their resentment terminate here; they exercised their fury in the cathedral, tore down the altar, broke the organ in pieces, and committed a kind of sacrilegious devastation in the church; they burnt the service books in the market-place, filled the cathedral with musketeers, who behaved in it with as much indecency, as if it had been an alehouse; they forced the bishop out of his palace, and employed that in the same manner. These are the most material hardships which, according to the bishop's own account, happened to him, which he seems to have born with patience and fortitude, and may serve to shew the violence of party rage, and that religion is often made a pretence for committing the most outrageous insolence, and horrid cruelty. It has been already observed, that Hall seems to have been of an enthusiastic turn of mind, which seldom consists with any brilliance of genius; and in this case it holds true, for in his sermons extant, there is an imbecility, which can flow from no other cause than want of parts. In poetry however he seems to have greater power, which will appear when we consider him in that light.
It cannot positively be determined on what year bishop Hall died; he published that work of his called Hard Measure, in the year 1647, at which time he was seventy-three years of age, and in all probability did not long survive it.
His ecclesiastical works are,
A Sermon, preached before King James at Hampton-Court, 1624.
Christian Liberty, set forth in a Sermon at Whitehall, 1628.
Divine Light and Reflections, in a Sermon at Whitehall, 1640.
A Sermon, preached at the Cathedral of Exeter, upon the Pacification between the two Kingdoms, 1641.
The Mischief of Faction, and the Remedy of it, a Sermon, at Whitehall on the second Sunday in Lent, 1641.