Hales was the second son of John Hals (fl.1423) of Kenedon in the parish of Sherford, Devon (a Justice of the Common Pleas and in 1423 a Justice of the King's Bench) by his first wife, a daughter of the Mewye (alias Mewy[4]) family of Whitchurch near Tavistock, Devon. [5] His great-uncle was Richard Hals (d.1418), a Canon of Exeter Cathedral in Devon, and Treasurer of Exeter Cathedral in 1400, who in 1414 was sent as Ambassador to Brittany.[6] Bishop Hals appointed his kinsman Edmund Hals as Archdeacon of Salop from an unknown date until 1485 and as Archdeacon of Derby from 1485, probably until his death.[7] The mansion house of the Hals' at Kenedon, originally quadrangular in form, is today represented by a small 16th c. farmhouse known as Keynedon, about 1 mile south of the village of Sherford.[8] The early 15th century gate-tower of the house was demolished in about 1850.[9]
^Southworth, Carol M., Pluralism and Stability in the Close: The Canons of Lichfield Cathedral in the Last Quarter of the Fifteenth Century, Thesis, University of Birmingham, January 2012, University of Birmingham Research Archive e-theses repository[1], p.18, footnote 40, quoting: "Le Neve, John, Fasti Ecclesiae Anglicanae 1300-1541 X Coventry and Lichfield Diocese, compiled by B.Jones (London 1964), p.17; Emden, A.B., A Biographical Register of the University of Oxford to 1500, 3 volumes (Oxford 1957-9), p.856"; "Edmund Hals" not listed in the family's pedigree in the Visitations of Devon (Vivian, p.439)
^Pevsner, Nikolaus & Cherry, Bridget, The Buildings of England: Devon, London, 2004, p.727
^Hoskins, W.G., A New Survey of England: Devon, London, 1959 (first published 1954), p.475
Fryde, E. B.; Greenway, D. E.; Porter, S.; Roy, I. (1996). Handbook of British Chronology (Third revised ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN0-521-56350-X.
