John Hale (British Army officer)

General John Hale (1728–1806) was a British army officer, remembered chiefly for his close friendship with General James Wolfe, and for his extraordinarily large number of children by his wife Mary Chaloner, a noted beauty who was painted by Joshua Reynolds.

As a very young officer he played a part in supressing the 1745 Rebellion. He was stationed at Fort Edward and later took part in the Siege of Louisbourg as the commander of the 47th Regiment of Foot. He also commanded the regiment in the Battle of the Plains of Abraham. He was a close friend of General James Wolfe, and it was Hale whom the dying Wolfe ordered to carry his final dispatches back to England. Hale received a grant of Crown lands in Canada, where several of his sons later settled.

John Hale co-owned the privateer Musketo, 120 tons, eighty men, and the Hertford. These vessels sailed uh on their first cruise in November, 1756. The regiment was renumbered the 17th Lancers in 1761. The following year he acted as aide to Lord Albemarle during the Battle of Havana.

He was raised to the rank of General in the British Army, and was appointed Governor of Londonderry in 1776, holding that office until his death in 1806.

He was born in London in 1728, the youngest son of the eminent judge Bernard Hale, former Chief Baron of the Irish Exchequer and his wife Anne Thoresby; his father died a few months after he was born. General Bernard Hale was his elder brother. The Hale family came originally from King's Walden in Hertfordshire, and were prominent in local politics.

John married in 1763 Mary Chaloner, daughter of William Chaloner the third of Guisborough, who died in 1803, and had twenty-one children, of whom seventeen survived, including William, John, Richard, George, Francis, Henry. Bernard, Vicesimus, Edward, Emily, Elizabeth, Mary, Anne and Harriet. Harriet married Lawrence Dundas, 1st Earl of Zetland. John junior had a distinguished political career in Canada. None of the General's sons held high military office.

There is a celebrated portrait of Mary Chaloner Hale as the goddess Euphrosyne by Sir Joshua Reynolds, who also painted her husband.

John's wife, Mary Chaloner, as Euphrosyne, painted by Joshua Reynolds