The official career of Sir Christopher Hales, attorney general and master of the rolls under Henry VIII

Abstract This article is the first study of the official career of Sir Christopher Hales. It casts new light on the workload and responsibilities of an early Tudor lawyer-administrator at the highest levels of government. It is structured around the principal stages in Hales’s career: undersheriff of Kent (1507–8), solicitor general (1525–9), attorney general (1529–36) and master of the rolls (1536–41). Its chief contribution to scholarship is that it provides a detailed discussion of the office of attorney general in the early Tudor period.