Hallam, Henry (1777-1859), historian

Henry Hallam was born on 9 July 1777, the son of John Hallam, Canon of Windsor. He attended Eton College and Christ Church Oxford, graduating BA in 1799. Hallam began a legal career and was a barrister on the Oxford circuit, but in 1806 he became a commissioner of stamps while contributing articles to the Edinburgh Review. In 1809 Hallam began to work on the large-scale historical works for which he is known; View of the state of Europe during the Middle Ages was published in 1818 and The Constitutional history of England from the accession of Henry VII to the death of George II in 1827. His final work, published in 1837-39, was his Introduction to the literature in Europe in the fifteenth, sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. He married Julia Maria, daughter of Sir Charles Elton, in 1807, and was the father of Arthur Henry Hallam, favourite of Tennyson, and Henry Fitzmaurice Hallam. Both sons, who predeceased their father, were members of Trinity College Cambridge. Hallam died in 1859.

Hallam's papers in Trinity College Library include commonplace books; historical notes; journal of a trip to Italy, 1828; diaries 1799-1800; household accounts, 1812, 1845-1851.

This material forms a series within the additional manuscripts series a, b, c and d, catalogued as Add.Ms.a.22-28, Add.Ms.b.18-21A, Add.Ms.c.17-20 and Add.Ms.d.13-52.

Oxford Dictionary of National Biography