John Hales (died 1608)

John Hales
John Hales's former residence, the Whitefriars, where the Marprelate tracts were printed, as it was in 2012
Died	1 January 1608
Spouse(s)	Frideswide Faunt Avis (surname unknown)
Children	Mary Hales Jane Hales Bethany Hales
Parent(s)	Christopher Hales, Mary Lucy

John Hales (died 1 January 1608) was the owner of the Whitefriars in Coventry at which two of the Marprelate tracts were printed on a secret press. He was the nephew and heir of John Hales, Clerk of the Hanaper, and the nephew of Sir Thomas Lucy of Charlecote.

John Hales was the son of Christopher Hales of Coventry and Mary Lucy, the daughter of William Lucy, esquire, and Anne Fermor, and sister of Sir Thomas Lucy of Charlecote, Warwickshire.

Little is known of Hales's early life. In 1589, at the request of his great-uncle Sir Richard Knightley of Fawsley, he allowed the press on which the Marprelate tracts were being printed secretly to be brought to his house at the Whitefriars in Coventry by Knightley's servant Stephen Gyfford. The first of the tracts, Martin Marprelate's Epistle, had been printed at the home of Elizabeth Hussey in East Molesey. The second tract, The Epitome, had been printed at Sir Richard Knightley's house at Fawsley. At the time, Knightley was married to his second wife, Elizabeth Seymour, a daughter of Edward Seymour, 1st Duke of Somerset, and a cousin of King Edward VI. Two of the Marprelate tracts, Certain Mineral and Metaphysical Schoolpoints and Hay Any Work for Cooper, as well as John Penry's A View, were printed at the Whitefriars by Robert Waldegrave. The secret press was then moved to Sir Roger Wigston's house of Wolston Priory.