In the quiet agricultural village of Hale, perched along the northern bank of the River Mersey in Cheshire and Lancashire just outside Liverpool, stands a bronze life sized sculpture and a fourteen foot gravestone commemorating one of the most celebrated folk heroes of Jacobean England: John Middleton, universally revered as the Childe of Hale. Born in 1578 during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, Middleton allegedly grew to an astonishing height of nine feet three inches, sleeping with his feet sticking out the window of his tiny thatched cottage and traveling to the royal palace of King James I to defeat the monarch’s personal champion wrestler in a single throw.
Sleeping Foot-Out-the-Window in Hale Village
According to parish traditions recorded in seventeenth century histories of Lancashire, John Middleton was born in Hale in 1578 to working class parents of completely average stature. Like many individuals who experience rapid adolescent growth linked to pituitary gigantism, Middleton shot up so rapidly during his teenage years that his humble half timbered wattle and daub cottage on Church End could no longer contain his frame when he lay down flat.
Local villagers recounted that when Middleton stretched out on his bed at night, his head pressed against the far interior wall while his ankles and giant boots extended straight out through the open cottage window into the lane. Despite his terrifying physical size and hands so broad that their traced outline at Brasenose College, Oxford, measured seventeen inches from wrist to fingertip, Middleton possessed a gentle, unassuming temperament. In archaic northern English dialect, the title “Childe” was a term of affectionate honor normally reserved for a young nobleman awaiting knighthood; the people of Hale bestowed it upon Middleton because his quiet humility matched his heroic proportions.
Wrestling the King’s Champion Before James I in 1617
Word of the Lancashire giant’s strength—including stories that he could hurl heavy boundary stones across fields and protect his landlord’s livestock from poachers simply by standing in a gateway—eventually caught the attention of the local squire and sheriff of Lancashire, Sir Gilbert Ireland of Hutt Hall. In August 1617, when King James I traveled south through Lancashire on a royal progress returning from Scotland, Sir Gilbert decided to present the thirty nine year old giant to the King at Hoghton Tower and subsequently escorted Middleton all the way to the royal court in London.
Dressing Middleton in a dazzling, custom tailored suit of crimson velvet laced with gold, large white ruffs, and rose adorned shoes, Sir Gilbert led him into the royal presence chamber at Whitehall. Amused and astonished, King James I arranged a wrestling match on the palace grounds pitting the Childe of Hale against the King’s own undefeated personal wrestler. Unfamiliar with refined London court etiquette, Middleton grabbed the royal champion in his massive arms, lifted him off his feet, and slammed him down onto the turf with such bone crushing force that the champion’s thumb—or according to some accounts, his collarbone—was snapped in an instant. While the court courtiers who had bet large sums of money on the King’s wrestler were furious, King James I was delighted, presenting Middleton with a royal gift of twenty pounds in gold before sending him safely back north.
The Oxford Robbery and the Portrait at Brasenose College
On their return journey from London to Lancashire in 1617, Sir Gilbert Ireland stopped at the University of Oxford, where he had been a student at Brasenose College, a traditional academic home for young men from Lancashire and Cheshire. While visiting the college, an artist painted two striking life sized oil portraits of John Middleton—one preserved today at Brasenose College and the other formerly hung at Speke Hall—alongside life sized life paintings of Middleton’s massive right hand and his colossal costume.
Unfortunately, Middleton’s fame and newly acquired wealth attracted treachery on the final leg of his journey home. According to Lancashire folklore, a group of unscrupulous companions or highwaymen ambushed the gentle giant along the road, tying him up and robbing him of the twenty pounds of gold King James had given him. Returning to Hale Village penniless, Middleton spent the remaining six years of his life working as a humble agricultural laborer and village protector before dying in 1623 at the relatively young age of forty five—an age typical for individuals suffering from the cardiovascular strain of untreated pituitary gigantism.
Was He Really 9 Feet 3 Inches Tall? The 1768 Exhumation
Buried in the churchyard of St. Mary’s in Hale under a slab inscribed in old lettering “Here lyeth the bodie of John Middleton the Childe, nine feete three, borne 1578, dyed 1623,” the giant’s claimed height of nine feet three inches (282 centimeters) would make him four inches taller than Robert Wadlow, the tallest medically verified human in modern history (eight feet eleven inches). Naturally, modern anatomists and historians have questioned how close the Jacobean legend was to biological reality.
A crucial piece of forensic evidence emerged in 1768 when parish officials at Hale reportedly opened Middleton’s grave and measured his preserved skeletal thighbone (femur). According to notes recorded at the time by Thomas Pennant and later by gregory Baines, Middleton’s femur measured three inches longer than that of a tall six foot man, or in another contemporary measurement, stretched from the hip of a tall six foot parish clerk all the way down to the clerk’s ankle. Using modern forensic anthropology regression formulas that calculate living stature from femur length and hand span, medical historians estimate that while local pride exaggerated his legend to passed nine feet, John Middleton genuinely stood between seven feet eight inches and seven feet nine inches tall—making the Childe of Hale an authentic giant of the seventeenth century whose memory still anchors his native village four hundred years later.
