was rejected on political grounds. Thereupon Hook suggested that the bishops of the Scottish church, who had in 1785 consecrated Dr. Seabury, the first bishop of the church in America, should consecrate a bishop to minister to the English on the European continent. The suggestion was adopted; the Scottish bishops elected Dr. Luscombe, and on Sunday, 20 March 1825, Hook preached the sermon at his consecration at Stirling. The sermon was entitled ‘An attempt to demonstrate the Catholicism of the Church of England and the other branches of the Episcopal Church.’
Hook left Whippingham in 1825 when his father was made dean of Worcester, and was soon afterwards appointed to the perpetual curacy of Moseley, then a country village about four miles from Birmingham. In 1827 he was also appointed to a lectureship at St. Philip's, Birmingham. The emolument of the lectureship enabled him to keep a curate at Moseley, but he never spared himself. In Birmingham he established a penitentiary, and in Moseley a village school.
Hook was appointed by Lord Chancellor Lyndhurst in the autumn of 1828 to the living of Holy Trinity, Coventry. The parish was an onerous charge at the time; there was great depression of trade, and the spirit of churchmanship was at a low ebb. But the new vicar soon poured new life into the place. He began evening services—rare in those days—in the summer of 1830, and his church was the first in Coventry to be lighted with gas. He introduced frequent celebrations of holy communion, services on saints' days, and lectures in Lent. In 1834 he gave a series of lectures on the liturgy, and his Sunday evening sermons were generally an expository course upon some book of holy scripture. The course upon St. Matthew occupied several years, and the sermon, afterwards so notorious, ‘Hear the Church,’ was originally written for this series. In holy week, 1830, he delivered day by day the lectures afterwards published under the title of ‘The Last Days of Our Lord's Ministry.’ This, his first literary venture, was one of the most successful. A dispensary, a savings bank, and a society called ‘The Religious and Useful Knowledge Society,’ which included a library, classes of instruction, and periodical lectures, were all more or less directly established by him.
In 1837 Hook was elected to the vicarage of Leeds by more than two-thirds of the trustees, in spite of a vigorous opposition from the low-church party. The chief conditions which he had to face at Leeds were a huge and rapidly increasing population, great ignorance among church people of the principles of their church, and active opposition on the part of dissenters. The population had risen from 53,162 in 1801 to 123,393 in 1831. The parish included the whole of the town and a large portion of the suburbs. In 1835 there were only eight churches in the town besides the parish church, and nine in the suburbs. The total number of clergy was eighteen. The town churches were mere chapels of ease to the parish church; no districts were assigned to them, the patronage of nearly all was vested in the vicar, and most of the baptisms, marriages, and funerals were performed at the parish church, functions which consumed nearly all the time of the clerical staff, consisting of the vicar, one curate, and a clerk in orders. The agitation against compulsory church rates was in progress when Hook arrived in Leeds. The ratepayers had purposely elected seven churchwardens either hostile or indifferent to the church. Hook found the surplices in rags and the service books in tatters, but the churchwardens refused to expend a farthing upon such things, and behaved at a vestry meeting in the church with the grossest irreverence. As chairman of a church-rate meeting in the old Cloth Hall Yard in August 1837, the vicar found himself confronted by a mob of nearly three thousand persons. A halfpenny rate was proposed to meet the church expenses for the coming year. A baptist preacher furiously attacked both church rates and the vicar, but Hook, by his tact, boldness, and ready wit, gained the day, the rate was passed, and a vote of thanks to the chairman was carried by acclamation.
The congregation at the parish church soon became so large that scarcely standing room could be found at the Sunday services. An entirely new church, capable of holding nearly four thousand persons, was opened in 1841. It was Hook's custom for many years to preach not only each Sunday but every day in Lent. His sermons were always learned and forcible, and full of fervid piety. The whole number of communicants when he became vicar was little more than fifty, and among these there were no young men, and very few men of any age. But in the course of two or three years four or five hundred persons communicated on Easter day, and before he left Leeds this number was often doubled. At the same time his published sermons, pamphlets, and other occasional writings extended his influence far beyond his parish.
In 1844 he succeeded, after many delays, and at the sacrifice of his own income and patronage, in getting an act of parliament
