Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 27.djvu/301

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Elect; especially of the Prophet Habbakuk's Faith,’ Oxford, 1612, 4to. Jackson also edited from Hooker's papers ‘Two Sermons upon part of St. Jude's Epistle—Epist. Jude vv. 17, 21,’ Oxford, 1613, 4to, but the style has few of Hooker's characteristics, and if they are his work they belong to a very early period.

‘A Summarie View of the Government both of the Old and New Testament; whereby the Episcopal Government of Christ's Church is Vindicated’ was issued in 1641, ‘out of the rude draughts of Launcelot Andrewes, late bishop of Winchester.’ To this volume was prefixed ‘A Discovery of the Causes of these Contentions touching Church Government, out of the fragments of Richard Hooker.’ The book seems to have been issued by Ussher to prepare the way for a compromise on the current disputes respecting church government. The editor suggests that ‘A Discovery’ was printed from Hooker's autograph, but the general style and argument does not justify its ascription to him.

[Walton's Life of Hooker, written at Archbishop Sheldon's suggestion, to correct the errors of Gauden's biography (1662), was first published in 1665; was reprinted with Walton's other Lives in 1670, and reached a fourth edition in 1675. Walton was in early life acquainted with the family of George Cranmer, Hooker's friend, and derived much information from him; but he also consulted Archbishop Ussher, Dr. Morton, bishop of Durham, and John Hales of Eton, ‘who loved the very name of Mr. Hooker.’ Little has been discovered since Walton wrote, and the charges of exaggeration and credulity brought against him are not conclusively proved. Fuller, in his Church History and Worthies, supplies a few particulars, some of which are manifestly inaccurate. Keble's introduction to his edition of Hooker, with the corrections of Dean Church and Canon Paget in the reissue of 1888, is valuable. Dean Church's preface to his edition of the Ecclesiastical Polity, bk. i. (Clarendon Press, 1876), and Ronald Bayne's introd. to his edition of bk. v. (1902) are of importance. See also Fowler's Hist. C.C.C. Oxford, 1898; Prince's Worthies of Devon; Wood's Athenæ (Bliss), i. 694; Remusat's La Philosophie Anglaise depuis Bacon jusqu'à Locke, i. 125; Masters in English Theology, ed. Dr. A. Barry (1877), 1–60; F. D. Maurice's Modern Philosophy; John Hunt's Religious Thought in England (1870), i. 56–70; Ueberweg's History of Philosophy (English transl.), ii. 350–2. Hooker and Bacon take part together in one of Landor's Imaginary Conversations, but both from historical and philosophical points of view it is unsatisfactory.]

S. L.

HOOKER, THOMAS (1586?–1647), minister at Hartford, Connecticut, son of Thomas Hooker (d. 1635), was born at Markfield, near Leicester, probably on 7 July 1586. He was educated at Market Bosworth grammar school, and afterwards for a time as a sizar of Queen's College, where he matriculated 27 March 1603–4, and finally at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, where he graduated B.A. in 1608, M.A. in 1611, and became a fellow on Sir Wolstan Dixie's foundation (Savage, Genealogical Dict. ii. 459–60). About 1620 he became rector of Esher in Surrey. The income of the living was only 40l. a year, but Francis Drake, the patron, received him into his house. Drake's wife was under the impression that she had committed the unpardonable sin, and Hooker succeeded in comforting her after Ussher and John Dod had failed (cf. Trodden down strength, by the God of Strength, or Mrs. Drake revived. Related by her friend Hart Onhi, Lond., 1647). Hooker married Susanna, Mrs. Drake's waiting-woman. In 1626 he accepted a lectureship at Chelmsford, Essex; he was especially popular with the younger ministers, ‘to whom he was an oracle and their principal library.’ His puritanism, however, brought him into disfavour with Laud. He was threatened with an arraignment before the high commission, and offered in May 1629 to depart quietly out of the diocese. In June he appeared before the bishop in London, when the excitement ‘even drowned the noise of the great question of tonnage and poundage’ (cf. the very interesting letters from Samuel Collins, vicar of Braintree, Essex, to Dr. Arthur Duck, in Cal. State Papers, Dom. 1628–9, pp. 554, 567). It was mainly through Collins's mediation that proceedings were stayed. On 3 Nov., however, Dr. John Browning, rector of Rawreth, Essex, again complained to Laud (ib. Dom. 1629–31, p. 87). A week later Laud received a petition in favour of Hooker, signed by forty-nine of the beneficed clergy in Essex (ib. Dom. 1629–31, p. 92). Meanwhile Hooker had opened a school at Little Baddow, about five miles from Chelmsford, with John Eliot [q. v.] for his assistant, but eventually, on being cited in 1630 to appear before the high commission court, he deemed it prudent to forfeit his sureties and withdraw to Holland. Here his movements were made known to Laud, through the agency of Stephen Goffe [q. v.] (ib. Dom. 1633–4, pp. 30, 324, 450). He was some time at Amsterdam, then preached for two years at Delft, and afterwards assisted William Ames (1571–1633) [q. v.] at Rotterdam. In 1633 he sailed for New England in the Griffin. He arrived at Boston on 4 Sept., settled in the following month at Newtown (now Cambridge), Massachusetts, and became a freeman on 14 May 1634. At a fast kept on 11 Oct. 1633 Hooker was