Richard Hooker

The English divine Richard Hooker (1554-1600) is best known for his "Ecclesiastical Polity, " a work that provided a solid theological basis for the newly established Church of England.

Nothing is known of Richard Hooker's early life apart from his birth at Exeter in Devonshire. He went to Corpus Christi College, Oxford, about 1568. His appointment as deputy to the regius professor of Hebrew is one of the best-known events in his Oxford career; and a small pension of £4 a year was given Hooker by the mayor and Chamber of Exeter in 1582. It is likely that he left Oxford in 1584, when he was presented to the vicarage of Drayton Beauchamp. It is possible that he never resided there, because he was negotiating in London for the mastership of the Temple Church, which he got in 1585. In 1588 he married Joan Churchman; they later had two sons, who died in infancy, and four daughters.

While at Oxford, Hooker had been tutor to Edwin Sandys, who was to have a notable career as a statesman, become a director of the Virginia Company, and be knighted. Hooker sold the copyright in the eight books of his Ecclesiastical Polity to Sandys for about £50 plus a certain number of copies of the printed books; while, for his part, Sandys was to get the books printed. Only the first five appeared and at considerable cost to Sandys: the first four in 1593, the fifth book in 1597. Why the last three books were not published until the middle of the 17th century has caused much discussion among scholars, touching not least upon the genuineness of these volumes. In 1591 Hooker had accepted the living of Boscombe in Wiltshire, from which in 1595 he went to the living of Bishopsbourne, near Canterbury, where he died.

C. J. Sisson, perhaps the greatest modern Hooker scholar, stated: "In the long and crowded roll of great English men of letters there is no figure of greater significance than Hooker. … His own life's work is a monument of pure and splendid prose style and of lucid philosophic thought, based on unsurpassed scholarship in the vast field of his theme."

Further Reading

Hooker's Works were published in three volumes in 1888. An early life of Hooker by Gauden, Bishop of Worcester, was so unsatisfactory that Archbishop Sheldon of Canterbury commissioned Izaak Walton to write a biography. This has been the standard life since its publication in 1665 and was included in the 1888 edition of Hooker's Works. C. J. Sisson, The Judicious Marriage of Mr. Hooker (1940), provided some important corrections. Modern studies of Hooker are F. J. Shirley, Richard Hooker and Contemporary Political Ideas (1949), and John S. Marshall, Hooker and the Anglican Tradition (1963).

Additional Sources

Archer, Stanley., Richard Hooker, Boston: Twayne, 1983. □

Hooker, Richard (1554–1600). Theologian and political theorist. Educated at Oxford, Hooker became a fellow of Corpus Christi College and master of the Temple before ‘retiring’ to a country living to write his masterly defence of the Elizabethan system of government The Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity. His intention was to show how in England there was an essential unity between church and state, which were different aspects of a single community, both subject to the authority of the monarch. However, Hooker insisted that the monarch's authority, though supreme, was not arbitrary. It was limited both by being founded on the consent of the people, and by being subject to the rule of law, a body of civil and ecclesiastical statutes originating in Parliament. In this work, Hooker supplied the most effective statement of the theoretical foundations of Anglicanism that has ever been written, and greatly influenced the ideas of later political theorists such as John Locke and Edmund Burke.

Tim S. Gray

Hooker, Richard (c.1554–1600), the foremost apologist of the ecclesiastical settlement of Elizabeth I.

His treatise Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity (1593–1662) was designed to justify the constitutional structure of the Elizabethan Church, but it embodied a broadly conceived philosophical theology. His opposition to the Puritans, who held that whatever was not commanded in Scripture was unlawful, led him to elaborate a theory of law, based on the ‘absolute’ fundamental of natural law. This natural law is the expression of God's supreme reason, and everything, including the Bible, must be interpreted in the light of it. But the permanence of law does not preclude development of detail. The Church is an organic, not a static, institution, and methods of Church government and administration will change according to circumstance. Hence the C of E, though reformed, possesses continuity with the medieval Church. Feast day in parts of the Anglican Communion, 3 Nov.

Hooker, Richard (c.1554–1600). Anglican theologian. As the apologist of the Elizabethan religious settlement in England, he was a decisively important interpreter of Anglicanism. His Treatise on the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, also a classic of English prose, was only partly published in his lifetime (books i–v of eight books). Starting from a broadly conceived philosophical theology appealing to natural law, he attacked the Puritans for regarding the Bible as a mechanical code of rules, since not everything that is right (e.g. episcopacy) finds precise definition in the scriptures. Moreover, the Church is not a static institution, and the method of Church government will change according to circumstances. Hence the Church of England, though reformed, possesses continuity with the early Church.

Hooker, Richard (1554–1600). Theologian and political theorist. Educated at Oxford, Hooker became a fellow of Corpus Christi College and master of the Temple before ‘retiring’ to a country living to write his masterly defence of the Elizabethan system of government The Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity. He argued that in England there was an essential unity between church and state, which were different aspects of a single community, both subject to the authority of the monarch. Hooker supplied the most effective statement of the theoretical foundations of Anglicanism, and greatly influenced the ideas of later political theorists such as John Locke and Edmund Burke.

Hooker, Richard (?1554–1600), theologian. Of his great prose classic, the defence of the Church of England as established in Queen Elizabeth's reign entitled Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Politie, four books appeared in 1593, the fifth in 1597. A biography of Hooker was written by I. Walton and published with the 1666 edition of his Works. There is some reason to credit Hooker with the first steps towards making known in England the theory of ‘original contract’ as a basis of sovereignty.