William Hooper

William Hooper 1742-90, political leader in the American Revolution, signer of the Declaration of Independence, b. Boston. He became a lawyer and moved (1764) to Wilmington, N.C. Hooper served on the local committee of correspondence and was a North Carolina delegate (1774-77) to the Continental Congress.

Hooper, John (d. 1555). Bishop of Gloucester and Worcester. Born in Somerset and educated at Oxford, Hooper probably took Cistercian vows at Gloucester. After the dissolution he returned to Oxford to study reformed theology, but fled abroad in disguise and eventually settled in Zurich (1547–9), where he knew the reformer Bullinger. A radical extremist of ‘blazing sincerity’ and ‘intolerable obstinacy’, too militant for Cranmer, he returned to London as Protector Somerset's chaplain. When offered the see of Gloucester (1550), his disagreement with Cranmer over vestments led to brief imprisonment before he agreed to consecration fully robed (1551). A zealous reforming bishop, he set to work, but with the merger of Gloucester and Worcester (1552) he was retitled bishop of Worcester. In Mary's reign he was imprisoned, deprived (1554), and burned at Gloucester. His actions and writings were a potent force in spreading puritanism in England.

Revd Dr William M. Marshall

Porter, William T[rotter] (1809–58), born in Vermont, began his journalistic career there before moving to New York City, where in 1831 he established the Spirit of the Times, a racy chronicle primarily distinguished for its publication of tales of the Old Southwestern frontier. From it he collected material by such authors as T.B. Thorpe, G.W. Harris, J.J. Hooper, and W.T. Thompson in The Big Bear of Arkansas (1845) and A Quarter Race in Kentucky (1847).