Richard Hooker (1554–1600) was an English theologian and influential philosopher. The son of poor parents, he was educated through the help of patrons at Exeter Grammar School and Corpus Christi College, Oxford. Following an Oxford career as a college fellow and deputy professor of Hebrew, he was subsequently master of the Temple Church in London, subdean of Salisbury, and rector of Boscombe in Wiltshire and of Bishopsbourne in Kent, where he died.
His fame rests on his great prose classic, the defence of the Church of England as established in Elizabeth I’s reign entitled Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity. Books I-IV were published in 1593, Book V in 1597, Books VI and VIII in 1648, and Book VII in 1662. deals mainly with the proper governance of the churches (“polity”). Structurally, the work is a carefully worked out reply to the general principles of Puritanism as found in the “Admonition” and Thomas Cartwright’s follow-up writings, more specifically:
- Scripture alone is the rule that should govern all human conduct;
- Scripture prescribes an unalterable form of Church government;
- The English Church is corrupted by Roman Catholic orders, rites, and ceremonies;
- The law is corrupt in not allowing lay elders;
- “There ought not to be in the Church Bishops”
Other works were issued at Oxford in 1612-14. The influential biography by Izaac Walton (1666) is delightful but often inaccurate. Hooker’s admirers have included William Chillingworth, John Locke, S. T. Coleridge, and John Keble, who edited his works.