HOOKER, Richard. - Protestant theologian and jurist, b. at Heavitree, near Exeter (England) in 1554, d. at Bishopsbourne, near Canterbury, on 2 Nov. 1600. Of poor family, he was able to attend the University of Oxford with the help of the bishop of Salisbury, Jewell; there in 1578 he taught Hebrew and was ordained an Anglican minister in 1581. The following year he married, but the union was unhappy because of his wife’s character.
Appointed by the archbishop of York as “Master of the Temple,” in this office he came into contact with his colleague Walter Travers, who, however, professed Calvinist doctrines: both preached in the same church. Travers attacked H. on many points (cf. *A supplication made to the privy council by master Walter Travers*). H. replied to his opponent and expounded his own doctrines in the famous *The laws of ecclesiastical polity*. The work consists of eight books. The first four were printed in 1594; the fifth in 1597; the remaining three were lost, and some attribute this loss to H.’s widow; however, some outlines and notes survived and were first published about the middle of the 17th century. The work was written chiefly against the Puritans, who, in H.’s time, refusing to remain within the State Church, constantly looked to Geneva and Calvin and sought to purify the Anglican Church by dragging it toward Calvinist forms of government and doctrines. The work marked the path that was later followed by the “Caroline divines” or Caroline theologians of the 17th century; it is therefore no wonder that Anglicans hold H. and his work in such high esteem. The work has had many editions. The best is that of J. Keble (1836, revised in 1888 by R. W. Church and F. Paget; 1st vol. ed. R. Bayne 1922; 8th vol. ed. R. A. Honk 1931).