Richard Hooker

Richard Hooker was born in 1554 in Heavitree, near Exeter, in Devon, England. His family could not afford a university education, but Bishop John Jewel of Salisbury became his patron and sent him to Corpus Christi College, Oxford, where he became a fellow in 1577. He was ordained in the Church of England. In 1585 he was appointed Master of the Temple Church in London, where the afternoon preacher, Walter Travers, was a leading Puritan; their opposing sermons became a famous public debate, with Hooker defending the established church. Hooker later served as a parish priest in Wiltshire and then at Bishopsbourne, near Canterbury. His great work, Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, the first books of which appeared in 1594, defended the Church of England's government by bishops and its forms of worship against Puritan critics. Drawing on Scripture, reason and tradition, and on the idea of natural law, he argued that not every detail of church life had to be laid down in the Bible. The work became a foundation of Anglican theology. He died at Bishopsbourne in 1600.

Richard Hooker is also an author in the library: author page and works.

Faith: English priest and leading defender of the Church of England in his Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity. Source: Dictionary of National Biography (1885–1900) (via Wikisource)