HOOKER, RICHARD English writer, author of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, son of Richard Vowell or Hooker, was born at Heavitree, near Exeter. His uncle, John Hooker alias Vowell, chamberlain of Exeter, and a man of some literary repute, induced Bishop Jewel to become Richard's patron and to bestow on him a clerk's place in Corpus Christi college, Oxford. He was admitted in 1568, and became a fellow in After his marriage, in 1581, he was presented to the living of Drayton Beauchamp in Buckinghamshire, and a few months later (March 1585) to the mastership of the Temple. Here he had his famous controversy with Walter Travers, a Presbyterian and evening lecturer in the same church. At his own request, Hooker was transferred in 1S91 to the rectory of Boscombe near Salisbury, where he completed the first four of the proposed Eight Books of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, published in or 1594. In he was promoted to the rectory of Bishopsbourne near Canterbury, where he lived to see the com pletion of the fifth book in 1597. In the passage from London to Gravesend some time in 1600 he caught a severe cold from which he never recovered; he died on Nov. 2 of the same year. A volume professing to contain books vi. and viii. of the Polity was published at London in 1648, but the bulk of book vi., as has been shown by Keble, is a deviation from Hooker's subject, and doubtless the genuine copy, known to have been completed, has been lost. Book vii., which was published in a new edition of the work by Gauden in 1662, and book viii., may be regarded as in substance the composition of Hooker; but they have been unskilfully edited, and probably manipulated for theological purposes.
Hooker's Polity, which exhibits his respect for reason and for liberty, his broad sympathies, his dignity of language, and his wide reading, especially in patristic literature, was an answer to the attacks of the Presbyterians on the Episcopalian polity and customs. Its theological interest lies in its recognition of the greatness of Calvin as well as of the weaknesses and dangers of the Puritan movement, in its contention that the Bible was never meant to regulate the externals of church worship and govern ment, in its defence of the Anglican Church against the charge of Romanism and in its interpretation of the sacraments. Its philo sophical interest lies in the fact that the fundamental principle on which Hooker bases his reasoning is the unity and all-embrac ing character of law. Law—as operative in nature, as regulating each man's individual character and actions, as seen in the forma tions of societies and governments—is a manifestation and devel opment of the divine order according to which God Himself acts. Natural law is eternal and immutable ; positive law, which in cludes all forms of government, varies according to external necessity and expediency. The application of positive laws is to be determined by reason enlightened and strengthened by every variety of knowledge, discipline and experience.
Applying his principles to man individually, the foundation of morality is, according to Hooker, immutable, and rests "on that law which God from the beginning path set Himself to do all things by" ; this law is to be discovered by reason ; and the per fection which reason teaches us to strive after is stated, with characteristic regard to the facts of human nature, to be "a triple perfection : first a sensual, consisting in those things which very life itself requireth, either as necessary supplements, or as beauties or ornaments thereof ; then an intellectual, consisting in those things which none underneath man is either capable of or acquainted with; lastly, a spiritual or divine, consisting in those things whereunto we tend by supernatural means here, but can not here attain unto them." Applying his principles to man as a member of a community, he assigns practically the same origin and sanctions to ecclesiastical as to civil government. His theory of government forms the basis of the Treatise on Civil Govern ment by Locke, although Locke developed the theory in a way that Hooker would not have sanctioned.
The force and justification of government Hooker derives from public approbation, either given directly by the parties immedi ately concerned, or indirectly through inheritance from their ancestors. His theory is in various of its aspects and applications liable to objection; but taken as a whole it is the first philosophi cal statement of the principles which, though disregarded in the succeeding age, have since regulated political progress in England and gradually modified its constitution. One of the corollaries of his principles is his theory of the relation of church and State, according to which, with the qualifications implied in his theory of government, he asserts the royal supremacy in matters of re ligion, and identifies the church and commonwealth as but dif ferent aspects of the same government.
BIBLIOGRAPHY.—A life of Hooker by Dr. Gauden was published in Bibliography.—A life of Hooker by Dr. Gauden was published in his edition of Hooker's works (1662) . To correct the errors in this life Izaak Walton wrote another, which was published in the 2nd edition of Hooker's works in 1666. The standard modern edition of the works is that by Keble, which first appeared in 1836, and has since been several times reprinted (1888 ed., revised by Dean Church and Bishop Paget).
The Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity was printed in the Everyman's Library (2 vols., 1907), and bk. i. was edited by R. W. Church (1868 76) . See also V. Stanley, R. Hooker (1907) and L. S. Thornton, R. Hooker, a Study of his Theology (1924).