HOOKER, THOMAS (1586-1647), New England theo logian, was born, probably on July 7, 1586, at Marfield, in the parish of Tilton, Leicestershire, England. He took his M.A. in 1611 at Emmanuel college, Cambridge, the intellectual centre of Puritanism, remained there as a fellow for a few years, and then preached in the parish of Esher in Surrey. About 1626 he became lecturer to the church of St. Mary at Chelmsford, Essex, deliver ing on market days and Sunday afternoons evangelical addresses which were notable for their moral fervour. In 1629 Archbishop Laud took measures to suppress church lectureships, which were an innovation of Puritanism. Hooker was placed under bond and retired to Little Baddow, 4m. from Chelmsford. In 163o he was cited to appear before the Court of High Commission, but he forfeited his bond and fled to Holland, whence in 1633 he emi grated to the Colony of Massachusetts Bay in America, and be came pastor at Newtowne, now Cambridge, Mass., of a company of Puritans who had arrived from England in the previous year and in expectation of his joining them were called "Mr. Hooker's Company." Hooker publicly criticized the limitation of suffrage to church members, and, according to a contemporary historian, William Hubbard (General History of New England) "after Mr. Hooker's coming over it was observed that many of the freemen grew to be very jealous of their liberties." He was a leader of the emigrants who in 1636 founded Hartford, Conn. In a sermon before the Connecticut general court of 1638, he declared that "the choice of public magistrates belongs unto the people by God's own allowance" and that "they who have the power to appoint officers and magistrates, it is in their power, also, to set the bounds and limitations of the power and place unto which they call them." Though this theory was in advance of the age and has caused many historians to call him "the father of American democracy," Hooker had no idea of the separation of church and state—"the privilege of election, which belongs to the people," he said, must be ex ercised "according to the blessed will and law of God." Hooker was pastor of the Hartford church until his death, on July 7, 1647. Hooker through his piety, zeal and wisdom was unquestionably one of the foremost of colonial clergymen.
See G. L. Walker's Thomas Hooker (1891), the best biography, which contains a bibliography of Hooker's published works.