31 Facts About Richard Hooker

Richard Hooker was an English priest in the Church of England and an influential theologian.

Richard Hooker was one of the most important English theologians of the sixteenth century.

Details of Richard Hooker's life come chiefly from Izaak Walton's biography of him.

Richard Hooker was born in the village of Heavitree in Exeter, Devon sometime around Easter Sunday 1554.

Richard Hooker came from a good family, but one that was neither noble nor wealthy.

Richard Hooker's uncle John Hooker was a success and served as the chamberlain of Exeter.

Hooker's uncle was able to obtain for Richard the help of another Devon native, John Jewel, bishop of Salisbury.

The bishop saw to it that Richard Hooker was accepted to Corpus Christi College, Oxford, where he became a fellow of the society in 1577.

Sandys made Hooker tutor to his son Edwin, and Richard taught George Cranmer, the great nephew of Archbishop Thomas Cranmer.

In 1581, Richard Hooker was appointed to preach at St Paul's Cross and he became a public figure, more so because his sermon offended the Puritans by diverging from their theories of predestination.

Some ten years before Richard Hooker arrived in London, the Puritans had produced an "Admonition to Parliament" together with "A view of Popish Abuses" and initiated a long debate which would last beyond the end of the century.

Richard Hooker was drawn into the debate through the influence of Edwin Sandys and George Cranmer.

Richard Hooker was introduced to John Churchman, a distinguished London merchant who became Master of the Merchant Taylors' Company.

Richard Hooker seems to have lived on and off with the Churchmans until 1595 and, according to Booty, he "seems to have been well treated and considerably assisted by John Churchman and his wife".

Richard Hooker became rector of St Mary's Drayton Beauchamp, Buckinghamshire, in 1584, but probably never lived there.

About this time, Richard Hooker began to write his major work Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, a critique of the Puritans and their attacks on the Church of England and particularly the Book of Common Prayer.

In 1591, Richard Hooker left the Temple and was presented to the living of St Andrew's, Boscombe, Wiltshire to support him while he wrote.

Richard Hooker seems to have lived mainly in London but apparently did spend time in Salisbury where he was subdean of Salisbury Cathedral and made use of the Cathedral Library.

In 1595, Richard Hooker became rector of the parishes of St Mary the Virgin in Bishopsbourne and St John the Baptist in Barham, both in Kent, and left London to continue his writing.

Richard Hooker published the fifth book of the Laws in 1597.

Travers accused Richard Hooker of preaching doctrine favourable to the Church of Rome when in fact he had just described their differences, emphasising that Rome attributed to works "a power of satisfying God for sin".

For Richard Hooker, works were a necessary expression of thanksgiving for unmerited justification by a merciful God.

Richard Hooker defended his belief in the doctrine of justification by faith, but argued that even those who did not understand or accept this could be saved by God.

Richard Hooker expresses in this work the classic ordo salutis that recognises the distinction between justification and sanctification as two forms of righteousness while at the same time emphasising the role the sacraments have in justification.

Richard Hooker attempted to work out which methods of organising churches are best.

In political philosophy, Richard Hooker is best remembered for his account of law and the origins of government in Book One of the Laws.

Richard Hooker worked largely from Thomas Aquinas, but he adapted scholastic thought in a latitudinarian manner.

Richard Hooker argued that church organisation, like political organisation, is one of the "things indifferent" to God.

Richard Hooker wrote that minor doctrinal issues were not issues that damned or saved the soul, but rather frameworks surrounding the moral and religious life of the believer.

Richard Hooker contended there were good monarchies and bad ones, good democracies and bad ones, and good church hierarchies and bad ones: what mattered was the piety of the people.

Notably, Richard Hooker affirmed that the power and propriety of bishops need not be in every case absolute.