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 religion, and
identifies the church and commonwealth as but different aspects of
the same government.
Bibliography.—A life of Hooker by Dr Gauden was published in his edition of Hooker’s works (London, 1662). To correct the errors in this life Walton wrote another, which was published in the 2nd edition of Hooker’s works in 1666. The standard modern edition of Hooker’s works is that by Keble, which first appeared in 1836, and has since been several times reprinted (1888 edition, revised by Dean Church and Bishop Paget). The first book of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity was edited for the Clarendon Press by Dean R. W. Church (1868–1876). (T. F. H.)
HOOKER, THOMAS (1586–1647), New England theologian,
was born, probably on the 7th of July 1586, at Marfield, in the
parish of Tilton, County of Leicester, England. He graduated
B.A. in 1608 and 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, delivering 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, 4 m. from Chelmsford. In 1630 he was cited
to appear before the Court of High Commission, but he forfeited
his bond and fled to Holland, whence in 1633 he emigrated
to the Colony of Massachusetts Bay in America, and became
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 seems to have been a leader in the formation
of that sentiment of discontent with the Massachusetts government
which resulted in the founding of Connecticut. He 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, Connecticut. 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,
Hooker had no idea of the separation of church and state—“the
privilege of election, which belongs to the people,” he said,
must be exercised “according to the blessed will and law of God.”
He also defended the right of magistrates to convene synods,
and in the Fundamental Orders of Connecticut (1639), which
he probably framed, the union of church and state is presupposed.
Hooker was pastor of the Hartford church until his death on
the 7th of July 1647. He was active in the negotiations which
preceded the formation of the New England Confederation
in 1643. In the same year he attended the meeting of Puritan
ministers at Boston, whose object was to defend Congregationalism,
and he wrote a Survey of the Summe of Church
Discipline (1648) in justification of the New England church
system. His other works deal chiefly with the experimental
phases of religion, especially the experience precedent to conversion.
In The Soule’s Humiliation (1637), he assigns as a test
of conversion a willingness of the convert to be damned if
that be God’s will, thus anticipating the doctrine of Samuel
Hopkins in the following century.
See George L. Walker’s Thomas Hooker (New York, 1891); the appendix of which contains a bibliography of Hooker’s published works.
HOOKER, SIR WILLIAM JACKSON (1785–1865), English
botanist, was born at Norwich on the 6th of July 1785. His
father, Joseph Hooker of Exeter, a member of the same family
as the celebrated Richard Hooker, devoted much of his time
to the study of German literature and the cultivation of curious
plants. The son was educated at the high school of Norwich,
on leaving which his independent means enabled him to travel
and to take up as a recreation the study of natural history,
especially ornithology and entomology. He subsequently confined
his attention to botany, on the recommendation of
Sir James E. Smith, whom he had consulted respecting a rare
moss. His first botanical expedition was made in Iceland, in
the summer of 1809, at the suggestion of Sir Joseph Banks;
but the natural history specimens which he collected, with
his notes and drawings, were lost on the homeward voyage
through the burning of the ship, and the young botanist himself
had a narrow escape with his life. A good memory, however,
aided him to publish an account of the island, and of its inhabitants
and flora (Tour in Iceland, 1809), privately circulated
in 1811, and reprinted in 1813. In 1810–1811 he made extensive
preparations, and sacrifices which proved financially serious,
with a view to accompany Sir R. Brownrigg to Ceylon, but the
disturbed state of the island led to the abandonment of the
projected expedition. In 1814 he spent nine months in botanizing
excursions in France, Switzerland and northern Italy, and in
the following year he married the eldest daughter of Mr Dawson
Turner, banker, of Yarmouth. Settling at Halesworth, Suffolk,
he devoted himself to the formation of his herbarium, which
became of world-wide renown among botanists. In 1816
appeared the British Jungermanniae, his first scientific work,
which was succeeded by a new edition of William Curtis’s
Flora Londinensis, for which he wrote the descriptions (1817–1828);
by a description of the Plantae cryptogamicae of A. von
Humboldt and A. Bonpland; by the Muscologia Britannica,
a very complete account of the mosses of Great Britain and
Ireland, prepared in conjunction with Dr T. Taylor (1818);
and by his Musci exotici (2 vols., 1818–1820), devoted to new
foreign mosses and other cryptogamic plants. In 1820 he
accepted the regius professorship of botany in Glasgow University
where he soon became popular as a lecturer, his style being both
clear and ready. The following year he brought out the Flora
Scotica, in which the natural method of arrangement of British
plants was given with the artificial. Subsequently he prepared
or edited many works, the more important being the
following:—
Botanical Illustrations (1822); Exotic Flora, indicating such of the specimens as are deserving cultivation (3 vols., 1822–1827); Account of Sabine’s Arctic Plants (1824); Catalogue of Plants in the Glasgow Botanic Garden (1825); the Botany of Parry’s Third Voyage (1826); The Botanical Magazine (38 vols., 1827–1865); Icones Filicum, in concert with Dr R. K. Greville (2 vols., 1829–1831); British Flora, of which several editions appeared, undertaken with Dr G. A. W. Arnott, &c. (1830); British Flora Cryptogamia (1833); Characters of Genera from the British Flora (1830); Flora Boreali-Americana (2 vols., 1840), being the botany of British North America collected in Sir J. Franklin’s voyage; The Journal of Botany (4 vols., 1830–1842); Companion to the Botanical Magazine (2 vols., 1835–1836); Icones plantarum (10 vols., 1837–1854); the Botany of Beechey’s Voyage to the Pacific and Behring’s Straits (with Dr Arnott, 1841); the Genera Filicum (1842), from the original coloured drawings of F. Bauer, with additions and descriptive letterpress; The London Journal of Botany (7 vols., 1842–1848); Notes on the Botany of the Antarctic Voyage of the Erebus and Terror (1843); Species filicum (5 vols., 1846–1864), the standard work on this subject; A Century of Orchideae (1846); Journal of Botany and Kew Garden Miscellany (9 vols., 1849–1857); Niger Flora (1849); Victoria Regia (1851); Museums of Economic Botany at Kew (1855); Filices exoticae (1857–1859); The British Ferns (1861–1862); A Century of Ferns (1854); A Second Century of Ferns (1860–1861).
It was mainly by Hooker’s exertions that botanists were appointed to the government expeditions. While his works were in progress his herbarium received large and valuable additions from all parts of the globe, and his position as a botanist was thus vastly improved. He was made a knight of Hanover in 1836 and in 1841 he was appointed director of the Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew, on the resignation of W. T. Aiton. Under his direction the gardens expanded from 11 to 75 acres, with an arboretum of 270 acres, many new glass-houses were erected, and a museum of economic botany was established. He was engaged on the Synopsis filicum with J. G. Baker
