when he was attacked by a throat disease then epidemic at Kew, where he died on the 12th of August 1865.
HOOLE, JOHN (1727–1803), English translator and dramatist,
son of a watchmaker and machinist, Samuel Hoole, was born at
Moorfields, London, in December 1727. He was educated at
a private school at Hoddesdon, Hertfordshire, kept by James
Bennet, who edited Ascham’s English works. At the age of
seventeen he became a clerk in the accountants’ department
of the East India House, and before 1767 became one of the
auditors of Indian accounts. His leisure hours he devoted to
the study of Latin and especially Italian, and began writing
translations of the chief works of the Italian poets. He published
translations of the Jerusalem Delivered of Tasso in 1763,
the Orlando Furioso of Ariosto in 1773–1783, the Dramas of
Metastasio in 1767, and Rinaldo, an early work of Tasso, in
1792. Among his plays are: Cyrus (1768), Timanthes (1770)
and Cleonice, Princess of Bithynia (1775), none of which achieved
success. The verses of Hoole were praised by Johnson, with
whom he was on terms of intimacy, but, though correct, smooth
and flowing, they cannot be commended for any other merit.
His translation of the Orlando Furioso was superseded by the
version (1823–1831) of W. S. Rose. Hoole was also the friend
of the Quaker poet John Scott of Amwell (1730–1783), whose
life he wrote; it was prefixed to Scott’s Critical Essays (1785).
In 1773 he was promoted to be chief auditor of Indian accounts,
an office which he resigned in 1785. In 1786 he retired to the
parsonage of Abinger, Surrey; and afterwards lived at Tenterden,
Kent, dying at Dorking on the 2nd of April 1803.
See Anecdotes of the Life of the late Mr John Hoole, by his surviving brother, Samuel Hoole (London, 1803). Some of his plays are reprinted in J. Bell’s British Theatre (1797).
HOOLIGAN, the generally accepted modern term for a young
street ruffian or rowdy. It seems to have been first applied to
the young street ruffians of the South-East of London about
1890, but though popular in the district, did not attract general
attention till later, when authentic information of its origin
was lost, but it appears that the most probable source was a
comic song which was popular in the lower-class music-hall
in the late ’eighties or early ’nineties, which described the doings
of a rowdy family named Hooligan (i.e. Irish Houlihan). A
comic character with the same name also appears to have been
the central figure in a series of adventures running through
an obscure English comic paper of about the same date, and
also in a similar New York paper, where his confrère in the
adventures is a German named Schneider (see Notes and Queries,
9th series, vol. ii. pp. 227 and 316, 1898, and 10th series, vol. vii. p.
115, 1901). In other countries the “hooligan” finds his counterpart.
The Parisian Apache, so self-styled after the North
American Indian tribe, is a much more dangerous character;
mere rowdyism, the characteristic of the English “hooligan,”
is replaced by murder, robbery and outrage. An equally
dangerous class of young street ruffian is the “hoodlum” of
the United States of America; this term arose in San Francisco
in 1870, and thence spread. Many fanciful origins of the name
have been given, for some of which see Manchester (N.H.)
Notes and Queries, September 1883 (cited in the New English
Dictionary). The “plug-ugly” of Baltimore is another name
for the same class. More familiar is the Australian “larrikin,”
which apparently came into use about 1870 in Melbourne.
The story that the word represents an Irish policeman’s pronunciation
of “larking” is a mere invention. It is probably
only an adaptation of the Irish “Larry,” short for Lawrence.
Others suggest that it is a corruption of the slang Leary Kinchen,
i.e. knowing, wide-awake child.
HOOPER, JOHN (d. 1555), bishop of Gloucester and Worcester
and martyr, was born in Somerset about the end of the 15th
century and graduated B.A. at Oxford in 1519. He is said to
have then entered the Cistercian monastery at Gloucester;
but in 1538 a John Hooper appears among the names of the
Black friars at Gloucester and also among the White friars at
Bristol who surrendered their houses to the king. A John Hooper
was likewise canon of Wormesley priory in Herefordshire;
but identification of any of these with the future bishop is doubtful.
The Greyfriars’ Chronicle says that Hooper was “sometime
a white monk”; and in the sentence pronounced against him
by Gardiner he is described as “olim monachus de Cliva Ordinis
Cisterciensis,” i.e. of the Cistercian house at Cleeve in Somerset.
On the other hand, at his deprivation he was not accused, like
the other married bishops who had been monks or friars, of
infidelity to the vow of chastity; and his own letters to Bullinger
are curiously reticent on this part of his history. He there
speaks of himself as being the only son and heir of his father
and as fearing to be deprived of his inheritance if he adopted
the reformed religion. Before 1546 he had secured employment
in the household of Sir Thomas Arundell, a man of influential
connexions. Hooper speaks of himself at this period as being
“a courtier and living too much of a court life in the palace
of our king.” But he chanced upon some of Zwingli’s works
and Bullinger’s commentaries on St Paul’s epistles; and after
some molestation in England and some correspondence with
Bullinger on the lawfulness of complying against his conscience
with the established religion, he determined to secure what
property he could and take refuge on the continent. He had
an adventurous journey, being twice imprisoned, driven about
for three months on the sea, and reaching Strassburg in the
midst of the Schmalkaldic war. There he married Anne de
Tserclaes, and later on he proceeded by way of Basle to Zürich,
where his Zwinglian convictions were confirmed by constant
intercourse with Zwingli’s successor, Bullinger.
It was not until May 1549, after he had published various works at Zürich, that Hooper again arrived in England. He at once became the principal champion of Swiss Protestantism against the Lutherans as well as the Catholics, and was appointed chaplain to Protector Somerset. Somerset’s fall in the following October endangered Hooper’s position, and for a time he was in hourly dread of imprisonment and martyrdom, more especially as he had taken a prominent part against Gardiner and Bonner, whose restoration to their sees was now anticipated. Warwick, afterwards duke of Northumberland, however, overcame the reactionaries in the Council, and early in 1550 the Reformation resumed its course. Hooper became Warwick’s chaplain, and after a course of Lent lectures before the king he was offered the bishopric of Gloucester. This led to a prolonged controversy; Hooper had already denounced the “Aaronic vestments” and the oath by the saints prescribed in the new Ordinal; and he refused to be consecrated according to its rites. Cranmer, Ridley, Bucer and others urged him to submit in vain; confinement to his house by order of the Council proved equally ineffectual; and it was not until he had spent some weeks in the Fleet prison that the “father of nonconformity” consented to conform, and Hooper submitted to consecration with the legal ceremonies (March 8, 1551).
Once seated in his bishopric Hooper set about his episcopal duties with exemplary vigour. His visitation of his diocese (printed in English Hist. Rev. Jan. 1904, pp. 98-121) revealed a condition of almost incredible ignorance among his clergy. Fewer than half could say the Ten Commandments; some could not even repeat the Lord’s Prayer in English. Hooper did his best in the time at his disposal; but in less than a year the bishopric of Gloucester was reduced to an archdeaconry and added to Worcester, of which Hooper was made bishop in succession to Nicholas Heath (q.v.). He was opposed to Northumberland’s plot for the exclusion of Mary from the throne; but this did not save him from speedy imprisonment. He was sent to the Fleet on the 1st of September 1553 on a doubtful charge of debt to the queen; but the real cause was his stanchness to a religion which was still by law established. Edward VI.’s legislation was, however, repealed in the following month, and in March 1554 Hooper was deprived of his bishopric as a married man. There was still no statute by which he could be condemned to the stake, but Hooper was kept in prison; and the revival of the heresy acts in December 1554 was swiftly followed by execution. On the 29th of January 1555, Hooper, Rogers, Rowland Taylor and others were condemned by Gardiner and
