"MAKERS OF  AMERICA"

 

 

 

 

THOMAS  HOOKER

 

        Preacher, Founder, Democrat

 

 

 

                                                     BY

 

GEORGE LEON WALKER

 

 

 

 

 

 

                       NEW YORK

DOD MEAD, AND COMPANY

                                PUBLISHERS

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

         Copyright, 1891,

Bv Donn, MEAD, AND Co.

       All rights reserved.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

             University Press

JOHN WILSON  AND SON,  CAMBRIDGE.

 

 

 

 

 

                      PREFACE.

 

 

 

ONE striking difference in the advantages possessed
by a biographer of the more distinguished personages
of the Massachusetts and of the Connecticut colonies
is the comparative destitution, in the  latter case,  of
the aids afforded by contemporaneous diaries, his­
tories,  and  portraits.  The lack of such writings
in the Connecticut annals is a little surprising; the
want of portraits may be considerably accounted for
by the remoter and poorer conditions of the inland
settlement.

No portrait or other contemporaneous representa­

tion of Mr. Hooker remains. The picture which
prefaces this volume is taken from Niehaus's statue,
ordered by the Commonwealth of Connecticut for the
State Capitol; in the making of which the artist com­
pared the likenesses of various and widely separated
members of Mr. Hooker's lineal posterity, among
whom exists, however, a strong family resemblance.
Attired thus in the characteristic costume of the time,
the figure affords a not improbably fair representation
of the great Founder of the Colony.

 

 

vi                    PREFACE.

The present writer had occasion, in 1884, in nar­
rating the two hundred and fifty years' history of the
 Hartford Church, of which Mr. Hooker was the first
pastor, to publish, in a volume of local imprint and
limited circulation, together with the biographies of
subsequent pastors, the story of Mr. Hooker also.
Subsequent repeated   visits   to  the scenes of Mr.
Hooker's English ministrations, as well as investiga­
tions at home, have added to the facts there narrated.
Still, in addressing on the same theme the wider con­
stituency of the MAKERS OF AMERICA series, the writer
could not, without awkwardness and even affectation,
avoid the frequent use of language in which he had
already narrated the same biographical and historical
incidents. He has therefore drawn without hesitation
on his own previous statements, so far as the altered
proportions of a separate biography and added facts
and illustrations suited him to do.

The valuable bibliography of Mr. Hooker's pub­
lished writings (found in Appendix IL) was compiled
by J. Hammond Trumbull, LL.D., to whom indebted­

ness is due, also, for the discovery and rescue from
oblivion of the most important manuscript docu­
ments illustrative of Mr. Hooker's chief title to
remembrance.

 

HARTFORD, CONN.,

September 1, 1891.

 

 

 

                        CONTENTS.

 

 

CHAPTER                                                                          PAGE

I.    BIRTH AND BOYHOOD ASSOCIATIONS                  1-17

II.    EDUCATION AND  RESIDENCE  AT  CAM-

BRIDGE                                                                         18-31

III.    HOOKER'S  ENGLISH  MINISTRY                          32-51

IV.  LIFE  IN HOLLAND  AND DEPARTURE  FOR AMERICA  ….                                                                              52-70

V.  IN    MASSACHUSETTS  AND  REMOVAL TO

CONNECTICUT                                                                 71- 93

VI.     HOOKER  IN  CONNECTICUT                                     94-154

Section  I.                                                     94-117

                        "    II.                                                 118-133

      "   III.                                                 134-154

VII.        THOMAS   HOOKER'S    WRITINGS                            155-177

 

                                         APPENDIX.

I.       HOOKER'S WILL  AND  INVENTORY                    178-183

II.       HOOKER'S PUBLISHED  WORKS                            184-195

INDEX                                                . . . .                            197-203

 

 

                      LIFE OF THOMAS  HOOKER.

 

 

 

                                 CHAPTER  I.

 

           BIRTH AND   BOYHOOD   ASSOCIATIONS.

 

        Come,  Hooker, come forth of thy native soile.

 

                            JOHNSON: Wonder-Working Providence, 1654.

 

THOMAS HOOKER was born at Marfield in Leicester
County, England,  probably on  July  7,  1586. This
little hamlet of Marfield --  variously spelled in Leices­
ter records as Mardifeud, Marclefelde, Markfelde,
Markfild, Marefield, as well as Marfield -- is one of
four tithings which make up the parish of Tilton, or
Tilton super montem, as the old  chronicles often  have
it; the other three being Tilton, Halstead, and What­
borough. These four tithings or towns have for their
common place of worship the stately  gray-stone
church of St. Peter, dating from  the  days  of  King
John, built on the hill-top corner  of  the Tilton  pre­
cinct of the parish,  and  commanding  one  of  the
widest and most beautiful landscape-views of Midland
England. Around  the  church lies the  churchyard,
with four gates giving access to  the four precincts  of
the ground allotted as a burial-place to the inhabitants

                                       1

2             LIFE   OF  THOMAS   HOOKER.

 

of the four tithings which constitute the parish. The
church  itself is an interesting specimen of Early Eng­
lish architecture,  with  embattled  tower,  surmounted
by an old,  but  later-added spire,  pierced  by  eight
open windows, -- a  landmark  visible from  far. The
word " steeple-chase " is said to  be  of  Leicester
County origin, and to have  been  derived  from  the
many spires surmounting the hill-tops of this county,
toward some one of which, in default of game, the dis­
appointed hunters  directed  their  chase;  the first  to
gain  which  was  accounted  victor  as  if  he  had been
"in at the death" of fox or deer.

It is with a feeling of surprise that one sees so
stately and beautiful an edifice in so comparatively
quiet   and   solitary   a spot.   Four   ancient   bells   hang
in the   tower, -   three   of   them   bearing the inscrip­
tion I. H. S. Nazarenvs. Rex. Ivdeorum. Fili. Dei.
Misere. Mei.; and one, of somewhat later date, the
motto, Praise the Lord. These bells   doubtless in
former times summoned a far larger congregation to
worship in the house below them than they can have
gathered   for   several   centuries   past.    The   Wars   of
the Roses did much, in the two hundred years before
the   period   at which   our story   begins,   to   depopu­
late the whole region; but the wonder still remains
here, as well as in many other parts of   England, how
such churches as the traveller finds in the quietest and
most secluded portions of the land could   have been
built amid so sparse a population as at any time lived
on the soil about them.

But in young Hooker's  day matters in  this respect

BIRTH  AND  BOYHOOD.   3

of numbers attendant on the services of the parish­
church could not have been much different from their
condition  at present. Twenty-two  years  before he
was born a parliamentary return gives the number of
houses in Tilton as twenty-eight, in Halstead as six­
teen, in Whatborough one, and in " Markfield " six.
To-day Marfield has five; though as late as 1882 the
present writer saw some carved beams which had be­
longed to another. These however, on a later exami­
nation, in 1886, were found to have been destroyed.

The visitor to the  region, therefore, may be confi­
dent that he sees all things substantially as they were

when the boyish eyes of young Thomas Hooker looked
upon  them. The  picturesque old church of  mottled
gray on Tilton  hill-top, compassed  round  by the dead
of the different precincts of the p1rish; the  wide
prospect of alternating woodland and open fields and
spire-surmounted hills  toward  every compass-point;
the old Rose and  Crown Inn, which Cromwell  made
his  head-quarters when  his army lay in  this vicinity;
the thatch-covered houses which hang  irregularly
around the summit occupied by the  church  and  its
Acre of God; and the little Marfield hamlet  em­
bowered in  trees  down  in  the  valley,  about a mile
and a half away, and approached through rustic gates
and stiles which the visitor opens or climbs as he de­
scends through the sweet green fields, -- all present a
spectacle which cannot  be  materially  different  from
the aspect it wore two and three hundred years ago.

Of the family ancestors of Thomas  Hooker  there is
at present little known. His father, Thomas, appears

4             LIFE OF THOMAS  HOOKER.

to have come to Marfield from Blaston in the same
county, in some capacity as overseer  of  the  large
landed properties of the Digby family; and as his
grandfather  bore  the Christian  name of"   Kenellyme,"
it seems to be indicated that the connection with the
Digby family, with whom Kenelm was a frequently re­
current name, must have been of long standing. The
records of Tilton parish previous to 1610 having dis­
appeared, it is impossible to state the date of young
Thomas's birth or baptism. His mother, " Mrs.
Hooker wife to Mr. Hooker of Marefield was buryed,"
April, 1631; his father,  "Thomas  Hooker of  Mare­
field was  hurried"  July  24,  1635;  and  his  brother
"Mr.  John  Hooker  of  Marfeild  were  burryed,"  Jan.
25, 1654. These are all  the references to the family
which  appear  on  the  extant  records  of  the parish.
But the title  "Mr.,"  used  in  mention  both  of  the
father and brother of our Thomas, indicates that the
family was regarded as of honourable standing.   The
will  of  the brother  John,  above   mentioned,  dated
Jan. I,  1654-5,  a  few days before he died,  and
proved  at  London  on November  26  of  the  same
year, as the will of "John Hooker of Marfield, Co.
Leicester, Gentleman," gives the same impression of
recognized  social  position.     This will  bequeaths  to

"Samuel  Hooker, student in New England, £ 100;"

and to "John Hooker,  student  at Oxford,  £200."
These were the two sons of our Thomas, who at the
date of this will had been some seven years dead in
Hartford. The first named, Samuel, was then about
graduating at Harvard College, and soon -- in 1661

BIRTH  AND  BOYHOOD.     5

--  to be minister at Farmington; and the other, John,
was our Thomas's oldest son, of whom his dying father
said in his will, July 7, 1647, "However I do not for­
bid my sonne John from seeking and taking a wife in
 England, yet I doe forbid him from marrying and tarry­
 ing  there." The young man did however marry and
tarry there, and became a minister of the Episcopal
church, rector of Lechamposted in Bucks, dying  in
1684.  There were also in the Marfield family of our
Thomas's father at least four daughters, one of whom
married a "revolutionist by the name of Pymm;"
another, Frances, married a Tarlton of London;  an­
other, Dorothy, married John Chester of Blaby, Lei­
cester County; and another married Mr. John Alcock,
afterward deacon of the church in Roxbury, Massa­
chusetts. Who the mother was  who presided  over
the crowded household  in the  little  Marfield  home  is
at  present  unknown. Little can be recorded of her
 save that she lived long  enough to  see  one  of  her
boys become a preacher sufficiently famous to attract
crowds whenever he  spoke at  the great  parish-church
of Leicester twelve  miles  away, to  know  of his  exile
 to Holland, and to mourn the death ¹ of one of her
daughters in that far American land to which that son
was still some years later to flee.

The family life at Marfield may have been comfort-

able and happy, but it must have been narrow and
limited. Its chief points of interest, outside the con­
cerns of home and the labours by which home wants
were provided for, must have been in the church.

1 Young's Massachusetts, p. 314.

6             LIFE OF  THOMAS  HOOKER.

 

Even the material edifice which lifted itself as the
most prominent object before the eye, contained many
things suited to touch duller imaginations than young
Thomas certainly had, or than were possessed probably
by the whole group of  brothers  and  sisters  to whom
the old  building on  the  hill must  have  been at  once
the home of their fancy and their faith.

There was the quaint oct1gonal font at which had
been baptized the generations of Tilton's  parishioners

from near the days of the Conquest. There were the
monumental effigies of  Jehan de Digbie and his wife;
he a crusader -- lying cross-legged with  hand  on  his

half-drawn sword, at his feet a lion - who died in
1269, and whose stone likeness was laid  here  not
long after, with an inscription in old Norman French
asking prayers; she, full-robed, large-moulded, lying
by his side, a lap-dog at her feet. There, too, was
another of the same _family of a later generation,
great-grandfather of a boy six years older  than
Thomas Hooker was, - which boy  young  Thomas
might sometimes have seen at Tilton, where so much
of the family  property  lay, -  great-grandfather, that
is to say, of Sir Everard  Digby of the Gunpowder

Plot,  executed  in  St.  Paul's  churchyard  in  1606.

 This old ancestor -of the youth who was to attain  so

  sinister an eminence lay there in coat-of-mail, a fleur­
  de-lis on his shield ; having just before his death
  executed his will: "I bequeathe my sowle to God all
  myghty, our blessed lady Seynt Mary and  all  the
  Seynts of heven, my baddie to  be  buryed in the
  parishe church of Seynt Peter at Tilton, before the

BIRTH  AND  BOYHOOD.      7

Ymage of the blessect Trinitie att our Lady authur.''
Other monuments and escutcheons were  there beside,
to waken inquiry and to freshen fireside-legend and
romantic tale.

Who the vicar of the parish was in Hooker's boy­
hood is probably only learned from a broken  brass
tablet in the church at Knossington, recording the
burial-place of "Thomas Bayle  ...      sometime rector
of Tilton;" who, because we know who came before
and after him, may with considerable likelihood be
believed to have been the minister by whom  Hooker
was baptized. Vicar Bayle was succeeded by Chris­
topher  Denne.   Little  is known  of  him,  except  that
he was the Tilton rector in 16 ro, and was probably a
young man, as he had  children  christened  between
then and 1613, as shown by the parish records.

But concerning another minister of the parish in
Hooker's early manhood, and for several years before
his brother John's burial in the Marfield grave-plot,
there is quite definite information. It is a sort of
information, moreover, which sheds a good deal of
light, not only on the religious  condition of  that
parish, but on that of the important county  of
Leicester and of the country generally.

In  the Minute-books  of  the  Parliamentary  Com­

mittee of Sequestration in the Bodleian Library, it is
recorded, under elate of 1645-6, that" Thomas Silver­
wood, minister to the Assembly, is referred to the
church at Tilton." An entry of a later date, 1647,
explains matters: "Whereas  the  Vicarage of  the
parish  of Tilton, in the County of  Leicester,  is,  and

8             LIFE OF  THOMAS  HOOKER.

standeth, sequestrated by the  Committee  of  Parlia­
ment from Dr. Manwaring for his delinquency, it is
ordered that the said Vicarage shall stand and be
sequestrated to the use henceforth of Thomas Silver­
wood,  a  godly  and  orthodox   divine,  and  appointed
to officiate said cure by the said Committee of
Parliament." The nature of Dr. Manwaring's " delin­
quency" appears from the report of the Parliamentary
Survey of the Churches in Leicester County, on which
the action of the Parliament in "sequestrating" one
minister  "from"  and  another  "to"   the  livings  of
the various Leicester parishes is based. That report
divides the Leicester County ministers  into "three
sorts," - first, "Preachers, " of whom there were one
hundred and   fifty-three;   second,  "No   Preachers,"
by which is meant "no preaching and dumb
ministers," as those who could or  would only
conduct service by the use  of  a  liturgy were  called,
and of these there were seventy-six; third,  "scan­
dalous of both  the  former  sorts,  and  they  arc  32."
The report   further   divides   the   first-mentioned
"sort" of ministers  in  Leicester,  namely, "Preach­
ers,"   into   four   classes, --   "sufficient,   102; weak
and unprofitable, 25; careless and negligent, 20;
corrupt and unsound, 6."

The particular incumbent of the Tilton vicarage is
set down as "no preacher and a pluralitan," from
which the inference is that the Tilton vicar was an
anti-Puritan or perhaps high prelatical man, who
insisted on confining himself to the liturgy of the
church and declined to preach, and that he held

BIRTH  AND BOYHOOD.   9

some other  living  beside that  of Tilton.  That  he
was  "Dr."  Manwaring -- as  well  as  Prebendary  of

Weeford, as is ascertainable from another source than
the parliamentary statement  about him -- suggests
that his "no preaching "  depended  rather  upon  his
will than his ability ; making him to  differ in this
respect from a great many of the clergy of the day,
whose pulpit incapacities were  those  of  ignorance
more than of choice.

What set young Hooker on a course of education
cannot in particular be discovered. There can be no
considerable doubt, however, that the place of his
preparatory  training for  the University was the school
at Market-Bosworth,  established by Sir Wolstan Dixie,
a wealthy Londoner having landed property at that
place,  and which  was founded in 1586, the same year
in which it is believed Hooker was born. Market­
Bosworth lies about twenty-five miles west from
Marfield, and close to the celebrated Bosworth-field,
where Henry, Earl of Richmond, defeated and killed
Richard III.

The evidence on which this statement of the  prob­
able place of Hooker's  early  education  rests, is  the
fact that he afterward occupied at Emmanuel College
one of the two Wolstan Dixie fellowships, the conditions
of which demand that the incumbent be  either  a
relative of the founder or a graduate of Market-Bos­
worth School.¹ And  this  connection  of  the school
with Emmanuel College may be taken also as an in­
dication of the quality of the religious influences

1 Cambridge Calendar;  Ackermann's Cambridge, ii. 234.

10           LIFE  OF  THOMAS  HOOKER.

 

under which learners were there brought. For Em­
manuel was distinctly a Puritan institution, and Sir

Wolstan's establishment of the two fellowship foun­
dations there, which still bear his name, must at least
signify that the preparatory school he endowed would
 be in sympathy with the Puritan side in then existing
ecclesiastical controversies. Probably the same in­
ference may be drawn· concerning the  tendency of
the parochial instruction imparted to the  pupils in
their residence at Market-Bosworth; for Rev. Wil­
liam Pelsant, who was rector there for more than fifty
years,  dying in 1634, was one of the first of the  board
of the school governors appointed by its founder.

It was in all likelihood while Hooker was at this
school, and about a year before his going to the
University, that an anxiously anticipated event oc­
curred, which was looked for by all parties in the relig­
ious commonwealth as destined  to  affect  profoundly
the   course   of   ecclesiastical   affairs, -- the death of

Elizabeth, and the accession of the Scottish Presby­
terian James  to  the  English monarchy. The  long
reign  of  Elizabeth  had  been a protracted  endeavour

to maintain Conformity to the laws and ritual of the
Church against Puritanism and Separatism; as the
doctrines of those who desired to purify the polity and
the usages of the Church, or those who desired to sep­
arate entirely from any national religious establishment
whatever,  were respectively called. The   numbers
who preferred actual divorcement from  the State
Church were, indeed, few compared with  those who
only wanted a reform of  the administration and  prac-

BIRTH  AND BOYHOOD.      11

 

tice within it. Some distinctly Separatist movements
there had been in  England  as  early  as  1566,  and
more important on s arose near the close of the great
queen's reign;  but the great  body of devout  objectors
to the existing system of affairs were Puritans, not
Separatists. And  as  the  Puritans  generally  agreed
with the Genevan Reformers in matters of faith, a
Puritan came to stand for a man of strict morals, a
Calvinist in doctrine, and  a  non-conformist  to  the
rules and discipline of the Church, though not a re­
nouncer of its fellowship or a denier of its churchly
character.

Into the struggle which  turmoiled  nearly the whole
of her reign by the conflict of the dissentient religious
parties in the realm, the queen put the entire strength
of her character and will. She established a High
Commission Court, of which even the Romanist his­
torian Lingard, comparing it with the Inquisition,
declares,1 " The chief difference consisted in their
names."    The Commission varied at different periods
of  its existence in  its  personnel  and  its  powers; but
at its ripest development, as ordered under the Great
Seal in December, 1583, was composed of some
forty-four bishops, privy-councillors, lawyers, and offi­
cers of State, any three of whom, under the general
presidency of a bishop, constituted  a  court  endued
with full power to inquire into and punish by fine,
deprivation, or imprisonment all opinions or practices
different from those of the Established Church. This
High Commission vindicated its character, as de-

1    History of England, vol. v. chap. vi,

12           LIFE  OF  THOMAS  HOOKER.

 

scribed by Hume, as a "real Inquisition,  attended
with all the iniquities as well as cruelties inseparable
from that tribunal." 1 Put into effective operation by
Archbishop Whitgift, in the single first year of his
administration, 1584, two hundred and thirty-three
ministers were suspended in six counties of Canter­
bury alone.2

Under the vigorous procedures of this body no less
than a fourth part of the  clergy  of  England  were, at
one time and another,  under  suspension; and  this
not on account of any moral  misbehaviour  or  neglect
 of pastoral duty, but on account of conscientious con­
victions which prevented their wearing certain pre­
scribed ecclesiastical vestments, their  baptizing  with
 the sign of the cross, their use of the ring in marriage,
their assent to the apostolical succession of the epis­
copate, and their obedience to churchly regulations
which were, in their opinion, unjustified by Scripture.
To people of our comfortable time some of these
particulars of Puritan objection to the prescribed
 usages of the Church Establishment may doubtless
seem insignificant; but to the actors on the then ex­
isting  stage  they  were  immensely  important. The
 surplice was the badge of that hierarchical separation
of ministry and people which long ages of ecclesi­
astical oppression had made offensive, and which the
Puritans believed was inconsistent with  the  doctrine
 of  the  brotherhood  of  all  believers in Christ.    The
 sign of the cross in baptism was a reminder of a whole
class of superstitious ceremonies which had come

l   Eliz., chap. xli.            2  Neal, i. 157.

BIRTH  AND  BOYHOOD.  13

down from a  corrupted past, in which  the symbol of
the crucifix was accorded a magical efficacy in exor­
cising evil spirits, in warding off physical dangers, as
well as in securing spiritual benefits. The ring in
marriage was the token of that ecclesiastical doctrine
which made marriage exclusively a religious  sacra­
under  the  care  and  authority of  the  Church.
The bowing at the name of Jesus was a seeming im­
peachment of the reverence due equally to the Father
and the Spirit. The observance of saints' days brought
recollections of ecclesiastical impositions which bur­
dened life with their restrictions and bound time in
fetters and obligations hard to bear. The rule of bish­
ops associated with temporal dignities and powers
seemed to the Puritan not only an assumption of un­
warranted authority by one soul over another soul, but
an  intrusion  of  churchly functions  into a department
of things not legitimately its own. These objections
were not to the participators in the then ·waging con­
flict matters of whimsey or sentiment. Every one of
them stood for and represented a principle. As a na­
tional flag may be  the symbol of  principles  central  to
a people's life, and of memories  in  which  are gath­
ered up generations of history, so to the Puritan of
Elizabeth's day the ring, the cross, the surplice, were
symbols of the whole of that great conflict which had
been waging in England and Europe for centuries
between freedom and authority, between individual
conscience and established privilege.
     It is impossible to conceive of any intelligent house­
hold in England, still less of any company of students

14           LIFE OF  THOMAS  HOOKER.

 

even  if  not  yet  quite  attained  to university standing,
as unconcerned  in  the bearing upon this great conflict
of such an event as took place in 1603, when  the
uncouth and polemic James succeeded to the throne
vacated by the strong-willed virgin queen.

All those who had in any degree  sympathized with
the Puritan side in the struggle, looked now for some
measure of relief from the compellant hand of Con­
formity. The expectation was certainly not irrational.
James had been brought up a Presbyterian. He had
written  Calvinistic  commentaries  on  the  Scriptures.
He had been the ostentatious champion of the anti­
prelatical views of the continental  reformed churches.
He was a man of scholarship, and many hoped a man

of Puritan convictions.

But whatever hopes of  this kind  were  awakened
were  destined  to  early  disappointment. James  was
met on  his  journey  up to London  from  Edinburgh  by
a deputation of Puritan ministers, bearing  what  is
known as the Millenary Petition from the popularly
supposed thousand of its signatures. Some  seven
hundred and fifty of  the clergy of  England  united in
this document entitled "The humble Petition of the
Ministers of the Church of England desiring Refor­
mation of certain Ceremonies and Abuses of that
Church." 1 The first specified matter needing refor­
mation mentioned in the petition related to church
services; and as it refers to what was the main issue
between the  Conformist  and  Puritan  parties,  it  may
be well to quote that portion of it here:2 --

1    Neal, i. 228.          2 Strype's Whitgift, ii. 479, 480.

BIRTH AND BOYHOOD.

 

"Namely, first, In the 'Church service,' the cross in
Baptism, interrogatories ministered to infants; confirma­
tions, as superfluous, to be  taken away: Baptism  not  to
be ministered by women, and so explained: the cap and
surplice not to be urged: that  examination  might  go
before the Communion:  that it  might  be ministered with
a sermon: that divers terms, viz. of  Priests, and  absolu­
tion and some other used, with the ring in marriage and
other such like in the book, might be corrected: the
longsomeness of suits abridged: Church songs and music
moderated to better  edification:  that  the  Lord's  day
might not be profaned: the rest upon holydays not so
strictly urged: that there might be an uniformity of doc­
trine prescribed: no popish opinions to  be  any  more
taught or defended: no Ministers charged to teach their
people to bow at the name of Jesus: that the Canonical
Scriptures be only read in the Church."

In response to this petition the king appointed a
meeting at Hampton Court ostensibly to confer with
representatives of  the petitioners  about  the proposed
reforms. The  king nominated the disputants on  
both sides: those for the Establishment being nine
bishops, seven deans, one archdeacon and  two  doc­
tors in divinity; while  the  Puritans  were  represented
by only four of their ministers, Drs. Reynolds and
 Sparke of  Oxford, and Mr. Knewstubs and Mr.
Chaderton of  Cambridge. The meetings continued
 for three days  about  the  middle  of  January,  1604, --
the Puritans being admitted to audience only on the
second and third, -- and were, so far as any substantial
result in approximating the two parties  in  issue,  or
in providing relief for conscientious dissent from the
established usages of the Elizabethan settlement was

16           LIFE   OF   THOMAS   HOOKER.

 

concerned, an entire failure. A few minor matters of
offence to the petitioners were indeed promised re­
dress, - baptism by women and the reading of such
portions of the Apocrypha as have "some repugnancy
to the canonical  Scripture " among  them;1   but as to
the main body of the usages objected to, the king was
found their defender.   He put himself into the hands
of the ecclesiastics, who delightedly declared, by the
mouth of Whitgift, their  archbishop,  "undoubtedly
his Majesty spoke by the especial assistance of God's
Spirit." ² He badgered the Puritan representatives

with taunting questions and brow-beating lecturings;
commanded them to "awaie with their  snyvelings," 8
and wound up  the   interview  with   the  declaration:
 "If this be all your party  have  to say,  I  will  make
them conform, or  I  will  harry them  out  of  the land,
or else worse." 4

The king and the  bishops  were  mightily  pleased
with  their  part  in the  conference.   Bancroft,  falling
on his  knees,  declared:  "I  protest my heart  melteth
for joy, that Almighty God, of his singular mercy, has
given us such a king as since Christ's  time  has not
been." ⁶ And James wrote  to  a  friend  in  Scotland
about  keeping  "a revel  with  the  Puritans  this two
days   such   as  was   never    heard   the   like,"   having
"peppered   them"   with  such   arguments   that   they
"fled from him" like schoolboys.⁶

1  Strype's Whitgift, ii. 501.         2 Ibid. 498.

3 W. Barlow, The   Summe and Substance of  the  Conference

at Hampton Court.

4  Neal, i.  2.32.                  5 Ibid. 233.

⁶ Strype's Whitgift, ii. 500.

BIRTH AND BOYHOOD.

 

Echoes of these events on  the  public stage  must
have reached quieter places than Market-Bosworth,
whence Hooker was just taking  his  departure,  and
must  have afforded topic for  interested  and wonder­
ing comment to duller wits than those with whom  he
had  been there associated. Two months later  found
him at Cambridge and the University.

18           LIFE OF THOMAS  HOOKER.

 

 

 

                     CHAPTER  II.

 

EDUCATION AND  RESIDENCE  AT  CAMBRIDGE.

 

When he was fellow of Emmanuel

Much learning in his solid head did dwell.

SAMUEL STONE: Elegiac Verses, 1648.

 

THE  Cambridge  at  which  Thomas  Hooker  arrived
in 1604, bore many traces of that  Puritan  influence
which in this  university, much  more than at  Oxford,
had marked  the  history of  the  previous century. A
very considerable number of the members of the
university  who  after  the  Marian exile  returned to
their former or to higher posts  in  its  service,  came
back with more pronounced views  of nonconformity
than those they carried with them abroad. At Zurich,
Geneva, Frankfort, or Basel they had  been  received
with hospitality by the continental reformers, and had
come in many instances still more fully to sympathize
with the theological opinions and the practices  in
church   usage  which   characterized   the   theologians
of  Southwestern   Germany   and  Switzerland.  Men
like the  two  brothers  Pilkington,  successively  mas­
ters  of  St.  John's  College,  and   Roger  Zelke,  mas­
ter of Magdalen, brought back   with   them   from
their  exile  an  opposition  to  "ceremonies"  as  pro-

RESIDENCE   AT  CAMBRIDGE.     19

 

nounced almost as that of any Separatist;  an  oppo­
sition which the  elder  Pilkington  carried  with  him
into the exercise of his bishopric of Durham when
promoted thither.

But the most potent influence which had affected
Cambridge emanated from Thomas Cartwright, Mar­
garet Professor of Divinity, who preached and taught
both the doctrine and polity of Geneva, and profoundly
influenced the younger and rising class of fellows and
scholars.    Under  his  powerful  impression  the  spirit
of dissent from the prescribed ritual grew rapidly.
Undergraduates and fellows in many of the colleges
objected to the surplice, declined to kneel at the sac­
rament, and deemed the hierarchical orders of the
ministry unscriptural. Theological degrees were de­
nounced as being an attempt on the part of secular
institutions to determine who might properly teach in
religious matters.

And even when, as in the case of Dr. Whitgift, --
successively Margaret and Regius Professor of Divin­
ity, master of Trinity, and vice-chancellor of the uni­
versity, - no sympathy with nonconformity was found,
there was often a high degree of accordancy with the
continental divines in matters of  theology. It was in
1595 that  what are  known  as the  Lambeth  Articles --
so called from the place of their subscription at the pal­
ace of that name in London, and beyond comparison
the most vigorous symbol of Calvinism ever framed as
an expression of English faith -- were written by Dr.
Whitaker, who succeeded Whitgift as Regius Pro­
fessor of Divinity at Cambridge, and were approved

20           LIFE  OF  THOMAS  HOOKER.

 

by Whitgift himself, now elevated to the  Archbishop­
ric of Canterbury.    The  prevalent tone of teaching in
the university was Calvinistic. The most celebrated
preacher in Cambridge for nearly twenty years before
Hooker's coming there was Rev. William Perkins,
fellow of Christ College and lecturer at Great St.
Andrews, a thorough Puritan in principles and a vig­
orous expounder of Genevan theology.

Mr. Perkins was repeatedly summoned before the
Commission on account of his irregularities in
matter of ritual, and authorities are somewhat at vari­
ance as to his having been or not having been  ulti­
mately  put under interdict.    But at his death in 1602
the town and the university contended for the  privi­
lege  of  being  foremost  in  bemoaning  his loss. Into
the rather warmly heated atmosphere of doctrinal and
ecclesiastical controversies such as are thus indicated,
young Hooker was introduced on his university en­
trance  at about eighteen years   of   age.   Cotton
Mather says I that he was born " of parents that were
neither unable nor unwilling to bestow upon him  a
liberal education." But to one acquainted with  the
narrow conditions of life, such as must have  been lived
at Marfield, it can occasion no surprise that, like many
another university scholar destined to after eminence,
Hooker entered college in a position implying some
inferiority of pecuniary  resource. He  was  matricu­
lated at Queen's College as sizar, March 2 7,  1604;

 

1 Magnalia (ed. 1820), i. 303.

2 Records of the College, and letters of librarians of that in-
 stitution and Emmanuel.

RESIDENCE  AT  CAMBRIDGE.    21

 

a sizar at  Cambridge  being, like a batteller  at  Oxford,
a student who waits upon the fellows at table, and who
generally, in consideration  of these and other services,
is personally exempt from college charges. At some
uncertain date, however, he was transferred to Emman­
uel College, where he appears to have  been on taking
his B. A.  degree  in  January, 1608,  and  his  M.A. in
1611.

Occupying one of the two Wolstan  Dixie  fellow­
ship foundations he remained  for an  indeterminable
but considerable  period,  prosecuting  his studies, and,
in the latter part of the  time  certainly, engaging  in
some form of clerical  work. Here  then  at  Cam­
bridge, as a student for certainly seven years, and as a
fellow resident for some years more, Thomas Hooker
was, from eighteen to probably at least twenty-eight
years of age, in the focus of  Puritanism,  and in the
midst of some of the most considerable actors in the
great events of the time. How much of acquaint­
anceship was had among particular students of the
university, it is impossible of course more than to con­
jecture;  but  it  is  interesting  to  note  that  there were
in Cambridge during these  important  years  of  col­
lege experience several men who in  the  chances  of
after life  were  to be thrown  more or less intimately,
and some of them quite intimately, into Hooker's
fellowship.

Nathaniel Ward, afterward to be minister of the
gospel in Ipswich, New England, and author of the
"Simple Cobbler of Agawam," had just taken his mas­
ter's degree at Emmanuel in 1603, a year before

22           LIFE  OF  THOMAS  HOOKER.

 

Hooker entered the university, and  was  pursuing
there his divinity studies. William Ames, with whom
Hooker was subsequently to be  joined  in  the  care of
the church of exiles in Rotterdam, and in the publi­
cation of Ames's book against  Ceremonies,  a graduate
of Christ  College,  was  resident in  Cambridge  nearly
all the time till Hooker became a fellow at Emmanuel,
and was already challenged by the authorities for his
outspokenness  against church vestments, and  his pub­
lic denunciation of games countenanced by the clergy.
Peter Bulkley, afterward to be associated  with  Hooker
in the moderatorship of more than one historic New
England assembly, and pastor of the  church in Con­
cord, was taking his M. A. at  St. John's  College  in
1605, a year after Hooker's  arrival  at  Cambridge.
John Cotton, a  year older  than  Hooker, and  a student
of earlier start in letters, who was to sail in the same
vessel with him across the seas, and to be to Massa­
chusetts  what  Hooker  was  to   Connecticut,  reached
his B. A. at Emmanuel a year before Hooker was
matriculated, and arrived  at  his M.A. in 1606.    Fran­
cis Higginson, Hooker's junior by a year, who was to
precede both him and Cotton in the American enter­
prise, attained his B. A. at Jesus  College a year  later,
and  his  M. A. two  years  later,  than  Hooker's  arrival
at  the same standing.    John Wilson,  Hooker's  junior
by two years, and  afterward  so long Cotton's associate
in the pastorate of the Boston church, entered Kings
College in 1602, and after pursuing  the usual  univer­
sity course, and attempting awhile the study of law,
returned in 1610 to Cambridge to put himself under

RESIDENCE  AT  CAMBRIDGE. 23

 

the special instruction of  Mr. Ames, and to prosecute
his studies in divinity.

All these and several other afterward distinguished
men who were to be in one way or another closely
associated with Hooker  in  his  subsequent history,
were in Cambridge during some part of his residence
there ; and with them all it was quite possible, and with
several of them altogether probable, that he had per­
sonal acquaintance.

The particular college with which Thomas Hooker
was  most  identified --   Emmanuel --   and  where  he
held one of  the Wolstan Dixie  fellowships, was, from
its  foundation,  regarded  as a Puritan  institution.   It
was established in 1584 by a charter granted by Eliza­
beth to Sir Walter Mildmay,  a  prominent  statesman
and councillor in the service of that sovereign, and
employed  by her  in  many responsible  trusts.    There
is nothing in  the  charter of  the institution to suggest
any deviation from the established order,  but  ru­
mours of its founder's intention to encourage dissent
were early promulgated;  and the queen, on his coming
to court soon after the allowance of the  new institu­
tion,  is  said to  have .addressed  him:  "Sir Walter, I
hear yon have erected a  Puritan foundation;" to
which  he  is  said  to  have  made reply, "No, madam,
far  be it from  me  to  countenance   anything  contrary
to your established laws; but  I  have  set  an acorn
which, when it becomes an  oak, God  alone  knows
what will be the fruit thereof." 1 Something of the
diplomatist is probably discoverable in this reply, espe-

1  Cooper's Annals of Cambridge, ii. 354.

24                LIFE OF THOMAS HOOKER.

 

cially as Sir Walter conditioned his foundation of the
college  upon  the  acceptance  by Laurence  Chaderton
of the mastership. Chaderton had always  the  repu­
tation of belonging to the Puritan side in the then cur­
rent controversies.    As such he was  chosen  by James
as one of the four ministers to represent the  Puritan
cause in the famous mock-conference  at  Hampton
Court a  few years later;  on which  occasion  he is said
to have fallen on his knees and entreated  the  railing
king  that  the " wearing  of the  surplis and the vse of
the Crosse in Baptisme might not be vrged vpo some
honest, godly, and painfull ministers in some partes of
Lancashire." 1  A pious and learned  man, he was one
of the translators of the new version of the Bible au­
thorized by James; the section on which he with his
immediate co-labourers was employed being "from
Chronicles  to Canticles, inclusive."    Chaderton  lived
to be  one  hundred  and  three  years old;  and  though
he  is  spoken  of  as  a  " moderate "  man  in his spirit,
he  had  fire  enough  in  his  bones in 1622,  at  eighty­
six years of  age, to resign  the mastership of  Emman­
uel in favour of the celebrated  Calvinistic  preacher
John Preston, fearing that otherwise an Arminian suc­
cessor might be chosen.

And  it  must be  confessed that Emmanuel College

under his and Mr. Preston's guidance vindicated the
character given to  it by Carter at a somewhat later
date than Chaderton's day, as "neither more nor less

1 Barlow's Summe and Substance, p. 99.

2 Ackermann's Cambridge, ii. 237.

3 Ibid.

RESIDENCE   AT CAMBRIDGE.     25

than a mere nursery of Puritans."1 During the Com­
monwealth no less than eleven masters of other colleges
in  Cambridge were graduates of  Emmanue1, all more
or less distinct representatives of Puritan views.

A single but very significant hint of the temper of
things  in Emmanuel  remains  to  this day.    Alone of
all the college chapels in Cambridge or Oxford, its
original chapel - now, indeed, disused  for  this  ser­
vice,  and  employed  as  the  library -   stands, as built
by Sir Walter, facing north and south instead  of  east
and  west.    A  report  made  to  Archbishop   Laud  in
1633 of the condition of affairs at the college, prob­
ably gives a substantially accurate account of matters as
 they were twenty years  before, when Hooker  occupied
 a fellowship there. The reporter says:--

"In Emmanuel College their chappel is not conse­
crate. At Surplice prayers they sing nothing but certain
riming Psalms of their own appointment instead of ye
Hymmes between ye Lessons.    And at Lessons they read
not after ye order appointed in ye Callendar, but after
another continued course of their own. All Service is
there done and performed by the Minister alone.   When
they preach or Commonplace   they omit all service after
ye first or second Lesson at ye furthest." 2

Indeed,  the vigour  of  Emmanuel's  Puritanism  was
a  popular  proverb.   The doggerel and ridiculing lines
of the "Mad Puritan"  in  Percy's  Ballads  have  all
their significance from the recognized character of the
college to which they refer:--

1 Ackermann's Cambridge, ii. 228.

2 Cooper's Annals of Cambridge, ii. 383.

26           LIFE OF THOMAS HOOKER.

"In the house of pure Emmanuel
 I had my education;

Where, my friends surmise,
 I dazzled my eyes

With the light of Revelation.

"Boldly I preach,

Hate a cross and a surplice;
 Mitres, copes, and rochets;
Come hear me pray,

Nine times a day,

And fill your head with crotchets."

The avowed design of Sir Walter Mildmay in estab­
lishing a new college was  to train up a  "godly minis­
try;"  and  however wise or unwise minor features of
the administration may have been,  tried by the test  of
its avowed intention Emmanuel was certainly a suc­
cess. The acorn planted only in 1584, which before
Cromwell's time had  fruited  with  such  names -- not
to mention any already spoken of-.-as William Brad­
shaw, Ralph Cudworth, John Richardson, John Har­
vard, William Eyre, Jeremiah Burroughs,  Ephraim
Udal, Richard Holdsworth, Thomas Shepard, Samuel
Hudson, Thomas Hill, Nathaniel Rogers, Stephen
Marshall, Samuel Stone, Anthony Burgess, William
Bridge, Anthony Tuckney, and Bishop Hall, among
many others nearly or equally distinguished,  must
surely be regarded as an acorn well worth planting.

Of Hooker's  personal  experiences  during the years
of his residence in Cambridge scanty authentic me­
morials remain. These years themselves were marked
by some events on the public stage which must have
been felt at Cambridge quite as sensibly as anywhere

RESIDENCE   AT  CAMBRIDGE.      27

else. It  was  in  his second  year's residence that the
plot to blow up the king  and  Parliament  in the  inter­
est of the Romanist party, by Catesby, Digby, Guy
Fawkes, and others, was discovered just  in  time  to
have no worse consequences than the execution of the
conspirators.    It was just when he was taking his B. A.,
in 1608, that John Robinson and his Scrooby church,
unable to find toleration for Independency in England,
sought refuge and liberty in Holland. Two years later,
James, the whilom Presbyterian of Scotland, forced
Episcopacy into the country north of the Tweed.

It was just as Hooker was taking his M.A., in 1611,

that James inaugurated the protracted fight  of  the
Stuarts with  the Commons  of England  by dissolving
his first Parliament. The years following, to 1620, saw
the clouds of civil and religious trouble steadily deep­
ening. They beheld the scandals of Somerset's eleva­
tion to power, of Overbury's murder, of the sale of
peerages for money payments, of  the  dismissal  of
Lord Coke, of the rise to supremacy of  the  ignorant

but dangerous Buckingham. They saw the  peremp­

tory dissolution of James's second Parliament, the ne­
gotiations for the marriage of Prince Charles with the

Infanta of Spain, the execution of Sir Walter Raleigh,
the outbreak in Europe of the Thirty Years' War, -- a
struggle virtually between Protestantism and Roman­
ism, -- and perhaps  least  noticed  of  all, the  planting
of Plymouth Colony in America by English exiles for
the sake of religious liberty.    These things, and mat­
ters involved  in them, could not but have been  things
of  interest, and  some of  them of  intense concern, to

28           LIFE OF  THOMAS  HOOKER.

 

the nearly three thousand students of the various
colleges of the university.

But to Hooker himself an event which occurred
apparently after his reception of  his  master's  degree
and during his residence as Dixie fellow,  was  of
greater personal  moment  than  any  yet  alluded  to.
This event,  to  use phrases which  he was  accustomed
to employ in characterizing similar experiences in
others, was his  Effectual  Calling,  and  Implantation
into Christ. Whatever may have hitherto been his
religious convictions  or feelings,  this  was  the  period
of that great spiritual crisis  which  he  would  have
called his conversion.

That his processes of mind in this passage of his
inward history should have been sombre and tumul­
 tuous might easily be anticipated. Such  was  the
common course of religious experience in  his  time.
And there is reason to believe that it was unusually
common at Cambridge, where the strenuous presenta­
tion of some of the sterner features of the Calvinistic
system, by powerful popular preachers like Perkins,
Baynes, and Gibbs, had given a kind of established
direction to the courses of men's experience under the
operation of strong religious emotions. But there was
also something in Mr. Hooker's temperament, and
probably something also, as we shall have occasion
hereafter to see, in his theological views and tenden­
cies, to make this religious struggle in his own case
unusually protracted and severe. He is said1  to have
long afterward observed of this passage of his experi-

1    Magnalia, i.  303.

RESIDENCE  AT  CAMBRIDGE.      29

 

ence, "that in the time of his agonies, he could reason
himself to the rule, and conclude that there was no way
 but submission to God, and lying at the foot of  his
mercy in Christ Jesus,  and  waiting  humbly  there  till
he should please to perswade the soul of his favour;
nevertheless, when he came to apply this rule unto him­
self, in his own condition, his reasoning would fail him,
he was able to do nothing." Readers of his treatise on
 the "Soules Humiliation" will not wonder why he found
it hard to  apply  his "rule "  to  his own  case,  or  why
 his reasoning  failed  him. The extreme  conceptions
of what is involved  in  a  true  submission  of  the  soul
to God set  forth  in  that  treatise,  and  to  some  extent
in other of Mr. Hooker's writings, have always, when­
ever presented, been  a  source  of  perplexity  to  men.
As expounded a hundred and fifty years later in the
writings of Samuel Hopkins, they not only introduced
an era of controversy in theological  debate, but  a
period of bewilderment and trouble in the individual
religious  experience  of  multitudes. The making_a
willingness   to  be  lost  a  condition  precedent to a
reasonable hope of being saved, whether prescribed by
Hooker or his son-in-Jaw Shepard, or by  the  cele­
brated Newport divine who has in New England
theology given his name to the particular dogma in
question, is and must ever be  a  prescription  perplex­
 ing and embarrassing to the process of most people's
 religious experience.

How far this particular notion of  what is necessary

before a soul can rest in a cheerful hope of  God's
 mercy  actually  embarrassed  the  process  of attaining

30           LIFE OF THOMAS HOOKER.

that quietude in Hooker's own case, it is probably
impossible to say; but his  doubts  and  perturbations
were protracted.    He is said1 to  have remarked,  "I
can compare with any  man living  for  fears."  And it
is not without a  touch of  pathos  that it  is recorded2
that one considerable source of  relief  to him  in this
time of trouble came from the young sizar who waited
upon  him,  whose  "prudent  and   piteous  carriage"
and "discreet and proper compassions" were of
"singular help."    The giver of this important  aid was
Mr. Simeon  Ashe,  afterward  a graduate of  Emmanuel,
 a minister in Staffordshire, chaplain to the Earl of
Warwick in the civil wars, rector of St. Austin  in
London for  twenty years, and  though, as Calamy says,
"a nonconformist of the old stamp," one of the divines
who went to Breda to meet Charles II just before his
restoration. The piety and moderation of which the
general  course  of  this  Puritan  minister's  history was
an illustration, had  apparently one  of  its earlier and
most useful manifestations in helping to lead the Fellow
whom it was his function  to serve  into a more  cheer­
ful assurance of religious welfare.

There  appears  to  be  evidence  that  after passing
this crisis-point in his religious history, Mr. Hooker
continued a considerable time in the university as
catechist and lecturer. Here and  in  the  vicinity he
began the systematic development  into sermonic form
of those essays on experimental religion which consti­
tuted always the main  bulk of his preaching, and over
the general track of which he seems again and again

1  Magnalia, i. 314.        2   Ibid. 303.

RESIDENCE   AT  CAMBRIDGE.      31

to have gone, at Cambridge, at Chelmsford, and in his
successive ministries in Holland and America. These
sermons, which are in effect a kind of body of divinity,
not so much of the doctrinal  as of  the experimental
kind, were  immensely  popular. They  grew  out  of,
and were exactly suited to, the religious feeling of the
period. They  gave  their  author  an  immediate  and
wide distinction as a powerful applier of the gospel to
men's  hearts and consciences.  They were circulated
to some extent in copies  enlarged  from  short-hand
notes surreptitiously taken. They were collected with
less or more accuracy into volumes published not
always with their author's knowledge or sanction. And
they make up in the whole  that body of writing about
the general  subject of  the  application  of  religion  to
the soul,  which as one substantially connected
treatise, though divided in  title into various subordi­
nate portions, there will be occasion hereafter more
particularly, though briefly, to notice.

32           LIFE OF  THOMAS  HOOKER.

 

 

 

 

                                CHAPTER III.

 

                 HOOKER'S ENGLISH MINISTRY.

 

His knowledge in Theologie Divine,

In Chelmsford Lectures divers years did shine.

SAMUEL STONE: Elegiac Verses.

 

LEAVING out of view the functions which Mr.
Hooker may have performed as catechist and lecturer
while still resident at Cambridge, the probable period
of his exercise of ministerial duty in England was ten
or twelve years, -- that is to say, from 1618 or 1620 to
his flight to Holland in 1630. This space of time was
all included in the duration of the archbishopric of
George Abbot, who had been appointed to the pri­
macy on the death of Bancroft in 1610. These
twenty-two years of  Abbot's  nominal  headship  of
the Church of England, and especially the last thir­
teen of them which cover the period of Hooker's
English ministry, were momentous years in Puritan
story. Abbot himself was a Calvinist, and by convic­
tion attached to the cause of Puritanism and the Par­
liament. He advocated a definite policy of Protes­
tantism abroad, and it was his influence which sent
English representatives to the Synod of Dort in
1618-19. He favoured the maintenance of the Puritan
Lectureships,  which  had become so extended a part
of the machinery employed for the dissemination of

HOOKER'S   ENGLISH  MINISTR Y.      33

the principles of which nonconformity stood the rep­
resentative. By his doctrinal sympathies with his
pragmatic sovereign and  by his official  place as head
of the hierarchy, he seemed to stand in a favourable
for mediating between  the contending  parties
in the civil and religious commonwealths. But Abbot
had no skill as a reconciler; events were too strong for
him,  perhaps were  too strong for any one. The  years
of his primacy saw the progressively definite identifica­
tion of Puritanism with the Parliament, of prerogative
with churchly authority. The Presbyterian king put
himself increasingly into the hand of  Arminian  pre­
lacy; the Commons more and more accepted the
leadership of Calvinistic nonconformity.

The great figure  on  the stage of  this generation of

English story, and the great power by which this defi­
nition of party lines was effected, was William Laud.
Laud had been from his university days a rival and
opponent of the archbishop; and during all the later
years of Abbot's nominal headship of the  establish­
ment it was far more the inferior than the superior
church-functionary who gave  direction  to  the  course
of religious affairs, and influenced the counsels of his
sovereign. Laud's advancement was rapid, and in­
dicative alike of his personal abilities and of  the
growing conviction on the part of the king, which he
formulated in the characteristic saying, "Presbyteri­
anism agreeth as well with monarchy as God and the
devil."     In 1611   Laud was appointed   president   of
St. John's College, Oxford. The same year made him
also  chaplain  to  the  king.    The  year  1616 saw him

                                                  3

34           LIFE OF  THOMAS  HOOKER.

Dean of Gloucester; in 1621 he was Bishop of St.
David's; in 1626, of Bath and Wells; in 1628, of the
important See of London. He  guided, almost regu­
lated, the church patronage by giving the king a list of
the clergy, marked for advancement or neglect by the
cabalistic sign  "O" or  "P" (Orthodox  or Puritan)
affixed to their names. His hand, as there will be
occasion to see, was in every considerable event of the
period covered by our Hooker's English ministry.

This ministry began in Mr. Hooker's appointment,
probably some time between 1618 and 1620, to the
rectorship of the little parish of Esher in Surrey, a
small place sixteen miles southwest from the Parlia­
ment houses in London.

That Mr. Hooker's principles allowed  him  to  go
there was owing to the fact that the living was a dona­
tive one, -- given, that is to say, directly  by the  patron
of the benefice, a  Mr. Francis  Drake, and  not requir­
ing presentation to the bishop and induction by  his
order; to which presentation Mr. Hooker's non­
conforming views  would  not  allow  him  to  accede,
and which would  therefore  have availed  to  exclude
him from the greater part of the benefices in England.
Esher 1 was and is a pleasant, small village, built on a
rising ground a little distance from the Thames, and in­
cludes in its parochial boundaries two or three ancient
manorial properties, one of which, Esher Place, was
occupied by Carclin:11 Wolsey after his disgrace; an­
other, Clermont, was formerly the home of Lord

1 Manning's History and Antiquities of Surrey, vol. ii.: art.
"Esher."

HOOKER'S ENGLISH  MINISTRY.     35

Clive; then of Princess Charlotte, and now of  the
widow of Prince  Leopold.   Adjoining  Esher Common
is the tract of ground which used to be  known as
Sandon Farm, now the scene of the Sandon races.

That Esher was, and is still, a little village with so
much that is picturesque in its  situation  and conven­
ient in its proximity to the city, the rector at present
(1891) incumbent ascribes to the fact of its being
hemmed in and limited by these large landed estates.
 The church where Mr. Hooker preached still stands,
though  not at  present used for public worship.    It is
very small, with a nave and chancel only, except that
 at a period considerably later than that we are now
speaking of, the Duke of Newcastle, who occupied
Clermont before Lord Clive, built a kind of chamber­
room or gallery on one side of it.  The glass of the
 chancel windows is said once  to have  been  fine,  but
no vestige of its former glories remains.  At the west
 end the nave is surmounted by a low pyramidal tower
in which formerly hung three bells, one of which was
 understood to be a war-trophy brought by Sir Francis
Drake from St. Domingo. The living was worth only
forty pounds a year; the  place of worship  not capable
 of stretching beyond a hundred sittings; the congre­
gation a few lowly people of the village, and members

of the manor house families.

The patron of the living, a gentleman of the same
name, and a  kinsman  of  the great  admiral: received
the rector into his  house,  and  gave  him  a  home  in
his family, -- a fact attended with important conse­
quences to the rector.

36           LIFE OF THOMAS  HOOKER.

 

The persuasive cause of the procuring of Mr.
Hooker's services at Esher was the condition of Mr.
Drake's wife. The story is told in a little volume
printed the year Mr. Hooker died. It bears the
characteristically quaint title of the time, "Trodden
down Strength by the God of Strength, or Mrs. Drake
Revived, showing her strange and rare Case, great and
manifold afflictions for tenne years together. Related
by her friend Hart On-hi. London,  1647." Mrs.
Drake was an invalid and hypochondriac. She had
already worn out the consolations of two worthy
ministers --  Rev. Mr. Dod,  the author  of a  comment­
ary on the Decalogue, and hence popularly known as
Decalogue Dod; and Rev. Mr. Usher, afterward Pri­
mate of Ireland -- in their efforts to persuade her that
she had not committed the unpardonable sin.

Mr. Dod being obliged  to  leave  her  after  three
years' wrestling with her case, tidings came  to  Mr.
Drake of"   one Mr.  Hooker,  then  at Cambridge,  now
in New England: A great  Scholar,  an  acute  Dis­
putant, a strong learned, a  wise  modest  man,  every
way  rarely  qualified;  who  being  a  Non-conformitan
in judgement, not willing to trouble himself with Pre­
sentative Livings, was  contented  and  persuaded  by
Mr.  Dod   to  accept   of   that   poor   Living  of  40l.
per annum: This worthy man accepted of the place,
having withal his dyet and lodging  at  Esher,  Mr.
Drake's house."

Mr. Hooker's ministrations seem to have been use­
ful. " For Mr. Hooker being newly come from the
University had a new answering methode (though

HOOKER'S  ENGLISH  MINISTRY    37

the same thing) wherewith shee was marvellously de­
lighted." Just how  long or precisely  at what date
these ministrations  were rendered  is not stated, but
the period came when  Mrs.  Drake felt  "that  her
time on earth was but of small continuance. About
which time it fell out that Mr. Hooker also having
acted his part with her, and done his best, to comfort,
uphold and rectifie her spirit, . . . by God's provi­
dence he was married  unto  her  waiting-woman:
After which both of them having lived some  time
after with her, and he cal'd to be Lecturer at Chelms­
ford in Essex, they both  left her."

It is pleasant  to  be  assured  that  the  counsels  of
Mr. Hooker, and of Mr. Dod which were again re­
newed, did much to  help  Mrs.  Drake, and  that  she
was "more cheerful in mind divers years," coming
indeed to her end at last in "a Fit of sudden, extream,
ravishing, unsupportable Joy, beyond the Strength of
Mortality to retain, or be long capable of, which

put Mr. Dod, her Husband, and all of them to a non­
plus, as being beyond all Experience; they in all their
lifetime never having seen or heard of the like."

The chief recorded result to Mr. Hooker himself,
however, of this Esher experience  was his marrying
Mrs. Drake's waiting-woman,  Susanna. Who this
young woman was, whose future was to be so full of
vicissitude, who was to be exiled to  Holland, to voy­
age the Atlantic, to be carried on a litter through the
Massachusetts forests to Connecticut, to survive her
husband we  know  not  how  long,  and  to  be  buried
we know not where -   there  seems  no way at  present
to determine.

38           LIFE OF THOMAS  HOOKER.

That she was esteemed in Mr. Drake's family is
evidenced by the provision in Mr. Drake's will, dated
March 13,  1634,  by  which he gave to  "Johana
Hooker  whoe  is  now  in  New  England £30   to  be
paid her the day of her marriage." This was  Mr.
Hooker's daughter who  married  Rev. Thomas Shep­
ard,  and from  a  comparison   of  dates   would   seem
to have been  his oldest  child,  and  may  have  been
born at Esher, and named Joanna  for  Mrs.  Drake,
whose maiden name was Joanna Tothill.

Esher's proximity to London favoured the more ready
recognition  of  Mr.  Hooker's  gifts as  a  preacher,  and
it  appears  that  some  ineffectual  attempts were  made
to secure his establishment in some capacity at
Colchester in Essex, "whereto Mr. Hooker did very
much  incline,  .  .  .  but  the  providence  of  God gave
an obstruction to that settlement."

     Mather  says1  Hooker's  desire to  be at Colchester
was on account of its proximity to Mr. Rogers of
Dedham, whom he used to call "the prince of all the
preachers in England; " but "it was an observation
which  Mr. Hooker  would  sometimes  afterwards  use

     unto  his  friends  'that  the  providence  of God  often

l

    diverted him from employment  in such places as he
himself  desired, and  still  directed him to such  places
as he had no thoughts of.'"

But sometime probably in 1626 an invitation was ex­
tended and accepted for Mr. Hooker's·establishment
as Lecturer in connection with the church of St. Mary
at Chelmsford, Essex, then under the rectoral care of

1 Magnalia, i. 304.

HOOKER'S ENGLISH MINISTRY.    39

 

Rev. John Michaelson.  Possibly he  had  been  resi­
dent a little while previous in the immediate vicinity,
for the parish register of Great Baddow contains the
following entry: "Anne, daughter of Mr. Thomas
Hooker, clerk, and Susan his wife, baptized at Great
Baddow,  Essex,  January 5. 1626."   As  pertinent  to
Mr.   Hooker's   family   relationships   it   may   also
here as  appropriately as anywhere  be  remarked  that
the Chelmsford parish register contains the  record,
under date of April 9, 1628, of the baptism of ''Sarah
daughter of Nir. Thomas Hooker and Susan his wife;"
and on August 26, 1629, of her burial.

Chelmsford was a busy town twenty-nine miles east
from London, and  its  old Gothic  church is an  edifice
of great antiquity. The great-tower and  most of  the
older portions of the building are made of the flint
nodules, from the size of the fist upward, found in the
chalk-pits of the neighbourhood, laid in cement.  The
arch of the Norman  door  in  the great-tower has the
Boar and Mullet pf the De Vere family. In 1641 the
Parliamentary visitation was the occasion of a riot in
which the beautiful glass windows were destroyed, and
Rev. Dr. Michaelson, the rector, subjected to personal
indignities  and  injury.  The  roof  of  the  nave fell  in,
in 1800, and the repair in other stone than that which
characterizes  the  older  portion  of  the   structure  has
an unpleasing and incongruous appearance. The
patronage of the church was given or sold by Henry

VIII.      to Roger Mildmay, ancestor of Sir Roger Mild­
may, founder of Emmanuel College; and twenty gen­
erations of the family sleep underneath its roof.   This

40            LIFE OF  THOMAS  HOOKER.

noble old  sanctuary became for between  three  and
four years the scene of Mr. Hooker's public labours as
Lecturer.

These Lectureships, to which  reference has already
 several times been made, were one of the most char­
acteristic  outgrowths of the Puritan movement in
England. They were designed to secure a more
efficient preaching  service  than  could be  often had
from the  legal incumbent  of  a  benefice.     They were
generally  ·supported  by voluntary gifts of wealthy
Puritans, though  sometimes  endowed by permanent
funds ; and were customarily held by persons having
scruples about the ceremonies and the vestments, and
consequently not always, though generally, in priest's
orders. The Lecturer preached on market-days and
Sunday afternoons, as supplemental to the regularly
appointed   church services.  The system was im­
mensely popular with the multitude, who were dis­
satisfied  with "no  preaching  and  dumb  ministers,"
as those who confined themselves to the liturgy were
called, and  developed  into  wide  and  large  proportions
in the country generally.

But  by so much as Lectureships were  popular with

the masses they were obnoxious to the church party,
who sympathized with  Laud and with the intensifying
demand   for  Conformity   represented    by  the   king.
Already: some four years previous to Hooker's enter­
ing on his Chelmsford Lectureship, James, in   1622,
had issued injunctions to the clergy, through the arch­
bishop, forbidding any one of them  under  the  stand­
ing  of  "a bishop or dean [to] presume to  preach  in