The Evolving Reputation of Richard Hooker: An Examination of Responses, 1600-1714

THE EVOLVING REPUTATION OF RICHARD HOOKER

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The Evolving Reputation of Richard Hooker An Examination of Responses, 1660–1714

M ICH A E L B RY D ON

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Great Clarendon Street, Oxford ox2 6 Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide in Oxford New York Auckland Cape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi New Delhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto With offices in Argentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France Greece Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal Singapore South Korea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries Published in the United States by Oxford University Press Inc., New York © Michael Brydon 2006 The moral rights of the author have been asserted Database right Oxford University Press (maker) First published 2006 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this book in any other binding or cover and you must impose the same condition on any acquirer British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Data available Typeset by SPI Publisher Services, Pondicherry, India Printed in Great Britain on acid-free paper by Biddles Ltd., King’s Lynn, Norfolk ISBN 0–19–920481–0 978–0–19–920481–6 1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

Acknowledgements This study began life as a doctoral thesis for the Department of Theology at the University of Durham. I am most grateful to Dr Alan Ford, my supervisor, for his generosity with his time, information and books. Professor John Morrill, Dr Alison Shell and Dr Arnold Hunt were also kind enough to read my first musings upon the subject. Undoubtedly my research would have remained in thesis form without the encouragement of the Revd Dr Peter Groves and Professor Diarmaid MacCulloch. If Dr Groves had not overcome my shy reluctance to show it to Professor MacCulloch I would never have received the latter’s convincing encouragement to transform it into this book. The process of research is heavily dependent upon the help and goodwill of the librarians and archivists you encounter. It is impossible to speak too highly of the help that I have received from the staff at Durham University Library, Durham Dean and Chapter Library, Ushaw College Library, Cambridge University Library, and the Bodleian Library, Oxford. It has also been a pleasure to work with the Oxford University Press. Miss Qureshi, the commissioning editor, has been most supportive throughout the publication process. Without the perceptive suggestions offered by the two academic readers it is also certain that the scope and period of this book would have been much more limited. Throughout my period of study I have been fortunate in a numerous circle of friends at St Chad’s College, Durham and St Stephen’s House, Oxford. They have all offered encouragement and provided suitable distractions at appropriate moments. I have also been blessed in my title parish of St Peter’s, Bexhill, which has made time for study possible. Finally I owe an immense debt to my parents, grandparents, and the rest of my family. Without their help, support, and nurture within the Anglican tradition I would never have embarked upon this study. Bexhill, 2005

M. A. B.

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Contents Note on the Text

viii

Introduction

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1. Hooker and the Jacobeans

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2. The Road Towards an Anglican Icon: The Treatment of Hooker under Charles I and the Commonwealth

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3. The Establishment of Anglican Triumphalism

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4. The Zenith and Slow Decline of Hooker as the Icon of Restoration Anglicanism

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5. The Mask of Discontinuity: Hooker in the Reigns of James II and William and Mary

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6. The Indian Summer of Restoration Anglicanism: Queen Anne and the Tory Revival

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Hooker’s Reputation: A Conclusion

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Bibliography

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Index

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A Note on the Text In general there has been no attempt to standardize quotations from any of the early printed sources to conform to contemporary English spelling. The one consistent exception is with regard to the long s. All quotations to the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, unless stated otherwise, are taken from the modern Folger edition of Hooker’s works. The Folger’s dual system for citation has also been adopted. This means that the Folger reference comes first and is followed by a bracketed one to Keble’s more widely available edition.

Introduction It has been claimed that in ‘the long and crowded roll of great English men of letters there is no figure of greater significance to the instructed mind than Hooker’, and that his Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, are a milestone in the history of religious thought.1 The Polity has certainly been lauded as the first ‘philosophical masterpiece’ to be written in the vernacular and traditionally been acclaimed for setting out the classic depiction of the English via media based upon the sound triumvirate of scripture, reason, and tradition.2 Hooker has been celebrated for rejecting the hardening disjunctions between these assorted authorities, and for bringing them into a rational and coherent synthesis, which avoided the mistaken extremes of Romanism or Puritanism.3 Although the English Church clearly pre-dated Hooker, his skilful congruence of the divergent strands of the Reformation has been regarded as publicly signifying ‘the beginning of what we now call Anglicanism’.4 In spite of the longevity of these claims, however, it is far from clear that the legacy of our Anglican Hooker is quite so straightforward. If Hooker was indeed the father of a special English Church settlement then it begs the question of why the terms Anglican or via media appear nowhere in the Polity? It could be that others applied them later to positions defended by Hooker, or possibly even invented by him. More radically it might be that we need to accept the validity of a whole series of revisionist studies, which have addressed the issue of ¹ C. J. Sisson, The Judicious Marriage of Mr Hooker and the Birth of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity (Cambridge, 1940), p. ix. ² P. Avis, Anglicanism and the Christian Church (Edinburgh, 1989), pp. xix, 47; D. Stancliffe, ‘Proem’, in P. B. Secor, Richard Hooker, Prophet of Anglicanism, (Tunbridge Wells, 1999), p. viii; W. D. Neelands, ‘Hooker on Scripture, Reason and “Tradition” ’, in A. S. McGrade (ed.), Richard Hooker and the Construction of Christian Community (Tempe, 1997), 74–94. ³ J. S. Marshall, Hooker and the Anglican Tradition. An Historical and Theological Study of Hooker’s Ecclesiastical Polity (London, 1963), 1; H. McAdoo, ‘Richard Hooker’, in The English Religious Tradition and the Genius of Anglicanism (Wantage, 1992), 105–25. ⁴ Marshall, Hooker, 1.

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Hooker’s public authority and in different ways sought to demythologize the established Anglican image of him.5 Whenever we view a text, perspectives are all we can see from; and too often we mistakenly use the understanding we are able to make from a given perspective as evidence for its universality.6 No texts, (the Polity not excepted) are capable of existing in vacuums, and our comprehensions of them are undoubtedly created by the historical circumstances in which they are read. Consequently Hooker’s reputation becomes a microcosm of contemporary understandings of the Church; something which would be capable of a changing sense of identity without losing all sense of integrity. It is the purpose of this study to chronicle an essential stage of seventeenth-century myth-making: the evolution of Hooker, with all his complexities and ambiguities into the iconic emblem of Anglicanism. The notion that Hooker was seeking to act as a national guardian to the English Church is certainly clearly present in the Polity. His Preface states that it was written to counteract the dangers posed by Presbyterians and Puritans within the English Church and the first three books articulate, at length, the authorities on which the Church based her polity.7 Scripture was paramount, Hooker insisted, with all matters that affected salvation; but, with regard to matters indifferent, human reason,8 along with the collective experience of the past, might be consulted.9 Each national branch of the Universal Church had the right to determine the form of these outward matters. The ⁵ Notable examples of this include: C. Condren, ‘The Creation of Richard Hooker’s Public Authority: Rhetoric Reputation and Reassessment’, Journal of Religious History, 21/1 (1997); R. Eccleshall, ‘Richard Hooker and the Peculiarities of the English: The Reception of the Ecclesiastical Polity in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries’, History of Political Thought, 2 (1981); J. Gascoigne, ‘Church and State Unified: Hooker’s Rationale for the English Post-Reformation Order’, Journal of Religious History, 21/1 (1997); and D. MacCulloch, ‘Richard Hooker’s Reputation’, English Historical Review, 107 (2002). ⁶ C. Condren, The Status and Appraisal of Classic Texts. An Essay on Political Theory, Its Inheritance and the History of Ideas (Guildford, 1985), 22. ⁷ N. Voak, Richard Hooker and Reformed Theology. A Vision of Reason, Will, and Grace (Oxford, 2003), 15–16. ⁸ H. C. Beeching, Religio Laici. A Series of Studies Addressed to Laymen (London, 1902), 45; Hooker, Lawes, 1. 84. 2–25 (I. 8. 4). ⁹ Hooker, Lawes, 1. 231. 15–25 (III. 8. 14).

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great danger of the Puritan scripturalist position was that it turned indifferent mundane practices into matters of extreme importance that became central to Christianity.10 ‘For whereas God hath left sundry kindes of lawes unto men, and by all those lawes the actions of men are in some sort directed: they hold that one onely lawe, the scripture must be the rule to direct in all thinges, even so farre as to the taking up of a rush or strawe.’11 Having defined his points of authority the rest of the books dealt with the practical outworkings of Hooker’s principles. Books IV and V were concerned with the acceptability of the rituals and ceremonies of the Church and the last three explored the forms of visible authority, by which these public duties and practices were performed. All three of these were posthumously published, and as will subsequently be seen this delay had serious consequences for Hooker’s future reputation. The surviving form of Book VI is far from complete, but it is clear that Hooker primarily intended it to refute the office of lay elders through his defence of the spiritual discipline established in the English Church and commonwealth.12 Book VII then discussed episcopal authority. In spite of an impressive apostolic precedent for episcopacy, Hooker was loath to insist upon its claims to be the only legitimate form of government and with confusing subtlety viewed it as only enjoying divine approbation.13 Finally Book VIII considered the relationship between ecclesiastical and secular power in a confessional state. For Hooker they were both a single unity and distinct entities presided over by the sovereign.14 It is important to note that, according to Hooker, the extent of monarchical authority depended not upon a divine mandate, but upon a human contract. Other contemporary conformist writers had resorted to increasingly authoritarian accounts of royal power to see off the Puritan threat,15 ¹⁰ Ibid. 1. 207. 19–25 (III. 2. 1). ¹¹ Ibid. 1. 145. 10–14 (II. 1.1). ¹² L. W. Gibbs, ‘Book VI’, in W. Speed Hill (ed.), The Folger Library Edition of the Works of Richard Hooker, 6/1 (New York, 1993), 271; Hooker, Lawes, 3. 2–6. 1–4 (VI. 1–2). ¹³ Hooker, Lawes, 3. 157. 17–19 (VII. 4. 3); 3. 212. 5–12 (VII. 11. 11.). ¹⁴ Ibid. 3. 319. 19–21 (VIII. 1. 2). ¹⁵ P. Lake, ‘The “Anglican Moment”? Richard Hooker and the Ideological Watershed of the 1590s’ in S. Platten (ed.), Anglicanism and the Western Christian Tradition (Norwich, 2003), 115.

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but Hooker stressed that Englishmen were in no more subjection, but such as they had willingly assented to for their own ‘behoof and securitie’.16 For Hooker such a constitutional limitation was a substitute for resistance, not a ground for it, and potentially removed any grounds for disorder.17 This overriding desire to demonstrate the reasonableness of obedience to the English Christian polity, so that what ‘the Church hath received . . . must carry the benefite of presumption with it to be accompted meete and convenient’ underlies the whole Polity.18 The motivation behind Hooker’s clear desire to advocate conformity is less obvious, however, and is not necessarily indicative of a desire to promote a distinctive form of Anglicanism. A growing consensus has suggested that it is preferable to view Hooker as a mainstream part of a classically Protestant Reformed settlement, who sought only to oppose those extremists that threatened the Church’s stability. This study understands the term Reformed to denote a general sympathy with the Continental Calvinist Reformation in all its purely doctrinal aspects, and a sense of identification with the West European Calvinist Churches, and their fortunes, up until the rise of Arminianism in the seventeenth century.19 This belief in a Protestant Hooker has a great deal to be said for it, since it increasingly seems that the Elizabethan settlement, rather than trying to give the Church of England a unique double identity, as a body that was both Catholic and Reformed, consciously sought to bring her into doctrinal conformity with the Calvinist Churches of Germany and Switzerland. Consequently, if it is dubious to talk about Elizabethan Anglicanism, it is equally dangerous to see it opposing a Protestant ‘alien Puritanism not yet clearly disowned’.20 There were undoubtedly differences of adiaphora, but the background Hooker grew up against was still one of lively Reformed ¹⁶ Hooker, Lawes, 3. 336. 19–25 (VIII. 2. 7.); 3. 339. 25–30 (VIII. 2. 10). ¹⁷ G. Burgess, Absolute Monarchy and the Stuart Constitution (London, 1996), 46. ¹⁸ Hooker, Lawes, 1. 286. 10–13 (IV. 4. 3). ¹⁹ Voak, Hooker, p. xvii. ²⁰ P. Collinson, The Religion of Protestants. The Church in English Society, 1559–1625 (Oxford, 1982), p. ix; N. Tyacke, Anti-Calvinists, the Rise of English Arminianisme c.1590–1640 (Oxford, 1990), p. vii.

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international cultural exchange.21 His uncle, John Vowell alias Hooker, was a cosmopolitan scholar whose higher education had included time in Cologne and Strassburg.22 Furthermore Hooker was heavily indebted to John Jewel, that doughty defender of the Protestant faith, and whilst at Oxford he had become a close associate of the great Dr John Rainolds, President of Corpus Christi, and leader of moderate Puritans within the University.23 These influences are all marked in his early sermons, which suggest that he was very much part of this decidedly Calvinist world. Notably his sermon, from the early 1580s, on the Book of Jude, unambiguously makes clear his shared belief that the Reformation was caught up in a war against the antichrist that was the bishop of Rome.24 Consequently a concerted effort has also been made, particularly by Nigel Atkinson, to reposition the Polity within the Reformation tradition.25 Alister McGrath memorably describes, in a preface for the latter, how evangelicals have far too long accepted the Catholic interpretation of Hooker as a writer determined to move the Church away from the Reformation, and have studiously ignored him in consequence.26 Atkinson is certainly adamant that Hooker would not have recognized the classic Anglican via media depiction of his theological premises. Within the Polity, he emphasizes, Hooker actually declares his hostility towards Rome and expresses himself to ²¹ W. J. Bouwsma, ‘Hooker in the Context of European Cultural History’, in A. S. McGrade (ed.), Richard Hooker and the Construction of Christian Community (Tempe, 1997), 41–57. ²² W. T. McCaffrey, Exeter 1540–1640: The Growth of an English Country Town (Cambridge, 1958), 3, 7–8, 50, 120, 139, 144, 225, 272–4. ²³ J. E. Booty, John Jewel as Apologist of the Church of England (London, 1963), 136; C. M. Dent, Protestant Reformers in Elizabethan Oxford (Oxford, 1983), 103–10, 115– 16, 133–43, 203–4; P. B. Secor, Richard Hooker. Prophet of Anglicanism (Tunbridge Wells, 1999), 47–50, 66–7; W. M. Southgate, John Jewel and the Problem of Doctrinal Authority (Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1962), 69–70, 119, 135–6, 139, 144, 151, 195, 218, 219; Voak, Hooker, 20. ²⁴ R. Bauckham, ‘Hooker, Travers and the Church of Rome in the 1580s’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 29 (1978), 37–40; A. Milton, Catholic and Reformed: The Roman and Protestant Churches in English Protestant Thought, 1600–1640 (Cambridge, 1995), 211–12; Voak, Hooker, 318. ²⁵ N. Atkinson, Richard Hooker and the Authority of Scripture, Tradition and Reason. Reformed Theologian of the Church of England (St Ives, 1997). ²⁶ Ibid., pp. vii–viii.

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be a theological proponent of the Reformation.27 Hooker may have defended distinctive outward forms, but, Atkinson insists, he was still defending a Church of the same ‘confession in doctrine’.28 His success in defending the Church was based not on his ability to define an Anglican position, but his adroitness in demonstrating that his own position was closer to that of the magisterial Reformers, than those he was writing against. Atkinson’s comparison of Hooker’s much-vaunted Thomistic usage of scripture, reason, and tradition with that of Calvin and, somewhat surprisingly, Luther, given the hostile marginalization of Lutheranism in England, seeks with some success to demonstrate a significant continuity of belief. Both were in agreement, with Hooker, that scripture enjoyed authoritative primacy since the testimony of God could neither ‘erre, nor lead into error’.29 Even more importantly Calvin, like Hooker, did not attempt to extend the use of scripture beyond its proper bounds and was content in matters indifferent to follow reason or tradition.30 Whilst the above is undoubtedly true, the situation is not quite as clear-cut as Atkinson suggests. Although understandably partly constrained by space it is to be regretted that the Polity was not contrasted with a broader selection of Protestant writings than those of Luther and Calvin. Whilst Hooker has been carefully positioned in his ‘deep context’, amongst the leading early figures of the Reformation, there has been a wholesale neglect of his contemporaries, whose teachings were not necessarily synonymous with their founders.31 The limitation of the discussion to the tripartite grounds of authority also creates an overly monolithic view of what Reformation Protestantism consisted of. Most notably there is no mention of areas of definite disagreement amongst the Reformers, such as their clear Eucharistic differences. Yet if Atkinson’s thesis is somewhat overdone it still remains that a good argument can be mounted for repositioning Hooker within ²⁷ Hooker, Lawes, 1. 302. 27–9 (IV. 9. 2); 1. 344. 4–14 (IV. 14. 7). ²⁸ Atkinson, Hooker, p. xx. ²⁹ Ibid., p. xxii; Hooker, Lawes, 1. 167. 23–9 (II. 6. 1). ³⁰ Atkinson, Hooker, 79; Hooker, Lawes, 1. 160. 2–9 (II. 5. 4); Avis, Anglicanism, 45. ³¹ P. O. G. White, Predestination, Policy, and Polemic: Conflict and Consensus in the English Church from the Reformation to the Civil War (Cambridge, 1992), 80–1.

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a broadly Calvinist Reformed tradition. This position is convincingly supported by more nuanced treatments, such as those by Torrance Kirby, Bryan Spinks, and Egil Grislis, of Hooker’s Reformed credentials.32 This is particularly apparent with regard to his views concerning predestination. Although Hooker’s violent Temple dispute with Travers, over the redemption of Catholics, has suggested major differences of opinion over salvation by Christ’s merits alone this potentially owes more to small differences of emphasis within common shared assumptions.33 Hooker, they suggest, still upheld the Calvinist belief that the total depravity of man’s will deprived the soul of any capacity to receive the righteousness of justification, which was very different from the Tridentine view that justifying righteousness was infused as a habit of the soul.34 His supposed sympathy towards the Catholics simply affirmed that God in His mercy saved many who lived, by force of circumstance, in ignorance of the true Gospel of justification by faith alone and sinned ignorantly. Such an approach was also shared, of course, with many other unquestioned Puritans, such as Oliver Carter, the Preacher of Manchester. Consequently it has been wisely commented of the Temple dispute that only because ‘Travers expected Hooker to be less than firmly anti-papist was he able to put the least anti-papist construction on Hooker’s sentence about the forefathers’.35 Undoubtedly it is right, therefore, to challenge the anachronistic view that Hooker’s opponents were necessarily the true heirs of the ³² E. Grislis, ‘The Assurance of Faith According to Richard Hooker’, in A. S. McGrade (ed.), Richard Hooker and the Construction of Christian Community (Tempe, 1997); W. J. Torrance Kirby, ‘Richard Hooker as an Apologist of the Magisterial Reformation in England’, in A. S. McGrade (ed.), Richard Hooker and the Construction of a Christian Community (Tempe, 1997); B. D. Spinks, Two Faces of Elizabethan Anglican Theology. Sacraments and Salvation in the Thoughts of William Perkins and Richard Hooker (London, 1999). ³³ P. Collinson, ‘Hooker and the Elizabethan Establishment’, in A . S. McGrade (ed.), Richard Hooker and the Construction of the Christian Community (Tempe, 1997), 160, 165; K. Fincham, The Early Stuart Church, 1603–1642 (London, 1993), 193; Tyacke, Anti-Calvinists, 58–9, 253. ³⁴ Torrance Kirby, ‘Richard Hooker as an Apologist’, 256. B. D. Spinks offers a useful analysis of the similarities between Hooker and the impeccably Reformed William Perkins in Spinks, Two Faces of Elizabethan Anglican Theology. ³⁵ Bauckham, ‘Hooker’, 45, 46–7; Bouwsma, ‘Hooker’, 52.

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Reformation. When Hooker talks about Puritans he is referring to the lineal descendants of those Protestants who had chosen exile during Mary’s reign, and had returned to England assuming that the revival of the Edwardian Church was but the first step towards a more thorough reform. The original magisterial reformers had certainly believed, as Hooker did, that there were only two necessary signs of the true visible Church, namely Word and Sacrament. This meant that it was perfectly acceptable for each national Church to order her outward structure in whatever way seemed most appropriate. Against this Bucer and Beza had enunciated the ‘un-Calvinist’ opinion that only a totally scriptural form of government was the acceptable mark of the visible Church. In England those sola scriptura Protestants who continued ‘to refuse to come to churche, as not lyking the surplas, ceremonies, and other services’ consequently became widely known as Puritans.36 This study uses the term Puritan, therefore, to refer to any groups that ‘were distinctive in their enthusiasm and zeal for the cause of true religion in a way in which they themselves (regarding themselves as a godly elite) and their hostile opponents (seeing them as overprecise hypocrites) could and did recognize’.37 Hooker could, therefore, criticize the Puritans whilst still recognizing, as he stated in Book IV, that the English Church was a Reformed one.38 Whilst Hooker may have accepted that the Established Church considered herself to be a Reformed body, however, other scholars have still been reluctant to accept the revisionist belief that the precise orientation of his own theology was in agreement with this. Peter Lake and Philip Secor have argued that Hooker still deserves to be considered an Anglican, not because he inherited this distinctive English tradition, but because he invented it.39 Hooker, Lake has ³⁶ C. Litzenberger, ‘Defining the Church of England: Religious Changes in the 1570s’, in C. Litzenberger and S. Wabuda (eds.), Belief and Practice in Reformation, England (Aldershot, 1998), 137, 140, 143. ³⁷ Milton, Catholic and Reformed, 8. ³⁸ Hooker, Lawes, 1. 333–6. 22–15 (IV. 13. 9–IV. 14. 1). ³⁹ P. Lake, Anglicans and Puritans? Presbyterianism and English Conformist Thought from Whitgift to Hooker (London, 1988), 173–82, 225–30; Lake, ‘Anglican Moment’, 99, 116; Secor, Richard Hooker, pp. xiii, xviii–xix, xxi. In addition see the following for claims that Hooker was disassociating the Church from Continental Protestantism. Collinson, ‘Hooker’, 151; Milton, Catholic and Reformed, 8, 48–9, 426–7; P. More and F. L. Cross (eds.), Anglicanism (London, 1962), p. xix; P. B. Secor, ‘In Search of Richard

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notably argued, was a leading player in an anti-Calvinist movement, which subsequently came to dominate the Church. In contrast to the stark Calvinist division between the godly and profane he adopted a unique view of the visible Church, which was based upon the outward profession of faith, as witnessed to by the sacraments and public worship.40 In a rhetorical flourish Secor describes how although others defined Anglicanism further ‘it was Hooker on whose shoulders they all stood; and most of them knew it’.41 Whilst such an ‘Anglican reading’ can be extracted from the Polity it can also be criticized for failing to give sufficient emphasis to Hooker’s background in Reformed theology, as located in his early works, and apparently maintained, if less vociferously, in the Polity.42 Nigel Voak, however, has recently reopened this debate through a detailed analysis of Hooker’s writings, taking the relationship between reason, will, and grace as the focus of his study. From this he concludes that Lake is closer to the truth than the likes of Atkinson and Kirby since, although the Polity appears to be Reformed, Hooker can be shown to be moving away from this consensus in several respects. Undoubtedly, unlike many other clerical careerists, Hooker was certainly prepared to step outside the mainstream. This independence is clearly illustrated by his surprising failure to support divine right episcopacy or monarchy, when most of his conformist colleagues had found it politic to do so.43 Voak emphasizes that a similar innovation is displayed by Hooker’s treatment of Reformed theology. The fact that this is not immediately obvious, Voak insists, is due to the Polity’s ‘most obscure’ discussion of these areas. Hooker was, no doubt, all too painfully aware of the harsh treatment dealt out by Archbishop Whitgift to the likes of William Barrett and Peter Baro, the Lady Margaret Professor of Divinity, when under cover of anti-Puritan attacks they had tried to provide a more spiritually dynamic account Hooker: Constructing a New Biography’, in A. S. McGrade (ed.), Richard Hooker and the Construction of Christian Community (Tempe, 1997), 24–7. ⁴⁰ P. Lake, ‘Lancelot Andrewes, John Buckeridge, and Avant-Garde Conformity’, in L. L. Peck (ed.), The Mental World of the Jacobean Court (Cambridge, 1991), 113–14. See also Fincham, Early Stuart Church, 206; Milton, Catholic and Reformed, 430, 451, 495. ⁴¹ Secor, Prophet of Anglicanism, p. xiii. ⁴² Atkinson, Hooker, 28–9, 41, 56; Torrance Kirby, Hooker, 3, 40. ⁴³ MacCulloch, ‘Hooker’s Reputation’, 6.

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of what the English Church stood for and, through obliqueness, sought to avoid a similar critical censure.44 Such theological coyness was by no means unique to Hooker since, throughout the 1590s and early Jacobean period Lancelot Andrewes also continued to veil publicly his newly acquired sacramental spirituality, for fear of public disgrace.45 Hooker’s careful balancing act was a ‘reflection of his appreciation that his overall position had to be finessed, rather than forced through the grind of high Elizabethan Protestant assumption and, in the process, sold, in different bases or grounds, to a variety of different constituencies, both clerical and lay’.46 Only through ‘extensive analysis’, Voak suggests, and ‘crosscomparison’ with leading sixteenth-century Reformed theologians, including Cartwright and Travers, is it possible to recover his views.47 Against this background Voak agrees, in a more qualified sense, with the old accepted view that Hooker was innovative in his appeal to scripture, tradition, and reason as the sources of ecclesiastical authority. ‘He gives reason a role quite alien from that to be found in Calvinist theology, placing it as a barrier or filter between the believer and the Holy Spirit.’ Scripture and what it revealed about Christ still remained primary for Hooker,48 but he opposed any notion that it was interpreted, or authenticated, by the direct inner witness of the Holy Spirit and gave this role to demonstrative reasoning and tradition, in that order, aided by grace.49 He was, as Rowan Williams puts it, a ‘comtemplative pragmatic’ who knew his final theological goal, but allowed room for a good deal of reticence as to how this ought to work itself out.50 Such an approach was totally opposed to Calvin’s belief that human reason, due to its innate corruption, was incapable of acting as a mediating force between the Word and the

⁴⁴ Lake, ‘Anglican Moment’, 97, 106, 110, 113; P. Lake and M. Questier, The Antichrist’s Lewd Hat. Protestants, Papists and Players in Post-Reformation England (London, 2002), 568. ⁴⁵ N. Tyacke, ‘Lancelot Andrewes and the Myth of Anglicanism’, in P. Lake and M. Questier (eds.), Conformity and Orthodoxy in the English Church c.1560–1660 (Woodbridge, 2000), 28. ⁴⁶ Lake, ‘Anglican Moment’, 117–18. ⁴⁷ Voak, Hooker, 12, 214. ⁴⁸ Hooker, Lawes, 1. 189. 11–22 (II. 8. 5). ⁴⁹ Hooker, Lawes, 1. 222. 22–8 (III. 8. 4); Voak, Hooker, 320. ⁵⁰ R. Williams, Anglican Identities (London, 2004), 26.

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believer, and that only the Spirit could offer the degree of certainty he looked for in the interpretation of scripture.51 Whilst Hooker makes it clear that the Spirit guaranteed for him the veracity of sound reasoning, within the Church, he clearly militates against the more explicit manifestations claimed by other Reformers.52 This approach finds clear public expression through his desire to downgrade the centrality of preaching. The classic Reformed view of preaching, stemming from Calvin, claimed that the Holy Spirit would only ordinarily ensure that scripture is efficacious for salvation when it was preached, as opposed to being read. Although Hooker’s own notorious failings in the pulpit may also have tempered his enthusiasm for preaching, his opposition primarily stems from a clear refusal to accept that the Holy Spirit would subvert the natural order, rendering one reasonable Church practice ineffectual, while favouring another.53 For him it ignored the fact that the collective probable reasoning of the Church had also recognized the importance of sacramental worship and liturgical prayer.54 The difference of the Polity’s theological outlook concerning reason, Voak argues, ensured that Hooker’s comprehension of the key sixteenth-century theological question of the relationship between free will and the nature of grace also distanced him from Reformed norms. Hooker’s treatment of it, within the Polity, is far from systematic, but Voak convincingly demonstrates that he was more liberal than many of his contemporaries. Hooker shows this through his limited references to the fall and by his acceptance of the reality of ‘natural grace’ outside full Christian commitment.55 Although, at the same time, Hooker affirmed the Reformed belief in the absolute depravity of humanity, without divine aid, he still made justification an action that must be congruously merited through man cooperating freely with grace, and something that can be lost through mental sin and then subsequently regained.56 Undoubtedly Voak ⁵¹ Voak, Hooker, 228, 229–32, 238, 241 ⁵² Ibid. 224. ⁵³ MacCulloch, ‘Hooker’, 780; Voak, Hooker, 239–40. For Hooker’s apparent lack of interest in the sermon also see Lake, ‘Avant-Garde Conformiy at the Court of James I’, 114, 115–16, 123–6; P. E. McCullough, Sermons at Court. Politics and Religion in Elizabethan and Jacobean Preaching (Cambridge, 1998), 159–60, 164. ⁵⁴ Hooker, Lawes, 3. 303–5. 22–09 (V. 65. 5); Lake, ‘Anglican Moment’, 100–3. ⁵⁵ Voak, Hooker, 148. ⁵⁶ P. Lake, Anglicans and Puritans?, 145–97.

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is correct to assert that such a belief, in the need for human cooperation, clearly has a great deal in common with Arminius’s unCalvinist assertion that human freedom is incompatible with divine determinism.57 Whether Lake is correct, however, in his suggestion that Hooker went as far as accepting that election occurred on the basis of foreseen merits remains debatable.58 Nevertheless it is certainly true that many of Hooker’s contemporaries were concerned by his perceived radicalism, in the Reformed England of the 1590s. The criticisms of the writers of the Christian Letter, a critical Reformed response to the Polity, have not always been taken seriously on account of the numerous errors of interpretation within their response. Some were clearly deliberately disingenuous, and others simply mistaken, due to their ignorance of scholastic theology, but, following Voak’s careful analysis, it is clear that not all their accusations were wide of the mark.59 Hooker was no Pelagian, as they suggested, but there appears to be much truth in their view that his positive view of man’s nature was moving markedly away from a Reformed tradition.60 Even the Dublin Fragments,61 Hooker’s supposedly unambiguously Reformed response to criticisms, can be argued to be an evasive attempt, based upon subtle distinctions, to make himself sound more Reformed than he was with a strong emphasis upon the subject of grace.62 The fact that Hooker’s innovative qualities have not been widely recognized is because he was at pains to set his theology of grace within the traditional soteriological framework he had been brought up in; one which made him appear to be in substantive agreement with Calvin.63 Furthermore Hooker was able to disguise his fundamental modifications to this theory of grace by only criticizing those ⁵⁷ Voak, Hooker, 59. ⁵⁸ Ibid. 5. ⁵⁹ V. Mahon, ‘The “Christian Letter”: Some Puritan Objections to Hooker’s Work; and Hooker’s “Undressed Comments” ’, Review of English Studies, 25 (1974), 306. Voak, Hooker, 316. ⁶⁰ P. Lake, ‘Business as Usual? The Immediate Reception of Hooker’s Ecclesiastical Polity’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 52/3 (2001), 462; Voak, Hooker, 160, 213, 272. ⁶¹ For Atkinson and Kirby, Hooker’s unfinished response to allegations of heresy regarding the path of Reformed orthodoxy, the so-called Dublin Fragments, convincingly demonstrate that Hooker, whatever the ambiguities of the Polity, was firmly in the Protestant mainstream. Atkinson, Hooker, 28; W. J. Torrance Kirby, Richard Hooker’s Doctrine of the Royal Supremacy (Leiden, 1990), 34. ⁶² Voak, Hooker, 266–7, 275, 303, 309. ⁶³ Ibid. 217.

Introduction

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aspects of Reformed theology, which were also common to the Presbyterians and Puritans he was officially opposing.64 Lake describes how ‘Hooker’s whole project represented a sort of sleight of hand whereby what amounted to a full-scale attack on Calvinist piety was passed off as a simple exercise in anti-puritanism’.65 If Hooker had lived longer it is possible that this might have been more apparent. Unfortunately he died at the age of forty-six with three books of the Polity still waiting to be published, along with his unfinished response to the Christian Letter. He was dead before the Hampton Court Conference of 1604 and long before the Caroline monarchy created an environment where he could have more safely expressed dissent.66 Consequently, given Hooker’s own deliberate ambiguity, it is not difficult to see why it has been so difficult to reconstruct his approach. Even now it is potentially perplexing to know exactly where to place Hooker satisfactorily. Although undoubtedly discreetly anti-Calvinist even Lake has now modified his earlier position to accept that Hooker’s thought also remained ‘in some sense “Reformed” ’.67 MacCulloch rightly notes that Hooker started a ‘considerable variety of hares’ in his ‘indefatigable quest in his subject’.68 Indeed such was the variety and apparent paradox of Hooker that his Polity was to become a protean source for a wide variety of future commentators. It is these later commentators, of course, as has already been recognized, who are primarily responsible for the creation of Hooker’s theological identity. They approached the Polity, guided by their own preconceptions, and created the popular, unambiguous, if somewhat one-sided, view of Hooker as an advocate for a distinctive form of Anglicanism. The critics of this anachronistic approach suggest that the guiltiest parties of all are the Anglican hagiographers of the Oxford Movement.69 Keble and Newman are held to be primarily responsible for developing the myth that Hooker’s distinctive Anglican theology was the basis upon which the next generation of English divines were able to build, and maintain that the Church ⁶⁴ Ibid. 159 ⁶⁵ Lake, Anglicans and Puritans, 239. ⁶⁶ Voak, Hooker, 322. ⁶⁷ Lake, ‘Business as Usual?’, 469, 484–5. ⁶⁸ MacCulloch, ‘Hooker’s Reputation’, 6. ⁶⁹ Torrance Kirby, Hooker, 36.

14

Introduction

was a separate state, which remained distinct from either Rome or Geneva.70 Undoubtedly Keble’s distinguished edition was partly motivated by his desire to provide a correct understanding of Hooker. In his preface he hints at the need to respond to Benjamin Hanbury’s recent, but somewhat partisan edition of the Polity. Hanbury recognized that Hooker was a literary giant, but, as a nonconformist by birth and education, was not necessarily the most sympathetic of commentators. His unease with Hooker’s refusal to accept scripture as the all-sufficient rule meant that he recognized the Laws as being like a ‘magnificent Building’, but one constructed upon foundations of rubble which meant that it would inevitably become a ‘splendid ruin’.71 Such an opinion was anathema to Keble’s vision of the Church, of course, and in his editorial preface he memorably describes how to Hooker, and his successors, ‘we owe it, that the Anglican Church continues at such a distance from that of Geneva, and so near truth and apostolical order’.72 It is also clear, however, that Keble was perplexed by the un-Catholic views of the three posthumous books and sought to explain them away.73 Keble insisted that both the Erastianism of the court and Hooker’s desire not to offend his non-episcopal Continental brethren encouraged him to moderate the way his views were stated. Hooker, he argued, lacked that full evidence of episcopal origins ‘with which later generations have been favoured’ since St Ignatius was still ‘under a cloud of doubt’.74 Nevertheless since Hadrian Saravia, that zealous Dutch proponent of episcopacy, was in close contact with Hooker we may use ‘the recorded opinions of the one for interpreting what might seem otherwise ambiguous in the other’.75 ⁷⁰ Atkinson, Hooker, pp. x, xii, xiv–xvii, xix; Torrance Kirby, Hooker, 37. ⁷¹ R. Hooker, The Ecclesiastical Polity and other Works of Richard Hooker: With his Life by Izaak Walton and Strype’s Interpolations, ed. B. Hanbury (London, 1830), vol. 1, pp. xi, xxii, xxxviii, clxxiii. ⁷² R. Hooker, The Workes of the Learned and Judicious Divine MR Richard Hooker: With an Account of His Life and Death by Isaac Walton, ed. J. Keble (Oxford, 1836), p. civ. ⁷³ P. B. Nockles, ‘Survivals or New Arrivals? The Oxford Movement and NineteenthCentury Historical Construction of Anglicanism’, in S. Platten (ed.), Anglicanism and the Western Christian Tradition (Norwich, 2003), 151–2. ⁷⁴ Hooker, Lawes, ed. J. Keble, pp. lix–lxii. ⁷⁵ Ibid., p. lxvii.

Introduction

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The belief that the Oxford Movement distorted Hooker is further supported by the fact that Tractarian contemporaries also criticized them for misrepresenting the Polity. As early as 1836 a Low Church opponent argued that the Oxford group had ‘secretly discovered Hooker’s doctrines [on Church and State] to be dangerous, though it is willing to shelter under his name still’. The younger Christopher Wordsworth similarly echoed this concern, when he appealed to Hooker’s belief in the single organically unified entity of Church and State, against the Tractarian notion that they were two distinct societies only accidentally brought into a condition of union.76 In spite of these anxieties, however, it was the Tractarian approach which effectively defined Hooker’s reputation as the epitomization of the Anglican tradition. Such was the growth of pious acclaim amongst Victorian devotees of the established faith that a statue of Hooker was erected in the cathedral close at Exeter, and he was depicted as an Anglican worthy in numerous churches and chapels.77 Keble’s edition of the Polity also continued to be in wide demand since it had run through six issues before being revised by R. W. Church and F. Paget in 1888.78 At the end of the century Paget, the Oxford Regius Professor of Pastoral Theology, commented in a further consideration of Book V that ‘but for the change which Mr. Keble’s learning and diligence have made in the conditions under which Hooker is studied, he could not have considered’ undertaking such a project.79 Keble’s legacy was similarly dominant throughout the twentieth century. With some exceptions there was a widespread continuation of the assumption that Hooker was a great systematic thinker, who provided an Anglican defence par excellence. Works by H. C. Porter, ⁷⁶ P. B. Nockles, The Oxford Movement in Context. Anglican High Churchmanship, 1760–1857 (Cambridge, 1994), 87. ⁷⁷ Good examples of English images of Hooker may be seen in Chester Cathedral; Kings College, London; Trinity College, Cambridge; Ridley Hall, Cambridge; and Winchester Cathedral. Overseas he is included in the parade of Anglican preachers carved around the nave pulpit of the Nation Cathedral, Washington, DC. A rare example of Hooker’s image being placed with Reformed divines can be seen at Harris Manchester College, Oxford. ⁷⁸ R. Hooker, The Works of that Learned and Judicious Divine Mr Richard Hooker with an Account of His Life and Death by Isaac Walton, ed. J. Keble, rev. R. W. Church and F. Paget (Oxford, 1888). ⁷⁹ F. Paget, An Introduction to the Fifth Book of Hooker’s Treatise of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity (Oxford, 1899), 259.

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Introduction

H. R. McAdoo, E. T. Davies, and J. S. Marshall all confidently assumed Hooker to be such an exponent.80 This comprehension is also marked within the most recent scholarly Folger edition of the Polity.81 Although W. Speed Hill, the general editor, suggested that Keble’s edition now seems ‘unduly narrow in the focus of its commentary and unduly pious in its retention of Walton’s Life as the gateway to the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity’ most of the editors continued to treat Hooker as the quintessential Anglican divine.82 In spite of his mild criticism of Keble, even Speed Hill used the preface to refer to Hooker as a major contributor to Anglican religious thought.83 He provided the definition of the ‘English church as neither Roman nor Genevan—at once historic and reformed—and thus distinctively “Anglican” ’.84 However, whilst the Oxford Movement and her successors may have popularized this view of Hooker, it is not the case that it originated with them. The Tractarians were always anxious to stress that they were merely recalling the Church to what she had always held. ‘For the Tractarians, the Caroline church, along with its individual nonjuring successors, represented the apogee of Anglicanism.’85 Therefore with regard to the supposed Anglican via media Newman sought hard to maintain that it could clearly be located in the seventeenth-century Church as ‘the religion of Andrewes, Laud, [and] Hammond’.86 ⁸⁰ E. T. Davies, The Political Ideas of Richard Hooker (London, 1946), 27, 98; Marshall, Hooker; passim; McAdoo, The Spirit of Anglicanism, pp. v, vi, 6–11, 26, 124, 143, 152, 182, 272, 309, 311, 319–20, 333; H. C. Porter, Reformation and Reaction in Tudor Cambridge (Cambridge, 1958), 333–4, 381–4. ⁸¹ W. Speed Hill (gen. ed.), Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity: bks. 1–4, ed. G. Edelen; bk. 5, ed. W. Speed Hill; bks. 6–8, ed. P. G. Stanwood (London, 1977/1981). The major significance of the Folger edition is discussed in B. Kaye, ‘Authority and the Shaping of Tradition: New Essays on Richard Hooker’, Journal of Religious History, 21/1, (1997), 4–5. ⁸² W. Speed-Hill, Studies in Richard Hooker. Essays Preliminary to an Edition of his Works (London, 1972), p. ix. ⁸³ Hooker, Lawes, 1, p. vi. ⁸⁴ W. Speed Hill, ‘Doctrine and Policy in Hooker’s Laws’, English Literary Renaissance, 2 (1972), 175. ⁸⁵ Nockles, ‘Survivals or New Arrivals?’, 153. ⁸⁶ S. Gilley, Newman and his Age (London, 1990), 151; J. H. Newman, Apologia Pro Vita Sua (London, 1946), 83.

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Although there is undoubtedly a strong link between the so-called Caroline divines and early Tractarians it is also vital to realize that any notion of an English via media is a rather evasive rhetorical concept.87 Newman, himself, was somewhat selective in his use of Hooker and rightly recognized that the via media was very much ‘a paper religion’ since it lacked an ‘original anywhere of which it was the representative’.88 Consequently the via media of the nineteenth century is unlikely to be exactly the same as that of an earlier period. The principle, if not the phrase via media, goes back to Archbishop Parker’s sixteenthcentury definition of a ‘golden mediocrity’ in discipline and doctrine in the Church of England between Rome and Geneva.89 Such a comment, of course, probably says more about his antiquarian religious desire to look, Janus-like, both backward and forward than to set the English Church apart from the Reformed Continent. When in July 1624 Richard Montague, the dean of Hereford, expressed his famous desire for a Church that would ‘stand in the gapp against Puritanisme and Popery, the Scilla and Charybdis of antient piety’, however, he undoubtedly was moving in the direction of a doctrinal difference between the Church of England and the Reformed churches.90 Yet this is still not the same as Newman’s comprehension of a via media. Although Montague’s ecclesiological approach has strong similarities he was not using the via media to resolve the same problem as Newman. Newman thought that modern Protestantism had departed further from the Catholic faith than the original Reformers had done, so that what was needed to redress this great drift from Catholicism was ‘a  ’.91 Hooker’s Polity, as this brief discussion of the much-vaunted ‘Anglican via media’ reinforces, has never inhabited a timeless ⁸⁷ For a discussion of the context of the Oxford Movement see Nockles, Oxford Movement. Somewhat unexpectedly the discussion of the articles of religion undertaken by Hooker, in the Dublin Fragments, and Newman, in Tract 90, both depend upon subtle distinctions concerning non-Christian grace. Voak, Hooker, 315. ⁸⁸ Nockles, ‘Survivals or New Arrivals?’, 173; Newman, Apologia, 83. ⁸⁹ Gilley, Newman, 131. ⁹⁰ J. Cosin, The Correspondence of John Cosin, D. D. Lord Bishop of Durham: Together with Other Papers Illustrative of his Life and Times, ed. G. Ornsby (Durham, 1869), 21; Milton, Catholic and Reformed, 408, 422, 428, 430–4, 447, 453, 475. ⁹¹ Gilley, Newman, 131.

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Introduction

continuum.92 As Quentin Skinner puts it, ‘to mount an argument is always to argue with someone’ and ‘to reason for or against a certain conclusion or course of action’.93 There is, in other words, a fundamental hermeneutical issue here, concerning the way the Polity has been used, and the various assumptions and biases which different readers have brought to it. Throughout the seventeenth century it will be seen that interpretations of the Polity visibly changed as new contexts endowed it with new meanings, so that by the end of the period Hooker had been used to elicit authoritative support for ‘the embryonic version of virtually every modern doctrine’.94 As a result, in the jargon of modern hermeneutics, the Polity can be viewed as an open-ended text, which initiated a perpetual chain of significations, rather than one, which conveyed some specific content.95 This consideration of the creation of Hooker’s posthumous reputation will examine various strands within the struggle for intellectual control of Hooker, and evaluate chronologically the influence of contemporary events upon interpretations of the Polity. Printed books are the primary source because of their availability to a wider audience. Whilst some manuscripts were clearly circulated they were only ever able to reach a limited section of society. In contrast the status of printed books, as works intended for general circulation, signals a clear usage along with a public determination to provide the definitive interpretation of the judicious divine.96 The study begins directly after Hooker’s death with a consideration of the initial lack of interest in the Polity. It will then investigate why the examination of Hooker by William Covell, then chaplain to Richard Bancroft, began the process of remoulding the Polity in ⁹² See the following for other contemporary accounts, which support this contention. Condren, ‘The Creation of Richard Hooker’s Public Authority’; Eccleshall, ‘Richard Hooker and the Peculiarities of the English’; Kaye, ‘Richard Hooker’, 3–5; MacCulloch, ‘Hooker’s Reputation’. ⁹³ Q. Skinner, ‘The Idea of Negative Liberty: Philosophical and Historical Perspectives’, in Philosophy in History. Essays on the Historiography of Philosophy (Cambridge, 1984), 201; and Liberty before Liberalism (Cambridge, 1998), 101–2. ⁹⁴ R. Eccleshall, Order and Reason in Politics. Theories of Absolute and Limited Monarchy in Early Modern England (Oxford, 1978), 2–3; A. C. Thistelton, New Horizons in Hermeneutics (London, 1992), 6, 35. ⁹⁵ Thistleton, New Horizons, 49. ⁹⁶ Condren, Classic Texts, 136; A. Moss, Printed Commonplace-Books and the Structuring of Renaissance Thought (Oxford, 1996), p. vii.

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support of a growing distaste, amongst some churchmen, for the style of the earlier English Reformation. The ‘ecumenical’ outlook of James I’s reign fostered this, but also led to an unexpected interest by English Roman Catholic propagandists. Consequently it will be shown how it was necessary to emphasize that Hooker was part of the Protestant mainstream and this led to tensions between this understanding of the Polity and the beginnings of a desire to see it as an expression of a distinctive English settlement. The latter group, it will be seen, came to enjoy ascendancy in the 1630s, but were heavily dependent upon royal support. When this crumbled the established Church fell with them, and something akin to a Reformed understanding of Hooker publicly reasserted itself. Only a small rump of churchmen remained loyal to the old religious settlement. In the face of outright hostility even the former moderates amongst them were forced to become more extreme and embrace what can arguably be described as an Anglican interpretation of Hooker. When the Restoration finally came this view was to emerge triumphant as the authentic opinion of the English Church. The Restoration’s role in the creation of an Anglican identity for Hooker will then be considered. It will be demonstrated how his recently established image as an Anglican Church father was perpetuated, and will consider the methods used to suppress rival interpretations. Particular attention will be paid to the discreet marginalizing of the last three books of the Polity, which contained ideas that were anathema to Restoration Anglicans. These chapters will seek to demonstrate the resilience of the Restoration settlement, but also to draw attention to some of its potential weaknesses. This will relate especially to the way the Church’s use of Hooker to promote the doctrine of passive obedience placed her in an impossible dilemma following the accession of James II. His reign effectively discredited the Restoration political understanding of Hooker. It also threatened Hooker’s guardianship of the English Church through the resurgence of Catholic exploitation of his religious vagaries. The long-term effects of James’s reign on the Polity will then be evaluated during the reign of William and Mary. James’s enforced abdication brought Hooker’s previously discounted doctrine of original compact back into favour, and more latitudinarian attitudes developed within the Church. The Restoration ideologies, however,

20

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will be shown to have been far from moribund. Several individuals were able to reconcile them to the change in status quo, but others merely bided their time until the accession of Queen Anne. Although Anne’s reign is outside the chronological span of the seventeenth century it is essential to include it in this study. The fact that it was at the start of a new century made little difference at the time, since the Tories treated the new reign as an opportunity to seek to put the political clock back. They were reasonably successful, although they became increasingly conscious that the imminent accession of the Hanoverians would result in their eventual sidelining. Through this chronological and thematic examination of the changing role of the Polity the centrality of the seventeenth century in the creation of Hooker as an icon of Anglicanism will be vindicated. The century broadly began with the assumption that Hooker was within an anti-Puritan moderate Reformed tradition and ended with the belief that he was a distinctive Anglican figurehead. Whilst the boundaries of this Anglican definition continue to expand and contract in response to particular situations, the notion of the Polity as a distinctive authoritative English text has remained remarkably constant ever since.

1 Hooker and the Jacobeans In view of Hooker’s modern reputation as the pre-eminent English theologian of the sixteenth century it has been claimed that one of the surprises confronting students of the seventeenth century is the relative scarcity of contemporary or near-contemporary references to him.1 This chapter will seek to explore the validity of this claim and to explain what effect such Jacobean reserve had for the Polity’s subsequent reputation. The response to the publication of the first part of Hooker’s Polity was somewhat muted. Although Hooker has subsequently been lauded for his contribution to a ‘golden era’ of English prose he was not popular with his own contemporary reading public.2 It has wisely been commented that they were ‘perhaps baffled by a work which grounded its assault on its opponents on axioms from Aristotle, Plato and the medieval scholastics, rather than getting straight down to satisfying direct insults’.3 Indeed Iob Throckmorton, the Puritan controversialist, marvelled at how ‘out of love with an unvenomed penne’ Hooker was and encouraged his more vociferous opponents to follow his example.4 ¹ J. N. Wall, ‘Jeremy Taylor and Richard Hooker’s Contemporary Reputation’, Seventeenth Century News, 35/4 (1977), 112. ² For a useful summary of Hooker’s influence on the English language, through such notable works as Samuel Johnson’s dictionary, see R. Hooker, The Ecclesiastical Polity and Other Works of Richard Hooker: With His Life by Izaak Walton, and Strype’s Interpolations, ed. B. Hanbury, 1 (London, 1830), pp. xi–xii. ³ D. MacCulloch, ‘Richard Hooker’s Reputation’, The English Historical Review, 117 (2002), 781. ⁴ I. Throckmorton, The Defence of Iob Throckmorton, Against the Slaunders of Maister Sutcliffe (London, 1594), pp. civ–cvi.

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Such commendable restraint, however, also ensured that the Polity’s arguments in defence of conformity made dull reading next to the calls for reform. One contemporary witness of the apparent public disinterest subsequently noted that ‘bookes of that Argument and on that parte were not saleable’.5 The brief favourable literary references made to Hooker by Thomas Rogers, a conformist incumbent in West Suffolk, or by Throckmorton were exceptional6 and most proponents of the religious establishment continued to turn to the likes of William Perkins, the distinguished Cambridge preacher, if they required a reliable exponent of Church of England teaching.7 If those groups, however, which should have been favourable to Hooker, failed to recognize his worth his opponents may have been swifter to recognize the power of his writings. In a suit brought by Hooker’s daughters against his publisher, Sandys, for proceeds that might be owing to them from the sale of their father’s works, the public allegation was made that forces hostile to Hooker had tampered with them. Edmund Parbo, a London lawyer from Staple’s Inn, testified, in 1614, that he had heard that Edward Nethersole, the new husband of Hooker’s widow, Roger Raven, a Canterbury schoolmaster, and a Mr Aldridge had gained possession of various of Hooker’s manuscripts and had burned them. Although opinion remains divided about the accuracy of this statement it does, at least, indicate an early climate of hostility where such a claim was plausible.8 Nevertheless in spite of all the subsequent arguments concerning the Polity it seems incredible that only one answer to Hooker’s magnum opus, the work entitled A Christian Letter, was published in his ⁵ C. H. Sisson, The Judicious Marriage of Mr. Hooker and the Birth of The Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity (Cambridge, 1940), 132, 134, 145, 149, 151, 156. ⁶ L. H. Carlson, Martin Marprelate, Gentleman: Master Job Throckmorton Laid Open in his Colors (San Marino Calif., 1981), 124; J. Craig, ‘The “Cambridge Boies”, Thomas Rogers and the “Brethren” in Bury St Edmunds’, in S. Wabuda and C. Litzenberger (eds.), Belief and Practice in Reformation England: A Tribute to Patrick Collinson (Aldershot, 1998), 174 n.; Throckmorton, The Defence of Iob Throckmorton, pp. ciii–cvi. ⁷ B. Spinks, Two Faces of Elizabethan Anglican Theology. Sacraments and Salvation in the Thoughts of William Perkins and Richard Hooker (London, 1999), 2–3. ⁸ A. S. McGrade, ‘Hooker, Richard (1554–1600)’, in H. G. G. Matthew and B. Harrison (eds.), Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, 27 (Oxford, 2004), 974; Sisson, Judicious Marriage, 83.

Hooker and the Jacobeans

23

lifetime.9 Yet this critical response was to mark the beginning of the struggle for the identity of Richard Hooker. Not surprisingly this response was anonymous, but circumstantial evidence suggests that Andrew Willet was the principal writer.10 This attack is an important landmark since although Willet was Calvinist in his theology, strongly anti-Roman Catholic and a proponent of further reform in the English Church, he was also a loyal conformist. He remained committed to episcopacy and enthusiastically endorsed Whitgift’s defence of the national Church against the Presbyterians.11 Willet’s loyalty, and that of his co-writers, comes across strongly in the preface to A Christian Letter. Here they strove to make it clear that they, not Hooker, were the true guardians of the central middle religious ground. They emphasized that they were not opponents of the Church, but ‘unfained favourers of the present state of religion’. Hooker, by contrast, although he pretended to be loyal, was guilty of crypto-popery as he directed his ‘dangerous pushes of the pikes, against the Ierusalem of God, the holy Christian church of England’.12 In particular the work criticizes Hooker on doctrinal grounds for undermining the Church through his mistaken comprehension of the relationship of reason to scripture, his weakening of the doctrine of predestination and his marginalization of preaching.13 Furthermore Hooker failed to treat Calvin with due reverence and had turned ‘that worthie pillar of the Church’ into a public spectacle.14 By his discussion of the Genevan system, purely on its merits, and not with the reverence due to a divinely revealed scheme, any talk of ‘Calvin acting wisely or correctly in the circumstances was . . . to damn with faint praise’.15 ⁹ [A. Willet] A Christian Letter of Certaine English Protestants, Unfained Favourers of the Present State of English Religione, Authorised and Professed in England: Unto that Reverend and Learned Man, Mr. R. Hoo . . . (Middelburg, 1599). ¹⁰ Hooker, Lawes, 4, pp. xiv–xxv. ¹¹ P. Lake, ‘Business as Usual? The Immediate Reception of Hooker’s Ecclesiastical Polity’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 52/3 (2001), 457–8. ¹² A. Milton, Catholic and Reformed. The Roman and Protestant Churches in English Protestant Thought, 1600–1640 (Cambridge, 1995), 17; Willet, Christian Letter, A2, 46. ¹³ Willet, Christian Letter, title-page, 7–17, 20–4, 31–3; See also N. Tyacke, AntiCalvinists. The Rise of English Arminianism c.1590–1640 (Oxford, 1990), 23. ¹⁴ Willet, Christian Letter, 37. ¹⁵ P. Avis, Anglicanism and the Christian Church (Edinburgh, 1989), 55.

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Such failings, Willet insisted, could not but tend to confirm that ‘under the shewe of inveighling against Puritanes, the chiefest pointes of popish blasphemie’ were being pursued; a belief further corroborated by Hooker’s softening of ‘the odiousness’ of the ‘heresie’ of transubstantiation and his belief in a sacramental ministry.16 He was a ‘subtill enemie to the whole state of the Englishe Church’ by his implicit suggestion that the Queen had done wrong to banish ‘the Popes authoritie’ and abolish the ‘Romish religion’.17 Finally, and perhaps most damming of all, Hooker was dismissed as a tedious polemicist; a point proved by Willet in a sentence of over two hundred words which seems to have been intended as a deliberate parody of Hooker’s style.18 Throughout the Jacobean period Willet continued to give voice to his anxieties, concerning Hooker’s Reformed credentials, through a highly popular ‘torrent of theological works’.19 Willet, in marked contrast to Hooker, was a best-seller whose works served to mould the public opinion that he was not a sincere proponent of the Reformation.20 In spite of Hooker’s claims to represent true conformity Willet claimed that his subtle secrecy meant that he was no longer a ¹⁶ Willet, Christian Letter, 4, 24–5, 33–5. ¹⁷ Ibid. 43. ¹⁸ ‘And that your Prefaces and discourses before you come to the question are so longe & mingled with all kinde of matters and sutes of learning and doctrine: whether your meaning bee to shewe your selfe to bee some rare Demosthenes, or extraordinary Rabbi, or some great Pythagoras, that enioyne your scholars or your adversaries to five yeares silence, before they can be perfect in your meaning or able to replye: or that these men you write against, bee not sounde in matters of faith; and therefore you handle all thinges, or else you had no better way to make doubtfull the chief groundes of our faith and religion, and that you would have men better seene in Philosophie and schoolemens divnitie, and namelie in Aristotle: or that you were afearde, that if you had not handled it with so grave heroicall and loftie a maiestie, you should have been reputed like some other man, and so your fame should have bene but small: or that you should wearie your adversarie with such thicke and continuall fallinge strokes that hee should not bee able to stande before you to strike one blow against you, or that you would beare downe the cause with swelling wordes of vanitie, and cunningly framed sentences to blinde and intangle the simple; or that you would shew your selfe another Aristotle by a certaine metaphisicall and crupticall method to bring men into a maze, that they should rather wonder at your learning, the (sic) be able to understand what you teach in your writinge’. (Willet, Christian Letter, 45). See also MacCulloch, ‘Hooker’s Reputation’, 782 and J. E. Booty (ed.), Richard Hooker and the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity. Attack and Response (London, 1982), 71–2, 232. ¹⁹ Milton, Catholic and Reformed, 13–16, 17, 20, 128. ²⁰ W. J. Torrance Kirby, ‘Richard Hooker as an Apologist of the Magisterial Reformation in England’, in A. S. McGrade (ed.), Richard Hooker and the Construction of

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25

loyal son of the Reformed religion and should be suppressed for he was guilty of setting ‘a foot some popish doctrines’ and ‘mingling the sweete lumpe of the gospel, with sowre leaven’ of his own.21 Hooker, Willet argued, unlike himself and other moderate conformist Puritans, was no longer teaching the same scriptural faith, as taught by the Edwardian Reformers and currently maintained by Archbishop Whitgift. Clearly Willet hoped that he could turn Whitgift, then Hooker’s patron, into his opponent. No doubt he hoped to secure for Hooker the public disgrace, which, presided over by Whitgift, had already befallen Barrett and Baro for their criticisms of predestinarian doctrine and led to the drawing up of the Lambeth Articles; a semiofficial guide, which was designed to prevent any further such teaching or challenges to the received doctrinal integrity of the Church. It was true that the late intervention of the queen had prevented them from obtaining an official status, but it had been a close enough to make a second attempt, via an attack on Hooker, a realistic possibility.22 Undoubtedly Hooker was all too aware of the potentially unpleasant problems A Christian Letter might create for him. His own annotated copy of the Letter indicates his furious desire to respond to it, but his death in November 1600 ensured that his answer was never concluded.23 Whilst the death of Hooker meant that he was no longer able to defend himself it did mean that others could take up the posthumous mantle for him. Ironically it was it only through death that Hooker was to be transformed into the iconic authority of the English Church that he had failed to be in his lifetime. The process began in 1603 with William Covell’s attempt to answer A Christian Letter.24 This defence Christian Community (Tempe, Medieval Renaissance Texts and Studies, 1997), 219– 20. ²¹ A. Willet, An Antilogie or Counterplea to an Apologeticall Epistle (London, 1603), Preface to King James and Ecclesia Triumphans: That is, the Ioy of the English Church, for the Happie Coronation of the Most Vertuous and Pious Prince (London, 1603), 35–6, 90–3. ²² Lake, ‘Business as Usual?’, 460–1. ²³ P. Collinson, ‘Hooker and the Elizabethan Establishment’, in A. S. McGrade (ed.), Richard Hooker and the Construction of Christian Community (Tempe, Medieval Renaissance Texts and Studies, 1997), 171. ²⁴ W. Covell, A Iust and Temperate Defence of the Five Books of Ecclesiastical Policie: Written by M. Richard Hooker (London, 1603).

26

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was timely due to the expectations that James I’s accession would lead to a further Reformation. Willet, in a veiled attack on Hooker, advised the new regime that ‘the peace of our church hath been hindred by the opposition of strange and newe doctrines’ so he hoped and expected that our new ‘David will restore the peace of the church and bring us to one uniforme doctrine’. James, he hoped, would be like a second Hezekiah and refuse to listen to the false pleas that ‘the Church ayled nothing’.25 Whilst Covell claimed to be writing to ‘informe ignorance’ he was equally careful to be seen to be acting as a mouthpiece for the established ecclesiastical powers.26 He included a preface stressing his need to fulfil his ‘service’ to the archbishop and claimed to have been ‘published by authority’ on account of the fact he was chaplain to Richard Bancroft, the Bishop of London.27 Furthermore he could claim to have been licensed for publication by John Buckeridge, chaplain to Archbishop Whitgift. This combination of author and licenser was to be ‘a significant one’ for Hooker’s future reputation.28 Buckeridge provides a prime example of a new element within the Church that wished to stress the edifying value of ceremonialist practice, the importance of her clerical and sacramental credentials, and consequently to distance her from the style of the earlier English Reformation. Traditionally Buckeridge and the other ceremonialist conformists of his generation would have been described, as Laudian. This is a deeply anachronistic claim, however, when you consider that Buckeridge was a great deal older than Laud and that he had served as his tutor. It makes better sense to assume that he influenced Laud than to imply that he formulated his ideas in the shadow of the younger man. Neither is the term ‘High Church’ really satisfactory since it enjoys considerable fluidity of meaning. The most helpful description, used by Peter Lake and Anthony Milton, is avant-garde conformist. It enjoys the considerable merit of being able to distinguish the likes of Buckeridge from more

²⁵ Willet, Antilogie, Preface to King James; Willet, Ecclesia Triumphans, Preface to the Reader, 35, 90–1. ²⁶ Covell, Defence, 3. ²⁷ Ibid., A3, 9, 3, 137; Lake, ‘Business as Usual?’, 463. ²⁸ MacCulloch, ‘Hooker’s Reputation’, 785.

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conservative conformists, who had not so decisively parted with the Reformed mainstream of the Continent.29 Although Covell’s work was always careful to stress Hooker’s ‘temperate’ moderation and his desire to ‘pursue peace and harmony’ his attacks upon A Christian Letter meant that he was also appropriating him as part of the avant-garde conformist armoury. 30 The fact that Covell’s work is very much indebted to his remodelling of the Polity, largely by means of unacknowledged quotation, interspersed by his own prose, has previously led the likes of Vincent Mahon and John Booty to believe that he adds nothing of substance to our understanding of Hooker. In fact his reworking, as Peter Lake has convincingly pointed out, has gone further since it has sharpened every one of the positions that Willet had attacked in Hooker.31 Regarding the highly sensitive question of the salvation of Catholics, for example, Covell was a great deal more explicit than Hooker had been by turning away from the notion that Rome was totally dominated by Antichrist to the unparalleled belief that it was ‘a limb of the visible house of God’, albeit a flawed one. ‘Yet for all that, we affirme them to be part of the church of Christ and those that live and die in that church may notwithstanding be saved.’32 Furthermore Covell suggested that all who denied Rome to be a true Church were Puritans. They were guilty of exaggerating Rome’s errors and espousing many of the repugnant errors that Catholics erroneously assumed to be representative of the English Church.33 The obstinacy of Puritans, ‘whose remedies were worse than the disease itselfe’ was responsible for the fact that the Catholics remained separated. They ensured that any attempt at reconciliation was denounced as a move ‘to betray the cause’ and any suggestion, as Hooker found to his cost, that they should question their position was condemned as cryptopopery.34 As Professor MacCulloch rightly comments this is ‘an early instance of the rhetorical strategy whereby those who criticized ²⁹ Ibid.; Milton, Catholic and Reformed, 8–9. ³⁰ Covell, Defence, 154; Lake, ‘Business as Usual?’, 463. ³¹ Lake, ‘Business as Usual?’, 464; N. Voak, Richard Hooker and Reformed Theology. A Study of Reason, Will, and Grace (Oxford, 2003), 110. ³² Covell, Defence, 74, 76–7; Milton, Catholic and Reformed, 163, 240. ³³ Covell, Defence, 42. ³⁴ Ibid. 7, 39–40.

28

Hooker and the Jacobeans

Hooker might be labelled Puritans, and could thus be written off as having nothing to do with the Church of England’.35 Whilst they pretended to be supporting the bishops against the innovations of Hooker, Covell insisted, their ultimate desire was ‘proudly and maliciously to contemne both’.36 Doctrinal and polemical assumptions, along with positions from which a good deal of the existing justifications of the English Church had been written, and would continue to be written, were being recast as not only mistaken, but as erroneously Puritan. This approach is particularly apparent in Covell’s assertive reminder that Hooker had been opposed to the prominence given to preaching. Covell accepted that preaching was a sign of the Christian faith, but the Puritan propensity to equate their own sermons with the word of God was totally mistaken. Hooker, Covell insisted, had recognized that it was better to hear the Bible read; ‘the word, that proceedeth from God (who is himselfe very truth and life) should be . . . lively and mighty in operation, sharper than any two edged sword.’37 Neither was Covell prepared to allow any erroneous notion that Hooker had believed preaching to be an exclusive function of the ordained ministry. It might be ‘an act of lesse honor, and profit’; but there was no denying that the laity meeting in private conference could still ‘exhort and instruct out of holy Scripture’.38 If the clergy were not vital to the preaching ministry then this clearly begged the question of why Hooker believed them to be necessary at all. The Christian Letter believed that he was trying to mark them off through their sacramental function at the Eucharist.39 Such an allegation of a sacerdotalist and sacrificial approach to the ministry was a clear accusation of crypto-popery and could have been immensely damaging to Hooker’s Reformed veneer. It is all the more remarkable, therefore, that Covell, admittedly somewhat guardedly, accepted the validity of this claim. Lake points out that although he initially tried to maintain a balance between the ministries of word and sacrament his acceptance, following Hooker’s own writings, that preaching had been undertaken by the ³⁵ MacCulloch, ‘Hooker’s Reputation’, 785. ³⁶ Covell, Defence, 6. ³⁷ Ibid. 79–80; Hooker, Lawes, 2. 98–9. 32–09 (V. 22. 10). ³⁸ Covell, Defence, 78–9. ³⁹ Christian Letter, 37.

Hooker and the Jacobeans

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non-ordained, forced him to emphasize the latter as the only way to preserve a distinctive role for the clergy. ‘The character of Order is an active power, as the Schoolemen speake, which giveth an abilitie publikely to administer the sacramets [sic] unto those, who the church hath esteemed fit.’ Since Hooker, as cited elsewhere by Covell, had accepted that baptism at the hands of women was valid then this sacramental exclusivism could only refer to the Eucharistic celebration.40 Covell was undoubtedly anxious to use Hooker’s emphasis upon the sacraments, as another way, to distance perceived Puritanism from the mainstream position. Citing Hooker he complained how they regarded them as ‘bare resemblances, or memorials of things absent’, ‘naked signes, and testimonies assuring us of grace received before’.41 Whilst the word was clearly important the Puritans had failed to realize, unlike Hooker, that the Church ‘hath nothing left unto it, either more powerful, or more reverently to be esteemed then the holy Sacraments’.42 Such an enthusiasm for the sacraments, Covell stressed, did not imply ‘that the Sacraments, worke of themselves, by a vertue resigned unto them without God’ directly acting; even the Romans, when correctly understood, did not believe this.43 But it did mean, Covell insisted, that Hooker, like the Roman Church, had recognized that there was a real presence in the Eucharistic elements, where ‘Christ presenteth himself ’, although there was no agreement about the way this presence should be conceived.44 Nevertheless this did not change the fact, according to Hooker, that at baptism we were first drawn sacramentally to God and then the process was completed through the sanctifying power of the Eucharistic sacrament.45 Covell, in an unacknowledged quotation from the Polity, reminded his readers that ‘these mysteries doe, as nailes, fasten us to his Crosse, that by them we draw out (as touching efficacy, force, and vertue) even the blood of his wounded side; that this breade hath more in it, then our eies behold; that this cup hallowed with solemn benediction, . . . serveth, as well for medicine to heale our infirmities and purge our sins, as for ⁴⁰ ⁴¹ ⁴² ⁴⁵

Covell, Defence, 86, 90, 91. Lake, ‘Business as Usual?’, 471–2. Covell, Defence, 97; Hooker, Lawes, 2. 247. 17–19 (V. 57. 5). Covell, Defence, 113. ⁴³ Ibid. 97. ⁴⁴ Ibid. 116–7. Lake, ‘Business as Usual?’ 472–3.

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Hooker and the Jacobeans

a sacrifice of thanksgiving, which touching it sanctifieth; it inlightneth with beleefe; it truly conformeth us unto the Image of Iesus Christ’.46 This sacrament-centred vision of true faith was contrasted favourably by Covell with what he denounced as the predestinarian dominated position of Hooker’s Puritan opponents. Christians must not, admonished Covell, rely ‘wholy upon the bare conceit of that eternall which notwithstanding includeth a subordination of meanes, without which we are not actually brought to injoy what God secretly did intend’.47 Lake makes the crucial point, however, that in spite of appearances to the contrary Covell is clearly not setting a sacramental grace up in opposition to the grace of election. Covell’s agreement with Hooker’s belief that it was potentially possible to be saved without baptism, on account of the ‘bottomles mercie of a most loving father’, demonstrates his clear acceptance that God could bestow grace by whatever means He saw fit.48 His real objection to the Puritan obsession with grace by election, and it is worth remembering that many Puritans also had a highly exalted view of sacramental grace,49 concerned the lack of reverence it possessed in comparison to a sacramentally based piety.50 When Covell’s actual theory of predestination is examined it is clear that this area was exceptional in his treatment of Hooker. It was the only one where he was not prepared to go on the offensive and develop the judicious divine’s ideas further.51 No doubt his recollections of the disgrace suffered by Barrett still loomed large in his consciousness and he was personally anxious to avoid a similar fate. Whilst still anxious to defend Hooker’s use of non-saving reason against the criticisms of the Christian Letter, he was also careful to be seen to consider how grace aids human action.52 Such an approach, however, was far from straightforward. Given Hooker’s own evasiveness on the subject Covell was forced, somewhat uncomfortably, to abandon his preferred approach of simply paraphrasing the Polity and to construct his own explanation of the different types ⁴⁶ Covell, Defence, 120; Hooker, Lawes, 2. 343. 7–21 ( V. 67.12). ⁴⁷ Covell, Defence, 108–9; Hooker, Lawes, 2. 255. 14–256.9 (V. 60. 3). ⁴⁸ Covell, Defence, 109. ⁴⁹ A. Hunt, ‘The Lord’s Supper in Early Modern England’, Past and Present, 61 (1998), 39–83, ⁵⁰ Lake, ‘Business as Usual?’ 476. ⁵¹ Ibid. 476. ⁵² Voak, Hooker, 111.

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of human action and their attendant graces.53 The only passages from Hooker he refers to are those explicitly cited by the Christian Letter. In his personal anxiety to appear Reformed Covell often makes Hooker often sound more mainstream than he was. When considering Article 13 he actually conflates works not ‘acceptable’ to God with sinful works, in a manner similar to the Christian Letter. With a heavy touch of irony Voak comments that ‘this is an excellent early example of a Reformed interpretation of Hooker’s theory of human nature, with parallels in the present-day work of Kirby and Atkinson. It succeeds, though, by overlooking key elements of Hooker’s thought.’54 Undoubtedly Covell can appear to be somewhat confused in his treatment of Hooker’s understanding of grace, with its distinction between a general divine will to save all and a more particular one to rescue only the elect.55 He makes all sorts of distinctions between the different wills and then, as Lake puts it, ‘appears to repudiate it all with a reiteration of the inherent unity and immutability of the divine will and essence’.56 His attempts to extricate himself end not so much with an argument, but with the firmly orthodox assertion that ‘I doubt not to affirme . . . that the predestination of God, is eternall, not conditional; immutable; not for works foreseen, and that those, which God hath determined (though his predestination doe not take away second causes) certainly must come to pass’.57 Covell’s treatment of Hooker concerning predestination, however, remains exceptional. It in no way negates his general move towards the appropriation of Hooker in support of the avant-garde conformist case. By associating himself with Hooker’s own claim to be the true representative of the English Church, against the Puritans, he was able to appear to be occupying the same ground. This strategy seems to have enjoyed a moderate success. Only four years later Thomas Rogers, another avant-garde conformist, cited the Polity’s preface in denunciation of Puritans58 and by the end of the next decade Ben Jonson, that hater of Puritans, could tell William ⁵³ Ibid. 112. ⁵⁴ Ibid. 314. ⁵⁵ Covell, Defence, 61–3. ⁵⁶ Ibid. 62–3; Lake, ‘Business as Usual?’ 479. ⁵⁷ Covell, Defence, 63. ⁵⁸ T. Rogers, The Catholic Doctrine of the Church of England, an Exposition of the Thirty-Nine Articles, ed. J. J. S. Perowne (Cambridge, 1854), 359.

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Hooker and the Jacobeans

Drummond that the Polity was authoritative ‘for church matters’ in England.59 Even more remarkably Jonson actually drew heavily upon the preface of the Polity for his satirical presentation of religious dissent in his anti-Puritan plays, The Alchemist and Bartholomew Fair.60 This evolution of the Church towards a new theological definition of Puritanism was further assisted by the foreign policy of James I. Hooker’s supposed conciliatory attitude towards Catholics clearly loaned itself to a royal policy of both national and international ecumenism. Since James was even prepared to suggest that the Pope could be the patriarch of a united Church an author who provided a ‘sustained rhetoric of moderation on this subject was liable to find his stock suddenly rising’.61 William Laud, who was far from being one of James’s favoured churchmen, certainly felt able to cite Hooker freely at the famous three-day May conference of 1622 between John Fisher, the Jesuit, and other leading English divines. In the presence of several of James’s favourites and other courtiers he used the Polity to provide a convincing demonstration of Rome’s right to be considered a true Church, although defective, through her possession of the same scriptures and the two Gospel sacraments.62 As a way to overcome these defective differences W. B. Patterson convincingly argues that it is more than coincidence that so many writers in the decade after Hooker’s death took up his conciliar theme.63 In the first book of the Polity he had argued that if nations had developed laws to regulate peace and commerce amongst themselves then the same was possible on religious matters. Christian nations, he contended, needed to promote communion within the framework of the religion they had in common. ‘And in this kinde of ⁵⁹ Conversations of Ben Jonson with William Drummond of Hawthornden, ed. P. Sidney (London, 1906), 20. ⁶⁰ P. Lake and M. Questier, The Antichrist’s Lewd Hat. Protestants, Papists and Players in Post-Reformation England (London, 2002), 606. ⁶¹ MacCulloch, ‘Hooker’s Reputation’, 786; W. B. Patterson, King James VI and I and the Reunion of Christendom (Cambridge, 1997). ⁶² W. Laud, An Answere to Mr Fishers Relation of a Third Conference betweene a Certaine B. (as He Stiles Him) and Himselfe, ed. R. Baily (London, 1624), 38; Patterson, James VI, 343. ⁶³ Patterson, James VI, p. ix, 63, 240 n., 362.

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correspondence amongst nations’, he wrote, ‘the force of generall councels doth stand.’64 This approach, for instance is clearly present in the writings of Edwin Sandys, Hooker’s former student. His Relation of the State of Religion stressed that his greatest desire was to see the reconciliation of Christendom. Reconciliation, Sandys believed, could be achieved ‘by some general Councel assembled and composed indifferently out of both sides; mens minds being before-hand prepared and directed to this issue and conclusion’.65 Covell also used his defence of Hooker to stress the importance of the council as a way of restoring purity to the Church.66 This desire to use Hooker to promote religious conciliation, however, also had the unintended side-effect of promoting the Polity as a useful text for Catholic propagandists to draw upon. Without a great deal of difficulty Hooker’s attacks upon the sola scriptura attitudes of the Puritans could be portrayed as logically leading to the conclusion that the tradition and authority of the Church was also needed to maintain truth. He offered an apparent admission, in spite of being a Roman opponent, of the validity of the Catholic position.67 It was little wonder, therefore, that Sylvester Norris, a Jesuit who had been implicated in the Gunpowder Plot, favourably recalled ‘this learned Protestant (whose calamity is the more to be deplored, in that retaining divers Catholike grounds, he forbare to build a fayth answerable therto)’ who had admitted that it was impossible for scripture itself to determine the canon.68 An apparent admission, by a Roman opponent, of the rightness of the Catholic stance clearly made the Polity an important propaganda source. Consequently there was a desire amongst Catholic polemicists to promote Hooker as an authoritative voice of the English Church ⁶⁴ Hooker, Lawes, 1. 109. 5–7 (I. 10. 14). ⁶⁵ W. B. Patterson, ‘Hooker on Ecumenical Relations: Conciliarism in the English Reformation’, in A. S. McGrade (ed.), Richard Hooker and the Construction of Christian Community (Tempe: Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 1997), (283–303); Patterson, James VI, 64; E. Sandys, Europae Speculum; Or a View or Survey of the state of Religion in the Western Parts of the World (London, 1673), 213. ⁶⁶ Covell, Defence, 77. ⁶⁷ For a contemporary statement of this approach see R. Fox, ‘Richard Hooker and the Incoherence of “Ecclesiastical Polity” ’, Heythrop Journal, 44/1 (2003), 43–59. ⁶⁸ S. Norris, The Pseudo-Scripturist (St Omer, 1623), F3v.

34

Hooker and the Jacobeans

and to place him in the mainstream of Reformation theology. An obvious early public example of this is offered in the Parliament of 1604 when John Good, a crypto-papist MP, cited the Polity as the ‘absolute and unanswerable works of reverend Mr. Hooker’ in his denunciation of Puritans as Protestant sectaries.69 This approach was also promoted in print by a pseudonymous Catholic writing under the name John Brerely. Brerely’s Protestant Apology for the Roman Church, as the title suggests, was exclusively based upon the deployment of non-Catholic writings in support of the Roman Church. Both Hooker and Covell are treated as representative of the Church of England. Both of them had recognized, Brerely insisted, that scripture could not authenticate itself without some external authority of tradition, which they acknowledged to be ‘the authoritie of Godes Church’. Only this could provide the ‘iudiciall and definitive sentence’ to decide the validity of scripture.70 The fact that Hooker had recognized the need for such a final judge, Brerely further argued, tended to vindicate the Catholic belief in the need for communion with the pope as a sign of that ‘Universall Ecclesiasticall government’.71 Hooker and Covell, he reminded his readers, had certainly been anxious to stress that ‘to reforme our selves, is not to sever our selves from the Church wee were of before’ and that Rome, in spite of its errors, was still a limb of the visible Church.72 By way of contrast, however, Hooker could be deeply critical of the failings of some of the Reformed Churches in Poland and Transylvania.73 Furthermore, Brerely emphasized, Hooker showed his sympathy with the Catholic faith through his emphasis upon the importance of the sacraments. The Polity maintained the importance of intention in their administration, an objective real presence in the Eucharist, independent of faith, and went beyond other Reformed writers by stressing that sacraments ‘do not only signify, but also conferre grace’.74 Similarly within the pages of the Polity, and Covell’s defence of it, Brerely located a recognition of the importance of works on ⁶⁹ Lake, ‘Business as Usual?’, 483. ⁷⁰ J. Brerely, The Protestants Apologie for the Roman Church (St Omer, 1608), 253–5, 620, 680, 700, 701–3 722. ⁷¹ Ibid. 157–8, 701. ⁷² Ibid. 169, 173, 470, 473 ⁷³ Ibid. 342, 424. ⁷⁴ Ibid. 137, 684–5, 695.

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account of Hooker’s appreciation of the importance of fasting, charity, voluntary poverty, and even chastity.75 Such was the ingenuity of Brerely’s writings that they continued to provoke response and counter-response for another half-century and clearly influenced the Catholic polemical treatment of Hooker for the rest of the seventeenth-century. The more important and representative Hooker appeared, the easier it was to ease the English Church towards Rome and to lessen the grounds for legitimate separation. Such a Catholic treatment, it is important to realize, appeared to be vindicated by the tangible fruit that it bore. Most notably Elizabeth Lady Falkland, the authoress and translator, attributed her famous conversion to her reading of the Polity. She insisted that it had ‘left her hanging in the air; for having brought her so far (which she thought he did very reasonably) she saw not how, nor at what she could stop, till she returned to the Church from whence they were come’.76 Convinced opponents of Rome also offered contemporary examples of colleagues who had been seduced by Catholicism after reading Hooker. William Bedell, the Calvinist bishop of Kilmore insisted that his friend James Wadsworth, a Suffolk cleric, had only acquired his opposition to Calvinist doctrine on reading Hooker’s criticism of its discipline.77 For Calvinist conformists sympathetic to further reform of the Church of England such conversions clearly confirmed their worst fears concerning the crypto-popery of the Polity. The apparent thinness of Jacobean references to Hooker undoubtedly owes a great deal to the desire of this group to marginalize the Polity by ignoring it. Some individuals, like Bishop Bedell, were prepared to be unapologetically open about the fact that in his private library the writings of ‘Mr Hooker I have not’.78 Bedell’s library was not alone in excluding Hooker, since he was a widespread silent absentee from other libraries. For example Samuel Ward, the distinguished Puritan lecturer, did not purchase a copy of the Polity for the Ipswich Library he founded for the benefit of future borough lecturers. Whilst this quiet ⁷⁵ Ibid. 114, 115, 591, 689, 698. ⁷⁶ A. Cary, The Lady Falkland: Her Life in Elizabeth Cary, Lady Falkland. The Tragedy of Mariam the Fair Queen of Jewry with the Lady Falkland: By One of Her Daughters, ed. B. Weller and M. W. Ferguson (London, 1994), 190. ⁷⁷ Milton, Catholic and Reformed, 427. ⁷⁸ Spinks, Two Faces of Elizabethan Anglican Theology, 168.

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Hooker and the Jacobeans

omission of Hooker may simply indicate the fact that his works were already otherwise available it could, nevertheless, also reflect a more conscious Puritan desire to exclude him. The fact that the Ipswich Library acquired the complete works of the avowedly Protestant Jewel and possessed no writers with perceived Roman sympathies also leaves open the possibility of a policy of deliberate marginalization.79 No doubt the fact that Hooker was acquiring a reputation for being a Catholic sympathizer ensured that many other mainstream conformists, who wished to maintain the religious status quo, also felt it prudent to discount him. It is even possible that this was why Sandys postponed the printing of Book VI after Hooker’s death. His detailed critique of the manuscript, written with George Cranmer, is certainly deeply critical of certain overly-papist tendencies and at least one historian has suggested that his subsequent mislaying of it may have been deliberate.80 Nevertheless, notwithstanding these anxieties concerning Hooker’s alleged Catholic sympathies, there was still some recognition of his role as a useful conformist bulwark against the excesses of Puritanism. John Spenser, Hooker’s friend and literary executor wrote the famous 1604 prefatory address to the Polity in which he recommended it as an antidote to the ‘unhappie Controversie about the received Ceremonies and discipline of the Church of England, which hath so longtime withdrawne so many of her Ministers from their Principall worke’.81 Such a view was clearly subscribed to by Thomas Morton, the moderate Calvinist bishop of Lichfield, when he commended the Polity’s defence of the Church’s ceremonies against their critics.82 Yet if this use of Hooker against the Puritans was still to be successful there was also a realization that the Polity needed to be rescued from the suspicions surrounding its Reformed credentials. As ⁷⁹ N. Cranfield and A. Milton, ‘The Preacher’s Choice of Books’, in J. Blatchly (ed.), The Town Library of Ipswich Provided for the Use of the Town Preachers in 1599. A History and Catalogue (Woodbridge, 1989), 79. ⁸⁰ F. E. Pamp, ‘Walton’s Redaction of Hooker’, Church History, 17 (1948), 97–8; Sisson, Judicious Marriage of Mr. Hooker, 100, 104. ⁸¹ R. Hooker, The Lawes of Ecclesiastical Politie (London, 1604), To the Reader, AI. ⁸² T. Morton, A Defence of the Innocencie of the Three Ceremonies of the Church of England. Viz the Surplisse, Crosse after Baptisme, and Kneeling at the Receiving of the Blessed Sacrament (London, 1618), 204.

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a result there was an attempt to reclaim Hooker as a champion of the Reformed faith. This clearly prompted the publication in 161214 of Hooker’s more overtly Reformed lesser works. Henry Jackson, a fellow of Corpus and assistant to Hooker’s literary executor John Spenser, the President of the same college, provided suitable prefaces for two of these works. His first preface accompanied Hooker’s Discourse of Justification, and stressed the importance of this publication as a corrective against ‘the suspition of some errours, which he hath been thought to have favoured’. Professor MacCulloch suggests that the fact that Jackson also added the Latin proverb, ‘he who lacks an enemy will be crushed by his friends’ indicates his unease at the avantgarde defence of Hooker offered by Covell.83 Jackson’s hopes that this work would help to redeem Hooker’s reputation were not unrewarded since there was sufficient demand for a second edition of the work for it to be published again in 1613. The following year Jackson also helped produce a preface to Hooker’s Reformed sermons, on the book of Jude, with a suitably anti-Catholic preface.84 Indeed such was the apparent market for these works that, in 1618, with Spenser acting as editor, a volume entitled Certayne Divine Tractates, and Other Godly Sermons was issued. The foreword was sufficiently confident of the impeccable Reformed contents of the volume that it was able to note that ‘sufficiently are they commended by their fragrant smell, in the dogmaticall truth’.85 In addition to publishing Hooker’s overtly Reformed works his Calvinist defenders also found it useful to link him with other safely Protestant names. It was a fortunate accident of history that the safely Reformed Jewel had sponsored Hooker for his old college and that John Rainolds, often regarded as a ‘zealous Puritan’, served as his tutor.86 Consequently it was very easy to treat them as a homogeneous Reformed trio. This point is clearly made in the memorial biography ⁸³ R. Hooker, A Learned Discourse of Iustification, Workes, and how the Foundation of Faith is Overthrown (Oxford, 1612), Preface; MacCulloch, ‘Hooker’s Reputation’, 788–9. For a discussion of Hooker’s anti-Catholic credentials see also R. Bauckham, ‘Hooker, Travers and the Church of Rome in the 1580s’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 29 (1978). ⁸⁴ R. Hooker, Two Sermons Upon Part of S. Judes Epistle (Oxford, 1614), Preface. ⁸⁵ R. Hooker, Certayne Divine Tractates, and Other Godly Sermons (London, 1618). ⁸⁶ Bauckham, ‘Hooker’, 40; P. B. Secor, Richard Hooker. Prophet of Anglicanism (Tunbridge Wells, 1999), 66.

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for Rainolds. Daniel Featley, a relative of Rainolds and future chaplain to the impeccably Reformed Archbishop Abbot, collectively described the three men as being ‘Devonienses triumviros literatos’.87 George Hakewill, the Calvinist archdeacon of Surrey, similarly commended Corpus Christi College for the miracle of yielding ‘at one time and from one country three such Divines as Iewell, Raynolds, & Hooker’, in his popular 1627 book on providence.88 So successful was this careful presentation of Hooker through his associates that when Joseph Hall, a moderate Puritan and future bishop, preached the leading sermon to the clergy of the Convocation of Canterbury, in 1624, he placed Hooker confidently amongst the twenty-one scholarly lights of the English Reformed Church. Collectively, Hall insisted, they made the English clergy the ‘stupor mundi’.89 Some members of the list make extremely unlikely bedfellows. In particular it is hard to believe, given their earlier conflict, that Willet and Hooker could be placed together. Yet, at the same time, Hall, and presumably most of his listeners, did not recognize any inconsistency. With Hooker having been apparently reclaimed by the conformist Calvinist mainstream of the Jaocbean Church he could safely be quoted in defence of their beliefs concerning Church discipline and belief. On the subject of predestination, Robert Sanderson, then a prebendary at both Southwell and Lincoln, self-assuredly cited the Polity to remind his readers that the Church of England adhered to a Calvinist view. He retorted against the Arminians that the ‘modest and learned Hooker’ could never have dreamed that men who were in agreement with him would find themselves denounced as Puritans.90 The Polity also proved useful to another Puritan sympathizer, Samuel Ward, Master of Sidney Sussex, who strongly agreed with ⁸⁷ Collinson, ‘Hooker and the Elizabethan Establishment’, 158; MacCulloch, ‘Hooker’s Reputation’, 789. ⁸⁸ G. Hakewill, An Apologie or Declaration of the Power and Providence of God in the Government of the World (London, 1635), A2. ⁸⁹ P. Collinson, The Religion of Protestants: The Church in English Society, 1559– 1625 (Oxford, 1982), 92 n. ⁹⁰ R. Sanderson, Pax Ecclesiae by the Right Reverend Father in God Robert Sanderson, Late Lord Bishop of Lincoln, in W. Jacobson (ed.), The Works of Robert Sanderson, D. D. Sometime Bishop of Lincoln, 6 (Oxford: 1854), 506.

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Hooker’s views regarding the Eucharist.91 In line with Calvinist belief he was critical of much English Protestant sacramental writing, because it was reluctant to allow any real efficacy to the elements. Such an opinion, Ward insisted, was closer to Zurich than to Geneva. A better understanding, as he stressed on more than one occasion, was offered by Hooker’s sacramental approach.92 Although, as the above suggests, Hooker was being quoted on major matters this was unrepresentative. Even Ward, in a private letter, actually acknowledged that most divines in England did not hold his and Hooker’s views.93 Consequently MacCulloch would appear to be accurate in his observation that generally Hooker was only cited regarding minor matters. For example Richard Holdsworth, then a moderate Calvinist lecturer at Gresham’s College, clearly reverenced Hooker, but his brief reference to the Polity, in his discussion of the Apocrypha, was far from crucial to his argument. This would seem to suggest that whilst Hooker was treated with respect by Jacobean Calvinist circles they were still conscious of his occasional prosaic ambiguity. Hooker’s status as an apologist for the English Church was secure, but they still preferred to cite more emphatically Reformed writings when discussing the nature of the Church. This was certainly the case for Holdsworth who preferred to cite Richard Field on these matters.94 No doubt this caution primarily related to the Catholic exploitation of Hooker, but it may also demonstrate a tentative recognition of the continued desire of avant-garde churchmen to appropriate Hooker also. Much to the distress of the godly, King James’s desire to conciliate Catholic foreign powers, his pursuit of the Spanish match, combined with his own exalted view of royal power and personal aversion to Presbyterianism, meant that the influence and authority of this group was increasingly becoming dominant at the Royal Court. Furthermore avant garde churchmen, following Charles’s visit to Spain, appeared to be on the verge of ousting his own ⁹¹ It should be noted that whilst their theological outlook is not dissimilar the Cambridge Samuel Ward is not the same as the founder of the Ipswich Library. ⁹² Spinks, Two Faces of Elizabethan Anglican Theology, 164–5. ⁹³ Ibid. 165. ⁹⁴ R. Holdsworth, Praelectiones Theologicae Habitae in Collegio Greshamensis (Londini, 1661), 108. See also Milton, Catholic and Reformed, 533.

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household’s previously unchallenged tradition of Calvinist conformism also.95 Lancelot Andrewes, the distinguished preacher and Dean of the Chapel Royal, was the leading ecclesiastical figure of this court group and along with Hooker has subsequently been lauded as one of the fathers of the English Church.96 Some commentators have even suggested that his court sermons provide the missing link between Hooker and Laud.97 Whilst Andrewes certainly shared an avantgarde ideology with Hooker it does not, of course, necessarily follow that the judicious divine was the senior authority to him. It is important to remember that they were almost direct contemporaries and that modern assumptions, concerning the importance of the Polity, should not obscure the fact that Andrewes may have been the one influencing Hooker. The former was certainly making avant-garde statements, on the subject of predestination and episcopacy, well before Hooker committed himself to any such opinions. Nevertheless, whilst the direct theological relationship between the two men may be difficult to clarify, it is undeniable that Andrewes was enthusiastic concerning Hooker’s writings. He was a close friend of Hooker’s and played a key role in the preservation of his unpublished works. On hearing of his death he immediately advised that great care should be taken to secure the manuscripts lest they be ‘embezelled’ and so suppressed, or come ‘into great hands’ who will mutilate them for their own purposes.98 Although the manuscripts were secured, John Spenser, the President of Corpus Christi, Oxford, was later to recall that a dispute between Sandys and Andrewes, over the insufficient anti-Roman nature of Book VI, was to result in the indefinite postponement of their publication. Indeed, as has already been indicated, this may have prompted his deliberate loss of the manuscript.99 Only the part concerning confession was to ⁹⁵ P. E. McCullough, Sermons at Court. Politics and Religion in Elizabethan and Jacobean Preaching (Cambridge: 1998), 208–9. ⁹⁶ N. Lossky, Lancelot Andrewes the Preacher (1555–1626). The Origins of the Mystical Theology of the Church of England (Oxford, 1991), 1. ⁹⁷ McCullough, Sermons, 3. ⁹⁸ Pamp, ‘Hooker’, 97–8; Sisson, Judicious Marriage of Mr Hooker, 81. ⁹⁹ Sisson, Judicious Marriage of Mr Hooker, 99–100, 104.

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survive amongst the papers belonging to Andrewes. It is not surprising that Andrewes guarded it so carefully since the surviving version, with its justification of the powers of the English clergy regarding penance and absolution, was clearly a doctrine dear to the hearts of the avant-garde group.100 Clearly even amongst Hooker’s friends there was no definite agreement on his correct theological positioning. Although the Polity may have assisted Andrewes in his continued exploration of a spirituality that was less Reformed and expressed itself in an ordered ceremonial, there are no precise verbal quotations from Hooker in his famous Preces Privatae or in any of his other works. This is not necessarily evidence, however, that Hooker was the one indebted to Andrewes and not vice-versa. It could simply be indicative of the patristic way that Andrewes absorbed so much into his subconscious without the need for precise citation.101 His knowledge of Hooker, for example, could easily have assisted his own strong emphasis upon religion being the uniting force of the body politic.102 Like Hooker he believed that this was expressed through united public worship where the divine attributes of majesty and splendour might be glimpsed. Although Andrewes was a distinguished preacher he knew the limits of sermons and, as Hooker did, placed considerable emphasis upon the superior efficacy of prayer and the sacraments.103 In certain respects his Eucharistic theology is particularly close to Hooker. Andrewes, like the Polity, insisted that it was essential in the Eucharist to know the reality of communion with the body and blood of Christ, but it was mistaken to want to penetrate the mystery of the localization of this communion.104 Similarly Andrewes’s description of the Eucharist as being permeated by a flood of life-giving water flowing from the Trinity seems to have been heavily influenced by ¹⁰⁰ Pamp, ‘Hooker’, 97–8. ¹⁰¹ J. Pinnington, Anglicans and Orthodox. Unity and Subversion 1559–1725 (Leominster: 2003), 19. ¹⁰² Lossky, Andrewes, 287–8, 372. ¹⁰³ Ibid. 284; McCullough, Sermons, 98, 161; N. Tyacke, ‘Lancelot Andrewes and the Myth of Anglicanism’ in P. Lake and M. Questier (eds.), Conformity and Orthodoxy in the English Church c.1560–1660 (Woodbridge: 2000), 6. ¹⁰⁴ Lossky, Andrewes, 97, 341.

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the strong Trinitarian and Incarnational themes he located within the Polity.105 This emphasis on worship as a means to experience God, which Andrewes located in Hooker, was to be central to his stress on the close relationship between theology and a life of prayer. Hooker had used this, along with reason, as the basis of a major apologia against a narrow and arbitrary interpretation of scripture, but Andrewes employed it to maintain that the English Church, because of its clear link with the Primitive Church, was part of the Catholic and Universal Church and God’s plan for the deification of man.106 Such prayerful subtlety on the part of Andrewes, of course, combined with his normal discretion, ensured that most Calvinist conformists would not necessarily have been aware of his agreement with Hooker. Nevertheless it would have been difficult for them to have been totally oblivious to the fact that Hooker was being marshalled in support of a more ceremonialist outlook. Some were sensitive deployments, such as the way John Day, an Oxford preacher, quoted approvingly from Hooker on the sanctification of days and times in his Easter sermon of 1613.107 Similarly tactful was John Cosin, then rector of Brancepeth and prebendary of Durham, in his careful deployment of Hooker in defence of his elevated understanding of episcopacy. In his sermon at the consecration of Francis White as bishop of Carlisle, he drew upon the Polity to defend the related ceremonies, and to define the nature of the spiritual gift communicated to a bishop.108 Others were rather more provocative, however, in their use of Hooker. Subtlety was clearly not an approach favoured by Richard Montague, that early proponent of an English via media, in his use of Hooker to silence all critics of ceremonial and push back the boundaries of Reformed theology.109 His New Gagg, which was published ¹⁰⁵ Ibid. 230, 329–30; Pinnington, Anglicans and Orthodox, 26, 36–7, 232. ¹⁰⁶ Lossky, Andrewes, 156, 268, 351. ¹⁰⁷ D. Cressy, Bonfires and Bells (Thrupp, 2004), 35. ¹⁰⁸ J. Cosin, A Sermon at the Consecration of Dr. Francis White, Bishop of Carlisle, 3rd December 1626, in The Works of the Right Reverend Father in God John Cosin Lord Bishop of Durham, 1 (Oxford, 1843), 101, 103. ¹⁰⁹ P. Collinson, ‘The Jacobean Religious Settlement: The Hampton Court Conference’, in Before the English Civil War. Essays on Early Stuart Politics and Government

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just before the end of James’s reign, followed the lead offered by Covell and condemned as Puritan distinctively Reformed ideas of salvation under the pretext of correcting a Catholic distortion of the genuine beliefs of the Church.110 Montague was totally lacking in discretion, so his aggressive approach ensured that the contents of his book became a contentious national issue ultimately leading to Parliamentary condemnation. Only the deliberate evasiveness of the Polity, comments Nigel Voak, ensured the irony of a situation where ‘the no less radical Hooker’ was quoted by opponents of Montague as an authority for orthodox Reformed ideas.111 This avant-garde use of Hooker was still exceptional at the end of the Jacobean period, but these early Stuart attempts to see Hooker as setting himself apart from a Reformed context were to be vital for future readings of him. Although Hooker, in spite of Catholic attempts to exploit his apparent ambiguities, had been successfully maintained as a Reformed figure he was, perhaps, less secure than he appeared. Many churchmen with Puritan sympathies still discounted him as being popish, and even contented conformists often preferred to cite more assuredly Reformed divines on matters of importance. It is salutary to realize that during the Jacobean era that the now largely forgotten William Perkins was regarded as the popular reliable published exponent of Church of England teaching. Unlike Hooker he was a well-known name, he witnessed high double-figure publications of his works during his lifetime, and as one historian has put it has every right to be considered ‘the first of the Cambridge bestselling authors’.112 Ironically it was this continued anxiety about Hooker’s Reformed credentials, which probably served to make him such an attractive figure to avant-garde churchmen. Although they do not encompass all that was distinctive about Hooker’s religious development it is clear (London, 1983), 36; P. Lake, Anglicans and Puritans? Prebyterianism and English Conformist Thought from Whitgift to Hooker (London, 1988), 228. ¹¹⁰ R. Montague, A Gagg for the New Gospel? No: A New Gagg for an Old Goose (London, 1624), 103–5, 125–7; Tyacke, ‘Lancelot Andrewes’, 32. ¹¹¹ Voak, Hooker, 321; D. D. Wallace, Puritans and Predestination: Grace in English Protestant Theology 1525–1695 (Chapel Hill NC, 1982), 84–6. ¹¹² H. C. Porter, Reformation and Reaction in Tudor Cambridge (London, 1958), 267; Spinks, Two Faces of Elizabethan Anglican Theology, 2–3.

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that there was an attempt, beginning with Covell, to set the Polity apart from the Reformed mainstream and to dismiss all Hooker’s critics as Puritan outsiders. Although to contemporaries their influence must have been negligible these lone Jacobean voices helped to prepare the way for the eventual public transformation of Hooker, the conformist Calvinist champion, into Hooker the ceremonialist and theologian of a distinctive English via media.

2 The Road Towards an Anglican Icon: The Treatment of Hooker under Charles I and the Commonwealth Just eighteen months after becoming king, Charles I published his views concerning the proper relationship between the religious and political polities in a titular letter to all bishops. ‘We have observed that the Church and State are so nearly united and knit together that though they may seem but two Bodies, yet indeed in some they may be accounted but as one . . . This nearness makes the Church call in the help of the State to succour and support her . . . and . . . the State call on for the Service of the Church both to teach that duty which her members know not, and to exhort them to, and encourage them to, and encourage them in that duty they know.’1 Such a royal belief in the intimacy of these two entities publicly testified to Charles’s determination to influence the religious policies of the Church. Whilst the origin, evolution, and motivation behind Charles’s religious conviction remain a source of debate, it does appear that by the time of his accession he was prepared to act as a sympathetic patron to the ‘Arminianization’ of the Church of England.2 This was by no means a foregone conclusion, particularly given Charles’s earlier support for a household tradition of conformist Calvinism, but it does seem that the persistent attempts of Lancelot Andrewes to woo his princely support for the avant-garde churchmen had finally borne fruit. A belief supported by the subsequent statement of ¹ C. Carlton, Charles I. The Personal Monarch (London, 1983), 16. ² Conrad Russell, The Causes of the English Civil War (Oxford, 1990), 196–7.

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Sir Philip Warwick, servant to the king, that ‘Bishop Andrewes, Laud and Hooker were this Prince’s three great authors’.3 Charles’s apparent enthusiasm for Hooker is presumably explained by the influence of Andrewes who, as both a friend and a literary executor to the judicious divine, would naturally have directed Charles towards the Polity. Wiliam Laud, who was to be archbishop of Canterbury for most of Charles’s reign, similarly venerated Hooker and reinforced Andrewes’s message about the Polity. In 1636, as Chancellor of Oxford, he organized the king’s visit to the University. Whilst Charles received a pair of gloves, as historic custom dictated, his brother-in-law the Elector Palatine was tactfully presented with a copy of the Polity.4 The theological outlook of the Laudians5 undoubtedly appealed to Charles, because it tended to stress the God-given importance of the established order and support his own belief in the divine right of kings. ‘Against the incipient egalitarianism of Calvinism, Arminians stressed the hierarchical nature of both church and state in which the office not the holder was what counted.’6 Although both Andrewes, Laud, and others of their theological ilk strove to maintain the divine right of kings as ‘the lynch-pin of high royalism’ it is important to remember that Hooker, with his belief in an original contract, was not a proponent of it.7 Hooker’s views were hardly socially radical, since he only accepted any notion of limitation on the premise that the king was irresistible, but they were still too reminiscent of the constitutionalism of the early Stuart period to be popular with the

³ K. Fincham, The Early Stuart Church, 1603–1642 (London, 1993), 42. ⁴ P. Heylyn, Cyprianus Anglicus: Or the History of the Life and Death of the Most Reverend and Renowned Prelate by Divine Providence Lord Archbishop of Canterbury (London, 1688), 318. ⁵ The term ‘Laudian’ is used interchangeably with avant-garde to refer specifically to all those who were closely associated with Laud and who were unequivocal in their support for his ecclesiastical policies throughout the 1630s. For a fuller discussion see A. Milton, Catholic and Reformed. The Roman and Protestant Churches in English Protestant Thought, 1600–1640 (Cambridge, 1995), 9. ⁶ N. Tyacke, Anti-Calvinists, The Rise of English Arminianism c.1590–1640 (Oxford, 1990), 246. ⁷ G. E. Aylmer, The Struggle for the Constitution. England in the Seventeenth Century (London, 1975), 139; F. D. Dow, Radicalism in the English Revolution, 1640–1660 (Oxford, 1985), 11.

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Laudians.8 Fortunately, for the avant-garde churchmen, Laud had become the custodian of the manuscripts of the unpublished books of the Polity. The fact that he never made any attempt to publish them strongly suggests that he recognized their contents to be insufficiently supportive of his position and found it easier to forget quietly their existence. Nevertheless, without anyone actually ever citing the Polity, the tacit assumption could be encouraged that Hooker was also a proponent of the divine right. Clearly Charles’s own known admiration for the Polity assisted the process. This attempt to demonstrate Hooker’s impeccable royalist credentials would never have stood up to close scrutiny, but it was nevertheless successful in creating an impression of a man who was a zealous supporter of both Church and king. On the eve of the Civil War, David Owen, an avant-garde controversialist from Anglesea, felt able to state with confidence that Hooker was amongst those ‘worthy men, that have in the church of England, learnedly defended the Princely right against disloyal and undutiful opponents’.9 Although Hooker was only coerced by implication into supporting this aspect of Laudianism, the Polity was important regarding the English Arminian treatment of the complex subject of justification. Whilst Hooker was seldom cited in the more abstract discussions of the subject, he was invaluable to the Laudian attempt to move away from the confirmation of personal salvation through an individual’s response to preaching or Bible reading.10 Laudians preferred to stress the collective nature of the Church where all possessed the ability to be saved or, indeed, to fall from grace. Building upon the Prayer Book a whole new scenic apparatus was elaborated in which the sacrament of Holy Communion came to enjoy a focal role.11 Clearly Hooker’s distinction between the prayer of the individual Christian and the corporate prayer of the Church supported this pursuit of an

⁸ G. Burgess, Absolute Monarchy and the Stuart Constitution (London, 1996), 1, 46. ⁹ D. Owen, A Perswasion to Loyalty (London, 1642), To the Dutiful Subject. ¹⁰ Thomas Jackson was the premier English Arminian theologian of the 1630s, but hardly ever quotes Hooker. When he does there is no indication that he regarded him as a theological ancestor. Tyacke, Anti-Calvinists, p. xiii. ¹¹ Tyacke, Anti-Calvinists, 246.

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enhanced role for the ceremonies and sacraments of the Church.12 John Cosin was heavily indebted to Hooker in his production of A Collection of Private Devotions, which he hoped would meet the need of the English court ladies for an equivalent of the Roman primers. Within it he drew lavishly upon the Polity in his discussion of the importance of prayer, holy days, the litany, fasting, and the structure of the Eucharist.13 This determination to use Hooker to promote the importance of the visible Church was also clearly illustrated by the Relation of the Conference between William Laud and Mr Fisher the Jesuit.14 Laud commended Hooker for perceiving that the spiritual Church had to be located within the physical Church or it ‘is tied to no duty of Christianity. For all such duties are required of the Church as it is visible, and performed in the Church, as it is visible.’ Hooker, Laud also insisted, had recognized that the ‘beam of scriptural light’ could not be manifested independently of the Church. The scriptures needed to be read in conjunction with the tradition of the Church, which, although of human creation, was a form of reason, and therefore led towards the divine rationality.15 By citing Hooker in support of their ecclesiology the avant-garde churchmen were also able to claim the middle ground for themselves at the expense of the old Calvinist conformists. William Page, the master of Reading Grammar School, vigorously denounced those who ignored the authority of Hooker, Whitgift, and Andrewes and ¹² G. W. O. Addleshaw, The High Church Tradition. A Study in the Liturgical Thought of the Seventeenth Century (London, 1941), 32; Milton, Catholic and Reformed, 533; R. Targoff, ‘Performing Prayer in Hooker’s Lawes: The Efficacy of Set Forms’, in A. S. McGrade (ed.), Richard Hooker and the Construction of Christian Community (Tempe, 1997), 276. ¹³ J. Cosin, A Collection of Private Devotions, ed. P. G. Stanwood (Oxford, 1967), Preface, 9–13, 15, 18–19, 171–2, 191, 198, 203–4, 208, 232, 318–20, 322, 345, 346, 347– 8, 351–2, 354; D. O’Connor, ‘John Cosin: A Collection of Private Devotions 1627’, in M. Jonson (ed.), John Cosin. From Priest to Prince Bishop. Essays in Commemoration of the 400th Anniversary of his Birth (Durham, 1997), 194–5. ¹⁴ J. Davies, The Caroline Captivity of the Church and the Remoulding of Anglicanism 1625–1641 (Oxford, 1992), 54; W. Laud, A Relation of the Conference between William Laud Late Lord Archbishop of Canterbury, and Mr Fisher the Jesuit, by the Command of King James of Ever Blessed Memory, in The Works of the Most Reverend Father in God, William Laud, D. D. Sometime Lord Archbishop of Canterbury, 2 (Oxford, 1849), 156. ¹⁵ C. Condren, ‘The Creation of Richard Hooker’s Public Authority: Rhetoric, Reputation and Reassessment’, Journal of Religious History, 21/1 (1997), 45–7.

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set themselves against ‘the whole clergy’ by refusing to conform to Church practices.16 Similarly Francis White and Robert Skinner, both of whom were Laudian bishops, treated Hooker as a bulwark against Calvinism, which would help to maintain the clergy in their subscription to the English Church.17 The Laudians not only defined their position against the Calvinists, however. Building upon the ecumenicism promoted by King James they also sought to comprehend the English Church as the expression of true Catholicism against the Church of Rome. This approach was ably supported by Hooker’s apparent recognition that although the Church of Rome was corrupt it was still possible for Catholics to be saved. Such a desire to perceive the English Church as the embodiment of the Aristotelian mean was clearly articulated by Richard Montague. On the eve of Charles’s reign he expressed his hope ‘to live and die in the Faith and Confession of that Church, than which I know none, nor can any be named, in all points more conformable unto purest Antiquity in the best times; which I trust to make good against any and all those brethren in evil, Papists and Puritans, whosoever.’18 Undoubtedly this was the real beginning of the via media notion of the English Church, which was to have such a major future in the comprehension of Hooker.19 This image of Hooker supporting a balance between Catholicism and Protestantism was further enhanced by the careful presentation of Hooker as a wise moderate endowed with good sense. The roots of this approach were clearly located in Hooker’s own works since although he could be caustic regarding his opponents the Polity also commended the merits of seeking ‘by the meeknesse of Jesus Christ . . . the peace and quietnes’ of the Church.20 John Spenser’s preface, to the 1604 edition of the Polity, had similarly stressed ¹⁶ W. Page, A Treatise or Iustification of Bowing at the Name of Jesus by Way of Answere to an Appendix [by W. Prynne] Against It (Oxford, 1631), Dedicatory, 147. ¹⁷ Fincham, Early Stuart Church, 82; P. Lake, Anglicans and Puritans? Presbyterianism and English Conformist Thought from Whitgift to Hooker (London, 1988), 228; Milton, Catholic and Reformed, 430. ¹⁸ R. Montague, Appello Caesarem. A Just Appeal from Two Unjust Informers. Part I (London, 1625), 48. ¹⁹ D. MacCulloch, ‘Richard Hooker’s Reputation’, English Historical Review, 117 (2002), 790–1. ²⁰ Hooker, Lawes, 1. 2. 26–7; (Preface, 1. 3).

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Hooker’s ‘soft and mild disposition’. Although this description of the peaceable Hooker was subsequently to be over-exaggerated it seems likely that Spenser’s description was based upon a genuine historical recollection.21 Expanding upon this already existent tradition the distinctive Laudian contribution was the descriptive epithet of Hooker as a ‘judicious’ man. An early reference came in 1631 when William Page insisted that it should already have been a sufficient honour for the opponents of bowing at the name of Jesus to have contended with the ‘iudicious Hooker’.22 In addition to what appeared on the printed page this approach was also given physical expression by the erection of a monument to Hooker, at Bishopsbourne, in 1635. It was paid for by Sir William Cowper, the local sacramentally minded landowner, and clearly enjoyed the support of John Warner, the Laudian incumbent.23 The monument consists of a bust of Hooker set between two columns of carved books to indicate Hooker’s scholarship. Beneath this was Cowper’s English epitaph, which firmly associated the term judicious with Hooker’s name. Furthermore all those of an ambitious temperament were urged to learn from Hooker that only ‘humility is the true way to rise’.24 Whilst Hooker clearly assisted the ceremonial preoccupations of the avant-garde churchmen it is also important to remember that his defence of Church practices had a very different motivation behind it. Although Book V offered a thorough justification of the Prayer Book practices on grounds of adiaphora it said very little to support the Laudian belief that they were immutable Church forms. Consequently many Calvinist conformists reacted in shocked disbelief when Laudians cited Hooker in support of their position. William Prynne, the distinguished Parliamentarian and Presbyterian sympathizer, was merely the extreme tip of a widespread belief when he insisted that Hooker was being misrepresented by ²¹ R. Hooker, Of the Lawes of Ecclesiastical Politie (London, 1604), To the Reader, AI. ²² Page, A Treatise, Dedicatory. ²³ Such was Warner’s devotion to the English Church that he chose to be sequestered from his living in 1646, rather than conform to the dictates of the Commonwealth. A. G. Matthews (ed.), Walker Revised Being a Revision of John Walker’s Sufferings of the Clergy During the Grand Rebellion, 1642–1660 (Oxford, 1948), 13. ²⁴ R. Hooker, Of the Lawes of Ecclesiastical Politie (London, 1666), 36.

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the Laudians. He argued that they were unjustifiably exaggerating the authority of Hooker; with regard to bowing at the name of Jesus he demanded to know what ‘auncient authorities there are before . . . Hooker, which testify that bowing at the name of Jesus was used in the time of Arius’?25 They had deliberately misread the Polity, which considered it to be a ceremony ‘which no man is constrained to use as Mr Hooker, and others write: since many are urged if not enjoyed to use it: others questioned, if not censured for opposing it’.26 Neither was Henry Burton, Prynne’s fellow Puritan sympathizer, prepared to allow the Laudians to distance Hooker from his Reformed background. Whilst discussing the Laudian promotion of limited Sunday recreation he insisted that Hooker would never have supported this. He was a strict sabbatarian who recognized that one day was to be devoted exclusively to God as an act of homage. No ‘Magistrate or Prelates’ had the right to dispense with this.27 Any anxiety that Hooker’s Reformed credentials were being undermined was further compounded by a revival of Roman polemical interest in Hooker. The likes of Thomas Thorold reiterated the belief that Hooker’s apparent recognition of the inability of scripture to validate itself necessitated the authority of an infallible Church to confirm it.28 Laud, who was obviously conscious that such citation confirmed his opponents’ worst suspicions, anxiously responded that whilst Hooker had recognized that something external to scripture was needed he had regarded it merely as the ‘first outward Motive’, which led men to esteem it.29 Not surprisingly Laud’s response was totally without effect. Thorold simply accused Laud of selective quotation. He insisted that Laud’s citation of the Polity to show that tradition opened the door to the comprehension of scripture was ²⁵ Page, A Treatise, 138. ²⁶ Aylmer, Struggle for the Constitution, 47–8; Page, A Treatise, 107. ²⁷ H. Burton, The Lords Day, the Sabbath Day. Or, a Briefe Answer to Some Materiall Passages in a Late Treatise of the Sabbath-Day: Digested Dialogue-Wise between Two Divines A. & B. (Amsterdam, 1636), 15–16; Davies, Caroline Captivity, 174; Milton, Catholic and Reformed, 533; M. R. Watts, The Dissenters (Oxford, 1978), 67–8. ²⁸ T. Thorold, Labyrinthus Cantuarensis: Or Doctor Lawd’s Labyrinth. Being an Answer to the Late Archbishop of Canterburies Relation of a Conference Between Himselfe and Mr Fisher, Etc. (Paris, 1658), 94. ²⁹ J. E. Booty, ‘Hooker and Anglicanism’, in W. Speed Hill (ed.), Studies in Richard Hooker (London, 1972), 222–3.

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misleading. We should let Hooker ‘be his own Interpreter, and shew what he means by opening the knowledge of Scripture. He speaks thus. The Scriptures do not teach us the things that are of God, unless we did credit men, who have taught us, that the words of Scripture do signifie those things’.30 It was not just Calvinist conformists and Puritan critics, however, who were concerned by the Laudian use of Hooker. The so-called Great Tew Group, a loose grouping of intellectuals who gathered at Viscount Falkland’s Oxfordshire mansion, were also anxious to resist the avant-garde reading of the Polity. Whilst they were enthusiastic proponents of the Elizabethan religious settlement they were equally opposed to Reformation dogmatism. Falkland’s satirical Huntindon elegy cleverly drew upon Hooker to help satirize radical Puritan proponents of the latter. Who to be indiscreet, count to be stout With whom the factions are alone devout, Think all in state of grace, and void of sinne; Hate Hooker perfectly, and honour Prynn.31

Hooker, unlike the successors of Calvin, appealed to the Tew Group because he appeared to allow reason a vital role in the authentication of scripture and the construction of suitable forms of ecclesiastical polity.32 This use of Hooker is particularly marked in the writings of the scholarly polymath, William Chillingworth. Chillingworth had a varied religious background since, in 1628, he had converted to Rome. He had believed that the ‘logic of Hooker’ led to Rome because she was a rational comprehensive church that respected her members’ intellectual integrity. Unsurprisingly Chillingworth’s brief experience of Continental Catholic authoritarianism dissuaded him of this belief ³⁰ Thorold, Labyrinthus Cantuarensis, 95. ³¹ J. C. Hayward, ‘The Mores of Great Tew: Literary, Philosophical and Political Idealism in Falkland’s Circle’, Ph.D. thesis (Cambridge, 1982), 121. ³² R. Eccleshall, ‘Richard Hooker and the Peculiarities of the English: The Reception of the Ecclesiastical Polity in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries’, History of Political Thought, 2 (1981), 71–2; H. Trevor-Roper, Catholics, Anglicans and Puritans, Seventeenth Century Essays (London, 1987), 190–9; B. H. G. Wormald, Clarendon: Politics, History and Religion (Cambridge, 1951), 255–6.

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and he made a swift religious return journey.33 This was not a total success either. Although he enjoyed excellent personal relations with Laud he was quickly concerned by what he perceived as the narrow ceremonial views of the hierarchy. His flirtation with Catholicism, however, did mean that he was well aware of the misuse of Hooker by Brerely and other writers in support of the authority of the Church.34 No doubt this also made him suspicious of the way the Polity was being appropriated by avantgarde churchmen at home. All these varied experiences served to convince him that in a true Christian community there had to be space for intellectual liberty and toleration of differences.35 Hooker’s belief in the Church of England as an all-embracing communion was consequently heavily adapted by Chillingworth to support his belief in a truly broad and comprehensive church. Within the Religion of Protestants, which set out his Church government ideal, there are five major acknowledgments of Hooker’s work.36 Chillingworth insisted that the fundamental importance of Christian dogma rested not upon authoritative decrees, but upon the outcome of a process of rational discussion. Whilst the authority of the Church might provide the ‘first introduction’, Hooker had never allowed it to be ‘the last foundation whereon our belief . . . is rationally grounded’.37 Indeed Hooker was ‘as far from making such an idol of ecclesiastical authority, as the Puritans whom he writes against’.38 Hooker had preferred to invest his authority, according to Chillingworth, in the rational faculty of the individual mind, brought to bear on problems of scriptural authority as a final court of belief. Although Chillingworth never explicitly says so it is clear that this ³³ Trevor-Roper, Catholics, Anglicans and Puritans, 204. ³⁴ E. Knott, Mercy and Truth, or Charity Maytayned by Catholiques, in W. Chillingworth, Works, 2 (London, 1719), 182. ³⁵ R. Orr, Reason and Tradition in the Thought of William Chillingworth (Oxford, 1967), 147. ³⁶ Ibid. 72. ³⁷ W. Chillingworth, The Religion of Protestants a Safe Way to Salvation. Or an Answer to a Booke Entituled Mercy and Truth, or Charity Maintain’d by Catholiques, Which Pretends to Prove the Contrary (Oxford, 1638), 64–5. ³⁸ Chillingworth, Religion of Protestants, 311; H. McAdoo, The Spirit of Anglicanism. A Survey of Anglican Theological Method in the Seventeenth Century (London, 1965), 14; Wormald, Clarendon, 249–50.

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personal concept of reason became virtually his primary authority in matters of belief.39 Whilst Chillingworth’s usage of Hooker’s interest in reason may have subsequently assisted the development of the Anglican triumvirate of authority, it was highly contentious amongst his contemporaries. At one end of the spectrum Calvinists, such as Francis Cheynell, were concerned that such an emphasis on reason would be detrimental to the ultimate authority of scripture; at the other end, however, the Laudians were anxious to stress that reason was a communal wisdom closely associated with the tradition of the Church. Hooker had certainly seemed to support this view when he had emphasized the importance of the Church for ensuring that the ‘light of nature’ was exercised in accord with scripture, and that it would be impudence to disagree on such a matter.40 Chillingworth had attempted to gloss this statement with the rejoinder that it implied that there ‘may be a just cause to be of a contrary mind, and that then it were no impudence to be so’.41 Unsurprisingly his response did not commend itself to the avant-garde churchmen. So apprehensive was Laud at the direction of Chillingworth’s arguments that he took steps to have the work censored before its publication.42 In spite of Laud’s anxieties the avant-garde vision of the Church appeared to be dominant by the mid-1630s. Peter Heylyn, a protégé of Laud, later recalled it as a golden era. The bishops were orthodox, the clergy obedient, ceremonies observed, the material possessions of the Church increased, and ‘the gentry thought none of their daughters to be better disposed of than such as they had lodged in the arms of a churchman’.43 Whilst there was indeed plenty to encourage Heylin this Hooker-sponsored success was, in fact, somewhat superficial. Generally it enjoyed a limited popular mandate and its continued authority and enforcement was heavily dependent upon the ability of the established government to act independently of Parliament.44 ³⁹ MacCulloch, ‘Hooker’s Reputation’, 792. ⁴⁰ Hooker, Lawes, 1. 220. 7–24; (III. 8. 1). ⁴¹ Chillingworth, The Religion of Protestants, 50. ⁴² Orr, Reason and Authority, 112. ⁴³ H. Trevor-Roper, Archbishop Laud 1573–1645 (London, 1940), 272. ⁴⁴ J. Morrill, The Nature of the English Revolution (Harlow, 1993), 53–4; K. Sharpe, The Personal Rule of Charles I (London, 1992), 368–9; Trevor-Roper, Laud, 194.

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When the Scots, already aggrieved at the political mishandling of their country, rose in revolt, against the imposition of the new 1637 Prayer Book, the king was forced to recall an unsympathetic English Parliament. As independent royal power effectively collapsed the whole Laudian edifice also crumbled.45 Although the Scottish crisis led to an ecclesiastical breakdown it paradoxically also served to confirm Hooker’s reputation as the primary representative apologist of the Church of England. The hostile Scottish critics of the English ecclesiastical aggression required figureheads to blame and amongst those selected was Hooker. This was particularly marked in George Gillespie’s Dispute Against the EnglishPopish Ceremonies Obtruded Upon the Church of Scotland. He clearly recognized Hooker’s importance to the Laudian defence of the Prayer Book and was consequently the first English theologian he chose to denounce. The Prayer Book ceremonies, Gillespie insisted, could not be accounted of little importance because Hooker had observed that ‘a Ceremony . . . worketh very much with people’.46 By his own admission they served ‘to conciliate reverence . . . and to stir up devotion’ which was little different from the Roman appointment of ceremonies ‘ut externam quondam Majestatem sensibus objiciant’.47 Consequently the abandonment of all Roman ceremonies, Gillespie insisted, was the only way to avoid agreement with the papists in those things that were repugnant to God. It was in this vein that Hooker strove to argue that since the ‘controverted ceremonies’ were not abused in England it was acceptable to retain them as things indifferent. Public conduct on Church feast days, as Gillespie clearly delighted in pointing out, did not support this attitude. Christmas was not spent praising the name of God, ‘but in riffling, dycing, carding, masking, mumming’, and in other licentious ways. Those ceremonies, which had been abused by the Catholic Church, would always retain the potential to serve as ‘the Trophees of Antichrist, and the Reliques of Romes whoorish bravery’.48 ⁴⁵ Aylmer, Struggle for the Constitution, 101–2; Morrill, English Revolution, 36–8; Sharpe, Personal Rule, 77–8. ⁴⁶ G. Gillespie, A Dispute against the English-Popish Ceremonies Obtruded upon the Church of Scotland (Edinburgh, 1660), 10. ⁴⁷ Ibid. 77. ⁴⁸ Ibid. 107–8.

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Gillespie, who was clearly aware of the Pauline admonition to preserve the weaker brethren, was as a result scathing in his condemnation of Hooker’s insistence that public forms could only be changed if they ceased to be ‘fittest for the whole, although it may chance that for some particular men the same be found inconvenient’. It was bad divinity not to be concerned by the scandalizing of a few men who had drunk ‘in superstition’ and fallen ‘into sundry grosse abuses in religion’.49 Hooker’s belief that the Church possessed the freedom to prescribe ceremonies was based on the equally flawed belief ‘that Christ hath not by positive Laws so far descended into particularities with us as Moses with the Jews’. Although moral circumstances, such as the time of worship, were left free, the ceremonies which were proper to God’s worship were another matter. Incredulously Gillespie demanded to know how we can ‘say that the fidelity of Christ hath been less than the fidelity of Moses the servant?’50 Gillespie was the most vocal of the Scottish critics of Hooker, but he was not alone. If others were more muted it was only because they loathed Laud more.51 Robert Baillie denounced Laud for virtually restoring the Mass and contrasted him with the earlier and moderately less offensive Eucharistic theology of ‘Andrewes, Hooker, Montague, or the grossest of the English divines’.52 These sorts of attack were very much a revival of Willet’s early Jacobean perception of Hooker as a crypto-popish figure. Both the Laudian party and their royal sponsor were sensitive to allegations of Romanism, so this was not an accusation they were prepared to let stand unchallenged. Charles I was so angered by Gillespie that he ordered his book to be burnt publicly. Charles Carlton pragmatically observes that whether ‘its reasonable complaint that the liturgy had been “pressed upon us by naked will and authority, without giving any reason to satisfy our consciences”, or its absurd charge that Richard Hooker and Lancelot Andrewes—two of the king’s favourite theologians—were Catholics, upset him the more one cannot say’.53

⁴⁹ Ibid. 108–9. ⁵⁰ Ibid. 42, 231. ⁵¹ MacCulloch, ‘Hooker’s Reputation’, 793. ⁵² R. Baillie, Ladensium, the Canterburians Self-Conviction (Amsterdam, 1640), 107–9. ⁵³ Carlton, Charles I, 198.

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Nevertheless these Scottish assaults upon Hooker also indirectly helped to confirm the Laudian image of an essentially non-Reformed figure. Hooker’s reputation as the authoritative representative of the English Church was ‘assured by an uneasy alliance of his church’s enemies’—Jesuits on the one hand, and angry Scots Presbyterians on the other.54 It should be stressed, however, that whilst these Prayer Book protests undoubtedly did assist the Laudian ecclesiastical repositioning of Hooker it was unlikely that this success was apparent at the time. Indeed its proponents must have recoiled in horror as Hooker was actually cited in opposition to the Laudian fabric of Church and State. In particular they must have been concerned by references to the previously marginalized unpublished manuscript of Book VIII in support of the opposition of the Commons to both royal and episcopal absolutism. Henry Parker, ‘the most formidable parliamentary apologist of the first Civil War’, cited Book VIII to demonstrate that the courts of Parliament were ‘the fountains of civill bloud, spirits and life; and soveraigne antidotes of publike mischiefes’.55 Hooker, he insisted, had recognized, since time immemorial, that the public good and stability of the monarchy depended upon consent. His demonstration that the religious and political polities were different expressions of the same community meant that he was able to squeeze together ‘the role of consent in church and state in a vice of tightening implication. Parliament was a court “not so merely temporal” that “it might meddle with nothing but only leather and wooll.” ’56 Since the king had flagrantly ignored the established forms of machinery, which were designed to ensure co-operation, Parker went on to

⁵⁴ C. Condren, ‘Hooker’s Public Authority’, 43; MacCulloch, ‘Hooker’s Reputation’, 793. ⁵⁵ R. Eccleshall, Order and Reason in Politics. Theories of Absolute and Limited Monarchy in Early Modern England (Oxford, 1978), 160; M. Mendle, Henry Parker and the English Civil War. The Political Thought of the Public’s ‘Privado’ (Cambridge, 1995), pp. xiv, 1, 63. ⁵⁶ F. D. Dow, Radicalism in the English Revolution, 1640–1660 (Oxford, 1985), 17– 18; J. H. Franklin, John Locke and the Theory of Sovereignty. Mixed Monarchy and the Right of Resistance in the Political Thought of the English Revolution (Cambridge, 1978), 23–4; Mendle, Parker, 65–6.

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suggest that Parliament ‘might legitimately do . . . whatever was necessary to prevent national ruin’.57 Although Parker’s use of Book VIII to support active resistance was not widely imitated this potentially had something to do with the fact that the work was still only available in manuscript. Whilst manuscripts clearly did circulate it was less freely available for public consumption than a published work, which explains why Philip Hunton, that subsequent doughty supporter of Cromwell, made no reference to it in his seminal treatise on the nature of monarchy.58 Some recognition of this need to disseminate more widely the ‘unLaudian’ notions of the last three books, through eventual publication, may, however, explain the decision of the 1641 Westminster Parliament to confiscate the manuscripts from Laud and to place them in the hands of the leading radical preacher Hugh Peter.59 It should be noted, however, that most Laudian opponents, whilst equally opposed to innovation, were not as confrontational as Parker and his ilk and preferred, on the basis of the first five books, to revive something akin to the old Jacobean perception of Hooker as a Reformed conformist. This is clearly illustrated by the Parliamentary opposition of Falkland, self-appointed leader of Great Tew, and his friend Edward Hyde, later earl of Clarendon who were amongst the most vociferous critics of arrogant Episcopal behaviour in the 1641 Parliament. Whilst sharing the Puritan indignation and hyperbole against unwarranted innovations, however, they made a clear distinction between the proud prelatical Church, maintained by Laud, and the reasonableness of the pre-Laudian religious settlement. Their understanding of Hooker compelled them to maintain a Church, which was shorn of jure divino notions, but respected the civil magistrate, the Elizabethan Church, and the learning and martyrdom of past bishops.60 Although the pro-Church petitions of 1641 and 1642 ⁵⁷ Eccleshall, Order and Reason, 160–1; Franklin, John Locke, 27. ⁵⁸ P. Hunton, A Treatise of Monarchie by an Earnest Desirer of his Countries Peace (London, 1643). ⁵⁹ MacCulloch, ‘Hooker’s Reputation’, 795; Parliament, The Journals of the House of Commons, 3 (1803), 421, 544. ⁶⁰ R. Ashton, The English Civil War, Conservatism and Revolution, 1603–1649 (London, 1978), 121–2; Hayward, ‘Mores of Great Tew’, 133, Morrill, English Revolution, 45–6; Wormald, Clarendon, 260.

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make no explicit reference to Hooker their approach is implicitly indebted to him.61 Unambiguously indicative of these moderate aspirations, however, were a whole series of contemporary publications. Potentially most notable of all was Ussher’s publication in 1641 of a collection of tracts which sought to support the institution of moderate episcopacy. This collection, which included works by Lancelot Andrewes and Ussher, was prefaced with a short piece by Hooker entitled A Discovery of the Causes of the Continuance of these Contentions Concerning ChurchGovernment.62 It served as a general exhortation for peaceableness in Church government, and for the avoidance of faction.63 A similar desire for Hooker-sponsored conciliation was found in a pamphlet entitled The Dangers of New Discipline, which was largely a reprint of chapters eight and nine of the Preface.64 Hooker was clearly popular with this group because he allowed for the possibility of ecclesiastical modification. The writer of Certain Reasons Why the Booke of Common Prayer Being Corrected should Continue reverenced Hooker’s writings on the English liturgy, since he that desires ‘answers to the severall objections against the Booke of Common-prayer, may read and receive it in that learned Work ⁶¹ J. Maltby suggests that they are arguing along the lines of Book VII. ‘Could it be that Hooker was better known before the civil war than is often suggested, and that we are seeing here the ‘trickle down’ effect of ‘formal theology’ on ‘the laity’? Or rather, do Hooker’s views represent not an original ‘invention of Anglicanism’ but his position within one developing tradition of a theologically pluralist English Church?’ J. Maltby, Prayer Book and People in Elizabethan and Early Stuart England (Cambridge, 1998), 103. ⁶² R. P. Almassy, ‘They are and are not Elymas: The 1641 “Causes” Notes as Postscript to Richard Hooker’s Of the Lawes of Ecclesiastical Politie’, in A. S. McGrade (ed.), Richard Hooker and the Construction of Christian Community (Tempe, 1997), 183; J. Ussher (ed.), Certain Brief Treatises Written by Diverse Learned Men Concerning the Ancient and Modern Government of the Church. Wherein Both the Primitive Institution of Episcopacie is Maintained and the Lawfulnesse of the Ordination of the Protestant Ministers Beyond the Sea Likewise Defended (Oxford, 1641). ⁶³ R. Hooker, ‘The Causes of the Continuance of these Contentions Concerning Church Government’, in R. Hooker, Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, Books VI, VII, VIII, ed. P. G. Stanwood, gen. ed. W. Speed Hill, 3 (London, 1981), 457. See also G. Cranmer, Concerning the New Church Discipline an Excellent Letter Written by Mr George Cranmer to Mr R. H. (Oxford, 1642), 8, 23–4. ⁶⁴ G. Edelen, ‘Publishing History of the First Five Books of the Lawes’, in R. Hooker, Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, Preface Books I–IV, ed. G. Edelen, gen. ed W. Speed Hill, 1 (London, 1977), p. xxiii.

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of Master Hookers Ecclesiastical Politie’.65 Yet at the same time he also recognized that a high regard for Hooker’s justification was not incompatible with being in favour of some sensible modification of the Church’s liturgy.66 Such eloquent pleas for moderate reform, however, were against the popular sentiment of the time. The Laudian-engendered hostility towards the Church ensured that the desire for a radical religious reformation was dominant.67 The growth of millenarian expectations had also encouraged an apocalyptic fervour which sought to cleanse the country. Thomas Wilson warned that it was nonsense to talk of a ‘reduced episcopacy’ when it could be demonstrated that this estate did not even enjoy divine approval: ‘O think it not enough to clip their wings when Christ is against the being of such a body.’68 The subsequent outbreak of the Civil War only served to exacerbate the animosity felt towards the royalist Church. Her clergy were ridiculed, their churches desecrated and the worship and doctrine of the Church held up to ridicule. Such localized acts of aggression came to full fruition in a series of Parliamentary statutes. The bishops were abolished, the cathedrals dissolved, and the Prayer Book was replaced by the Directory of Public Worship. By 1646 a self-congratulatory Parliament was able to record that they had successfully ‘laid the foundation of a Presbyterial Government in every Congregation’.69 As a result of the clear hostile linkage, by the Scotch polemicists, of Hooker with the Laudian Church it would be reasonable to expect his reputation to have been equally tarnished in the England of the 1640s, as part of this process of religious realignment. Richard Baxter, that scrupulous Puritan divine, writing in the 1660s, undoubtedly did feel enmity towards Hooker. He recalled that although he was a ⁶⁵ I. W., Certain Reasons Why the Booke of Common-Prayer Being Corrected Should Continue (London, 1641), 11. ⁶⁶ Ibid. 3. ⁶⁷ Aylmer, Struggle for the Constitution, 109–12; Morrill, English Revolution, 54–60. ⁶⁸ W. M. Lamont, Puritanism and the English Revolution, vol. 2, Godly Rule: Politics and Religion 1603–1660 (Aldershot, 1991), 87. ⁶⁹ Aylmer, Struggle for the Constitution, 142; Morrill, English Revolution, 74, 77, 80–90, 148–55; Parliament, An Ordinance of the Lords and Commons Assembled in Parliament for Keeping of Scandalous Persons from the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper, the Enabling of Congregations for the Choyce of Elders and Supplying Defects in Former Ordinances and Directories of Parliament Concerning Church-Government (London, 1646), 3.

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young man in the early 1640s he could not be ignorant ‘how Hookers principles began our warres . . . , that was a parliament of Episcopall men and Erastians, an Army of such Commanders that began it’.70 Baxter’s comments are not contemporary, however, and as will be subsequently demonstrated his recollections are potentially anachronistic. The already referred to Parliamentary grant of the unpublished parts of the Polity to Hugh Peter suggests that in spite of the attempt of the 1630s to distance Hooker from the Reformed group there was still widespread residual respect for him. Francis Cheynell, the avowed Presbyterian custodian of the dying Chillingworth, was certainly horrified by his charge’s belief that Hooker opposed the doctrine of sola scriptura and permitted the resolving of faith into reason. Chillingworth, he insisted, had made faith answerable to reason, rather than to divine authority, and wrongly used Hooker to suggest that ‘Reason is in some sort God’s Word’.71 The Polity had been misunderstood, he insisted, and it was Chillingworth, not Hooker, with whom he had a quarrel. Such a deliberate avoidance of any disagreement with Hooker confirms the widespread respect still felt across the ecclesiastical scene for the Polity. Such reverence, of course, did not mean that Hooker was in any sense recognized as a source of Reformed authority. Like their early Jacobean forefathers it is clear that most continued to find it safer to seek their Reformed authority outside the Ecclesiastical Polity. Nevertheless the old image of Hooker, the Calvinist conformist, still had a public role to play. Although by 1646 the royal opponents had been militarily successful the attempts to negotiate a settlement were exposing their clear internal religious tensions. An English Presbyterian-dominated Parliament was increasingly concerned by the strong uncontrollable Independent sympathies of the army, and was anxious for a settlement with the king that avoided a loosely organized Church and maintained their constitutional ascendancy. As the atmosphere between Parliament and the military became increasingly fraught it seemed that Hooker might offer a source of acceptable ⁷⁰ Lamont, Puritanism and the English Revolution, 82. ⁷¹ F. Cheynell, Chillingworthi Novissima. Or the Sicknesse, Heresy, Death and Buriall of William Chillingworth (London, 1644), F1r.

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Reformed unity. He was still relatively popular with the English Presbyterians and even amongst the extreme fringe of the Independents there was some enthusiasm for him. Remarkably the Leveller, William Walwyn, listed ‘those peeces annexed to Mr. Hookers Ecclesiasticall pollicy’ amongst his regular reading.72 Consequently when in 1648 Ussher helped to publish the first editions of Books VI and VIII it seems clear that he hoped they would provide a necessary focus for a lasting settlement. It was vital, the preface insisted, that ‘he which so much desired the Unity of the Church, might have the divided members of his Labours united’.73 The irenicism of Book VI and Book VIII were certainly both appropriate to a situation involving contentious ecclesiastical differences.74 Their appeal was ‘both fundamental and ecumenical, to the natural law, and beyond the national Church’.75 There were passages in Ussher’s ‘Trinity manuscript’ of Book VIII which contradicted this impression of Hooker, with their more absolutist depiction of the monarch, but these were clearly deliberately omitted in the unreceptive atmosphere of 1648.76 Although this considered treatment of the Polity manifestly failed to achieve the hoped for agreement, or prevent the execution of the king, it was still significant for Hooker’s reputation. Almost fifty years after Hooker’s death all of the Polity, with the exception of Book VII, had finally been published. There was clearly a popular demand for it, since a second edition was published in 1652. Such public ⁷² Walwyn is probably speaking of Hooker’s sermons. Barry Smith suggests that, as an unorthodox Calvinist, Walwyn probably found aspects of Hooker’s theology more congenial than his attitude to matters indifferent. See Eccleshall, ‘Richard Hooker’, 72. ⁷³ R. Hooker, Of the Lawes of Ecclesiastical Politie; The Sixth and Eighth Books (London, 1648), Printer’s Notice. ⁷⁴ P. G. Stanwood, ‘Textual Introduction. The Last Three Books’, in R. Hooker, Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, Books VI, VII, VIII, ed. P. G. Stanwood, gen. ed. W. Speed Hill, 3 (London, 1981), p. xlii; H. A. Lloyd, ‘Constitutionalism’, in J. H. Burns and M. Goldie (eds.), The Cambridge History of Political Thought 1450–1700 (Cambridge, 1991), 279–83. ⁷⁵ Ashton, English Civil War, 125; Stanwood, ‘Textual Introduction’, p. xvii. ⁷⁶ This omission might have been justified on the editorial grounds that these passages are not present in the other surviving manuscript sources of Book VIII. P. G. Stanwood regarded the Dublin Manuscript as the most accurate, however, because it contained more of Book VIII than any other source, and because it was copied ‘from Hooker’s autograph directly, it is obviously closest to the original design which Hooker outlined in his notes’. Stanwood, ‘Textual Introduction’, pp. lxiv, lxviii.

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enthusiasm is unlikely to have been created by the careful consideration of penance and absolution in Book VI; although it is true that the loyalists would have welcomed Hooker’s support in this area.77 Rather it seems indisputable that Book VIII, with its belief in an original political contract, was responsible for generating it. In spite of earlier Laudian attempts to draw a discreet veil over Hooker’s unpalatable belief in an original contract it had now entered the public consciousness. Retrospectively it confirmed the apparent legitimacy of claims, by the likes of Parker, that Hooker was essentially contractarian in outlook. Furthermore it consequently made other deployments of Hooker, in support of the new Commonwealth status quo, much more feasible. Amongst the most ingenious attempts to use Hooker to promote the religious and political life of the Commonwealth was John Hall’s The True Cavalier. Hall made full use of Hooker’s belief in things indifferent to show that under the guidance of the civil magistrate, the Church was competent to abrogate and amend her ecclesiastical practices. Hooker, Hall reasonably reminded his readers, had clearly defended the right of the Church and the ‘Chief Magistrate’ to change her positive laws ‘as the difference of time or places shall require’.78 Hooker’s anticipation of Book VIII in the Preface, Hall stressed, was adamant that the ‘Chief Magistrate’ possessed ‘the power of ecclesiastical dominion or Supream Authority’ as well as ‘domestical jurisdictions’.79 Normally the ‘Chief Magistrate’ would be the king, Hall recognized, but Hooker had clearly believed that power was ‘due to the King as Monarch, and not the Monarch as King’.80 Cromwell was now effectively ‘monarch’ and, on this basis, he should be obeyed.81 It was ⁷⁷ F. E. Pamp, ‘Walton’s Redaction of Hooker’, Church History, 17, (1948), 98. ⁷⁸ J. Hall, The True Cavalier Examined by his Principles; And Found Not Guilty of Schism or Sedition (London, 1656), 30–3. ⁷⁹ Ibid. 59. Hall makes the rather surprising comment, regarding Book VIII, that it is a great pity ‘that we had not the book it self to have been satisfied herein, and in the power belonging to him’. Since Hall’s book was published in 1656 and Book VIII had been printed in 1648 this is a surprising remark. If Hall was able to remain ignorant of both the 1648 and 1652 editions of a work he supposedly yearned to read, it suggests that his interest in Hooker was primarily motivated by a desire to secure a polemical victory over his royalist opponents. ⁸⁰ Ibid. 59. ⁸¹ Ibid. 91.

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to be hoped, therefore, that the authority of Hooker and his adherents was ‘not so lost, but that their authority’ would still serve ‘to keep us from all inclinations either to Schism or Sedition’.82 Since Cromwell was the legal governor and lawful authority was entitled to reform the Church in unessentials ‘no plea of former establishment, whether by Councels or Customes’ could warrant any dissensions from the currently sanctioned official position.83 Those who clung to the forbidden Prayer Book liturgy were guilty of violating the English tradition, as defined by Hooker. They had manifestly failed to heed Hooker’s warning not to be like Pharisees, ‘by whom divine things indeed were lesse, because other things were more divinely esteemed of them then reason would allow’.84 Their determination to be faithful to the old settlement had turned them into the new nonconformists who arrogantly elevated conscience above the authority of the national Church.85 If they truly esteemed Hooker they would ‘shew themselves Patterns of reverend subjection, not Authors and Masters of contempt towards Ordinances’.86 The English Church had willingly conformed to the Prayer Book ordinances of King Edward VI, so they should now also ‘conform to what an Act of Parliament and a protector of more power, hath determined concerning another alteration of this kinde’.87 Hall’s emphasis on the office, not the man, with his equation of the role of Lord Protector with that of a king was quite conventional. No doubt much to the frustration of his opponents, who would not have wanted Crowell’s seizure of power to be correlated in any way with the ordered royal succession of Edward VI and his successors, Hall had neatly transferred Hooker’s rhetoric of the sovereign’s supremacy onto the Lord Protector. Hall reminded his readers that although the changes made under the Commonwealth may have lacked obvious precedent, Hooker had rightly recognized that all things ‘cannot be of ancient continuance, which are expedient and needful for the ordering of spiritual affairs’.88 The alterations to the structure of the Church may have marked a break with the immediate past, but it was clear from the Polity that such measures demanded conformity

⁸² Ibid. 87. ⁸⁶ Ibid. 31.

⁸³ Ibid. 39–40. ⁸⁷ Ibid. 52.

⁸⁴ Ibid. 38–9. ⁸⁸ Ibid. 37.

⁸⁵ Ibid. 32.

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without reservation. To act otherwise would resemble a man who set fire to his neighbour’s house whilst praying that it would not burn.89 Prayer must, indeed, often have seemed like the only refuge left to the remaining proponents of Hooker’s exclusive alliance with the English Church and the royal prerogative. Not only was Hooker’s guardianship of this tradition threatened by the State-sponsored opposition to the old religious forms, but the collapse of the Church of England had unsurprisingly led to a marked revival, if somewhat uncoordinated,90 of the Catholic attempts to attract disillusioned loyalists through a polemical use of Hooker. This use was greatly encouraged by the pressure placed, often successfully, on the exiled royalists to submit to Rome, along with the post-Worcester decline of royal interest in wooing the Presbyterians. Hooker’s image as a crypto-papist struggling to retain a Catholic identity for his church against a groundswell of Protestant hostility was consequently carefully emphasized. Matthias Wilson, an English Jesuit, enthusiastically described how the ‘most learned Protestants . . . stand with us against their Protestant Brethren in most of the chiefest points of Religion controverted between us’.91 The fact that Hooker’s Church had been apparently totally overwhelmed, however, showed the ultimate futility of attempting to stand outside Rome. In such circumstances the Catholic claim that any reasonable reading of the Polity inescapably led to Rome was clearly heightened. Hooker himself, they suggested, had implicitly recognized this through his desire to emphasize the close relationship between Canterbury and Rome. Almost exceptionally he had been prepared to ‘acknowledge Papists to be of the family of Christ’.92 It was possible for them ‘to be reputed a part of the House of God, [and] a limb of ⁸⁹ Ibid. 32–3. ⁹⁰ Alison Shell comments: ‘The religious ferment of the period might have thrown up a covert radical Catholicism, eager to exploit what freedom of worship the period had to offer, or a Jesuit-led revival which used the discontinuities of state religion as an opportunity to promote appeals back to Rome; and yet, neither appears to have happened’ (A. Shell, Catholicism, Controversy and the English Literary Imagination, 1558–1660 (Cambridge, 1999), 165). ⁹¹ M. Wilson, Protestancy Condemned by the Expresse Verdict and Sentence of Protestants (Douay, 1654), The Preface, A3. ⁹² P. Scot, A Treatise of the Schism of England. Wherein Particularly Mr. Hales and Mr. Hobbs are Modestly Accosted (Amsterdam, 1650), 38.

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the visible church of Christ’.93 Unlike most other Protestant divines, including notables such as Luther, Hooker even acknowledged the insufficiency of faith that was not accompanied by good works.94 Hooker, Wilson insisted, had no problem in recognizing that Christian belief persisted in the Catholic Church, since he acknowledged that the English Church had grown out of it. Consequently he was happy to acknowledge Rome to be part of Christ’s family and hoped ‘that to reform our selves, is not to sever our selves from the Church we were of before’.95 Catholic propagandists declared that behind this refusal to unchurch Rome lay Hooker’s tacit acceptance of the importance of the Catholic magisterium. Peter Talbot, the future Catholic archbishop of Dublin, described how it was a recognition that ‘if they reject us, themselves can not pretend to be a Church, having neither succession of Bishops, nor (without begging our testimony) any solid proofe, that Scripture is God’s Word’.96 Hooker’s refusal to countenance the Puritan belief in sola scriptura and potential acceptance that scripture could not validate itself was consequently widely commended.97 Thomas Vane, a Catholic convert, advised his readers that the Polity asserted that scripture could not be self-authenticating, because the ‘outward letter sealed with the inward witnesse of the spirit, is not a sufficient warrant, for every man to judge and approve the scripture to be Canonicall’.98 Although Hooker had potentially recognized the need for an independent external authority the polemicists still had to explain his apparent reluctance to follow it through to its logical conclusion. Richard Smith, the aged bishop of Chalcedon, claimed to be amazed at Hooker’s inconsistency when he attempted to show by reason and ⁹³ Wilson, Protestancy Condemned, 345, 438. ⁹⁴ Ibid. 64, 311, 314, 320, 336, 337–8, 345, 438. ⁹⁵ Ibid. 446. ⁹⁶ P. Talbot, A Treatise of the Nature of Catholick Faith and Heresie, with Reflexion upon the Nullitie of the English Protestant Church, and Clergy (Rouen, 1657), 33. ⁹⁷ T. Bayly, A Legacie Left to Protestants, Containing Eighteen Controversies (Douai, 1654), 3; R. Smith, Of the Al-Sufficient External Proposer of Matters of Faith (Paris, 1653), 351, 456; T. Thorold, Labyrinthus Cantuarensis: Or Doctor Lawd’s Labbyrinth. Being an Anser to the Late Archbishop of Canterburies Relation of a Conference between Himselfe and Mr Fisher, Etc. (Paris, 1658), 94. ⁹⁸ T. Vane, A Lost Sheep Returned Home: Or, the Motives of the Conversion to the Catholike Faith (Paris, 1649), 12, 21.

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the light of nature that we ‘have no word of God, but the Scripture’.99 This made the ‘main ground of Protestants faith . . . no object of divine faith . . . which we are bound to believe under pain of damnation.’100 Thomas Thorold, an English Jesuit, was in agreement with Smith that Hooker’s argument was unworkable, since if scripture did not confirm itself as the word of God then ‘he must either settle no infallible ground at all . . . or must say, that the Tradition of the Church is that ground.’101 Smith agreed that tradition was the only reasonable destination since ‘the light of the scripture is not so great, that without the Church shew it to us, we can see it’.102 Thomas Bayly, who had been a royalist divine, also insisted that if Hooker had believed the scriptures to ‘have been written by men divinely inspired . . . why may they not also by men assisted by the Holy Ghost be made infallibly known unto us?’103 Smith concurred that Hooker would have seen this as the norm since he had only allowed for the possibility of private revelation in the most exceptional circumstances.104 This belief in the importance of the Church was apparently supported by the Polity’s recognition that she must be a visible authoritative body as well as a purely spiritual one;105 a rather different emphasis from most other Reformers. Abraham Woodhead, who had been converted to Catholicism whilst visiting the Continent in the 1640s, described how Hooker agreed with them that ‘the Holy Catholick Church . . . is a visible Church in all ages, consisting of Pastors as well as people, in external Profession, and Communion contra, distinct to Heretical, and Schismatical Churches, when such there happen to be in any age’.106 ⁹⁹ Smith, Of the Al-Sufficient Proposer, 351, 458. ¹⁰⁰ Ibid. 458–9. ¹⁰¹ Thorold, Labyrinthus Cantuarensis, 93, 119. ¹⁰² Smith, Of the Al-Sufficient External Proposer, 364, 412, 457. See also Wilson, Protestancy Condemned, 341, 344. ¹⁰³ T. Bayly, An End to Controversie between the Roman Catholique, and the Protestant Religions Justified by All the Severall Manner of Ways, Whereby, All Kinds of Controversie, of What Nature so Ever, Are Usually, or Can Possibly Be Determined (Douai, 1654), 128; Bayly, A Legacie Left to Protestants, 3. ¹⁰⁴ Smith, Of the Al-Sufficient External Proposer, 239. ¹⁰⁵ Wilson, Protestancy Condemned, 117–18, 321. ¹⁰⁶ A. Woodhead, A Rational Account of Roman-Catholicks Concerning the Ecclesiastical Guide in Controversies of Religion (London, 1673), 154, 394.

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Hooker’s recognition of the importance of the visible Church was further confirmed by the similarity of his sacramental teachings to those of Rome. According to Wilson, Hooker had properly comprehended that the intention of the church was vital to the successful administration of her sacramental ministry. Furthermore the Polity testified to his belief that certain sacraments imprinted an indelible character upon the individual.107 Baptism and the Eucharist, of course, were recognized as sacraments within the articles of the English Church. Hooker, however, as Wilson recorded, could be understood as also regarding practices, such as confirmation, as sacraments, through his belief that the imposition of hands conferred an inward grace.108 Bayly provocatively pronounced that he would use Hooker amongst ‘their own prime doctors to confute’ all opponents of its sacramental importance.109 Notwithstanding such an ingenious deployment of the Polity, however, these proponents of a Catholic Hooker never succeeded in converting the majority of remaining Church loyalists to their interpretation. At its most obvious it would seem reasonable to assume that this was because they were simply not convinced by the Roman manipulation of Hooker. Whilst Hooker’s ambiguities often assisted the Catholic position there were other parts of the Polity, which clearly contradicted this. For example Hooker’s enthusiasm for such a staunch anti-Catholic as Jewel was naturally an embarrassment. Most Catholics were predictably silent concerning this. Bayly was unusual in his attempt to gloss this by seeking to contrast the anti-Catholic Jewel against the peaceable Hooker’s more reasonable approach to the Roman Church.110 Equally silent were Church loyalists, however, with regard to making any response to Catholic attempts to appropriate Hooker. It is true that William Brough, a strong loyalist, used the Polity to show that baptism into membership of the Church was not the restricted property of Rome, but this brief reference can hardly be considered to be indicative of a systematic answer to the Catholic ¹⁰⁷ Wilson, Protestancy Condemned, 328. See also W. Stuart, Presbyteries Triall: Or the Occasion, and Motives of Conversion to the Catholique Faith, of a Person of Quality, in Scotland (Paris, 1657), 199–200. ¹⁰⁸ Wilson, Protestancy Condemned, 325. ¹⁰⁹ Bayly, An End to Controversie, 289. ¹¹⁰ Ibid. 309–10.

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challenge.111 This did not mean that Hooker’s authority was being denied. Rather it was a recognition that Hooker’s ambiguities, not to mention Laudian sympathies for parts of the Catholic case,112 made it difficult to answer satisfactorily and, therefore, it was deemed safer to say nothing. Nevertheless whilst these factors undoubtedly contributed to the silence it seems reasonable to assume that the Catholic threat to the survival of the Church was secondary to the Puritan one. The religious position of the exiles was not an easy one, but they could at least attend worship at the embassy chapel. This was not the case for those loyalists who had remained in England and had to meet, if at all, in secret. If anything was to survive, remotely akin to their interpretation of Hooker’s vision of the Church, then it was clear that they needed to struggle for their comprehension of the Polity in England. In spite of the fact that the Commonwealth proponents of a Reformed Hooker appeared dominant they failed, amazingly, to perpetuate their understanding of the Polity much beyond the late 1650s. At the Restoration it was not the Puritan image of Hooker, which emerged, but one, which may, for the first time, be reasonably defined as Anglican. Although the statutory suppression of the English religious settlement had publicly sounded the death knell for Laudianism, it ironically also marked the start of its resurrection as the widespread official creed of the Church. ‘Truly’, says one historian, ‘whereas the exile under Queen Mary was one of the greatest evils that ever befell the English Church, the exile under the Commonwealth and Protectorate was one of the greatest blessings; for it purified and spiritualized men’s conception of the Church, and made them realize their churchmanship as they had never done before.’113 When confronted by outright hostility to any form of accommodation for the old religious settlement, individuals who had previously adhered ¹¹¹ W. Brough, A Preservative Against the Plague of Schisme. Or, an Antidote against the Separation of the Time (London, 1652), 51. ¹¹² The fact that Laudian sensitivities played a part is supported by the fact that Thomas Barlow, a decided Calvinist and uncompromising opponent of the papists, happily employed Hooker to denounce the pope as antichrist. That Rome was occupied by Antichrist had been held by ‘Jewel, Witaker, Rainolds, Hooker, etc, and Arminius himself, as is evident in his writings extant’ (R. Beddard, ‘Sheldon and the Anglican Recovery’, Historical Journal, 19 (1976), 1007). ¹¹³ R. S. Bosher, The Making of the Restoration Settlement (London, 1951), 79.

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to a more expansive vision of the church were compelled towards opinions, which they had formerly regarded as Laudian innovations. Trevor-Roper regretfully comments that by 1660 ‘the temper of the old liberals of Great Tew, having being soured by events, was much nearer to that of the old Laudians than that of their old selves’.114 This growth of enthusiasm for Laudian concepts of Hooker amongst previous religious moderates is clearly illustrated by the evolution of Edward Hyde’s ecclesiastical opinions. At the start of the Long Parliament this Tuvian ‘disciple of Hooker’ had been vociferous in his criticism of royalist and Laudian abuses.115 He was horrified by the upsurge of Puritanism, however, and faithfully supported both Church and king throughout the Civil War. In 1646 he began his great History of the Rebellion, which was designed to serve as a ‘secular’ companion to the Polity. His opening paragraph was clearly modelled upon the Polity for, like Hooker, he was determined ‘to rise above controversy, to look beyond present misfortunes, and to produce a long-term validation of the English monarchy that would win support from an uncommitted posterity’.116 The execution of the king, however, confirmed that in the shortterm he would have to work with the Church exiles, and their compatriots within England, if there was to be any realistic possibility of securing a restoration. This enforced association with the Laudian clergy ensured that Hyde came to adopt a much more sympathetic attitude towards their political and religious opinions.117 By 1649 he could write to Gilbert Sheldon, the former warden of All Souls, that he was ‘one of those few by whose advice and example I shall absolutely guide myself ’.118 Such a statement cannot be dismissed as shallow rhetoric when one examines some of the other overtly ‘Laudian’ statements that Hyde was making. He stated to Lord Hopkins his belief that the acts of a non-episcopal ministry were utterly invalid. It is better that were I ‘cast into the Indies [I] should live there all the days of my life without receiving the Sacrament, than that I should receive it at the hands of one who had no authority ¹¹⁴ H. Trevor-Roper, ‘The Good and Great Works of Richard Hooker’, The New York Review of Books, 24 (1977), 55. ¹¹⁵ Hayward, ‘Mores of Great Tew’, 212. ¹¹⁶ Trevor-Roper, ‘The Good and Great Works of Richard Hooker’, 54–5. ¹¹⁷ Wormald, Clarendon, 307–8, 312. ¹¹⁸ Bosher, Restoration Settlement, 55.

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to give it than he was chosen by the company to that office’.119 The adoption of such an opinion naturally compelled Hyde to abandon his old moderate Reformed understanding of Hooker, and to replace it with the Laudian belief that the Polity was the embodiment of a distinctive English religious settlement. Throughout his exile he took a keen interest in the efforts of John Earle, the former chancellor of Salisbury, to produce a Latin edition of the Polity, which would serve to disseminate the excellent basis of the English Church more widely. The translation was never published, probably due to Earle’s death, but we know that Hyde sent his son to retrieve the manuscript of this important theological work. Hyde’s interest in Earle’s translation is an overt demonstration of the awareness of the Church loyalists that they needed to nurture the visible remnants of the old ecclesiastical organization if they were to survive. Book V, with its careful defence of the old status quo, was still an obvious authority for a new generation of polemicists to turn to in defence of outward forms. In the confused religious circumstances of the early and mid-1640s Hooker’s centrality was clearly demonstrated by Henry Hammond’s deployment of the Polity. Hammond, a distinguished Oxford fellow and the unofficial leader of the ‘home Church’, based the table of contents in his View of the New Directory upon the start of Book V. He then went on to insist that the criticisms made against the Prayer Book had only been ‘objections of little force to conclude anything, but only the resolute contumacious, . . . or malice of the objectors, which might at large be proved, both by the view of all the charges that former pamphlets have produced, all gathered together and vindicated by Mr Hooker’.120 This, rather surprisingly, was the only explicit citation of Hooker in the whole tract. Hammond, however, having referred once to Hooker, seems to have assumed his readership to have been so familiar with the arguments deployed by Book V, that they would have been able to recognize the parallel thrust of many of his arguments with those of the Polity. Hammond’s coyness concerning direct references to Hooker was not unusual since other Church sympathizers such as the author ¹¹⁹ Ibid. 56. ¹²⁰ H. Hammond, A View of the New Directory and Vindication of the Ancient Liturgy of the Church of England (Oxford, 1645), 11.

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of A Defensive Vindication of the Publike Liturgy . . . of the Church of England, were equally reserved. At the start of the tract he faithfully transcribed a list of all the points which Hooker proposed to discuss in his fifth book: ‘all which exceptions Hooker answereth punctually and fully, and so may give any intelligent and iudicious Reader abundant satisfaction’.121 There are no other direct references to Hooker, so clearly one allusion was deemed to be sufficient. Certainly their opponents were aware of the Church party’s enthusiasm for Hooker. Francis Cheynell was in no doubt that the Polity was vital to Hammond’s defence of the Church. Hammond, he complained, continued to ‘refer us to Mr Hooker’ without having made any serious attempt to answer the grievances of the Presbyterians.122 By the 1650s the enthusiasm of the Church loyalists for Hooker had become more explicit. This was undoubtedly prompted by the known devotion of the late king martyr to the Prayer Book and the works of Hooker. Shortly before his death Charles was known to have commended the Polity to his children as an aid to the maintenance of their allegiance to the English Church. Consequently Hammond now urged his readers to consult Hooker, and be thankful that they had received ‘Gods graces in that Godly learned man’.123 A whole new generation of Church apologists such as Anthony Sparrow, the ejected rector of Hawkedon, and Peter Heylyn also began to pepper their works with references to the ‘incomparable Hooker’.124 They were incredulous that anyone should continue to reject the Church’s forms when all scruples have already been ‘satisfied by our learned and judicious Hooker, who hath examined it per partes, and justified it in each part and particular Office’.125 ¹²¹ J. R., A Defensive Vindication of the Publike Liturgy, Established Ceremonies and Settled Patrimony of the Church of England (London, 1641), 8. ¹²² H. Hammond, A Copy of Some Papers Past at Oxford, Betwixt the Author of the Practical Catechism and Mr Ch. in The Works of the Reverend and Learned Henry Hammond, D. D., 2/1 (London, 1684), 173; J. W. Packer, The Transformation of Anglicanism 1643–1660 with Special Reference to Henry Hammond (Manchester, 1969), 28, 52–3. ¹²³ H. Hammond, The Grounds of Uniformity from I. Cor. 14. 40. Vindicated from Mr Jeanes’s Exceptions to One Passage, in the View of the Directory, in The Works of the Reverend and Learned Henry Hammond, D. D., 2/2 (London, 1684), 246. ¹²⁴ A. Sparrow, A Rationale upon the Book of Common Prayer of the Church of England (London, 1655), 91–2. ¹²⁵ P. Heylyn, Ecclesia Vindicata: Or the Church of England Vindicated. Part Second. Containing the Defence Thereof in Retaining the Episcopal Government (London, 1657), 79.

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This upsurge of overt enthusiasm for Hooker was not, however, solely based upon devotion to the instructions of the late king. Hooker continued to be valued in his own right as an authoritative text against the religious objections of the Commonwealth regime to the Prayer Book. In particular his refusal to accept a position, where the Bible exclusively prescribes all our actions, made it possible to counteract the condemnation of a fixed liturgy as unscriptural and contrary to the terms of primitive simplicity and Catholicism. Hooker had shown, Heylyn insisted, that the Prayer Book was the liturgy most consonant to the inheritance of the early Church, and that all the ancient services were fixed and ‘never use to be voluntary dictates proceeding from any mans external wit’. This merely led to unsatisfactory ‘effusions of indigested prayers’, which is why God respects not only the solemnity of places but ‘the precise appointment, even with what words or sentences his name should be called upon amongst his people’.126 Heylyn rejoiced that the structure of Prayer Book services recognized this need for a dignified liturgy since it had been observed ‘by our incomparable Hooker . . . That if the Angels have a continual intercourse betwixt the Throne of God in Heaven, and his Church here militant upon the Earth, the same is no where better verified then in these two godly exercises of Doctrine and Prayer’.127 Such seemly worship was further supported by Hooker’s stress that the maintenance of a limited ceremonial was important as an outward demonstration of the inward devotion. Hammond, clearly conscious of continued respect for Hooker, regretted his opponents refusal to bow to the arguments of the Polity, and greeted their demand that ‘all admirers of Mr Hooker . . . should vindicate their great Patron of ceremonies’ with amazement.128 Even more vituperative was Heylyn’s swift dismissal of ‘those unquiet spirits’129 that claimed that Prayer Book ‘had too much in it of the Roman Rituals’. Hooker, he insisted, answered their every anxiety in the Polity so that ‘never daring to adventure any more in pursuit of that quarrel’ they were forced to claim that liturgy had ‘no authority from the Word of God’ at all.130 ¹²⁶ Ibid. 100. ¹²⁷ Ibid. 98. ¹²⁸ Hammond, Grounds of Uniformity, 246. See also Sparrow, A Rationale upon the Book of Common Prayer, 160. ¹²⁹ Heylyn, Ecclesia Vindicata, 311. ¹³⁰ Ibid. 93

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Unsurprisingly Book V was enthusiastically cited by the loyalists in support of various disputed Prayer Book practices, such as confirmation131 and the daily repetition of certain psalms and canticles within the offices.132 Less predictable was the use the loyalists made of Hooker to stress that ceremonies were important and meritorious in themselves. Whilst Hooker would have recoiled from such an approach the Polity’s stress on outward forms clearly loaned itself to it. Indeed it even allowed enthusiasts to extrapolate well beyond the existent Prayer Book ceremonial rubrics. On this basis Sparrow confidently commended standing at the Gospel, because it demonstrated ‘a reverend regard to the son of God, above the other messages, although speaking as from God. And against Arrians, Jews, Infidels, who derogate from the honour of our Lord, such ceremonies are most profitable. As judicious Mr. Hooker notes’.133 Not all Church loyalists would have felt totally comfortable with the extemes of this theological outlook, but it is clear that the polemical usage of Hooker was very successful in its attempts to provide a strong identity and to consolidate their position within England. By the mid-1650s they had assumed an importance, which would have been unthinkable ten years earlier A London newsletter of 1653 declared that the clergy of ‘the old model begin to be very dear to the people in many parts of the nation: conventicles for Common Prayer are frequent and much desired in London’.134 Even the failure of the royalist rebellions in 1655, and the subsequent renewal of repression failed to halt their growth.135 It was somewhat paradoxical that at the same time as the Church loyalists were still struggling to maintain their identity that there was a growing desire amongst many of the English Presbyterians for some sort of accommodation with them.136 Once the support of the civil power had been withdrawn their attempt to establish Presbyterianism in England collapsed, and they were subjected to increasing ¹³¹ Ibid. 257. ¹³² Ibid. 121–2. ¹³³ Sparrow, A Rationale upon the Book of Common Prayer, 91–92, 141–2. ¹³⁴ Bosher, The Restoration Settlement, 11; Morrill, English Revolution, 174–5. ¹³⁵ Bosher, The Restoration Settlement, 41; Packer, Transformation of Anglicanism, 147–9. ¹³⁶ R. Hutton, Charles the Second King of England, Scotland and Ireland (Oxford, 1989), 151.

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hostility from the Independents. Like the Church loyalists they found that Book V was occasionally useful to their justification of standard forms. William Lyford, in An Apologie for our Publick Ministrie, even cited Hooker against the Independents in support of the Presbyterian commissioning of ministers.137 This Hooker-sponsored Presbyterian belief in national forms of Church government, along with residual royalism, clearly demonstrated that there was some common ground with the loyalists. In such an environment John Gauden’s posthumous publication, in 1656, of Ussher’s tract, on the early Church unity of presbyterial and episcopal government, not only provided a possible basis for mutual agreement, but also brought back into focus Ussher’s earlier hope that Hooker might offer a basis of religious unity.138 Amongst moderate churchmen, such as Gauden and Thomas Fuller, there was indeed an enthusiastic desire to realize Ussher’s desire for religious co-operation. In order to assist this Fuller deliberately used his Church-History of Britain to minimize the historic hostility between the Presbyterian Travers and the conformist Hooker by toning down their personal animosity.139 Fuller recounted how even in the middle of the violent argument between Hooker and Travers, ‘the latter stil bare . . . a reverend esteem of his adversary. And when an unworthy aspersion . . . was cast on Hooker, . . . Mr Travers being asked of a private friend, what he thought of the truth of that accusation, In truth (saith he) I take Mr Hooker to be a holy man. A speech which coming from an adversary, found no less to the commendation of his charity who spake it, then unto the praise of his piety of whom it was spoken.’140 Fuller was the exception, however, since most Church loyalists viewed his attitude towards Hooker as nothing more than an ¹³⁷ W. Lyford, An Apologie for Our Publike Ministrie, and Infant Baptism (London, 1653), 21. ¹³⁸ W. M. Abbott, ‘James Ussher and “Ussherian” Episcoapcy, 1640–1656: The Primate and his Reduction Manuscript’, Albion, 22 (1990), 237, 256–8; Eccleshall, ‘Richard Hooker’, 69 n.; J. Ussher, The Reduction of Episcopacie unto the Form of Synodical Government Received in the Ancient Church (London, 1656). ¹³⁹ T. Fuller, The Church-History of Britain; From the Birth of Jesus Christ, until the Year 1648 (London, 1656), 213, 214, 217. ¹⁴⁰ Ibid. 217. For an account of a general Protestant mourning at the death of Hooker see Fuller, Church-History, 235.

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opportunistic desire for subsequent accommodation. The fact that he had survived sequestration further supported their belief that his religious outlook was governed more by expediency than theology. Heylyn was consequently scathing in his criticism of Fuller, who was apparently prepared to surrender the small gains the faithful loyalists had managed to secure.141 When the Restoration of the monarchy took place he was anxious to stress that the only acceptable religious settlement involved the full restitution of the English Church. Heylyn and his compatriots in England were not alone. Amongst the exiles, Sir Robert Shirley, that zealous layman, was equally anxious to obtain surety from the king ‘that in view of the sacrilege in the Reformed Churches of which the most judicious Mr. Hooker has left his judgment’ that Church property would be restored at the return of the monarchy. 142 In order to resist this desire for rapprochement, with the Presbyterians, it became even more important for uncompromising Church loyalists to distance Hooker from any association with Reformed outlooks. Since Presbyterian hopes majored on being able to locate a mutually acceptable form of Church government it was heavily implied that Hooker was an unswerving proponents of divine right episcopacy. For as long as Book VII’s guarded defence remained effectively unknown it was perfectly possible to mobilize other parts of the Polity to suggest Hooker’s enthusiasm. This anti-Presbyterian approach is particularly marked in Heylyn’s vociferous writings on the subject. He reminded his readers that Hooker had believed the Church’s ordained ministry to be a threefold structure consisting of bishops, presbyters, and deacons.143 The colleges of presbyters and deacons had been founded by the apostles and evangelists, and were consequently joined into one Church by being placed under the jurisdiction of a bishop.144 The Polity was adamant that presbyters were a distinct order and should not, therefore, be ¹⁴¹ P. Heylyn, Examen Historicum: Or a Discovery and Examination of the Mistakes, Falsities, and Defects in Some Modern Histries (London, 1659). ¹⁴² Calendar of State Papers Preserved in the Bodleian Library, 3 (Oxford, 1872), No. 139. ¹⁴³ P. Heylyn, The History of Episcopacy. The Second Part from the Death of St. John the Apostle, to the Beginning of the Empire of Constantine (London, 1657), 430–1. ¹⁴⁴ Ibid. 29, 31.

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equated with bishops. The episcopate possessed a ‘charge of too transcendent, and sublime a nature, to be entrusted unto every common Presbyter, or discharged by him, who as our Hooker well observeth, though he be somewhat better able to speak, is as little to judge as another man’.145 By including carefully presented references to Book V’s justification of ceremonies, pertaining to a bishop, Heylyn was able to strengthen further the impression that Hooker shared his own advanced comprehension of episcopacy. This approach is clearly demonstrated by his citation of Hooker with regard to episcopal confirmation. Heylyn accurately cited Hooker’s belief that since bishops could no longer undertake all baptisms, as had happened in the early Church, it was right to reserve to them confirmation, the completion of baptism, so that an episcopal involvement was still preserved in the initiation rite. Heylyn’s comment on this, however, is less guarded in tone and commends the Polity’s recognition of the ‘spirituall superioritie’ of the bishop by reserving the completion of baptism to him for honour’s sake.146 The desire of the loyalists to minimize Hooker’s Reformed sympathies was also apparent in their increased attempts to position him within a distinctive and continuous Church tradition; a development which greatly assisted the subsequent Anglican claim to catholicity and apostolic continuity. This sort of approach informed William Nicholson, the dispossessed archdeacon of Brecon, in his Apology for the Discipline of the Ancient Church. Nicholson deliberately linked Hooker back to the primitive Church through his commendation of the Polity, as a clear illustration of the faithfulness of the forms of the English Church.147 The creation of this religious longevity was also furthered by the deliberate manipulation of more recent history. Works by oldfashioned Calvinist conformists, such as Robert Sanderson, were ¹⁴⁵ P. Heylyn, Extraneus Vapulans: Or the Observer Rescued from the Violent but Vaine Assaults of Hamon L’Estrange, Esq and the Back-Blows of Dr Bernard, an IrishDeane (London, 1656), 155. ¹⁴⁶ P. Heylyn, History of Episcopacy, 452, 455. ¹⁴⁷ W. Nicholson, An Apology for the Discipline of the Ancient Church Intended Especially for that of Our Mother the Church of England (London, 1659), 117, 135, 185, 186, 190, 194, 196–7.

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reissued and suitably re-edited to minimize Hooker’s Reformed credentials. In the 1620s Sanderson had been happy to quote the Polity in opposition to Arminian comprehensions of salvation. By the 1650s it was unthinkable to the loyalists, however, for Hooker, or indeed Sanderson, a former royal chaplain and Regius Professor of Divinity, to be associated with such an approach. Under considerable pressure from both Hammond and Thomas Pierce, the Laudian pamphleteer, several of Sanderson’s sermons were republished with all the antiArminian notes recast to refer only to Pelagian heresy. He was also compelled to construct a prefatory letter in which he explained how the follies of youth and opinions then predominant in the Church had misled him.148 In the letter Sanderson recalled how as a young man he had attempted to resolve his doubts concerning predestination by reading Hooker. The Polity had helped to settle his mind concerning many points of Church government, and was ‘a good preparative to me (that I say not, antidote) for reading of Calvin’s Institutes with more caution than perhaps otherwise I should have done’.149 Having established Hooker’s own historic concerns regarding Calvinism, to their own satisfaction at least, the Church loyalists felt able to cite boldly the Polity in their current doctrinal battles against it. Pierce, in particular, and to a lesser extent Herbert Thorndike, the Cambridge theologian, drew upon the Polity in their denunciations of the false claims of Calvinist predestinarians.150 It was untenable, Pierce insisted, for the English Church to claim that God died only for the elect since ‘Mr Hooker saith that God hath a general inclination that all should be saved’.151 Consequently attempts, by ¹⁴⁸ P. Lake, ‘Serving God and the Times: The Calvinist Conformity of Robert Sanderson’, Journal of British Studies, 27 (1988), 112–13; H. McAdoo, Spirit of Anglicanism, 32, 35, 38, 48; Packer, Transformation of Anglicanism, 55–6. ¹⁴⁹ R. Sanderson, The Works of Robert Sanderson, D. D., ed. W. Jacobson, 5 (Oxford, 1854), 297. ¹⁵⁰ H. Thorndike, An Epilogue to the Tragedy of the Church of England Being a Necessary Consideration and Brief Resolution of the Chief Controversies in Religion That Divide the Western Church: Occasioned by the Present Calamity of the Church of England (London, 1659), 68; T. Pierce, The New Discoverer Discovered by Way of Answer to Mr Baxter His Pretended Discovery of the Grotian Religion with the Several Subjects Therein Contained (London, 1659), 103, 249. ¹⁵¹ T. Pierce, The Divine Philanthropie Defended Against the Declamatory Attempts of Certain Late-Printed Papers Intitl’d a Correptory Correction. In Vindication of Some Notes Concerning Gods Decrees, Especially of Reprobation (London, 1659), 68.

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the likes of Baxter, still to draw upon Hooker as a Reformed figure were denounced as a misrepresentation of the Polity. Pierce insisted that his whole argument was dependent upon adding ‘something in pretence of exposition to Hookers words’.152 When Baxter objected to this treatment Pierce further responded by saying that he only condemned those ‘as were thought by judicious Hooker to be fit inhabitants for a wilderness, not a well ordered city’.153 This determination to present Hooker as an iconic epitome of the old Laudian ideals was further heightened by the death of Cromwell in September 1658. The ensuing political uncertainties publicly revived the question of the settlement of Church and State. What form this would take, however, was far from clear to contemporaries. To many it initially seemed that Richard Cromwell did offer a secure government. Edward Gee, the Presbyterian propagandist for the Interregnum government, certainly did not consider this an unpropitious moment to publish a belated elaboration of his earlier anti-Cromwell arguments. He enthusiastically used Hooker to propound a theory of government based on original consent by the people and even drew upon the Polity to justify the deposition of usurpers.154 In spite of their initial euphoria events seemed to be against the Church loyalists who found themselves subject to increased persecution. Nevertheless, in spite of these early successes, the government did falter and the growth of confusion and disunity within England made the prospect of a Restoration much more likely.155 With this prospect in sight the loyalists sought to ensure that it took place upon the same basis as the old Caroline settlement by publishing a series of well-aimed treatises affirming Hooker’s link to the royalist cause.156 ¹⁵² Ibid. 114–15. ¹⁵³ T. Pierce, Self-Condemnation Exemplified in Mr Whitfield, Mr Barlee, and Mr Hickman. With Occasional Reflexions on Mr Calvin, Mr Beza, Mr Zwinglius, Mr Priscator, Mr Rivet and Mr Rolloch: But More Especially on Doctor Twisse, and Master Hobbs (London, 1658), An Advertisement to the Reader. ¹⁵⁴ Eccleshall, ‘Richard Hooker’, 89-90; Condren, ‘Hooker’s Public Authority’, 47–9. ¹⁵⁵ G. Davies, The Restoration of Charles II, 1658–1660 (London, 1955), 283. ¹⁵⁶ P. Heylyn, The Stumbling-Block of Disobedience and Rebellion, Cunningly Laid by Calvin in the Subjects Way, Discovered, Censured, and Removed (London, 1658), 238, 274; M. Wren, Considerations on Mr. Harrington’s Commonwealth Oceana (London, 1657), 20–1.

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The fact that loyalists felt able to claim such things, particularly given the limited popular approval they had enjoyed twenty years earlier, is indicative of the increased acceptance, by the late 1650s, of their ecclesiological presentation of Hooker. Under the Commonwealth it is true that the old Reformed perception of Hooker had enjoyed something of a revival, but as the works of Baxter, Hall, and Gee demonstrate it was no longer tied to the maintenance of the Elizabethan settlement. Instead the Polity was seen to provide a respectable justification of the wide range of freedoms, which they had enjoyed under the broad Puritan settlement of the Commonwealth. Indeed even amongst formerly moderate churchmen the turmoil of the 1640s had largely forced them to abandon their vision of the Hooker-sponsored moderation of the Elizabethan Church. They had been compelled to either abandon the Church of England or to embrace a Laudian Hooker as the expression of a distinctive religious settlement. Largely as a result of the sufferings of the Civil War, the royal martyrdom and the authoritarianism of the Commonwealth the previously condemned excesses of Laudian prelacy and royalism had come to recall a stable society, peaceable uniformity, and order in religion. This ensured that it was the more narrow Laudian understanding of Hooker, which emerged as the authentic voice of the English Church. Heylyn rightly described how he had become the vigilant guardian of both Church and State whose ‘learned pains . . . hath took off long since these expectations, which hath been made against the severall Offices, and whole course thereof, by those unquiet spirits who first moved these controversies’.157 At the Restoration a difficult struggle still lay ahead to ensure that this vision was triumphant, but it was also clear that a good basis had been laid for this belief in Hooker as a leading ‘father’ of the English church. His great Polity was deemed to have shown that the Church enjoyed such a primitive purity of doctrine and practice that there was no error, which could justify any man’s renunciation of her communion. ¹⁵⁷ Heylyn, Ecclesia Vindicata, 311.

3 The Establishment of Anglican Triumphalism When Charles II finally returned to London in May 1660 he was greeted with tremendous enthusiasm. ‘Escorted by troops of splendidly uniformed horsemen and foot-soldiers, and announced by a fanfare of trumpets, Charles entered the capital through streets bright with flowers and hanging tapestries.’ He was not, however, just accompanied by soldiers and civic dignitaries. Amongst those taking an honoured part in the procession were twelve Presbyterian ministers in their sober Geneva gowns. Outside St Paul’s he actually made an official stop, so that he could be greeted by the whole company of city preachers and presented with a Bible. Farther along the processional route the king paused briefly before a more marginal group of clergy, consisting of the city’s sequestered divines. They then made a discreet presentation of a second Bible, bound up with the Prayer Book.1 This incident clearly demonstrates that whilst Charles may have ‘come into his own’ it was far from clear that the Restoration would lead to an accompanying triumph for the Hooker-sponsored ambitions of the Church loyalists, and a drastic reversal in the fortunes of the Presbyterians and Independents. In the Declaration of Breda, Charles had promised religious toleration to all peaceful Christians with the intention of seeking Parliamentary approval of this measure after mature deliberation.2 Most Restoration thanksgiving sermons, therefore, rejoiced in the return ¹ R. S. Bosher, The Making of the Restoration Settlement. The Influence of the Laudians, 1649–1662 (London, 1951), 143. ² G. E. Aylmer, The Struggle for the Constitution in the Seventeenth Century (London, 1975), 160–1; R. Hutton, The Restoration. A Political and Religious History

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of the king, but made the most general of references to any religious settlement. If Hooker was cited at all he was upheld as an example of ecclesiastical restraint. Edward Reynolds, whilst preaching to Parliament at St. Margaret’s, carefully avoided commenting on the explicit form the Restoration Church should take, and merely warned that we should offend God if any settlement presumed ‘to see what is meet and convenient better than God himself, thereby taking upon us to be controllers of his wisdome, as learned Hooker speaks’.3 In spite of apparent royal approval for such conciliatory statements the traditional historiography, as epitomized by Robert Bosher, has emphasized that this was no more than a calculated ploy to conciliate the Puritans temporarily. Charles had no intention of accommodating them, and discreetly worked to re-establish the old Caroline Church. Bosher insists that in the twelve months following the Restoration ‘the Anglicans, working quietly but purposefully under the powerful patronage of the Lord Chancellor, regained control of the Establishment. The nature of the settlement was not determined by the negotiations with the Puritans, nor by the deliberations of Parliament, but by the fait accompli which was the crowning achievement of Laudian policy, and which the nation had accepted before the Savoy Conference opened or the Cavalier Parliament convened.’4 Bosher’s belief in a popular royal-sponsored Church party has been vigorously contested. I. M. Green insists that there was only ever a minority of churchmen who sought a full restitution of the Laudian order, and there is no evidence that Charles ever supported them. On the contrary he did all that he could to bring about a compromise settlement of the Church. He ‘nurtured the spirit of reconciliation’ and sought to enshrine it by ‘a form of limited episcopacy’. Only the intransigence of the laity, within a Cavalier-dominated House of Commons, ensured that the royal efforts were largely in vain, and resulted in the triumph of a ‘high Church’ religious settlement.5

of England and Wales 1658–1667 (Oxford, 1990), 108; M. R. Watts, The Dissenters, 1 (Oxford, 1978), 221. ³ E. Reynolds, Divine Efficacy without Humane Power (London, 1660), 30. ⁴ Bosher, Restoration, 144. ⁵ I. M. Green, The Re-establishment of the Church of England, 1660–1663 (Oxford, 1978), 1–2, 24.

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Green’s explanation for the triumph of this party is supported by the treatment of the Polity at the start of the 1660s. The struggles of the Civil War and the Commonwealth had ensured that a Hooker-sponsored ideal of the English Church as a Catholic and Reformed body was the dominant ideology amongst the Church loyalists. Although the word would still have been meaningless to contemporaries it is both reasonable and convenient to describe this vision of a unique English religious settlement as Anglican. Unity of opinion amongst the loyalists, however, could not compensate for the lack of clerical adherents, and the failure to secure a wide popular mandate. In 1660 the Presbyterians, rather than the churchmen, were in the dominant position. They enjoyed significant support in all three kingdoms, and were actively co-operating to achieve the permanent ‘Extirpation of Prelacy’ and the firm establishment of ‘Presbytery, the Ordinance of Jesus Christ’ throughout the British Isles. Charles’s return was welcomed ‘not . . . upon any Terms, but upon the terms of the League and Covenant’ by which he had bound himself in 1650.6 The attempt by the long Parliament, in March 1660, to re-impose Presbyterianism by wholesale legislation was indicative of this desire to frustrate any form of Church revival.7 It was against this background that a conscious decision must have been made to publish a second edition of George Gillespie’s blistering denunciation of the popish tendencies of the English Church. In 1637 Gillespie had correctly identified the importance of Hooker’s justification of the Prayer Book to the Laudians, and consequently sought to refute him. By 1660 the Presbyterians were equally afraid that churchmen, ‘indoctrinated’ with Hooker, would attempt to reimpose some form of the old pseudo-Catholic Prayer Book and Gillespie became crucial to their attempt to resist a partisan Anglican settlement. Gillespie undoubtedly remained a compelling read with his fierce denunciation of the idolatrous nature of many observances, such as confirmation and holy days, which Hooker strove to maintain.8 Even worse than the sin of idolatry, however, Gillespie insisted, was ⁶ Green, Re-establishment, 13; J. Miller Charles II (London, 1991), 55, 57. ⁷ Bosher, Restoration, 139. ⁸ G. Gillespie, A Dispute against the English-Popish Ceremonies Obtruded upon the Church of Scotland (Edinburgh, 1660), 117, 123–6, 166.

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Hooker’s overt blasphemy in the defence of ceremonies such as kneeling at communion. At the last supper, Gillespie reminded his readers, the apostles had clearly received whilst sat at table, but Hooker persisted in commending the kneeling position which suggested that he believed that the Church had better warranty for their kneeling than Christ had for sitting.9 Such efforts by the Presbyterians to taint the Polity and the Prayer Book, however, failed to curb the enthusiasm of the Church loyalists for either of them. John Featley, nephew to Daniel Featley, Archbishop Abbot’s controversial chaplain, responded by issuing one of his uncle’s previously unpublished works against Presbyterianism. In it he furiously denounced the covenant for being opposed to episcopacy ‘as hath been justified by the word of God, and unanswerable arguments drawn from Scripture by Whitgift and Hooker’.10 Other churchmen were equally anxious to cite Hooker in support of the Church’s forms and practices. When Jeremy Taylor was asked, in January 1660, by two members of Trinity College, Dublin, for a list of valuable theological works supporting the Church of England he urged them to read the Prayer Book, the Ordinal, and the Ecclesiastical Polity. The question of ceremonial clearly loomed large for Taylor since he particularly counselled them to ‘read diligently and frequently the 5th booke of Hooker’s Ecclesiastical Policy the first 4 books are also excellent but they principally minister to other purposes’.11 Meric Casaubon, the classical scholar and high churchman, similarly urged ‘men that have been buyers of books these 15. or 16. yeares past, to burn one halfe, at least, of those bookes they have bought, . . . and to betake themselves to reading of Hooker: not doubting, but by that time they had read him once, or twice over accurately, they would thank me for my advice, but God, much more, that put it into their hearts to follow it’.12 This conviction in the rightness of their position, however, could not offset the limitations of their influence in 1660. They were neither ⁹ Ibid. 350. ¹⁰ D. Featley, The League Illegal (London, 1660), 18. ¹¹ C. McKelvie, ‘Jeremy Taylor’s Recommendations for a Library of Anglican Theology’, Irish Booklore, 4/2 (1660), 100. ¹² M. Casaubon, A Vindication of the Lord’s Prayer, as a Formal Prayer, and by Christ’s Institution to Be Used by Christians as a Prayer against the Antichristian Practice and Opinion of Some Men (London, 1660), 82.

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numerous enough to affect the situation at parish level, nor sufficiently well organized at court to control the settlement.13 Instead Church patronage, which remained securely in royal hands, was used to promote a broadly based ministry. In a fraught atmosphere where the Presbyterians feared a return to prelacy, the Episcopalians were anxious for a return to the old status quo, the Independents feared both sides, and the king was anxious to do something for the Catholics, it was not surprising that a royal policy of moderation was pursued culminating in the Worcester House declaration in favour of limited episcopacy. Once again it seemed possible that Hooker might offer a universal acceptable basis for a broad settlement, which would seek to combine episcopal and presbyteral government. Whilst this sort of approach showed considerable continuity, with the attempts of the 1650s to establish a consensus regarding Church government, it also displayed an affinity with the earlier aspirations of the ‘Great Tew’ circle to base a reform of religious structures upon the principles of Hooker.14 John Gauden, who was amongst the leading proponents of a broad settlement, claimed Hooker as ‘one of the ablest Personal and best Spirits that ever England employed or enjoyed’ who ‘hath . . . abundantly examined every feature and dress of the Church of England, asserting it by calm, clear and unanswerable demonstrations of Reason and Scripture’.15 According to Gauden such devotion to Hooker, however, was perfectly compatible with reasonable religious reforms. It was better to reform the Prayer Book than to force tender consciences into dissent. There was a major distinction between those Puritans Hooker condemned as ‘still clamouring for further reformation, and threatening violence, if they might not set up their fancies in Religion’, and those who genuinely wished to be reunited with the Church.16 Only the former were guilty of attempting ‘to bury in silence, as their enemy, that rare piece of Mr Hookers Ecclesiastical ¹³ Green, Re-establishment, 24. ¹⁴ Aylmer, Struggle for the Constitution, 167–8; C. Hill, The World Turned Upside Down, Radical Ideas during the English Revolution (London, 1973), 287. ¹⁵ J. Gauden, Ecclesiae Anglicanae Suspiria, the Tears, Sighs, Complaints and Prayers of the Church of England Setting Forth her Former Constitution Compared with her Present Condition (London, 1660), 83. ¹⁶ Ibid. 320.

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Polity, which many of them had seldome either the courage or the honesty to read’.17 Gauden stressed that this was not the case in 1660, when there was a genuine desire to achieve a mutually acceptable settlement through the introduction of moderate episcopacy. This form of government had more precedent than any other approach for the ‘incomparable and unanswerable Mr. Rich: Hooker’ had long ago demonstrated that it was ‘a very strange thing, that such a discipline (meaning the Presbyterian) as ye speak of, should be taught by Christ and his Apostles in the Word of God, and no Church hath ever found it out, nor received it till this present time’.18 Such primitive episcopacy, Gauden stressed, was vastly removed from any belief in prelatical government. Even Calvin, as described by Hooker, had declared his approval for moderate Reformed episcopacy.19 Edward Stillingfleet, that lifelong friend to nonconformists, was equally certain that moderate episcopacy was the most acceptable form of Church government. His aptly named Irenicum insisted that ordination performed by presbyters, in cases of necessity, was perfectly valid since no Church government could be based upon a Jus Divinum, but was a matter for prudence to decide.20 Critics were urged to consult Hooker, and they would ‘see the mutability of the form of Church Government largely asserted and fully proved’ in the third book of the Polity.21 The genuine seriousness with which Charles also viewed the prospect of limited episcopacy is clearly demonstrated by the appointments he made to bishoprics. Reynolds was consecrated to serve as bishop of Norwich, and Baxter and Calamy, although they eventually declined, were both offered sees. Some uncompromising loyalists, such as Cosin and Sterne, were also appointed, but most of the appointments went to men who had been closely associated with the ‘martyred king rather than the martyred archbishop’.22 ¹⁷ Ibid. 83. ¹⁸ Ibid. 183. ¹⁹ Ibid. ∗∗ 1. ²⁰ F. J. Powicke, The Reverend Baxter under the Cross (London, 1928), 220. ²¹ E. Stillingfleet, Irenicum, A Weapon-Salve for the Churches Wounds (London, 1661), 394. ²² Green, Re-establishment, 97; R. Hutton, Charles the Second King of England, Scotland and Ireland (Oxford, 1989), 152; G. F. Nuttall, Richard Baxter (London, 1965), 88.

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This avoidance of zealous loyalists may also have been influenced by Clarendon’s23 desire to establish the Restoration settlement on the basis of mixed monarchy. Although a Church loyalist, he was clearly anxious to ensure that there was no repetition of the earlier Caroline exaggerations of regal power. Any narrow revival of the belief in divine-right monarchy would have negated his acceptance of Hooker’s belief in the importance of an original compact to ensure good government and laws.24 Clarendon’s account of the institution of laws was much more scriptural and historical than the Polity’s, since he avoided Hooker’s explorative enquiry into natural law. The conclusion was identical, however, since he still agreed that all government was ‘establish’d by firmness and constancy, by every mans knowing what is his right to enjoy, and what is his duty to do’.25 He did extend Hooker’s belief that the laws described duties, however, to suggest that they also described rights. In order to avoid suggesting that these were natural rights he was forced to accept a divine origin of government in order to preserve valued legal rights. This still removed the right of the sovereign to initiate or repeal laws at his own will whilst allowing him to follow Hooker’s stance concerning law.26 Consequently Clarendon could be forcible concerning the supremacy and sacred nature of monarchy whilst insisting that the sovereign remained subject to the fundamental laws of the nation. The monarch retained the right, in exceptional circumstances, to break the law for the common good, but no new law could be made without the agreement of Parliament.27 This desire for mixed monarchy was no mere academic theory, and Clarendon endeavoured to guide his public actions by it. In the long Parliament of 1640 he had supported the impeachment of ²³ Edward Hyde was made earl of Clarendon in the coronation honours list of April 1661. ²⁴ J. C. Hayward, ‘The Mores of Great Tew’, Ph.D. thesis, (Cambridge, 1982), 212. ²⁵ M. Goldie, ‘Restoration Political Thought’, in L. K. J. Glassey (ed.), The Reigns of Charles II and James VII and II (New York, 1997), 12–13; Hayward, ‘Great Tew’, 213; H. Tomlinson, ‘The Causes of War: A Historiographical Survey’, in H. Tomlinson (ed.), Before the Civil War. Essays on Early Stuart Politics and Government (London, 1983), 8–9. ²⁶ Hayward, ‘Great Tew’, 209; B. H. G. Wormald, Clarendon Politics, History and Religion (Cambridge, 1951), 232. ²⁷ A. Quinton, The Politics of Imperfection. The Religious and Secular Traditions of Conservative Thought in England from Hooker to Oakeshott (London, 1976), 33.

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Stafford in the interest of constitutionalism. This desire to ensure that the constitution was respected then led him to end his temporary alliance with the Presbyterians when they sought to abolish episcopacy, and enhance the sovereignty of Parliament.28 Clarendon’s History of the Rebellion, his intended counterpart to the Polity, demonstrated his desire that Restoration society should adhere to this constitutionalism. He deliberately manipulated the historical records ‘on the lawyer-like grounds that, if England was to survive into the future as a law-respecting and oath-preserving nation, it must not be known that Charles had exceeded his constitutional rights in the years 1641–6’.29 On his return to England, in 1660, Clarendon maintained this adherence to law by not advising his sovereign to reverse the acts of Parliament which Charles I had reluctantly assented to on the eve of the Civil War.30 However both Clarendon’s personal desire to pursue the path of Hooker-sponsored political moderation, and Charles’s separate ambition to ensure a generous religious settlement on the premises of the Polity, were both thwarted by the growing strength of reaction amongst the Cavaliers. After the initial euphoria of the Restoration they became steadily more concerned that a Puritan counterrevolution would be attempted. The growing association of religious dissent, Protestant or Catholic, with political subversion is clear from the declarations, which the rapidly expanded royalist militia presented to the king.31 In late November this paranoia helped to ensure that the bill ‘for making the king’s Declaration touching Ecclesiastical Affairs effectual’ failed to secure a second reading, and, in January 1661, Venner’s Insurrection served to confirm the royalist equation of nonconformity and sedition. The electorates’ desire, in the May elections, to select strongly royalist candidates produced a house of ‘young squires’ who had been carefully tutored in the Laudian ideals by a whole series of loyalist tutors. They possessed an engrained hatred of Puritanism for the sufferings they believed it to have caused, and a belief in the episcopal Church of England as a bulwark against the ‘poisonous principles of schism and rebellion’.32 ²⁸ Ibid. 33. ²⁹ Hayward, ‘Great Tew’, 253. ³⁰ M. Ashley, England in the Seventeenth Century (1603–1714) (Harmondsworth, 1962), 121; J. Morrill, The Nature of the English Revolution (Harlow, 1993), 400. ³¹ Green, Re-establishment, 182. ³² Ibid. 180.

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Such an electoral result ensured that religious comprehension was no longer a realistic possibility and heralded the imminent triumph of Hooker’s Anglican identity. This may not, however, have been immediately apparent to contemporaries; particularly since the Savoy Conference was in the process of discussing possible reform of the Prayer Book. Baxter held out high hopes for it and had driven himself unrelentingly throughout the spring of 1661 with the hope of drawing the bishops into some sort of plan for pacific comprehension. Zachary Crofton, the Irish nonconformist divine, was similarly anxious, notwithstanding the excellent defence by ‘learned Hooker’ of the status quo, that the opportunity was not neglected to order worship to ensure that God was addressed in a reverent, ‘grave, serious and composed’ way. 33 Crofton’s comment clearly demonstrates that he, along with other Reform-minded liturgical revisionists, were deeply conscious of Hooker’s close association with the Prayer Book. Consequently there was a clear recognition that their case would be furthered if they could show that their proposed modifications were, at least, respectful of the wisdom located in the Polity. This policy of qualified agreement, rather than direct confrontation, avoided them simply being stereotyped as no more than bigoted Puritan opponents of everything Hooker said. Prynne notably drew upon Hooker within his detailed set of recommendations to demonstrate that ‘a set standing form of CommonPrayer . . . is not absolutely necessary’.34 With regard to ceremonies he argued that practices such as kneeling, the cross in baptism, and the ring in marriage were not to be insisted upon since many churchmen such as Cartwright, Whitgift and Hooker had debated them both ‘pro and contra’. Since there was no clear unanimity of agreement it was clearly better for them to ‘be omitted, or left arbitrary to all’.35 Hooker was also drawn upon to demonstrate the permissibility of dispensing with some of the repetitive intercessions. Prynne, with ³³ Z. Crofton, Prefatory Epistle to G. Firmin, The Liturgical Considerator Considered: Or a Brief View of Dr Gauden’s Considerations Touching the Liturgy of the Church of England (London, 1661), b2v. ³⁴ W. Prynne, A Short Pacific Examination of Some Exuberances in, and Ceremonial Appurtenances to the Common Prayer (London, 1661), 2. ³⁵ Ibid. 7.

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regard to the Gloria Patri, urged that this was superfluous because, as the Polity related, it had originally been introduced ‘as a paraphrastical exposition of Ro.11.36 to manifest our sound judgment concerning the sacred Trinity against the Arian’. For the same reason it could be shown from Hooker that the addition to the Gloria Patri of ‘As it was in the beginning . . . ’ was also ‘defective in itself ’.36 Crofton was equally unhappy with the petitionary rote of the Prayer Book. Although the ‘Reverend Hooker’ had rightly recognized that the Lord’s Prayer should serve as a pattern for our own prayers it was not ‘essential to every act of devotion’ and did not need to be repeated at the beginning and at the end of public prayers. Hooker’s position, Crofton argued, was equivalent to a belief in the ‘sanctifying power of the words’ themselves, ‘rendring it a vain sensless repetition, and self-devised Worship’.37 ‘Our own Hooker’ had rightly demonstrated the antiquity of so much of the Prayer Book, but wisely recognized that the prayers still remained the expressions of good and holy men rather than the inspiration of the Holy Ghost.38 Skilful as this carefully qualified enthusiasm for Hooker was, however, it fell upon deaf ears. The growing sense of reaction amongst the Cavaliers ensured that the old Laudian vision of Hooker was to be the dominant interpretation of the Restoration. Even as the conference was meeting a whole series of works were being produced, which cited Hooker in support of the old liturgical status quo. Zealous churchmen, such as Irenaeus Freeman and William Nicholson, cited the Polity in support of sacramental forms of service and confidently lambasted the revisionists for the worthlessness of their writings before the unanswered scholarship of Hooker.39 The more pragmatic moderate divines recognized this hardening of political and religious ideologies, and sought to adjust their position accordingly. This is clearly illustrated by Nicholas Bernard, that former supporter of Cromwell and limited episcopacy, who ³⁶ Ibid. 11. ³⁷ Crofton, Prefatory Epistle to Firmin, Liturgical Considerator, a4v. ³⁸ Ibid. A3v–A4r. ³⁹ I. Freeman, The Reasonableness of Divine Service: Or Non-Conformity to Common Prayer, Proved Not Conformable to Common Reason (London, 1661), 33; W. Nicholson, A Plain, but Full Exposition of the Catechism of the Catholic Church of England Enjoyned to be Learned of Every Childe, Before he be Brought to be Confirmed by the Bishop (London, 1661), 18, 165.

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chose to demonstrate his newly recovered royalist credentials through his publication of Clavi Trabales. This included previously unpublished parts of Book VIII, which he claimed to have located amongst Ussher’s manuscripts. These new extracts were important to the loyalist understanding of Hooker because they affirmed the sovereign’s religious supremacy, and his ultimate reckoning to God, rather than to the populace.40 Sanderson, who had previously decried Hooker’s belief in a group decision to place legislative authority in the kingin-parliament, gratefully provided the preface to this new corrective account of his political views. Not surprisingly Bernard made no mention of the fact that Book VIII had only claimed this to be so because the people, at some time in the past, had irrevocably committed themselves, and their heirs, to this kind of kingship. In the changed climate of the early 1660s he needed to provide an apologia both for Ussher’s actions of the 1640s and his own enthusiasm for them. Clavi Trabales is clearly also indicative of the general concerted effort, on the part of the Church enthusiasts, to shore up their intransigency by refurbishing the leading figures of the past, Hooker being the most notable of these, and narrowing the scope of their doctrines.41 Unlike Bernard, however, most proponents of change were illprepared for this deployment of Hooker against them. Baxter’s contemporary account of the Savoy conference shows that he was genuinely shocked by the unsympathetic hearing which the episcopal divines gave to their grievances. A tender conscience, he discovered, was declared to be another name for ‘a soft or foolish head’. Its possessor claimed to be pleading the will of God, but since he was actually acting from motives of pride or wilfulness he deserved no consideration. Hooker, he found his opponents insisting, had demonstrated ‘that no man is bound to part with his own freedom because his neighbour is forward and humorous’.42 He was even further ⁴⁰ N. Bernard, Clavi Trabales; Or Nailes Fastened by Some Great Masters of Assemblyes Confirming the Kings Supremacy. The Subjects Duty. Church Government by Bishops (London, 1661), 92–4. ⁴¹ F. E. Pamp, ‘Walton’s Redaction of Hooker’, Church History, 17 (1948), 110, 110 n. ⁴² R. Baxter, The Grand Debate between the Most Reverend the Bishops, and the Presbyterian Divines (London, 1661), 91–2; R. Baxter, An Accompt of All the Proceedings of the Commissioners of Both Persuasions, Appointed by his Sacred Majesty, According to

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antagonized when Bishop Morley urged him to read Hooker so that he would reform his errors.43 Nevertheless, in spite of Baxter’s irritation, such was the growing strength of this Anglican comprehension of Hooker that he seems to have accepted it as an authentic interpretation. He made no attempt to use the Polity in response to Morley and preferred to draw upon more definite Reformed sources. ‘You referre us to Hooker since whose writings Ames in his fresh suit, and Bradshaw and Parker, and many others have written that against the Ceremonies, that never was answered, that we know of, but deserve your consideration.’44 Unsurprisingly such a protest had little effect, and after the conference he sadly reflected that it had confirmed that Hooker was now amongst the major proponents for an established liturgy.45 This failure of the Savoy Conference to seek an expansive settlement ended all hopes of comprehension, and publicly marked the beginning of the triumph for the loyalists.46 By the end of the year Convocation had indicated that ministers whose ordination had only been undertaken by presbyters needed to be episcopally reordained, and Parliament had passed the corporation act to exclude nonAnglicans from local government.47 Naturally the losers resented this disparagement of their ministry and a few voices still protested that this went against Hooker’s vision of an inclusive settlement. Crofton insisted that it was ‘well observed by the Reverend Hooker that great Oracle of the Church of England’ that those who have ‘received the power and Office of the ministry may not think to put it off and on like a cloak as the weather serveth’.48 Letters Patents, for the Review of the Book of Common Prayer (London, 1661), 93; N. H. Keeble, Richard Baxter. Puritan Man of Letters (Oxford, 1982), 4; Powicke, Baxter, 193. ⁴³ R. Baxter, Reliquiae Bateriae: Or Mr Richard Baxter’s Narrative of the Most Memorable Passages of His Life and Times, ed. M. Sylvester (London, 1696), 440. ⁴⁴ Baxter, The Grand Debate, 92. ⁴⁵ Baxter, Reliquiae Baxteriae, 316–20, 440. ⁴⁶ Green, Re-establishment, 143. ⁴⁷ J. Spurr, ‘Religion in Restoration England’, in L. K. J. Glassey (ed.), The Reign of Charles II and James VII and II (New York, 1997), 104–7; Hutton, Charles II, 182. ⁴⁸ Z. Crofton, A Serious Review of Presbyters Re-ordination by Bishops (London, 1661), 33–4. See also R. I., A Peaceable Enquiry into that Novel Controversie about Reordiantion (London, 1661), 26.

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These final protests were futile, however, against the resurgent Church party and their uncompromising Parliamentary supporters. A further series of anti-Puritan and anti-Catholic measures, culminating in the 1662 Act of Uniformity, ensured that the old Laudian understanding of Hooker, as the authentic unchanging voice of what may conveniently be called historic Anglicanism, was to be the dominant voice of the Restoration. This is clearly reflected by those treatises, which were produced in support of the Cavalier Parliament’s policies of religious reaction. A new generation of writers was proving to be just as determined to ensure that the Polity was associated with an elevated understanding of the English Church, whose episcopal succession and Prayer Book were a mark of her status as the only true apostolic and catholic body.49 John Barbon, a zealous proponent of the new establishment, stressed that his justification of the forms and practices of the English Church was really unnecessary since Hooker was amongst those ‘more dexterous and more sufficient Pens that have dealt in this Argument or Theme before me’.50 Those individuals who, even after the troubles of the Civil War, continued to resist the authority of the Church would soon be corrected if they could only be persuaded to ‘try . . . their teeth . . . upon this file’ of Hooker.51 They would soon be defeated by his challenge to find one church that has not been governed by bishops ‘sithence the times that the blessed Apostles were conversant’.52 The allegation that bishops were made by the king was unsustainable since he merely nominated them, and did not consecrate them. ‘And yet, if it be so, see what Hooker saies for the meetness and reasonableness of that course in that segment of his Politie, which Dr Bernard ha’s communicated to the world in his Clavi Trabales.’53 Sir Roger L’Estrange, that inflexible Cavalier opponent of both Puritanism and Catholicism, was equally adamant that he did not need to concern his readers over the relative merits of episcopal government since Hooker was ‘[e]quall to all the World . . . upon that ⁴⁹ Spurr, ‘Religion in Restoration England’, 98. ⁵⁰ J. Barbon, Liturgie a Most Divine Service: In Answer to a Late Pamphlet Stiled, Common-Prayer-Book No Divine Service (Oxford, 1662), Dedicatory, Preface. ⁵¹ Ibid. 24, 63. ⁵² Ibid., The Preface. ⁵³ Ibid. 166.

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Subject’.54 Limited episcopacy was a nonsensical proposition based upon ‘the Imaginary coalition of the two Church Parties’.55 Barbon was also suspicious of such a concept and warned that only canonical ordination could make a lawful minister. The writings of Hooker, that ‘rich and inexhaustible anti-Sectarian Penn’ should have silenced all claims that a minister was made by his sound preaching of the Word or ability in extemporaneous prayer.56 Hooker’s words of warning, however, had remained unheeded by those who continued to press for public worship to consist of sermons and extemporary prayer. Much to Barbon’s evident irritation they refused to subscribe to the Prayer Book because of its perceived popish content. Wearily he agreed with Hooker that ‘were it not . . . to satisfie the minds of the simple sort of men, there nice curiosities are not worth the trouble, which we bestow to answer them’.57 L’Estrange was equally adamant that the Polity showed that such practices ‘are not in regard of their Corrupt original to be held Scandalous’. None of their opponents were ‘able to avouch, that any of them was otherwise instituted, than unto good’.58 This over-zealous desire for reform, L’Estrange and Barbon believed, would only be successfully counteracted through the demolition of the doctrine of sola scriptura. The Polity, which had striven to reconcile a belief in the sufficiency of the scriptures with the deployment of reason, was ideal for this purpose. The ‘Incomparable Hooker’, L’Estrange enthused, had convincingly demonstrated that those things ‘which the Law of God leaveth Arbitrary, and at liberty, are all subject unto positive Laws of men’. Any form of liturgy imposed by authority was legitimate providing it was ‘neither Unlawful in it self: nor wickedly applied’.59 The Polity’s provision of such a coherent theological basis for the Church’s actions totally vindicated the form of Prayer Book services. In particular it served to justify the Prayer Book’s emphasis upon the ⁵⁴ R. L’Estrange, Interest Mistaken: Or the Holy Cheat: Proving from the Undeniable Practises & Positions of the Presbyterians, that the Design of that Party is to Enslave Both King and Party under the Masque of Religion (London, 1662), 72. ⁵⁵ Ibid. 71. ⁵⁶ Barbon, Liturgie a Most Divine Service, 13. ⁵⁷ Ibid. 64. ⁵⁸ L’Estrange, Interest Mistaken, 78. ⁵⁹ Barbon, Liturgie a Most Divine Service, 34–5, 77, 80.

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orderly reading of scripture, rather than the sermon or expository prayer, as the central component of services. Barbon and Thomas Elborow (another High Church man) reminded their readers, that Hooker had recognized the worth of reading publicly from both Testaments. He had stressed, Barbon recalled, that the public reading of scripture had been a weekly practice of the Jews, ‘but that they always had, in like manner, their weekly Sermons upon some part of the Law of Moses, we no where find’.60 In general Hooker rapidly became indispensable to the maintenance of the recently established Anglican status quo as his support was enthusiastically trumpeted in defence of the centrality and immutable nature of all disputed practices. Hooker’s original belief that these were potentially matters indifferent, which could be altered, had been totally forgotten. Set forms of intercession, the Gloria Patri, kneeling, music in church, the services for churching, baptism, marriage and burial, were all commended as givens defended by Hooker.61 This confident ‘missionary’ usage of the Polity was not without its limited successes regarding the recalcitrant.62 Some reluctant conformists claimed that although they felt some unhappy reservations about the Hooker sponsored settlement their respect for his learning made it possible for them to attend Prayer Book services. Crofton, in spite of his complaints about episcopal arrogance, maintained his policy of qualified agreement with Hooker and urged his compatriots to submit to the discipline of the Church. The Church, he commented resembled a degenerate vine, parts of it were rotten, but it was still a vine.63 Although these corruptions, he insisted, obviously clouded the

⁶⁰ Ibid. 52; T. Elborow, An Exposition of the Book of Common-Prayer of the Church of England by Way of Question and Answer (London, 1663), 28. ⁶¹ Barbon, Liturgie, a Most Divine Service, 36, 80, 82, 95, 125, 134, 142, 143; Elborow, An Exposition, 27, 28; L’Estrange, Interest Mistaken, 78. ⁶² Spurr, ‘Religion in Protestant England’, 111. ⁶³ Z. Crofton, Reformation Not Separation: Or, Mr Crofton’s Plea for Communion with the Church, under those Corruptions, and by that Disorderly Ministration to Which he cannot Conform, Nor by it Administer. In a Letter Written July 20 1661 (London, 1662), 8.

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purity of the water it was clear from Hooker that such failings did not justify nonconformity.64 Crofton’s respect for Hooker was somewhat tortured and certainly not in agreement with the triumphant Restoration writings of the High Church divines. Nevertheless his reluctant recognition that the Polity encouraged religious compliance, to a settlement he disliked, was indicative of the dominant Anglican reading of Hooker. By the end of 1662 his position as an icon of Anglicanism appeared to be unassailable. With the tacit support of Hooker episcopacy had been restored, the Prayer Book revised, and well over a thousand Puritan clergy had been rejected for their refusal to conform.65 Naturally there were still nonconformists who differed in their usage of the Polity, and even some quiet conformist concerns, such as those of John Durel, the future dean of Windsor, who expressed muted disquiet concerning Hooker’s acceptance of the abolition of the Genevan episcopate, but these were not representative of a wider tradition.66 The publication in 1662 of the first complete edition of the Polity, along with a Life of Hooker was, therefore, expected to confirm symbolically the Anglican success. The choice of Gauden to produce the Life and supervise production of the new edition may seem a surprising decision. His conformity under the Commonwealth, and his close association with the moderate party, had done little to endear him to many of his more zealous clerical brethren. Whilst others suffered he was deemed to have ‘continued fix’d and undisturbed in his rich Benefice, joining himself to the sworn Enemies of the Church and Crown by their solemn League and Covenant’.67 His reputation for moderation, of course, also stood in his favour since he could be expected to produce an edition and biography that would enjoy a universal appeal. It was no doubt also assumed, however, that Gauden’s expectation of the bishopric of Winchester, would ensure that there was an appropriate Anglican tinge to his work.68 ⁶⁴ Ibid. 43, 73. ⁶⁵ Green, Re-establishment, 35. ⁶⁶ J. Durel, A View of the Government and Publick Worship of God in the Reformed Churches beyond the Seas (London, 1662), 160. ⁶⁷ P. Barwick, The Life of the Reverend Dr John Barwick, D. D. (London, 1724), 363–4. ⁶⁸ D. Novarr, The Making of Walton’s Lives (Ithaca, 1958), 222.

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The hope that Gauden would support the newly restored religious and political establishment was not totally misplaced. He used his prefatory letter to Charles II to stress that the publication of the Polity would ‘adde a further Lustre to your Majesties glorious Name, and happy Reign, whose transcendent favour, justice, and munificence to the long afflicted Church of England, is a subject no less worthy of admiration than gratitude to all posterity’. Gauden commended Charles for his devotion to both Church and people, and knew ‘not what to present more worthy of your Majesties acceptance . . . then these elaborate Works of the Famous and Prudent Mr. Richard Hooker now augmented, and I hope completed with the three last books, so much desired and so long concealed’. Whilst the Polity acts as a ‘great and impregnable shield’ to the Church, she also craves ‘your Majesties Royal Protection under God’. His late father had known his duty to the Church, and ‘a few days before he was Crowned with Martyrdom, commended to his dearest children, the diligent reading of Mr. Hooker’s Ecclesiastical Polity, even next the Bible’.69 Gauden insisted that such a recognition of the Polity’s worth had previously negated the need for a ‘Life and Death of . . . [the Church’s] great Friend, faithful servant, and valiant Champion’, since Hooker’s memory, like a jewel, was clearly set in his writings, and no author had deemed himself capable of producing a worthy companion.70 The production of some recent Puritan Lives (probably those of Samuel Clarke), however, which ‘have enviously passed by this Mr. Hooker’ had necessitated his own unworthy attempt. This Puritan disparagement, or ignorance, of the Polity had allowed it for too long to ‘lay gasping and sprawling for breath’.71 Hooker deserved to be better known because his life was like a golden lamp, which shone with the bright light of reason and burned with the holy fervency of grace to the comfort of all true members of the English Church.72 In many respects Gauden’s presentation of Hooker’s ecclesiastical outlook seemed to fulfil everything that his Anglican colleagues had ⁶⁹ R. Hooker, The Lawes of Ecclesisastical Politie, ed. J. Gauden (London, 1662), ‘An Epistle to the King’. ⁷⁰ J. Gauden, The Life and Death of Mr Hooker, in R. Hooker, The Lawes of Ecclesisastical Politie, ed. J. Gauden (London, 1662), 1, 2. ⁷¹ Ibid. 2. ⁷² Ibid. 6–7.

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hoped it would. Within the Polity, Gauden argued, there was both a treasury and an armoury for those who possessed sufficient maturity to be able to bear the weight of his reasoning. He even commended Hooker as the leading exponent of the via media of the English Church between nonconformity and popery. Into a new extreme; he bade them stay, And shew’d between each ditch the safest way. He did democracy and misrule hate, And lov’d the Order both of Church and State.73

Hooker, as Gauden approvingly noted, had successfully ‘avoided superstition on either hand; neither calling that evil which was good, nor that good which was evil’.74 Such a stance, Gauden commented, was not popular with his Puritan opponents, but no matter how bitter the conflict Hooker was never guilty of aggression towards his critics. The manner of his life may have been mild, but the impact of the Polity, on the Church’s opponents, was such that it ‘did cast the tortoise of Non-conformity on its back’.75 Despite this confident portrayal of Hooker as the saintly but strong deliverer upon whose ‘grounds, rules and proportions . . . a true Polity in Church and State’ could be based, the Life was not well received by the Anglican hierarchy.76 In spite of the promising preface it was a dull read, padded out with superfluous moral rambling, and adding very little in the way of detail to the already published account by Fuller. Those details which were new, such as his expansion upon Fuller’s discreet reference to attempts to blackmail him, hardly served to enhance Hooker’s reputation. It also seems amazing that Gauden was happy to follow Fuller’s lead and remind his readers that Hooker was considered to be a dull preacher.77 Even more concerning than this half-hearted hagiography, however, was Gauden’s presentation of Hooker as a proponent of a much broader via media than the one so recently established. Remarkably, given the climate of the time, he used the biography to make several ⁷³ Ibid. 38. ⁷⁴ Ibid. 40. ⁷⁵ Ibid. 20. ⁷⁶ Gauden, ‘An Epistle to the King’. ⁷⁷ D. MacCulloch, ‘Richard Hooker’s Reputation’, English Historical Review, 117 (2002), 798; J. Martin, Walton’s Lives: Conformist Commemorations and the Rise of Biography (Oxford, 2001), 241.

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derogatory remarks about pre-war Laudianism. He attributed the Commonwealth abandonment of the Church not only to nonconformist excess, but to a neglect by the Church ‘of the main matters in which the kingdome of God . . . do[es] chiefly consist’. The obsession of the 1630s church with enforcing uniformity of ceremonies was derided for being more concerned with achieving ‘an outward conformity to those shadows, then for that inward or outward conformity with Christ’.78 Furthermore such comments were paired with peaceable remarks about the moderate nonconformists of the 1590s, ‘who were carefully distinguished from doctrinaire Presbyterians’.79 Gauden also worryingly demonstrated his enthusiasm for Hooker as a figure of wide appeal through his enthusiasm for the moderate approach of the last two books of the Polity. In spite of the welcome corrective offered by Clavi Trabales, to Book VIII’s unacceptable belief in the importance of an original compact, he had deliberately modelled his version largely upon the 1648 edition.80 Moreover, in spite of his claim that Hooker asserted the supremacy of sovereign princes, he had appended to the end of Book VIII a passage, which infelicitously suggested that ‘such usurpers . . . as in the exercise of their power do more than they have been authorized to do cannot in Conscience binde any man unto obedience’.81 If the Anglican party was unhappy with Gauden’s presentation of Book VIII they found the newly published Book VII an even more unpleasant revelation. Rather than demonstrating episcopacy to enjoy a divine origin it merely showed it to enjoy divine approval, which meant that it was not an unalterable state of Church government.82 Although there is some evidence that Sheldon, that exemplar of Restoration Anglicanism, may have been rather more moderate in ⁷⁸ Gauden, Life and Death of Hooker, 4–5. ⁷⁹ MacCulloch, ‘Hooker’, 799. ⁸⁰ F. E. Pamp states that Gauden undoubtedly knew of Bernard’s work because of his reference in the Life to ‘these Clavos Trabales, strong nails, which by the hammer of Reason he forged on the Anvil of Religion’ and drove ‘home to the head’ (Pamp, ‘Hooker’, 109–10 n.). ⁸¹ Goldie, ‘Restoration Political Thought’, 14–16; Hooker, Ecclesiastical Politie, 224; Novarr, Walton’s Lives, 233; Quinton, Politics of Imperfection, 26–7. ⁸² P. Avis, Anglicanism and the Christian Church (Edinburgh, 1989), 34, 35, 57– 60; R. Buick Knox, James Ussher Archbishop of Armagh (Cardiff, 1967), 129–31; M. R. Sommerville, ‘Richard Hooker and his Contemporaries on Episcopacy: An Elizabethan Consensus’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 35 (1984), 182–3, 184, 187.

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his theological outlook, when he originally entrusted the manuscript to Gauden, he seems to have mistakenly hoped, by 1662, that its publication would conclusively demonstrate Hooker’s credentials as a supporter of jure divino episcopacy.83 There are certainly large parts of Book VII, which if read in isolation, would appear to support this, so Sheldon’s error is not without excuse. He was primarily an efficient administrator, so there is some truth behind Burnet’s barbed comment that ‘Sheldon was esteemed a learned man before the wars: but he was then engaged so deep in the politics, that scarce any print of what he had remained’.84 Peter Lake outlines the sort of interpretation that Sheldon must have constructed. Lake describes how Hooker provided all the basic assertions of the jure divino case for bishops. Book VII recounted how the ‘apostles were the first bishops; episcopacy was an institution of apostolic and therefore of divine foundation, the Church in general, and the Church of England in particular, had never been governed except by bishops’. Hooker admitted that he had previously agreed with the widespread conjecture that bishops, following the death of the apostles, had been introduced to maintain peace and order, but he had, subsequently, repented of this mistake.85 Lake insists, nevertheless, that this is misleading as shown by Hooker’s consideration of Jerome’s attribution of episcopacy to the custom of the Church. Episcopacy, Hooker concluded, in spite of its apostolic foundations, enjoyed no divinely enjoined perpetuity, and might therefore be said ‘to stand in force rather by the custom of the Church choosing to continue in it’ than by ‘any commandment from the word’. Hooker’s argument, Lake insists, as based ‘on the inherent congruence of the dictates of nature, reason and scripture, . . . felt no need to have constant recourse to divine injunctions, but preferred to emphasize the relative autonomy of divine and natural law, safe in the knowledge that, as with . . . episcopacy, the demands of nature and reason were often identical to those of scripture’.86 Gauden, in contrast to Sheldon, gratefully recognized Hooker’s reluctance to rest the episcopal case upon an overt divine command, ⁸³ Martin, Walton’s Lives, 240. ⁸⁴ Novarr, Walton’s Lives, 222. ⁸⁵ P. Lake, Anglicans and Puritans? Presbyterianism and English Conformist Thought from Whitgift to Hooker (London, 1988), 221. ⁸⁶ Ibid. 222–3.

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and consequently sought to demonstrate that the Polity supported his desire for limited episcopacy. Even in 1660 he had insisted that if it had been possible for him to obtain access to Hooker’s unpublished Book VII, it would have supported his stance. Sadly opponents of the Church ‘had the good (or rather evil) fortune, utterly to suppress those . . . books touching the vindication of the Church of England in its Ordination, Jurisdiction and Government, by the way of ancient Catholick, Primitive and Apostolick Episcopacy’.87 When less than two years later he was unexpectedly given a copy of the book he had no doubt that it was an authentic text since he recalled that ‘by comparing the writing of it with other indisputable papers or known manuscripts of Mr. Hooker’s’ he had ascertained that it was ‘undoubtedly his own hand throughout’.88 Hooker’s own views ‘touching episcopacy, as the Primitive, Catholick and Apostolick government of the Church’, Gauden rejoiced, had finally been made available.89 Through its publication Gauden clearly hoped to assure churchmen that limited episcopacy had a rational and respectable conformist precedent, at the same time as indicating to the English Presbyterians that their views could be comprehended by a newly re-established Church.90 The Polity demonstrated that the common people needed to be religiously governed ‘by such whose Learning, Age, Prudence, and Legal Authority derived from the Prince’. Episcopacy was to be preferred because it was in the best interests of the clergy to have a bishop with regard to their welfare. It would also suit the interests of the gentry and grand nobility who would respect a bishop more than a parochial minister. Finally the monarch could use bishops as their ‘religious eyes’ in the governance of their subjects.91 Such a settlement would ensure that for as long ‘as Bishops and Presbyters’ continued to exercise their duty in the ways of Piety, Prudence, Industry and Charity’ the Church would enjoy God’s protection.92 Whilst Gauden’s comprehension of Hooker was a reasonably authentic one, such moderation was clearly not in sympathy with the prevailing ethos of the Church and State. If Gauden had pub⁸⁷ Gauden, Ecclesiae Anglicane, 84. ⁸⁸ Gauden, Life and Death of Hooker, 26. ⁸⁹ Ibid. Title Page. ⁹⁰ Martin, Walton’s Lives, 239–40. ⁹¹ Gauden, Life and Death of Hooker, 24. ⁹² Ibid. 40.

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lished just one year earlier it might well have been greeted with the acclaim he desired, but, by 1662, the suggestion that Hooker had supported views contrary to the Restoration settlement was deeply embarrassing. The renewed status quo was not so secure that it could afford to have the reputation of one of its leading authorities sullied. Even in the aftermath of Savoy, Prynne was still quoting the Polity to show that the disputed ceremonies did not rest upon a divine mandate. Hooker’s recognition of this, he insisted, made it clearly wrong to forbid nonconformist leaders from performing their ministerial function, because they would not subscribe to ceremonies of man’s own devising.93 Gauden’s effective endorsement of the contents of the posthumous books made such continuing challenges even more dangerous, since it was clearly only a matter of time before their unhelpful contents also enhanced the nonconformist armoury. Indeed, even before the year was over, Book VII had actually been used as a rallying text against any notion of jure divino episcopacy. John Humfrey, a staunch royalist with a pronounced desire for a union of all Protestants, was advised that to accept episcopal reordination was not a thing indifferent, but a subscription to a belief in the divine institution of episcopacy. Such a doctrine, he was reminded, was totally opposed to Hooker’s understanding of the origins of episcopal government.94 Equally concerning to the Restoration Church was the potential exploitation of Hooker’s political writings. Sir Henry Vane had notably chosen to defend his Civil War actions with reference to the Polity. At his trial he claimed that ‘politic power is the immediate efflux and offspring of the law of nature, and may be called part of it. To this, Hooker, in his Ecclesiastical Polity agrees.’ Therefore during the constitutional deadlock ‘it had resolved on parliament to act on behalf of the nation and, in so doing, safeguard the community’s indissoluble right to political association’.95 Whilst this argument ⁹³ W. Prynne, A Moderate Seasonable Apology for Indulging Just Christian Liberty to Truly Tender Consciences, Conforming to the Publike Liturgy (London, 1662), the Epistle Dedicatory, 40, 53, 68. ⁹⁴ C. Condren, ‘The Creation of Richard Hooker’s Public Authority: Rhetoric, Reputation and Reassessment’, Journal of Religious History, 21/1 (1997), 51. ⁹⁵ J. H. Adamson and H. F. Folland, Sir Henry Vane. His Life and Times 1613–1662 (London, 1974); H. Vane, The Tryal of Sir Henry Vane, Kt (1662), 42.

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had not been accepted at Vane’s trial Gauden’s edition of the Polity appeared to exonerate him posthumously. If the Anglican settlement felt vulnerable to Puritan incursions, however, Gauden’s publication had made them equally sensitive to perceived Catholic threats. Consequently the king’s attempt, in 1663, to use his royal prerogative to grant toleration to the dissenters caused considerable dismay. Whilst Charles had little personal sympathy with the Puritans his suspected bias regarding the well-being of his Catholic subjects was perceived as a motivating factor. Although Parliament’s insurmountable opposition made him abandon this course it clearly raised the hopes of some of his Catholic subjects and revived the polemical tradition of presenting Hooker as a pseudo-papist. Hugh Cressy, an English convert, went further than most. Predictably he suggested to his readers that the Polity necessitated an external authority to validate scripture. However such an insistence on the importance of setting one above ‘the rest in God’s church to suppress the Seeds of Dissension’ was, he argued, tantamount to a recognition of the papal supremacy.96 Such an opinion was, of course, a misreading of Hooker. Edward Stillingfleet, that moderate scholar, stressed that it was more appropriate to talk of Hooker’s approval for ‘Humane-Tradition’ rather than ‘Church-Tradition’. By human testimony Hooker was speaking of the sort ‘whereby we know there is such a City as Rome, . . . wherein the ground of our perswasion can be nothing else but humane testimony’. The Catholic Church based authority upon a supposed supernatural infallibility, but Hooker had believed in a ‘rational Infallibility’. Such a rational authority could not prevent all forms of deception, but was sufficient to deal with all ‘reasonable doubting’. Any attempt to show that Hooker made the authority of the Church that ‘unto which faith is lastly resolved’ was an unfaithful representation of his meaning.97 ⁹⁶ H. P. Cressy, Roman-Catholick Doctrines No Novelties: Or Answer to Dr Pierce’s Court-Sermon, Miscall’d the Primitive Rule of Reformation ([No place of publication] 1663), 88, 305. ⁹⁷ E. Stillingfleet, A Rational Account of the Grounds of Protestants Religion, in The Works of that Eminent and Most Learned Prelate Dr Edw. Stillingfleet, Late Lord Bishop of Worcestor. Together with His Life and Character, 4 (London, 1709), 225–6.

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Well argued as such a response was, however, it did nothing to negate Gauden’s unhelpful, but supposedly authentic presentation of Hooker’s less than definite principles. For as long as this remained uncorrected both Catholics and Puritans were encouraged to threaten Church and State through careful exploitation of Hooker’s perceived ambiguities. Hooker’s sponsorship of religious subversion was obviously anathema to zealous Anglicans, and there was a recognition of the urgent need to neutralize Gauden’s unwelcome edition. Initially some attempts were made to discredit Gauden’s manuscript copies of previously unpublished material, but since no other authentic manuscripts could be found this quickly failed.98 More helpful was a new edition of Fuller’s Worthies of England, which corrected some of his earlier factual errors concerning Hooker. Gauden, who had largely copied Fuller, now found his own historical reliability damaged. Notably he was shown to be mistaken in his belief that Hooker never married. Furthermore Fuller, unlike Gauden, recognized the changed circumstances of 1662 and distanced Hooker from the supposedly friendly personal relations he had enjoyed with Travers. Instead he stressed the theological preaching battle between them with his famous phrase that ‘the pulpit spake pure Canterbury in the Morning and Geneva in the afternoon, until Travers was silenced’. Hooker’s Polity, he insisted, was prized by all ‘save such who out of Ignorance cannot, or Envy will not understand it. But with a prejudice, that as Jeptha vowed to sacrifice the first living thing which met him, these are resolved to quarrel with the first word, which occureth therein.’99 Such a short biographical entry, however, naturally had its limitations. Fuller’s own moderate churchmanship ensured that it did not overtly stress the High Church nature of Hooker’s beliefs. It also failed to do anything to mitigate the embarrassment caused by Gauden’s authentication of the disagreeable content of the latter books. Any hopes that Gauden’s unpalatable Life would be quickly forgotten were dealt a blow by the publication in 1663 of a biography of Sanderson, which was clearly based on Gauden’s account of ⁹⁸ Martin, Walton’s Lives, 242. ⁹⁹ T. Fuller, The History of the Worthies of England (London, 1662), 264.

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Hooker.100 In the same way that Gauden had pictured Hooker as a moderate churchman, this work attempted to show that Sanderson was of that party.101 Such enthusiasm for Gauden’s Life from religious moderates only served to fuel Anglican fears that Hooker’s High Church credentials were being damaged. Sheldon pragmatically recognized that only the production of a corrective life would bring the matter to a satisfactory conclusion. He was fortunate that Gauden had died before the end of 1662, which meant that he felt free to commission Isaac Walton to produce a new biography. The new biography was intended to discredit Gauden’s Life, neutralize the unpalatable parts of the posthumous books, and present Hooker and his Polity as being suitably Anglican in outlook.102 Walton was trusted to achieve this since he was known to be a convinced royalist and faithful churchman, who had already written a highly successful and overtly ‘Anglican’ life of Donne. Walton’s agenda is clear from the very beginning when he described how he intended to write the life of ‘the unhappy Author of five (if not more) of the Eight Bookes of The Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity’.103 He insisted that any implied criticism of Gauden was unintentional, but within his life there were many errors and omissions ‘which my better Leisure, my Diligence, and my accidental Advantages, have made known to me’.104 He was at pains to show the superior factual basis of his Life through the specificity of his dates, and the particularity of his accounts of Hooker’s benefices.105 By describing how he had been able to speak to William Cranmer, his two sisters, Ussher, Morton, and John Hales concerning their knowledge of Hooker, Walton was also able to demonstrate the superiority of the sources, which he had been able to draw upon.106 Such new material provided Walton with the necessary evidence to discredit the latter books of the Polity. By building upon their ¹⁰⁰ D. F., Reason and Judgment: Or Special Remarques of the Life of the Renowned Dr. Sanderson, Late Bishop of Lincoln (London, 1663), 4; Gauden, Life of Hooker, 6; Novarr, Walton’s Lives, 264. ¹⁰¹ Novarr, Walton’s Lives, 465. ¹⁰² Pamp, ‘Hooker’, 100. ¹⁰³ I. Walton, The Life and Death of Richard Hooker, the Author of those Learned Books of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity (London, 1665), 1. ¹⁰⁴ Walton, Life of Hooker, (1665), to the Reader. ¹⁰⁵ Novarr, Walton’s Lives, 275; Walton, Life of Hooker, (1665), 47, 156–7. ¹⁰⁶ Walton, Life of Hooker, (1665), 3–6.

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accounts of an unsympathetic family he implied that Hooker’s wife had been unsupportive of his academic studies. He reported how Sandys and Cranmer, whilst visiting their old tutor at Drayton Beauchamp, had been shocked to discover that he was reduced to minding the sheep, and rocking the cradle. Walton also strongly implies that Hooker was full of some sense of forboding concerning the preservation of his manuscripts. As he lay sick, unknown to him, the house was robbed. On being informed of this his first question was with regard to the safety of his books and papers.107 After Hooker’s death, Walton, who was consciously reviving Spenser’s earlier account concerning the destruction of the unpublished books by ‘evil disposed minds’, described how Archbishop Whitgift sent his chaplain to enquire after the drafts of the final three books of the Polity, but he could obtain no satisfactory answer from her. On being summoned to Lambeth to see Whitgift in person she confessed that she had allowed two local Puritan ministers access to the writings of her late husband’s study. Whilst ‘there they two burnt and tore many of them assuring her, that they were writings not fit to be seen, & that she knew nothing more concerning them’. The matter was never pursued any further than this since Hooker’s widow died overnight at her lodgings.108 There is some circumstantial evidence in favour of Walton’s story, such as the letter of Lancelot Andrewes to Henry Parry, a contemporary at Corpus, suggesting that someone ought to ensure the safe preservation of Hooker’s papers, but it is dangerous to extrapolate too much from these incontrovertible facts.109 Sisson, Novarr, and Stanwood have convincingly shown that Hooker’s wife has been unfairly maligned by history. They have demonstrated that, with the possible exception of Book VI, there is no first-hand evidence that the last three books of the Polity ever existed in a more complete form, and that there was no deliberate attempt to destroy Hooker’s manuscripts.110 ‘The story, in its various forms, presents some ¹⁰⁷ Pamp, ‘Hooker’, 109. ¹⁰⁸ C. J. Sisson, The Judicious Marriage of Mr Hooker and the Birth of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity (Cambridge, 1940), p. xii; Walton, Life of Hooker, (1665), 161–2. ¹⁰⁹ Martin, Walton’s Lives, 250. ¹¹⁰ R. Hooker, Of the Lawes of Ecclesiastical Polity, ed. P. G. Stanwood (London, 1981), 3, pp. xix–xx.

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impossibilities. Mrs Hooker’s impeachment, her journey to London, her examination before the Privy Council, and her [sudden] death, are manifest myth. And the various versions are mutually destructive by their many incompatibilities.’111 The famous story of Hooker being forced to mind the children during his incumbency at Drayton Beauchamp is an invention since there were no children in 1584, and there is no evidence that he ever took up residence.112 Undoubtedly the depiction of the difficult wife owes more to the earlier popular literary accounts, such as those concerning the marital sufferings of the scholarly Socrates and Thomas More, than to historical fact.113 Sisson locates the specific origins of the story of Hooker’s unsupportive wife within the lengthy and acrimonious chancery court cases, which arose out of the claims of his daughters as legatees under his will. In particular the suggestion that Sir Edwin Sandys, Hooker’s literary executor, had failed to pay the daughters their just share of the profits, produced by the Polity, created a bitter environment which came to reflect badly upon the whole family. This unpleasant and confused atmosphere encouraged the development of malicious rumours, which blended truth with fiction. The memory of this scandal was preserved amongst Sandys’s friends, notably the Cranmers, who subsequently became Walton’s principal informants.114 Walton’s debt to the Cranmers is made explicit in the appendix when he described how Mrs Spenser ‘who was my Aunt and Sister to George Cranmer’ had told him that her husband had been forced to finish the last three books of the Polity himself, because the manuscripts he had received at Hooker’s death were unfinished.115 Even if Walton sincerely believed the information to be accurate, he must undoubtedly have welcomed it as another conclusive piece of evidence to damage the credibility of the posthumous books. This calculated desire, to cast authoritative aspersions upon the origins of the latter books, is graphically confirmed by Walton’s deployment of ¹¹¹ Sisson, Hooker, 87. ¹¹² Ibid. p. xiii. ¹¹³ P. Ackroyd, The Life of Thomas More (London, 1998), 138–41. ¹¹⁴ P. B. Secor, ‘In Search of Richard Hooker: Constructing a New Biography’, in A. S. McGrade (ed.), Richard Hooker and the Construction of Christian Community (Tempe, 1997), 29–30; P. B. Secor, Richard Hooker. Prophet of Anglicanism (Tunbridge Wells, 1999), 2, 329–36, 339; Sisson, Hooker, 4–18. ¹¹⁵ Walton, Life of Hooker (1665), 116–17.

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other authorities against them. He praised Bernard, whom he seems to have assumed to be accurate, for drawing attention to the possible corruptions in the final three books.116 Readers were advised to consult Clavi Trabales where ‘the omissions are by him set down at large in the said Printed book’. Here the regal supremacy was asserted because ‘there could be in Natural Bodies no Motion of any thing, unless there were some first which moved all things, and continued Unmoveable; even so in Politick societies, there must be some unpunishable, or else no Man shall suffer punishment . . . Which kinde of Preheminency if some ought to have in a Kingdom, who but the King shall have it?’117 Bernard was not Walton’s only source of evidence for corruption of the last book since he was able to draw attention to the testimony of Fabian Philips, a royalist barrister, who was regarded as ‘a man of note for his useful Books’. Philips offered to ‘make Oath if I shall be required that Doctor Sanderson the late Bishop of Lincoln did a little before his Death affirm to me that he had seen a Manuscript, affirmed to him to be the hand-writing of Mr. Richard Hooker in which there was no mention made of the king or Supreme Governor being accomptable to the People’.118 There was also a letter of Henry King, the bishop of Chichester, to Walton, which was cited in its entirety. King described how Hooker’s manuscripts had been safely deposited in Laud’s library until his martyrdom. They were then removed and given to Hugh Peter. ‘And though they could hardly fall into a fowler hand, yet there wanted not other endeavours to corrupt and make them speak that Language, for which the Faction then fought; which was, To subject the Soveraign Power to the People.’ King was incredulous that anyone even attempted such a fabrication. Hooker’s ‘known loyalty to his prince whilst he lived’, the devotion felt towards him by James I and Charles I ‘and now the singular Character of his worth by you in the passages of his life’ all vindicate the Polity from the charge of being anti-royalist.119 Elsewhere Walton reinforced this point through his recollection of how Lord Say, the Parliamentarian commissioner, whilst conversing ¹¹⁶ Pamp, ‘Hooker’, 111. ¹¹⁷ Walton, Life of Hooker (1665) 168–70. ¹¹⁸ Ibid. 171. ¹¹⁹ Letter of Dr King to Isaac Walton, in I. Walton, The Life of Mr Rich. Hooker, the Author of those Learned Books of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity (London, 1665).

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with the king, had quoted from one of the then unpublished books. The king responded that ‘they were not allowed to be Mr Hooker’s Books but, however, he would allow them to be Mr Hooker’s and consent to what his Lordship proposed to prove out of those . . . Books’ if he would only accept the teaching of the undoubted five.120 This careful marshalling of material was highly successful in its attempt to undermine the credibility of Gauden’s un-Anglican account, and the last three books of the Polity. Even until well into the twentieth century these books were viewed with a degree of suspicion. Walton’s Life did much more, however, than merely limit the damage caused by Gauden’s edition of the Polity. It was his Life of 1665 which was responsible for firmly establishing a selective Anglican interpretation of the rest of the Polity on historical grounds. This interpretation was made plausible by the deeply attractive personal terms in which he portrayed Hooker. The judicious divine appears as a somewhat impractical, but saintly scholar divine who needed the guidance of a worldly-wise hierarchy. Such an image was to dominate the English Church for over three hundred years. Given its influence it is somewhat surprising, therefore, that Walton often seems so remarkably ignorant of the actual contents of the Polity. F. E. Pamp noted how Walton described the Polity as a treatise concerning the Church’s power to enact ceremonial canons and to impose a legal obedience to them, ‘but his specific delineation of Hooker’s doctrinal position is uniformly theological’. In addition it is noteworthy that some of the practices of Hooker as a parish priest, taken as beyond dispute by Walton, are a matter of argument in the Polity. Not unreasonably Pamp concluded that it seems unlikely that Walton ever read the whole of the work.121 As Keble had earlier recognized he seemed to prefer to judge Hooker’s character from anecdotes rather ‘than from the indications of temperament which Hooker’s own writings afford’.122 Walton, of course, never claimed to have read the whole of the Polity. Indeed, in the Introduction, he goes no further than to claim ¹²⁰ Walton, Life of Hooker (1665), 173. ¹²¹ Pamp, ‘Hooker’, 100–1. ¹²² R. Hooker, Lawes, ed. J. Keble (1836), 1, p. ii.

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that many years previously he had read part of Hooker’s works ‘with great liking and satisfaction’.123 Such unfamiliarity presumably explains Walton’s frequent fear of ‘Censures’ regarding his commission to write about ‘Mr Hooker and His Books’. Walton saw himself as a biographer of the person, with no pretensions to be considered a theologian, and openly recounted how he had primarily sought information regarding ‘his Person, his Nature, the management of his Time, his Wife, his Family, and the fortune of him and his’.124 Yet, at the same time, Walton’s biography of Hooker is somewhat different from his earlier personal Lives of Donne and Wotton, and his later ones of Herbert and Sanderson. Even leaving aside the enormous appendix to the Life, which was Walton’s attempt to separate his picture of Hooker from his attack on Gauden, the biography is disturbed by numerous unprecedented polemical digressions. Whilst these often do very little to increase our knowledge of Hooker they do assist ‘the discarding, under the cloak of historical relativity, of those doctrines in Hooker’s writings which were rising up to haunt the Restoration bishops from the pages of the Gauden edition of the Polity’.125 Most notably there is a long digression regarding the special situation and personality of Archbishop Whitgift, which makes Walton nervously promise to return as soon as possible to Hooker ‘where we left him’.126 As Walton’s embarrassed apology suggests this was included to further the atmosphere of relativity by emphasizing that the Polity was written to meet the needs of the late sixteenth century, not the situation of the 1660s. Consequently there is the unstated suggestion that the bishops of Walton’s own day, as Whitgift had done in his, might bring out the ideas of Hooker to meet their own problems. Whilst this sort of approach is greatly removed from the sort of empirical research undertaken in contemporary biographies, concerning character development, it was in keeping with the biographical approach of his own time. Blair Worden’s study, Roundhead Reputations, convincingly demonstrates that throughout the seventeenth century the lives of historical figures were being reinvented all the ¹²³ Walton, Life of Hooker (1665), 4. ¹²⁴ Ibid. 5. ¹²⁵ Pamp, ‘Hooker’, 104. ¹²⁶ Walton, Life of Hooker (1665), 64.

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time to speak to their contemporary audiences. The most dramatic of his cases concerns that of the posthumously published memoirs of Edmund Ludlow, a successful 1640s officer in the Parliamentary forces. These portray him as a staunch defender of Parliamentary liberty, an opponent of mercenary standing armies and a principled incorruptible. The discovery in the 1970s, however, of the original manuscript demonstrated that the text had been extensively revised, to the point of forgery, in order to fulfil the political aspirations of the 1690s.127 The difference in tone is staggering when all the genteel references to piety are replaced by their original apocalyptic references. Such bowdlerization makes Walton’s somewhat slanted treatment of Hooker, by contrast, appear to be positively mild. Nevertheless Walton’s own literary approach was undoubtedly heavily based upon popular classical forms. Jessica Martin’s recent study of his Lives has demonstrated that his primary models were works such as Plutarch’s Lives and Foxe’s Book of Martyrs. These were works, which conveyed a consciously ‘exemplary’ tradition, in which factual accuracy mattered much less than moral efficacy.128 Consequently it is not surprising that Walton was more concerned with promoting a particular system of belief than recording the colourless dry facts of the subject’s life.129 Sheldon had expected such a biography and he was not to be disappointed in the interpretation offered by Walton. Walton confidently writes how ‘there is in every page of Mr Hooker’s book the picture of a divine soul, such pictures of truth and reason drawn in so sacred colours, that they shall never fade, but give immortal memory to the author’.130 Hooker’s distinctive religious outlook was stressed throughout the Life by emphasizing the specific affection he possessed towards the English Church. Walton, like Fuller, stressed that his Temple sermons were always loyal to Canterbury, whilst those of his opponent looked towards Geneva.131 Even in his ‘first publick appearance to the World’ Walton informed his readers, Hooker had contradicted ‘a late opinion of Mr Calvins’ when he stressed that it was God’s primary will that all mankind should ¹²⁷ B. Worden, Roundhead Reputations: The English Civil Wars and the Passions of Posterity (London, 2002), 21–121. ¹²⁸ Martin, Walton’s Lives, 32–163. ¹²⁹ Secor, Hooker, p. xvii. ¹³⁰ Walton, Life of Hooker (1665), 173. ¹³¹ Ibid. 91.

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be saved; ‘but his second Will was, That those only should be saved, that did live answerable to that degree of Grace which he had offered or afforded them’. Subsequently Hooker’s anti-Calvinist stance had been supported by other learned churchmen, such as Hammond and Jackson, who believed ‘that a contrary opinion trenches upon the Honor and Justice of our Merciful God’.132 Hooker’s distinctive Anglican identity was also displayed through his close friendships with other proponents of the Elizabethan Church. Walton was clearly reluctant to combat openly the contents of Book VII, but through this strategy was able to link Hooker with uncompromising supporters of episcopacy. The Life was prefaced by a letter of 1598 from George Cranmer to Hooker, which condemned the bigotry of all those who opposed the lawful authority of bishops.133 Whilst Hooker was at Bishopsbourne, Hadrian Saravia, then a prebendary of Canterbury, who had ‘studied and well considered the controversial points concerning Episcopacy’ is shown to have actively sought out his company. Through his many tracts he declared his ‘Judgement concerning . . . his brethren ministers of the Low countreys . . . and of the Bishops Superiority above the Presbytery’.134 Unsurprisingly Walton does not mention that Saravia, in spite of being the most zealous English proponent of divine right episcopacy of his day, never found it necessary to seek any further validation of his own non-episcopal ordination.135 Walton clearly hoped that his readers would assume that the two men shared the same high view of the centrality of episcopacy. Consequently he exaggerated their closeness by stressing that Hooker’s relationship with Saravia was so ‘holy’ that it increased ‘daily to so high and natural affections, that their two wills seemed to be but one and the same’.136 His tactic was eminently successful since over two hundred years later Keble could comment that ‘we may with reason ¹³² Ibid. 38. ¹³³ Letter of George Cranmer to Mr Richard Hooker, Feb. 1598, in Walton, Life of Hooker (1665). ¹³⁴ Walton, Life of Hooker (1665), 124. ¹³⁵ Avis, Anglicanism, 81; W. Nijenhuis, Adrianus Saravia (Leiden, 1980), 232; Secor, Hooker, 291–8. ¹³⁶ Walton, Life of Hooker (1665), 127.

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use the recorded opinions of the one for interpreting what might seem otherwise ambiguous in the other’.137 Walton also emphasized Hooker’s association with Archbishop Whitgift. This allowed him to suggest that he shared his views regarding Church property.138 He invented a speech for Whitgift, concerning ecclesiastical property, which he associated with an acceptable passage from the seventh book (slightly altered) which referred to princes as ‘Nursing Fathers’ of the Church.139 Walton, who was clearly inspired by the historical and antiquarian works of Sir Henry Spelman, emphasized those regal obligations towards the Church, which were undertaken at the coronation. If the monarch allowed those who ‘serve at God’s Altar’, the Life commented, to ‘be exposed to Poverty, then Religion it self will be exposed to Scorn, and become contemptible’.140 Whitgift, the great statesman, was additionally used by Walton, as a foil to this shy retiring Hooker, so that he could present a more complete and rounded aspect of godly conduct.141 The enthusiastic zeal of Whitgift was greatly removed from the passive rectitude which Hooker, according to Walton at least, always displayed towards his opponents. This desire to avoid conflict had been with Hooker from his birth. Walton recorded how Hooker, whilst at University, had described how ‘Scripture was not writ to beget Pride and Disputations . . . but Moderation and Charity, and Humility, and Obedience, and Peace, and Piety in Mankinde; of which, no good man did ever repent himself upon his Death-bed’.142 Such a desire for calm meant that Hooker could easily be deployed in support of the status quo; discord and revolution were the responsibilities of those groups which sought to challenge the accepted conventions and structures of society.143 Hooker, therefore, Walton approvingly noted, had rightly recognized that ‘God abhors confusion as contrary to his nature’.144 By describing Hooker as being unwilling to enter into dispute, Walton implied that he was a conformist without actually saying so. Walton ¹³⁷ ¹³⁸ ¹³⁹ ¹⁴⁰ ¹⁴²

Hooker, Lawes, ed. Keble (1836), 1, p. lxvii. Walton, Life of Hooker (1665), 63, 67, 70–80. Martin, Walton’s Lives, 254–5; Walton, Life of Hooker (1665), 70. Walton, Life of Hooker (1665), 76–7. ¹⁴¹ Martin, Walton’s Lives, 259. Walton, Life of Hooker (1665), 35. ¹⁴³ Ibid. 54–7. ¹⁴⁴ Ibid. 106.

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did not rehearse the arguments put forward by Hooker since his loyalty to the English Church was demonstrated by his behaviour as a ‘passive peaceable Protestant’ who was ‘never known to be angry, or passionate, or extream in any of his Desires’.145 By the time Walton came to write, the image of the peaceable Protestant had become a well-established type within the tradition of Protestant hagiography. It frequently occurs within the nonconformist lives of Samuel Clarke.146 Walton was clearly aware of this literary device, although his portrayal of Hooker as a peaceable Protestant was probably based upon the account he gives of himself in response to A Supplication Preferred by Mr Walter Travers. Hooker claimed that he derived no joy from arguing and wished that his opponents ‘had so ruled their hands . . . that I might never have been so constrained to strike so much as in mine own defence’.147 Walton has clearly toned down the scale and bitterness of the conflict, however, if his account of the disagreement is compared with Hooker’s own response to Travers. Hooker’s own account claimed that Travers’s behaviour was not that which befitted a fellow brother in Christ. Even if the opinion of a fellow Christian was deemed to be offensive, could it ever be right to ‘controule it first with contrary speech and conferre with him afterwards upon it when convenient opportunitie serveth?’148 Walton’s Life also proved to be innovatory through its moulding of Hooker’s private devotion and pastoral work, so that it was indicative of his peaceable conformist Anglican attitude. Walton always stressed ‘the greater efficacy of private actions over public utterances’ and the virtue of quiet philanthropy in contrast to aggressive opposition.149 Hooker, as described by Walton, was the epitome of the former and quietly devoted himself to intellectual pursuits and the fostering of personal piety. He was a supremely humble man who had requested a small living so he could avoid ‘Contentions’ and enjoy the necessary ¹⁴⁵ Secor, ‘In Search of Richard Hooker’, 28–9; Walton, Life of Hooker (1665), 25. ¹⁴⁶ S. Clarke, A Collection of the Lives of Ten Eminent Divines, Famous in Their Generations for Learning, Prudence, Piety, and Painfulness in the Work of the Ministry (London, 1662), 4, 6, 15, 41, 44, 75–8, 114–15, 170, 183, 216, 325, 446–7, 493, 504–6. ¹⁴⁷ R. Hooker, The Answer of Mr Richard Hooker to a Supplication Preferred by Mr Walter Travers to the H. H. Lords of the Privie Counsell (Oxford, 1612), 31. ¹⁴⁸ Ibid. 24. ¹⁴⁹ J. Martin, ‘Izaak Walton and his Precursors: A Literary Study of the Emergence of the Ecclesiastical Life’, Ph.D. Thesis (Cambridge, 1993), 326.

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‘study and quietness’ he needed to write the Polity.150 Whilst in his parish, he regularly fasted, visited the sick, and sought to maintain good will amongst his parishioners by encouraging them to settle their grievances amicably.151 In appearance Hooker was ‘an obscure, harmless man, a man in poor Cloaths, his loins usually girt in a course Gown, or Canonical Coat; of a mean stature, and stooping and yet more lowly in the thoughts of his Soul; his Body worn out, not with Age, but Study, begot by his unactivity and sedentary life’.152 This was clearly reminiscent of Saint John the Baptist who lived in the desert and wore coarse garments of camel’s hair. In Walton’s revision of the Life the connection was made even more explicit when he stated that Hooker seemed ‘like S. John the Baptist, to be sanctified’ from his mother’s womb.153 These images of the Baptist were obviously intended to portray Hooker as the ‘voice crying in the wilderness’ which prepared the nation for the firm establishment of the Anglican Church. Such was the impact of this ‘most Learned, most Humble, holy Man’ that he had been raised up to join the most ‘glorious company of the Patriarks and Apostles’.154 Walton had effectively created an Anglican Church father who historically vindicated everything that the Restoration religious settlement stood for. Lake convincingly argues that Walton developed the myth of an ‘apostolic succession of Anglicanism’ by associating Hooker first with John Jewel, famous for his Apology of the English Church, and then Whitgift.155 Walton recalled how Jewel presented Hooker with his ‘walking staff ’, which he described as a ‘Horse, which hath carried me many a Mile, and I thank God with much ease’.156 This anecdote was not merely included to demonstrate the importance of humility within the Church, but graphically displayed ¹⁵⁰ Walton, Life of Hooker (1665), 112. ¹⁵¹ Ibid. 136–9. ¹⁵² Ibid. 128. ¹⁵³ I. Walton, The Life and Death of Richard Hooker, in R. Hooker, Of the Lawes of Ecclesiastical Politie (London, 1666), 4. ¹⁵⁴ Ibid. 21. ¹⁵⁵ Lake, Anglicans and Puritans?, 229. This belief in the Anglican succession, even now, continues to be prevalent. P. B. Secor comments that ‘Jewel was second in importance, in the sixteenth century, only to Cranmer, Hooker, and perhaps Whitgift amongst the founders of what was later to be called Anglicanism.’ See Secor, Hooker, 55. ¹⁵⁶ Walton, Life of Hooker (1665), 19.

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how Jewel nominated Hooker as his successor in the ‘great chain of Anglicanism’. This Anglican succession was also illustrated by showing the favour Hooker enjoyed on account of his religious convictions from both Elizabeth I and James I. Elizabeth had presented Hooker, ‘whom she loved well’, to the living of ‘Borne’ and had mourned his death.157 At his first meeting with Whitgift, James I is supposed to have enquired concerning the writer of the Ecclesiastical Polity, and to have been saddened by the news of his death.158 Of course such a vision of Hooker as the voice of a via media Church had also been present in Gauden’s Life. There was even some indication of a continuous religious succession since Whitgift was shown to have encouraged his academic pursuits.159 Walton’s Life, however, was radically different from Gauden. The latter had connected Hooker with the previous generation of Elizabethan divines, and monarchs, to demonstrate his Protestant reformed lineage. Walton, in contrast, had harked back to the sixteenth century to demonstrate the longevity of Hooker’s Anglican credentials. Even more startlingly, however, he strove on the way to link Hooker to the Laudian desire of the 1630s for conformity and reverent ceremonial, so that he could portray him as distinctively Anglican within a Protestant tradition. Within the Life Walton approvingly recorded how Hooker had faithfully attended Prayer Book services, prayed for the bishops, and was zealous in his maintenance of the related ceremonies.160 Although Puritans objected to kneeling at the Communion rail Hooker had knelt willingly ‘both when he prayed, and when he received the sacrament’.161 He had also recognized the importance of the Church as the unifying force in the social order and had been zealous in collective expressions of this, such as beating of the bounds.162 All this was a long way removed, Walton commented, from those who wrested the scripture to their own destruction.163 Walton mournfully records that if others would only follow his example and abandon ‘their pertinacious Zeal’ then ‘Peace and Piety’ might flourish within the nation.164 He insisted that he had only submitted to Sheldon’s ¹⁵⁷ ¹⁵⁹ ¹⁶⁰ ¹⁶² ¹⁶⁴

Ibid. 115, 120. ¹⁵⁸ Ibid. 119–20. Gauden, Life and Death of Hooker 10–11. Walton, Life of Hooker (1665), 25, 106, 134–5. ¹⁶¹ Ibid. 106. Pamp, ‘Hooker’, 107 ¹⁶³ Walton, Life of Hooker (1666), 10. Walton, Life of Hooker, (1665), 107–8.

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challenging request to write the Life so that it would serve as ‘a more publick Acknowlegment of your long continued, and now daily, Favours to your humble servant’.165 Such peaceable devotion to the established order meant that Hooker, like the loyal pre-Civil War Anglicans, had endured considerable criticism for attempting to adhere to the path of peaceable conformity. As suggested by his tending of the sheep he was a model for the good shepherd, who defended the flock from all external threats, in spite of the personal consequences to himself. Although he trod ‘in the footsteps of Primitive Piety’ he had suffered the same fate as Athanasius, and had been subjected to countless slanderous remarks from heretical enemies.166 During the Commonwealth the Bishopsbourne parish clerk was reported as saying that there had been so many sequestrations of ‘good men’ from their livings, that ‘he doubted if his good Master Mr Hooker had lived till now, they would have sequestred him too’.167 This was a sad change from former days when he had received ‘many rewards’ for showing Hooker’s grave and monument to visitors.168 Walton was not just content, however, to distance Hooker from Protestant critics of the Anglican settlement. He was equally aware of the need to secure Hooker’s reputation from any allegation of cryptopopery. Catholics, whom the king was rumoured to favour, were believed to be just as subversive, so there was an acute need to neutralize any use they might make of Hooker. Walton was sufficiently pragmatic to realize that direct confrontation, regarding earlier Catholic deployment of the Polity, was unlikely to be successful. The Polity, as earlier defenders of the Church had found, was too nuanced for a clear conclusion to be drawn either way. Instead Walton drew attention to Hooker’s peaceable attitude regarding Rome. Although Walton acknowledged that this was partly motivated by a desire to ensure the salvation of his forefathers, who had no choice but to live in that communion before the Reformation, he was also able to use it to strengthen the appeal of Anglicanism.169 Implicitly he suggested that there was no stream of negative ¹⁶⁵ ¹⁶⁶ ¹⁶⁷ ¹⁶⁹

Ibid. Declaration. Walton, Life of Hooker (1665), 138–9; Walton, Life of Hooker (1666), 24. Walton, Life of Hooker (1665) 131. ¹⁶⁸ Ibid. 130. Walton, Life of Hooker (1666), 18.

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anti-Roman invective within the Polity, because Hooker had not believed the theological basis of the English Church to be threatened by Catholicism. Consequently any growth in Catholic familiarity with Hooker was to be welcomed, because the Polity demonstrated the sound basis on which the English Church was constructed. Walton recalled how the enthusiastic reception given to the publication of the first four books of the Polity had prompted two leading exiled Catholics to procure copies. William Allen, who had been made a cardinal for his endeavours in the struggle to reconvert England, and Thomas Stapleton, a leading Catholic controversialist, were improbable individuals to display any enthusiasm towards a work that promoted the English Church. Walton insisted, however, that the Polity was such ‘a wonder to them’ that they commended it to Pope Clement VIII. They described how ‘a poor obscure English priest had writ four such Books of Laws, and Church Polity, and in a style that exprest so Grave and such Humble Majesty with clear demonstration of Reason, that in all their readings they had not met with any that exceeded him’. Clement, according to Walton, was suitably impressed and instructed them to translate part of the Polity into Latin and then read it to him. At the end he exclaimed that there ‘is not Learning that this man hath not searcht into, nothing too hard for his understanding: This man indeed deserves the name of an Author; his Books will get reverence by Age, for there is in them such seeds of Eternity, that if the rest be like this they shall last until Fire shall consume all Learning’.170 This was not just a charming anecdote since Walton had powerfully illustrated how the defender of an Anglican faith, which Catholics viewed as schismatic and corrupt, was so esteemed that he had even been reverenced by the head of the Roman Church. Any Catholic praise of Hooker was not to be treated as an embarrassment, but as a useful enhancement of his learned reputation. This was a major claim and Walton was clearly anxious to show that it was not unfounded. Therefore he included Henry King’s letter which expressed his pleasure that the Life had drawn attention ¹⁷⁰ W. J. Bouwsma, ‘Hooker in the Context of European Medieval History’, in A. S. McGrade (ed.), Richard Hooker and the Construction of Christian Community (Tempe, Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 1997), 43; Walton, Life of Hooker (1666), 20–1.

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to Hooker’s high standing with Clement VIII, and other leading Catholics such as Thomas Stapleton. As a youth he had heard of the popularity of the Polity amongst Catholics from ‘persons of worth’ that had travelled in Italy.171 King’s letter, as has been demonstrated earlier, is certainly correct in its claim that Hooker was popular from an early point with many Catholics. Nevertheless it seems likely that some of the specific details of Walton’s story are probably invented. It seems implausible, for example, that Allen ever saw a copy of the Polity since he died in the year it was published. These doubts, however, about the exact details of the story should not detract from Walton’s success in providing a response to those critics who were concerned by their usage of the Polity. Rather than fretting at the Catholic interest in Hooker, he had shown that they should rejoice that Rome had been forced to recognize the Polity as a work of seminal importance. Walton’s account of Hooker successfully masked the major discontinuities within the history of the English Church, and helped to create an historic Anglicanism, which had existed since the Reformation. After reading his biography it was impossible to approach the Polity without the assumption that it was to be comprehended as an Anglican work. With some justification Walton could claim that the most learned members of the nation could never refer to Hooker without some ‘Epithite of Learned, or Judicious, or Reverend, or Venerable Mr Hooker’.172 Consequently it was his final prayer that the Restoration Church would continue to follow this worthy pattern of peaceable Anglican piety. Lord bless his Brethren, the Clergy of this Nation with ardent desires and effectual endeavours to attain, if nott to his great Learning, yet to his remarkable meeknesse, his godly simplicity, and his Christian moderation . . . And let the Labors of his life, his most excellent Writings be blest with what he designed when he undertook them: Which was Glory to thee, O God on high, Peace in thy Church, and good will to mankinde.173

This prayer was not to be disappointed since the Life became an established part of Anglican hagiography. It was widely welcomed ¹⁷¹ Letter of Doctor King to Isaac Walton, in R. Hooker, Of the Lawes of Ecclesiastical Politie (London, 1666). ¹⁷² Walton, Life of Hooker (1665), 121. ¹⁷³ Walton, Life of Hooker (1666), 26.

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because it successfully counteracted the image of a moderate churchman, and undermined the authority of the last three books.174 TrevorRoper cynically remarked that Walton’s disparagement of Hooker’s less palatable writings became an ‘essential brick in the temple erroneously reared to an imaginary high Anglican saint’.175 Undoubtedly without Walton’s carefully crafted corrective it would have been almost impossible for individuals, such as Heylyn, to marginalize the posthumous books and to maintain their belief that the content of the Polity was synonymous with the Laudian Church of the 1630s.176 The publication of the Life marked the final triumph of the Church, and ensured that it was more securely re-established by the end of the 1660, than could ever have been anticipated at the start of the Restoration. Her opponents had been silenced and Anglicanism, with Hooker as its strong bulwark of defence, looked forward to the future with confidence. Hooker was the authentic mouthpiece of an Anglicanism, which compelled all English men to submit to the Church through his demonstration of the worthlessness of opposite opinions. Simon Patrick, then rector of St Paul’s Covent Garden, cited Hooker as a means of demonstrating to nonconformists the efficacy of reason in conjunction with scripture, and Samuel Parker, a future archdeacon of Canterbury, described how the Polity was ‘as full and demonstrative a confutation of their own cause, as the matters combined in it’.177 William Assheton, who was a convert to Anglicanism, agreed with Hooker that there would be a time ‘when three words uttered with Charity . . . shall receive a far more blessed Reward than three thousand volumes written with disdainful sharpness of wit’.178 Whilst this was the ideal it was not yet a practicality since hostile religious interests continued to push themselves forward. Early Church schismatic ¹⁷⁴ Novarr, Walton’s Lives, 6. ¹⁷⁵ H. R. Trevor-Roper, ‘The Good and Great Works of Richard Hooker’, The New York Review of Books, 24 (1977), 55. ¹⁷⁶ P. Heylyn, Cyprianus Anglicus: Or the History of the Life and Death of the Most Reverend and Renowned Prelate William by Divine Providence, Lord Archbishop of Canterbury (London, 1668), Preface. ¹⁷⁷ S. Parker, A Discourse of Ecclesiastical Politie (London, 1669), 230; S. Patrick, A Continuation of the Friendly Debate (London, 1669), 234. ¹⁷⁸ W. Assheton, Toleration Disapprov’d and Condemnd (Oxford, 1670), 16.

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groups, such as the Donatists, had pleaded for toleration, and when they had achieved it under the Apostate Julian wreaked havoc upon the orthodox.179 The present Church, Assheton counselled, would be better advised to follow Hooker’s opinion that ‘the manner of mens writings must not alienate our heart from the Truth, if it appear they have the Truth’.180 While Assheton praised Hooker’s perception, his reference to Julian shows that he was also deeply aware that the public position of the Church remained heavily dependent upon the State. This supports Green’s view that the Church was allied to the gentry, and would never have been restored without their support. ‘It was this more than anything else which forced Charles to abandon first the idea of comprehension and then the possibility of a royal indulgence. It was probably this factor too which undermined the moral of the puritan clergy, so that in August 1662 well over a thousand ministers, despairing of royal indulgence, and surrounded by a gentry which for some time had shown its hostility towards them, left their living quietly, and resignedly.’181 Green fails to consider, however, that the Cavalier Parliament only adopted this stance because the Church loyalists had secured their loyalty to a Hooker-sponsored vision of Anglicanism. An ingrained respect for the ecclesiological approach of the Polity was obviously not the sole motivation behind the Cavaliers’ behaviour, but the importance of Hooker should not be underestimated. In the first two years of the Restoration Hooker had been cited in support of the royal supremacy, the exalted place of episcopacy, the retention of ceremonies and respect for traditional religious rights. Any attempts to suggest that Hooker was anything other than a distinctive English churchman were totally discounted, as Baxter had found to his cost at Savoy. If Hooker had been considered in any way marginal to the Restoration’s case, Gauden’s and Vane’s treatment of the Polity would not have caused such consternation. It was unthinkable to the recently triumphant loyalists that Hooker’s reputation should be tarnished in this way. This setback to Hooker’s Anglican identity, however, was only temporary. Walton’s Life encapsulated the Restoration Anglican ¹⁷⁹ Ibid. 16.

¹⁸⁰ Ibid. 3.

¹⁸¹ Green, Re-establishment, 200.

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ideal, and ensured that unquestioning obedience to authority was portrayed as the only sure foundation for religious and political stability. The succeeding editions of the Life, which were bound in with the Polity, from 1666 onwards, only served to reinforce the Anglican sense of gratitude to the champion of the ‘Church of England Rights, against the Factious Torrent of Separatists’.182 At the start of the 1670 edition Samuel Woodford, the poetical divine, endeavoured to encapsulate, in verse, the close association of Walton with Hooker: The Church is Hookers Debtor: Hooker His; And strange twould be, if he should Glory miss, For whom two such most powerfully contend Bid him, chear up, the Day’s his own: And he shall never die Who after seventy’s past and gone, Can all th’Assaults of Age defie: Is, master still, of so much youthful heat A child, so perfect, and so sprightly to beget.183

Regardless of its linguistic merits such a poem was certainly apt in its recognition that Walton had become inseparable from any normative reading of Hooker. Without Walton’s corrective account, the Polity would never have been able to sustain its popularity as a defence of Anglican principles. The Life had ensured that Hooker was the unrivalled champion of the Restoration settlement against all those who ‘would . . . rake into the scarce-closed wounds of a newly bleeding State and Church’.184 ¹⁸² Copy of a Letter Sent to Mr Walton, by Dr. King, Lord Bishop of Chichester, in I. Walton, Life of Hooker (London, 1665). ¹⁸³ I. Walton, The Life of Mr Rich. Hooker, the Author of those Learned Books of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity (London, 1670). ¹⁸⁴ King, Letter to Walton (1665).

4 The Zenith and Slow Decline of Hooker as the Icon of Restoration Anglicanism The 1670s are increasingly regarded as the heyday of Restoration England—a period of experimentation, politicization, and strife.1 This approach would not have been recognized by earlier historians, who have tended to treat it as a quiet period between the Restoration and advent of the anti-Catholic hysteria at the end of the decade. In fact following the departure of Clarendon and his generation from the political arena, a shift in official public outlooks is noticeable. It is also clear that a burgeoning religious toleration was combined with a greater openness to wit, irony, and emotional experimentalism. Whilst Hooker’s reputation was not totally immune from such changes, however, Walton’s image remained remarkably dominant. He had done his work well and in an environment where references to the Polity were almost exclusively Anglican few individuals had the confidence, capacity or influence to dispute it. If contrary opinions were expressed these remained exceptional. Only with the advent of the popish plot and the exclusion crisis did this vision of Hooker suffer any realistic threat to its supremacy, on both the ecclesiastical and political front. Notwithstanding the seriousness of this challenge, the use of Hooker in support of the Restoration settlement was not only to survive, but to emerge stronger than ever before. Ironically the genesis of its own destruction and slow decline lay in this very success, as it proved almost impossible to reconcile it with the accession of an openly Catholic king, who was unable to maintain the ecclesiastical side of the equation. ¹ J. Spurr, England in the 1670s (Oxford, 2000), pp. x–xiv.

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Such future troubles could not have been imagined, however, by the triumphant divines of the early 1670s. Walton’s depiction of the peaceable Anglican worthy had fully entered the national consciousness, and ensured that the whole weight of scholarly opinion was behind this understanding of Hooker.2 When Clement Barksdale, another Anglican biographer, and Anthony Wood, the Oxford historian, sought to produce their own accounts of the judicious divine, they unhesitatingly turned to Walton’s Life of Hooker for their inspiration.3 Walton too, continued to use his biographical skills to consolidate Hooker’s Anglican identity, and his subsequent life of Sanderson sought to confirm the anti-Calvinist nature of the Polity and the dubious reputation of the posthumous books.4 The continued vitality of this perception of Hooker as a High Church writer was also apparent in popular Anglican apologetic. Earlier Hooker-dependent works such as Sparrow’s Rationale Upon the Book of Common Prayer, or Nicholson’s Catechism of the Church of England, were regularly reprinted, and new writers such as William Goulde, the rector of Ken, continued to cite his life and works as the model on which all true churchmen should base their own.5 This widespread Hooker-inspired confidence, however, masked the fact that by the early 1670s Protestant denominational boundaries were more blurred than the Anglican enthusiasts for the Polity would have cared to admit. Local magistrates were often reluctant to enforce the penal legislation against dissenters and the Compton Census revealed that large numbers of humble parishioners attended both Church of England and nonconformist meetings.6 Indeed such ² D. Novarr, The Making of Walton’s Lives (New York, 1958), 6. ³ C. Barksdale, A Remembrancer of Excellent Men (London, 1670); A. Wood, Historia et Antiquitates Universitatis Oxoniensis Duobus Voluminibus Comprehensae, 2 (Oxford, 1674), 236. ⁴ R. Hooker, A Sermon of Richard Hooker Author of those Learned Books of Ecclesiastical Politie, Found in the Study of the Late Learned Bishop Andrews (London, 1678), in I. Walton, The Life of Dr Sanderson, Late Bishop of Lincoln (London, 1678); T. Pierce, ‘A Letter of March 1677/8 to I. Walton’, in Walton, Sanderson; Walton, Sanderson, Preface. ⁵ W. Goulde, A Sermon Preached in the Cathedral Church of St Peter in Exon. On Palm Sunday. An. Do. 1672 (London, 1672), 1–2; W. Nicholson, A Plain but Full Exposition of the Catechism of the Church of England (London, 1671; London, 1676; London, 1678); A. Sparrow, A Rationale upon the Book of Common-Prayer of the Church of England (London, 1655; repr. 1676). ⁶ Spurr, England, 227.

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was the situation that the king felt able, once again, in March 1672, to proclaim independently of Parliament a declaration of religious indulgence. This was a public recognition, Charles insisted, that twelve years of persecution had achieved nothing. Charles’s private aim, of course, was to secure a greater liberty for his Catholic subjects. Although the Treaty of Dover remained secret, throughout his reign, there was still a marked public suspicion that the declaration was primarily designed to favour Catholics. This opinion was not discouraged by the inclusion of pro-Catholic members within the so-called Cabal, such as the genial Lord Clifford. Catholics certainly welcomed this potential, if controversial, improvement in their conditions and sought to smooth the path to it by the modest rekindling of polemical interest in the Polity. Hooker, who had been the proponent of a national Church, was ironically pressed into service as a proponent of toleration. Notably Abraham Woodhead, a convert from the 1640s, sought to counter English anti-popery through his provision of A Rational Account of Roman-Catholicks Concerning the Ecclesiastical Guide in Controversies of Religion. Through a careful appropriation of Hooker he undoubtedly hoped to promote further the acceptability of Catholic opinion. In particular he drew upon the Polity in support of the centrality of the ordained ministry as a mark of the visible Church. Through a somewhat forced exegesis of Book V Woodhead was also able to suggest that ‘touching the Substantial . . . Presence of Christ’s Body in the Eucharist all were agreed’.7 Ingenious as such deployments of Hooker were, however, Charles was pragmatic enough to realize that it was unlikely to overcome the deep-seated hostility of the majority of his subjects to any toleration of Romanism. Pragmatically he had stressed within the appeal his desire to comprehend all his Protestant subjects. Unsurprisingly nonconformists were enthusiastic concerning the removal of their statesanctioned religious oppression. Less predictable was the recognition, amongst some of them, that the opportunity also needed to be taken to further the process of comprehension through a reconsideration of Hooker’s status as an Anglican icon. ⁷ A. Woodhead, A Rational Account of Roman-Catholicks Concerning the Ecclesiastical Guide in Controversies of Religion (London, 1673), 14, 66, 154, 394.

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Baxter commented that he had never sought to deny the learned standing of Hooker, but regretted that his works had adopted a ‘military strain’ when there were ‘many more, who by Love and meekness, and a peaceable familiarity (without sin) might have been disarmed’.8 Andrew Marvell, a former secretary to Cromwell, went further and not only criticized the recent treatment of the Polity, but through a policy of qualified agreement partly revived the old Reformed understanding of Hooker, whilst still distancing himself from the claims he found less palatable. His Rehearsal Transposed favourably contrasted the modesty and frankness of Hooker with the ‘ignorance and prejudice of those who quoted him without having always read him’.9 Nevertheless the Anglican obsession with ceremonies was being undertaken, Marvell insisted, to the detriment of scripture.10 Hooker’s defence of scriptural sacraments had gained ‘those lasting and eternal trophies’ over their opponents, but his use to justify non-scriptural practices remained unaccepatable.11 ‘And, whereas Mr Bayes [Bishop Parker] is always defying the Nonconformists with Mr Hookers Ecclesiastical Polity, and the Friendly Debate; I am of opinion, though I have a great Reverence for Mr Hooker, who in some things did answer himself, that this little Book of not full eight leaves [J. Hales, Treaty of Schism] hath shut that Ecclesiastical Polity, and Mr Baye’s too, out of doors.’12 Such nonconformist interest in Hooker was highly unusual by the 1670s. Most dissenters had accepted the Anglican interpretation ⁸ R. Baxter, The Church Told of Mr. Ed. Bagshaw’s Scandals, and Warned of the Dangerous Snares of Satan, Now Laid for Them, in his Love-Killing Principles (London, 1672), 29. ⁹ F. J. Shirley, Richard Hooker and Contemporary Political Ideas (London, 1949), 207; J. M. Wallace, Destiny his Choice: The Loyalism of Andrew Marvell (Cambridge, 1980), 187–8. ¹⁰ A. Marvell, The Rehearsal Transposed; Or Animadversions upon a Late Book, Intituled, a Preface Shewing What Grounds There are of Fears and Jealousies of Popery (London, 1672), 308. ¹¹ Ibid. 217. ¹² Hales was favoured by Marvell because of his belief that it was schismatic to separate from the Church upon the grounds of ‘true and unpretended conscience . . . Where the Cause of Schism is necessary, there not he that separates, but he that is the cause of separation is the Schismatick’ (Marvell, Rehearsal Transposed, 175–7). See also J. Hales, A Tract Concerning Schisme and Schismaticks. Wherein is Briefly Discovered the Original Causes of All Schisme (London, 1642), 3–5.

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of the Polity, and had discounted him as a prelatical writer.13 This tentative revival of interest in Hooker, combined with the widespread nonconformist enthusiasm for the declaration of indulgence, was sufficient, however, to stiffen the Anglican resolve against any form of compromise. John Spurr wisely comments that it was impossible for ‘either side to admit that their stance was ill-founded. It would have cast doubt on their integrity for conformists to acknowledge that the Church of England imposed unnecessary terms of communion or for dissenters to admit that their own nonconformity was based on excessive scruples.’14 Against a background of royal failure in the Second Dutch War, alarm at the prospect of the triumph of French absolutism in the Low Countries and general fears at the growth of tyrannical popery it was not surprising that Parliament refused to accept the royal declaration. All forms of financial grant were made dependent upon its withdrawal, so Charles had little choice but to do so. Parliamentary anxiety regarding Charles’s religious inclusiveness also resulted in the passing of a Test Act, which required every office holder under the Crown to acknowledge the Anglican Church. Although shrewdly aimed primarily at the Catholics it also served to continue to marginalize the nonconformists. Indirectly it also acted to affirm further Hooker’s importance as an icon of the religious and political status quo. Whilst loyal Anglicans enjoyed legislative support, for their belief in the spiritual perfection of the Church, there could be no serious challenge to their religious dominance, and they remained totally unsympathetic to both nonconformists and Catholics who sought to worship outside the confines of the establishment. Instead both groups were admonished to model themselves upon the life and works of Hooker. With regard to the Catholics this was rather more limited given the earlier recognition of the dangers of encouraging exploitation of Hooker’s popish ambiguities. Yet at the same time Walton’s attempt to neutralize this problem seems to have given new heart to some ¹³ P. Talbot, A Treatise of Religion and Government with Reflexions upon the Cause and Care of Englands Late Distempers and Present Dangers (London, 1670), 106. ¹⁴ Spurr, England, 231.

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staunch anti-Catholic Anglicans. Francis Gregory, a devout Anglican schoolmaster, for example, was happy to cite the authority of Hooker in the preface of his work concerning the dangers of conversion to Rome.15 Nevertheless the overwhelming bulk of the polemic was directed against the nonconformists. The likes of John Goodman, a vociferous churchman, dismissed dissenting attempts to safeguard their spiritual purity as merely resulting in new forms of sectarianism. Hooker had demonstrated that their desire to hedge in access to the communion with strict rules and regulation had made it more like the private Roman mass they had striven to escape.16 Similarly John Nalson, the historian and royalist pamphleteer, insisted that if they could only be persuaded to read Hooker they would realize their errors and be reconciled to the Church. This judgment, he concluded, was implicitly echoed by the dissenting ministers’ attempts to dissuade their adherents from consulting Hooker and to read works only of their choosing. They despised the Polity as no more than ‘untemper’d Mortar, to dawb over the Temple of antichrist, which not withstanding all that can be done to support it, must down, must fall very suddenly’.17 Nalson’s rhetoric is somewhat exaggerated, but is clear that Hooker was generally absent from the nonconformist library. The Polity was certainly not included amongst Baxter’s list of recommended books for ‘the young beginner in religion’.18 This refusal to commend Hooker as a devotional work, however, did not mean that they were necessarily unfamiliar with him. It was, rather, a recognition that ¹⁵ F. Goodman, The Triall of Religions with Cautions to the Members of the Reformed Church against Defection to the Roman (London, 1674), Dedication. ¹⁶ J. Goodman, A Sermon ∼Preached at Bishops-Stortford, August 29, 1667 before the Right Reverend Father in God, Henry Lord Bishop of London, &c. (London, 1677), 3. See also Publick Devotion and the Communion Service of the Church of England Justified and Recommended to all Honest and Well Meaning, (However Prejudicial) Dissenters (London, 1675). ¹⁷ J. Nalson, The Countermine: Or a Short but True Discovery of the Dangerous Principles and Secret Practices of the Dissenting Party, Especially the Presbyterians (London, 1677), 6. ¹⁸ Baxter does cite Hooker in a further reading list which was primarily aimed at clergymen. Presumably he felt that their views would not be irrevocably formed by it; R. Baxter, A Christian Directory or, A Sum of Practical Theologie, and Cases of Conscience (London, 1673), 60, 928.

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Hooker’s association with Anglicanism was too strong for the Polity to play any constructive part in the advancement of any other religious cause. Most nonconformists, therefore, chose to ignore the Polity in its entirety. The only persistent exception to this was Baxter who continued to draw attention to the embarrassing contents of Book VIII. Baxter was aware of the ambiguity surrounding the authorship of the final books, but was adamant that they were the sole work of Hooker. ‘And if any (causelessly) question whether the eighth (imperfect) Book be in those passages his own, let them remember that the sum of all that I confute, is in his first Book, which is old and highly honoured.’19 He also insisted that even before Book VIII was published he had been familiar with its contents from a manuscript belonging to a friend.20 Baxter’s dogged interest in the unpalatable posthumous books made no impact, however, on the contemporary political debate. The proponents of the Restoration status quo, such as William Falkner and John Nalson, enthusiastically espoused Hooker’s ecclesiastical doctrine, but completely discounted him in their political writings.21 There was nothing inconsistent in their behaviour since they were merely avoiding those books, which, following Walton’s biography, were widely believed to have been corrupted by hostile religious sources. Baxter’s opinions were also easy to discount since his scrupulous obedience to his conscience generally made it impossible for him to co-operate successfully with any group. Only during his stay at Kidderminster did he ever manage to pursue anything approximating to a settled pattern of ministry. Although it is clear that Baxter was something of an unrepresentative maverick it is still important to examine his treatment of the Polity at some length. Notwithstanding his lack of influence in the 1670s his political comprehension of Hooker was to find subsequent favour in the post 1688 world. Whilst ¹⁹ Ibid., To the Reader. ²⁰ R. Baxter, Reliquiae Baxteriae: Or Mr Richard Baxter’s Narrative of the Most Memorable Passages of His Life and Times, ed. M. Sylvester (London, 1696), Part III, 151. ²¹ W. Falkner, Libertas Ecclesiastica, or, a Discourse Vindicating the Lawfulnesse of those Things Which are Chiefly Excepted against in the Church of England, Especially in its Liturgy and Worship (London, 1674), 467, 515; Nalson, The Countermine, 7.

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Baxter would totally have disapproved of the subsequent Whig enthusiasm for the Polity’s belief in an original contract the widespread publication of his own writings, undoubtedly, served to remind them of Book VIII’s contents. Ironically, of course, Baxter’s exegesis of Book VIII had been intended to display his conservative credentials against his Anglican opponents, who were happy to deploy a political revolutionary as their religious champion. By drawing attention to Hooker’s unhelpful views, regarding the monarchy, he sought to impugn the rest of the Polity by pandering to post-Civil War fears of rebellion. His gauntlet to the Anglican hierarchy was clearly expressed by his statement that in spite of Hooker’s political failings he remained ‘one of the most magnified authors with the Bishops’.22 It was equally incredible, he asserted that the king martyr had recommended him to his children. ‘They find that even the greatest Episcopal Divines, as approved by our Princes, and most Learned Defenders of Monarchy and Obedience, do yet set up the Laws above the King, and write more in than we can consent to.’23 Baxter insisted that whilst he remained reluctant to contradict the ‘authority of this famous divine’ he could not allow his belief that the whole body could be governors to stand unchallenged. Such a belief meant that the ‘Pars imperans’ and ‘Pars subdita’ were confounded. ‘Their authority is not derived from the people’s consent, but from God, by their consent, as a bare condition, sine qua non.’24 Since the monarch’s authority came directly from God there could be no recipient between him and God to convey it.25 To suggest that the whole body were governors was as ridiculous as the belief that if all ‘the persons in London subjected themselves to the lord mayor, he would thereby receive his power from them’.26 Neither did the people, as Hooker believed, play any part in the law-making process. ‘Wisdom doth but prepare laws and governing power enacteth them, and giveth them their form. But the whole ²² Baxter, Reliquiae Baxteriae, Part II, 424; W. Lamont, Richard Baxter and the Millennium, Puritanism and the English Revolution, 3 (London, 1979), 98, 290. ²³ Baxter, Reliquiae Baxteriae, Part II, 424. ²⁴ R. Baxter, The Practical Works of the Rev. Richard Baxter: With a Life of the Author, and a Crucial Examination of his Writings, ed. W. Orme, 1 (London, 1830), 548–9. ²⁵ Baxter, Reliquiae Baxteriae, Part I, 48. ²⁶ Baxter, Practical Works, Vol. 6, 29.

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body hath no such governing power, therefore they give them not their form.’27 Men obey God without consenting to His will; so are they to respect the laws of their sovereign for ‘rex legem [facit]’.28 The publication of Book VIII had misled the populace into believing that as ‘the fountain of Authority’29 they possessed ‘fore-prized Liberties, which they may defend, and the Parliament hath part of the Legislative Power, by the Constitution of the Kingdom’.30 Any legislative power which Parliament possessed stemmed not from the people, ‘but it is as the Constitution twisteth them into the government. For if once Legislation . . . be denied to be any part of Government at all, and affirmed to belong to the People as such, who are no Governors, all Government will hereby be overthrown.’31 Baxter did admit, however, that there were occasions when one might legitimately disobey the monarch. He referred with approval to Book VIII’s conclusion, which insisted that it was not a ‘sin to break a Law which is no Law, as being against God, or not authorised by him’.32 Nevertheless Baxter remained anxious ‘lest any should misapply Mr Rich. Hooker’s [aforesaid] doctrine’ and believe that they are never bound in conscience ‘to obey their Parents, their King, their Pastors, in any point wherein they exercise more power than God gave them . . . [since] there are many cases in which God bindeth children and subjects to obey their superiors, in such matters as they did sinfully command’.33 This potential misuse of the Polity, Baxter reminded his readers, was more than an abstract threat to the magistrate since the doctrine of popular monarchy had contributed to the causes of the Civil War. Consequently Baxter insisted that he had a public duty to counsel against the greatly esteemed Hooker’s seductive and dangerous weakening of obedience to the ruler. He recalled how he, himself, had allowed Hooker and other episcopal divines to make him more receptive towards populism. Consequently ‘I was the easilyer drawn to think that Hooker’s Political Principles had been commonly received by all’.34 The publication of Book VIII, Baxter noted, had only served ²⁷ ²⁹ ³⁰ ³² ³⁴

Ibid. 32. ²⁸ Ibid. 31, 33. Baxter, Christian Directory, To the Reader. Ibid., Part III, 11. ³¹ Baxter, Reliquiae Baxteriae, 41. Baxter, Christian Directory, Fourth Part, 37. ³³ Ibid., Parts I–III, 888. Lamont, Baxter and the Millennium, 229.

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to increase the danger of others making this mistake. When Parliament had first sought learned support to justify their stance against the king, it had ‘much concerned them to find the most Learned episcopal divines speak so high for the Legislative Power of Parliaments . . . for the Eighth Book, which saith more than the Parliament ever said, was not then published’.35 Baxter’s attempt to sully the image of Hooker the Anglican champion made no impact, however, upon his intended target. Although his arguments were clever his earlier support for Parliament in the Civil War undoubtedly made the sincerity of his strident anti-populism appear questionable. Anthony Wood, the Oxford antiquarian, undoubtedly spoke for many with his subsequent forthright denunciation of Baxter’s self-serving motives in pointing out Hooker’s supposed political failings. ‘And on this account it is, that he seems to take a more than ordinary delight in so often telling the World, that the Abettor of these seditious positions have so great a Church-man, . . . as our author was justly esteemed, on their side.’36 Baxter was clearly not unaware of the criticism that this offered ‘scanty satisfaction’ for the ‘malignant influence’ of his earlier behaviour since he was anxious to show that his previous actions were perfectly consistent with his political philosophy.37 In a private letter of 1677 to his old friend Richard Allestree, the provost of Eton, he explained that his reading of Thomas Bilson, the scholarly bishop of Winchester, had been the reason for his support of Parliament. ‘The Newes of 200 000 murdered by the Irish and Papist strength in the King’s armies, and the great danger of the kingdom was published by the Parliament . . . I thought that both the defensive part, and the salus populi, lay on the Parliament’s side . . . my principles were the same with Bishop Bilson’s (of subjection) and Jewel’s, but never so popular as R. Hooker’s.’38 Although there were some superficial similarities between Hooker and Bilson, Baxter was undoubtedly correct in his claim that they had a different political outlook. Bilson made no concession to concepts ³⁵ Baxter, Reliquiae Baxteriae, Part III, 11. ³⁶ A. Wood, Athenae Oxonienses. An Exact History of All the Writers and Bishops Who have had their Education in the Most Ancient and Famous University of Oxford, 1 (London, 1691), 263–4. ³⁷ Ibid. 264. ³⁸ Lamont, Baxter and the Millennium, 99.

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of popular sovereignty, and had only argued that a king might forfeit obedience through a misdirection of his powers. As one commentator puts it ‘reason, not tyranny was the critical issue. If the king, helped deliver his realm into the hands of a foreign power, such as Rome, he had negated the whole point of his kingly powers.’39 Baxter insisted that the nonconformist community had never gone beyond these grounds for resistance, and had never embraced the popular principles within the Ecclesiastical Polity.40 Baxter’s careful protests of sincerity, whilst they may have done something to redeem him in the eyes of some of his contemporaries, still failed to have any effect on the Anglican popularity of Hooker. They had no desire to abandon their mentor’s position as champion of their rites and practices. Neither did they feel any compulsion to do so since Walton’s biography had so successfully neutralized those parts of the Polity, which Baxter drew attention to. Whilst Baxter may have been unsuccessful in his attempts to challenge the established comprehension of Hooker the unexpected and troubled upheaval of late 1678, following the revelation of the Popish Plot, did raise a direct challenge to it. By bringing the question of the succession into sharp focus the subsequent exclusion crisis challenged the Hooker-sponsored belief that kings enjoyed a divine right to rule and could only be passively resisted. Whilst the proponents of exclusion, who were soon labelled Whigs, insisted that James’s Catholicism would lead to popery and absolutism their Tory opponents, also suspicious of their nonconformist sympathies, insisted that their real aim was to overthrow not only the monarchy but the Church too. The violence of the London mob and the frenzied atmosphere of unrest were sufficient to suggest to the Tories that they were potentially on the verge of a repetition of the upheaval of the 1640s. Consequently the Tory grouping, which supported James, sought a polemical statement to rally around in support of the preservation of the historic succession as surety against disorder. This they found through the belated publication of the pre-Civil War manuscript of Sir Robert Filmer’s Patriarcha.41 It was an inspired choice, ³⁹ Ibid. 92. ⁴⁰ Ibid. 99. ⁴¹ The historical context for its composition has been much debated, and scholarly opinion has placed it as early as the 1620s and as late as the 1630s. At present there is a general consensus that the manuscript was completed around 1631. This makes it

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since Filmer, had been a staunch supporter of Charles I and friend of prominent Church loyalists, such as Heylyn. Furthermore he already enjoyed a reputation as a royal absolutist through earlier published works such as his Observations upon Aristotles Politiques.42 Consequently when Patriarcha made its appearance it was gratefully received as a forthright defence of the ‘natural power of Kings’ against the ‘unnatural liberty of the people’.43 It demonstrated how the case for the royal supremacy was based upon the secure premise that just as a father’s power over children does not stem from their consent, so the king’s power is not derived from the consent of his subjects, but from God alone.44 The reality of this claim, Filmer insisted, was clearly illustrated at the start of the book of Genesis where it was recorded that God had invested Adam with monarchical power. This authority had consequently been passed through Adam’s descendants, until it finally came to rest in the house of Stuart. Since government was shown to be dependent upon divine status there was no question of it requiring consent.45 Whilst such a robust scriptural defence of the political status quo was exactly what the anti-exclusionists needed, Patriarcha also made the startling claim that the Polity supported this belief in a constant succession from Old Testament times onwards. Filmer described how his examination of the Polity, including a manuscript copy of Book VIII, had demonstrated that Hooker could find ‘no example in the scripture of the people’s choosing their own king’. Here Hooker was shown to have recognized that there was a major distinction between choosing a king and setting one above the people. Furthermore Hooker, according to Filmer, had insisted that it was totally mistaken primarily an abstract attempt to justify royal absolutism, rather than a direct response to the confusion of the Civil War. G. Burgess, Absolute Monarchy and the Stuart Constitution (London, 1996), 37; R. Filmer, Patriarcha and Other Writings, ed. J. P. Sommerville (Cambridge, 1991), pp. xxxii–xxxiv. ⁴² J. A. Downie, To Settle the Succession of the State. Literature and Politics, 1678–1750 (London, 1994), 21; Filmer, Patriarcha, pp. x, xiii. ⁴³ M. Ashley, England in the Seventeenth Century, (1603–1714) (Harmondsworth, 1962), 164. ⁴⁴ Filmer, Patriarcha, 10–12. ⁴⁵ Downie, The Succession, 22–4; Filmer, Patriarcha, 12; G. J. Schochet, Patriarchalism in Political Thought. The Authoritarian Family and Political Speculation and Attitudes Especially in Seventeenth Century England (Oxford, 1975), 121–2, 136–49.

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to allege that the biblical coronations of Saul, David, or Solomon ‘were a kind of deed, whereby the right of dominion’ was given. The right of sovereign dominion had been shown by all ‘law, equity and reason’ to be indisputably tied to hereditary succession. ‘Those public solemnities before mentioned do either serve for an open testification of the inheritor’s right, or belongeth to the form of inducting of him into possession of that thing he hath right unto’ [Hooker .ii.8.]46 This was why, Filmer insisted, Hooker been adamant that laws ‘do not take their constraining force from the quality of such as devise them but from the power that doth give them the strength of laws [Hooker .x.8]’.47 These were truly amazing statements for somebody to make who was familiar with Book VIII; a book that Filmer, who belonged to a pre-Walton generation, apparently regarded as accurate. Whilst the Polity and Patriarcha agreed that the family provided the point of departure for political society, Hooker’s belief in an original compact would have been complete anathema to Filmer. Hooker’s belief in a compact was based upon the presupposition that law was intrinsically excellent, and that all power perfected itself through a tightly defined law. By contrast Patriarcha, of course, insisted that sovereign power operated through laws which possessed no authority beyond the will of their maker, and that it was impossible for any ruler to be limited, least of all by his own compact.48 Filmer was clearly not ignorant of these differences since he endeavoured to acknowledge the importance of Hooker’s learning compared to a dwarf such as himself. As a dwarf, however, it was his job to rectify the errors and omissions from which even the ‘giants of scholarship’ were not immune.49 Thus Filmer was able to pay rhetorical respect to Hooker’s authority, whilst justifying selective quotation from him. In spite of such ingenuity, however, Filmer’s political interest in Hooker remained exceptional amongst the anti-exclusionists. For obvious reasons they were not keen to suggest that Book VIII’s broadly based political doctrine might be accurate, after all, and ⁴⁶ ⁴⁷ ⁴⁸ ⁴⁹

Filmer, Patriarcha, 21–2; Schohet, Patriarchalism, 127–30. Filmer, Patriarcha, 57. J. Daly, Sir Robert Filmer and English Political Thought (London, 1979), 34. Filmer, Patriarcha, 4–5.

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consequently Hooker was kept out of their increasingly magnified accounts of royal authority. No doubt much to their concern some of their opponents, however, were prompted by the publication of Patriarcha to seek to embrace Hooker as a possible authority against divine-right monarchy. There was clearly both a desire to rescue Hooker from Filmer’s distortions, but also a recognition that if Filmer could claim the right to be a corrective dwarf then there was no reason why they too might not indulge in minimal quotation from the Polity. Although this deployment of Hooker was still relatively small it did include influential thinkers such as Algernon Sidney, the republican writer, who produced his Discourses Concerning Government, in response to Patriarcha, around 1680.50 Although not published until 1698 it is clear that the manuscript was known to many of his contemporaries. In the Discourses Sidney demonstrated his considerable irritation at Filmer’s misuse of the Polity to suggest it supported an absolute monarchy based upon paternal right. Forcibly, he insisted, that ‘if Hooker, be a man of such great authority, I cannot offend in transcribing his words, and shewing how vilely he is abused by Filmer’.51 Contrary to what Filmer claimed, the Polity had recognized that the right to government could only be granted by the populace whose duty it was to ensure that only the ‘wisest, best, and most valiant Men, should be placed in the Offices where Wisdom, Vertue and Valour are requisite’.52 Hooker had recognized that without the consent of the populace it would be impossible for government to function effectively, since the law-making process depended upon their agreement.53 This point was proven to Sidney by the fact that whilst, by law, all revenues raised by customs or excise went to the monarch this was only because Parliament had assented to it.54 Filmer ‘not troubling himself with these things’, however, Sidney scoffed, had refused to acknowledge the importance which Hooker attributed to consent at coronations and institutions and had discounted all opposite statements within the Polity to promote his ⁵⁰ Burgess, Absolute Monarchy, 214; Downie, The Succession, 24. ⁵¹ A. Sidney, Discourses Concerning Government (London, 1698), 86. ⁵² Ibid. 105. ⁵³ Ibid. 457. ⁵⁴ Ibid. 458.

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belief in a divine-right monarchy.55 This made him guilty of bold censures, which ‘do not only reach Mr Hooker, whose modesty and peacefulness of spirit is no less esteemed than his Learning; but the Scriptures also, and the best of the human Authors, upon whom he founded his opinions’.56 Furthermore Patriarcha’s attempt to justify this selective usage of Hooker, through the image of the giant and dwarf, was no more than an arrogantly conceived conceit. In a sarcastic jibe, Sidney commented, that all were subject to error except Filmer ‘who is rendred infallible through Pride, Ignorance, and Impudence’. He also suggested that it was nonsensical to believe that Hooker could be wrong concerning his fundamentals, but right when he came to build upon it. We are asked to believe that the dwarf standing on the ground can now see that which the giant overlooked. ‘If there be sense in this, the Giant must be blind, or have such eyes only as are of no use to him.’57 Sidney was equally guilty of misunderstanding Hooker, of course, in his desire to use him to demonstrate that ‘the choice and constitution of government . . . is merely from the people’.58 Hooker had believed in an original compact between people and governor, but would have been horrified by the way Sidney had manipulated it to suggest that the sovereign was merely the servant of the people. His advocacy of aristocratic consent, against arbitrary monarchy, pushed Hooker’s political thought out of its context almost as much as Filmer had done. Of greater long-term political significance, than Sidney, was John Locke’s use of Hooker in response to Filmer. Although not published until 1690 his Two Treatises of Government were conceived as a proexclusionist response to Patriarcha. Like Sidney, Locke used Hooker’s belief in an original contract both to provide a respectable authority against absolutism, and to help to disguise his own more radical approach. Whereas Hooker had striven to vindicate the ideal of an evolving consensus, within public affairs, Locke vested this wisdom within the natural political virtues of the individual, enshrined in law, rather ⁵⁵ Ibid. 91. ⁵⁶ Ibid. 86. ⁵⁷ Ibid. 13. ⁵⁸ Downie, The Succession, 99; Sidney, Discussions, 86.

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than the corporate body.59 ‘This equality of Men by Nature, the Judicious Hooker looks upon as so evident in it self, and beyond all question, that he makes it the Foundation of that Obligation to mutual Love amongst Men, on which he Builds the Duties they are of another, and from whence he derives the great Maxims of Justice and Charity.’60 The Polity showed that once a man possessed sufficient reason to comprehend those laws, which are bound to guide his actions, he was of an age to govern himself.61 All men, Locke insisted, remain in this state of nature until ‘by their own Consents they make themselves Members of some Politick Society’.62 Locke was adamant that within this political polity the power of government could never be vested within one individual. Patriarchal government only existed within the closed confines of the family during the minority of children. Hooker, Locke accepted, had recognized that initially the chief man in every household was a king, and that consequently when several groups had first joined together ‘Kings were the first kind of Governours among them, which is also, as it seemeth, the reason why the name of Fathers continued still in them, who, of Fathers, were made Rulers’. But, Locke emphasized, this was not the only form of political regiment which had been set up. Many different forms of government had risen from ‘Consultation and Composition between Men, judging it convenient, and behoveful; there being no impossibility in Nature, considered by it self, but that Man might have lived without any publick Regiment’.63 The purpose of any civil society was to avoid and remedy those inconveniences of the state of nature. There would always be an antisocial minority who failed to adhere to the law of nature, which would result in socially destructive behaviour. In the ‘Golden Age’ when governors were virtuous men and subjects were less vicious, Locke insisted, it had been possible to live without law, but it had ⁵⁹ R. Ashcroft, Revolutionary Politics. Locke’s Two Treatises of Government (Princeton, 1986), 571; R. Eccleshall, ‘Richard Hooker and the Peculiarities of the English: The Reception of the Ecclesiastical Polity in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries’, History of Political Thought, 2 (1981), 19. ⁶⁰ J. Locke, Two Treatises of Government, ed. P. Laslett (Cambridge, 1994), 270. ⁶¹ Downie, The Succession, 25; Locke, Two Treatises (1994), 308–9; J. Miller, The Glorious Revolution (London, 1983), 277. ⁶² Locke, Two Treatises (1994), 277. ⁶³ Locke, Two Treatises (1994), 316; Schochet, Patriarchalism, 252–4, 259.

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subsequently become apparent that the remedy of government for society ‘did but increase the Sore which it should have cured. They saw that to live by one Man’s will, became the cause of all mens misery. This constrained them to come unto Laws wherein all Men might see their Duty before-hand, and know the penalties of transgressing them.’64 Individual rights were not fully secure ‘till the Legislature was placed in collective Bodies of Men, call them Senate, Parliament, or what you please’.65 Such bodies could then redress the inconveniences of society through the production of universal laws.66 The importance, which Locke placed on law to protect the community made it impossible for anyone to seize arbitrary power without contradicting existing legal forms.67 After all, Locke declared, Hooker had shown that this power of making laws belonged to the whole polity, so for any prince to usurp the right, unless he had received special commission from God or consent from the whole society, was no better than tyranny.68 Whilst such behaviour may have been tyrannous, however, there is nothing, in the Polity, to suggest that Hooker had any real concept of Locke’s belief in the natural rights of an individual. Neither would Hooker have been comfortable with the way Locke stripped natural law of its intimate association with the divine will.69 Although Locke clearly recognized Hooker’s importance, as shown by his possession, at various points, of at least three different editions of his works, he was primarily interested in the respectability the quotation of an established authority lent his own position.70 Any later attempts to suggest that Hooker’s political theory is the same as Locke’s are misplaced.71 ⁶⁴ Locke, Two Treatises (1994), 342. ⁶⁵ Downie, The Succession, 42; J. H. Franklin, John Locke and the Theory of Sovereignty. Mixed Monarchy and the Right of Resistance in the Political Thought of the English Revolution (Cambridge, 1978), 93; Locke, Two Treatises (1994), 329. ⁶⁶ Locke, Two Treatises (1994), 326, 357. ⁶⁷ Ibid. 426. ⁶⁸ Ibid. 356. ⁶⁹ D. MacCulloch, ‘Richard Hooker’s Reputation’, English Historical Review, 17/473 (2002), 801–2. ⁷⁰ The Library of John Locke, ed. J. Harrison and P. Laslett, Oxford Bibliographical Society Publications, NS 13 (1965), 157. ⁷¹ By the 19th cent. Henry Hallam, writer of the Constitutional History of England, was so anxious to force Hooker into the mould of an original Whig that he endeavoured to persuade himself that his political theory was the same as Locke’s.

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It is certainly notable that with one exception all his citations are from the Preface, or Book I, which potentially suggests that he never read further or considered the material offered by Book VIII. Locke’s calculated motivation behind the deployment of the Polity is also confirmed by his statement against the proponents of excessive regal power that he had ‘thought Hooker alone might be enough to satisfie these men, who relying on him for their Ecclesiastical Polity, are by strange fate carried to deny those principles upon which he builds it’.72 The desire, outlined above, to use Hooker to give intellectual integrity to opinions contrary to the Restoration settlement was not just limited to overtly political matters. Public fears of popish sedition, and anxieties about the future accession of a Catholic, also led to a revival of the long-stifled debate regarding the settlement of the Church. Whilst there was never a straight divide between Anglicans and nonconformists on the subject of exclusion it is undoubtedly true that the latter were highly active in campaigning on behalf of Whig candidates at the elections to the three exclusion Parliaments, and in London most of the ‘rank-and-file’ supporters were dissenters. Many of the leading proponents of exclusion, the most notable being Shaftesbury, were also united to the nonconformists by a history of opposition to the Anglican establishment.73 Such an atmosphere naturally made any desire to reconsider Hooker’s own Anglican guardianship and to reclaim him for a moderate Reformed tradition much more feasible. Humfrey, who had still not abandoned hope of a wide union of Protestants, tried once again to secure his objective. Through a policy of qualified agreement with Hooker he sought to use him to find accommodation within the English Church. Surely the Polity’s recognition that so many of the religious arrangements concerned R. Eccleshall, Order and Reason in Politics. Theories of Absolute and Limited Monarchy in Early Modern England (Oxford, 1978), 129–30. ⁷² Locke, Two Treatises (1994), 426. ⁷³ T. Harris, ‘Introduction: Revisiting the Restoration’, in T. Harris, P. Seaward, and M. Goldie (eds.), The Politics of Religion in Restoration England (Oxford, 1990), 10–11; J. Miller, Restoration England: The Reign of Charles II (London, 1985), 315, 320; J. Spurr, ‘Religion in Restoration England’, in L. K. J. Glassey (ed.), The Reign of Charles II and James VII and II (New York, 1997), 122–3.

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things indifferent, he argued, provided a basis for greater toleration and comprehension?74 Such nuanced arguments, of course, had been heard before. Rather more dramatic was the way Baxter, with remarkable inconsistency, temporarily changed his whole attitude towards the Polity. He loudly proclaimed Hooker as a leading representative, in spite of occasional failings, of the ‘Old Church of England’ to whom the godly could have conformed. He bemoaned that ‘conformity now was quite another thing than it was before, and to us more intolerable; that Bilson, Hooker and Usher would have been Nonconformists now, and that Stillingfleet had debased his earlier services to Protestantism’.75 Conformity as it was now understood, Baxter argued, would ensure that even ‘Hooker, Bilson, Jewel &c are hanged (which must be done if you extend the punishment to all Nonconformists)’. Fornicators, drunkards, and atheists, however, who appeared to conform were all left in peace.76 This sorry situation, Baxter informed his readers, was deeply reminiscent of Hooker’s story concerning Ithacius and his drive to expunge the heresy of Priscillianism. Such was Ithacius’s obsession with this one issue ‘that every man careful of virtuous conversations, studious of scripture, and given to abstinence in diet, was set down in his Character for suspected Priscillianists: For whom it should be expedient to approve their soundness of faith, by a more licentiousness and loose behaviour.’ Those Anglicans, Baxter urged, who had become obsessed with ensuring strict conformity needed to consider these words of Hooker ‘and perceive what service such do the Church’.77 There was no need for the Church to be narrow and prelatical since Hooker had provided the model for a broad comprehensive settlement. This had been recognized, Baxter gratefully recalled, by Gauden who had taught him ‘to esteem the ancient and Catholike ⁷⁴ C. Condren, ‘The Creation of Richard Hooker’s Public Authority: Rhetoric, Reputation and Reassessment’, Journal of Religious History, 21/1 (1997), 54. ⁷⁵ R. Baxter, Richard Baxter’s Answer to Dr Edward Stillingfleet’s Charge of Separation (London, 1680), The Preface; Lamont, Baxter and the Millennium, 246. ⁷⁶ R. Baxter, An Apology for the Nonconformists Ministry (London, 1681), 200–1; G. F. Nutall, Richard Baxter (London, 1965), 60. ⁷⁷ Baxter, An Apology for the Nonconformists Ministry, 225.

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Government of Godly Bishops, as Moderators and Presidents among the Presbyters’.78 ‘Add to this, what he saith in Hookers life of the late Bishops, and remember that this man was one of the Keenest Writers against the adversaries of the Bishops in his time; And though he was made a bishop when the king was restored, yet he was the only Bishop’ at Savoy which sought to facilitate a reconciliation.79 Even more radically Baxter also commended Gauden’s publication of Book VII because it made it possible to build upon earlier references in Books III and V to show that Hooker could be ‘answered as far as our cause requireth’.80 Although Baxter accepted that Hooker remained enthusiastic concerning old- style prelacy he stressed that his arguments, when compared to other treatises, were ‘next to nothing nor worth a Reply’.81 The logical conclusion of Book VII was not prelacy, but limited episcopacy. Hooker’s examination of early Church episcopacy had demonstrated the lawfulness of one bishop’s authority over a single church. Such a ‘definition visibly reacheth to no other sort of Bishops, but such as we oppose not’. The Polity’s affirmation of cathedrals as mirrors in which the face of apostolic antiquity was perfectly preserved, was an affirmation that ‘every City or Church’ should have ‘a Bishop and Presbytery of their own’. Hooker’s attempts to demonstrate that early Church bishops, such as Cyprian, enjoyed control over many churches were flawed since he ‘never once attempteth to prove that Cyprian had more Churches, yea, or Assemblies than one; but only that he was over the Presbyters in one Church or Assembly, and as an Archbishop as over Bishops’.82 Hooker’s apparent reluctance to define whether ‘the government of Lay-men (under the Bishop) belong to the Presbyters or not’ was also somewhat frustrating for Baxter. It was important to Baxter that they did share authority since this ‘is the matter of most of our difference; and we take him for no Pastor or Presbyter that is without the power of government, nor that to be a true Church (in sensu politico) that hath no other Pastor’.83 St Jerome, as quoted by Hooker, certainly appeared to support their joint government, since he had advised the ⁷⁸ R. Baxter, A Treatise of Episcopacy (London, 1681), 219. ⁷⁹ Ibid. 220. ⁸⁰ Ibid. 48, 112, 220. ⁸¹ Ibid. 48. ⁸² Ibid. 50. ⁸³ Ibid. 48.

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bishops never to ‘disdain the advice of their Presbyters, but to use their Authority with so much the greater humility and moderation’. Hooker, whilst insisting that ordination must be undertaken by a bishop, had also conceded that the custom of England and the council of Carthage permitted that presbyters might impose hands along with the bishop.84 Neither was Hooker, Baxter commented, able to deny that ‘the ancient use was for the Bishops to excommunicate with the College of his Assistant Presbyters’.85 So confident was Baxter in his manipulation of the Polity in support of limited episcopacy that he claimed that if anyone could find anything in Hooker ‘against the points which I defend, or for that Prelacy which I oppose, any more worth the answering than this I have recited, let him rejoice in the perfection of his eye-sight’.86 Any objective reading of the Polity, as opposed to the ones made by High Churchmen, would demonstrate that within the primitive Church a form of episcopal government existed, which although not of divine institution, it would be right to seek to maintain. The primitive form, however, was ‘so far unlike the present frame of the English Hierarchy, that they are neither the same, nor yet consistent’.87 As on the political front, however, Baxter’s somewhat confused and complex relationship to the Polity was not representative of a wider trend to reclaim Hooker from the Anglicans. Other pleas for Hooker-sponsored moderation, as found in a republished edition of Stillingfleet’s Irenicum, remained exceptional.88 Nonconformists, many of them heirs of the moderate Reformed tradition, which had once enthusiastically espoused his writings, seem generally to have lost interest in the ecclesiastical Hooker following the Restoration. This is, perhaps, not particularly surprising given the new wave of uncompromisingly Anglican anti-nonconformist publications prompted by the exclusion crisis. Once again Hooker featured heavily in this new publication drive to the detriment of all contrary opinions. ⁸⁴ Ibid. 50. ⁸⁵ Ibid. 51. ⁸⁶ Baxter, A Treatise of Episcopacy, 113; F. J. Powicke, The Reverend Richard Baxter under the Cross (London, 1928), 220–1. ⁸⁷ Baxter, Apology for the Nonconformists, 60; Baxter, A Treatise of Episcopacy, 51. ⁸⁸ E. Stillingfleet, Irenicum. A Weapon-Salve for the Churches Wounds (London, 1681), 394.

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The author of Speculum Baxterianum was incredulous that Baxter after having read Hooker, was unable to conform and continued to plead for liberty of conscience.89 He was equally angered by Baxter’s false equation of the Church’s pursuit of conformity with Baxter’s account of the misplaced zeal of Ithacius. It was sacrilegious effrontery for Baxter to compare the ‘Ithacian Masters’ with Anglicans, and the ‘Ithacian Synod’ to convocation. The passage had been taken out of context, he insisted, since Hooker had actually related the sores caused by Ithacius to the wounds the Puritans were inflicting upon the English Church. The words of the Polity reflected as much ‘upon Baxterianism, as remarkably as the foregoing do upon Ithacianism on the one, hand, and Martinism on the other’.90 William Denton, Charles II’s anti-Presbyterian physician, was equally impatient with those troublesome consciences which threatened Church and State. Hooker, Denton reminded his readers, had rightly recognized that the English Church possessed her own ‘Discipline of Government and Judicature’ which was ‘Independent of any other Person, Church or Power’.91 It was not necessary, therefore, for the Church to be reduced to the state she was in at the end of the apostolic era. ‘A thing in the opinion of Judicious Hooker, neither possible or certain, nor yet absolutely convenient. For that which was used in their dayes, the Scripture (he saith) doth not fully declare, so that making those times the Rule and Canon of Church Government, they make a rule which not being possible to be fully known, is as impossible to be fully kept.’92 Whilst the ecclesiastical debate engendered by the exclusionists is usually seen as a debate between uncompromising Anglicans and the nonconformists it is important to recall that the former group also perceived themselves to be equally challenged by papist machinations to undermine the Restoration settlement. Roger L’Estrange’s famous broadside, The Committee, or Popery in Masquerade of 1681 ⁸⁹ M. A., Speculum Baxterianum, Being Sober and Useful Reflections upon a Treatise of Mr Richard Baxter’s Stiled [Sacrilegious Desertion of the Holy Ministry Rebuked, and Tolerated Preaching of the Gospel Vindicated] (London, 1680), 48. ⁹⁰ Ibid. 76. ⁹¹ W. Denton, Jus Caesaris et Ecclesiae Vere Dictae. Or a Treatise of Independency, Presbytery, the Power of kings, and of the Church, or of the Brethren in Ecclesiastical Concerns, Government Discipline, &c. (London, 1681), 3. ⁹² Ibid. 56.

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encapsulates their fears. A committee, made up of sectaries, sits under a banner proclaiming that they are a covenanting people, whilst in another corner the Pope whispers encouragement to the committee.93 Such fears of popery seem to have led to a revival of anxieties that Hooker would be manipulated once again by Catholic sectaries. Whilst most Anglicans predictably preferred to seek authority from unambiguous anti-Catholics, such as Jewel, there were still some surprising deployments of the Polity on the Protestant side. Notably Timothy Puller, the rector of St Mary-le-Bow, London, produced a highly popular statement of Anglican theology, The Moderation of the Church of England, which strove to portray Hooker’s impeccable loyalty to his Protestant heritage. Generally via media Anglicans had used Hooker to lambaste nonconformists over the importance of a fixed liturgy, but Puller stressed that he had also recognized the ‘truth and goodness’, which could result from a well-constructed sermon.94 He also sought to distance Hooker from the Roman Church by defining his true opinions concerning Catholicism. This included a large section from the third book of the Polity in which Hooker described how the English Church had recoiled from the ‘gross and grievous abominations’ of Rome. Puller was not totally alone in using Hooker to resist the perceived Roman pretension to a narrow infallible exclusivity. Denton also cited Hooker to demonstrate that such power had not been awarded by God, or by the whole political society of men.95 In spite of the anxieties that the status quo was under serious threat from the double-headed beast of Catholicism and Puritanism the general subsidence of the Popish Plot panic ensured that Hooker’s status as an Anglican icon once again emerged undimmed. When Charles finally dissolved the Oxford Parliament of March 1681, and subsequently refused to call another one, it not only served to demonstrate the royal victory over the exclusionists, but also served to confirm that any challenge to Hooker’s identity had been rebuffed. At the Restoration Charles had been reluctant to support the ⁹³ A. Lacey, The Cult of King Charles the Martyr (Woodbridge, 2003), 158. ⁹⁴ T. Puller, The Moderation of the Church of England, Considered as Useful for Allaying the Present Distempers Which the Indisposition of Time Hath Contracted (London, 1679), 176–7, 181. ⁹⁵ Denton, Jus Caesaris, 208.

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Hooker-sponsored loyalty of the Cavaliers, but after the Whig ‘betrayal’ he appealed unequivocally to it.96 The lord lieutenancies were remade in the Tory image, Whigs lost their positions in the militia and as JPs, and new town charters ensured that civic corporations could be remodelled in the royal interest.97 Loyal Anglicans were in no doubt that Hooker would have approved of these actions. Sir William Dugdale, the Tory historian, reminded his readers that Book VIII only spoke otherwise because a group of Civil War Puritans had corrupted Hooker’s manuscripts to support a ‘malevolent design for the utter extirpation of monarchy’.98 The fabrication of the text had consequently ensured that many ‘well meaning people were miserably captivated and drawn to their Party’. Contemporary individuals, however, Dugdale insisted had no such excuse for flirting with ideas of mixed monarchy. Hooker’s true political credentials had been rediscovered through Walton’s ‘perfect Narrative’. He had corrected the numerous errors perpetuated by Gauden’s account, and demonstrated the unreliability of the later books.99 Whilst James Tyrell, the Whig historian, was appalled by the hold this belief in the ‘Divine and Patriarchal Right of absolute Monarchy’ had achieved, amongst the clergy and universities, such opinions were discounted. It would not be long, Tyrell mourned, before they had given up all those privileges, which their ancestors had been so careful to achieve.100 Certainly by the 1680s a new generation of clergy trained in the uncompromising Anglican attitudes of Oxford and Cambridge had come to dominate the parishes. Their tutors had taught them that the doctrine of passive obedience was ‘in a manner . . . the badge and character of the Church of England’.101 ⁹⁶ G. E. Aylmer, The Struggle for the Constitution. England in the Seventeenth Century (London, 1975), 205; J. Miller, Charles II (London, 1991), 347–9, 373; Miller, Restoration, 66. ⁹⁷ R. M. Bliss, Restoration England 1660–1688 (London, 1985), 45; R. Hutton, Charles the Second King of England, Scotland and Ireland (Oxford, 1989), 419–20; Miller, Restoration, 67. ⁹⁸ W. Dugdale, A Short View of the Late Troubles in England (Oxford, 1681), 38. ⁹⁹ Dugdale, Short View, 39–40; Miller, Charles II, 349. ¹⁰⁰ J. Tyrell, Patriarach Non Monarcha, the Patriarch Unmonarch’d: Being Observations on a Late Treatise and Divers Other Miscellanies, Published under the Name of Sir Robert Filmer Baronet (London, 1681), Preface. ¹⁰¹ I. M. Green, The Re-establishment of the Church of England (Oxford, 1978), 235.

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Such extravagant devotion towards the monarchy also reinforced the equation of political loyalty with religious conformity, and led to a vigorous renewal of the campaign against nonconformity. Urban nonconformist communities, which had quietly flourished under sympathetic Whig corporations, swiftly discovered that the new Tory magistrates were determined to enforce the full penalties of the law.102 Such renewed anti-nonconformist zeal naturally found its justification in Hooker’s justification of the Anglican position. His clear rebuttal of any criticism of the Church’s liturgy made him an ideal authority to cite in support of the drive towards uniformity. It was no coincidence, therefore, that in 1682 a new edition of the Polity, accompanied by Walton’s Life, was published and other treatises, which drew upon Hooker, by William Falkner and l’Estrange were reissued.103 New polemical Anglican writers such as the popular preacher Nathaniel Resbury, or John Dryden, were just as enthusiastic in their citation of Hooker.104 When Dryden attempted to set out the dangers of nonconformity in his preface to Religio Laici he turned to the Life for his inspiration. Like Walton he emphasized his own insufficiencies, and insisted that in the handling of such a weighty matter he would ‘lay no unhallow’d hand upon the Ark; but wait on it, with the Reverence that becomes me at a distance’. Yet since Hooker had supported his belief that the sectaries threatened the stability of civil and religious society he could be confident in this claim. If Hooker’s admonition was not heeded, Dryden warned, clearly with a view to the contemporary situation, we ‘should cause Posterity to feed those Evils, which as yet are more easy for us to present, than they would be for them to remedy’.105 ¹⁰² Miller, Restoration, 70. ¹⁰³ R. Hooker, The Works of that Learned and Judicious Divine, Mr Richard Hooker, in Eight Books of Ecclesiastical Polity, Compleated out of his own Manuscripts (London, 1682); W. Falkner, Libertas Ecclesiastica: Or a Discourse Vindicating the Lawfulnesse of these Things, Which are Chiefly Excepted against in the Church of England in its Liturgy and Worship (London, 1683); R. L’Estrange, Interest Mistaken: Or the Holy Cheat: Proving from the Undeniable Practises and Positions of the Presbyterians, that the Design of that Party is to Enslave Both King and People under the Masque of Religion (London, 1681); D. Novarr, The Making of Walton’s Lives (Ithaca, 1958). ¹⁰⁴ N. Resbury, The Case of the Cross in Baptism Considered. Wherein is Shewed, that there is Nothing in it, as it is Used in the Church of England, that can be Any Just Reasons of Separation from it (London, 1684), 14. ¹⁰⁵ J. Dryden, Religio Laici. Or a Layman’s Faith. A Poem (London, 1682), Preface.

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The assured nature of such treatises was indicative of the confidence felt by loyal Anglicans at the end of Charles’s reign. There was no obvious challenge to their supremacy, since this royal-sponsored period of reaction effectively silenced their opponents. The earl of Shaftesbury, the unofficial leader of the opposition, died an exile in 1683, and the exposure of the Rye House Plot had only served to stiffen the Tory resolve. Throughout the country, popular addresses to the king, sermons, and ballads proclaimed obedience and nonresistance to be indicative of true Anglicanism, and the divine right of kings to be the essence of the English constitution.106 There was certainly no indication, in spite of the claims of traditional historiography, that religion was being marginalized by the end of the Restoration period.107 On the contrary Hooker-sponsored Anglicanism appeared to have reached the zenith of its success. Such was the apparent timelessness of the Polity that James Bonnell, the accountant general of Ireland, was moved to praise Hooker as an ‘author who writ with a primitive spirit but modern judgment and correctness’.108 Some nonconformist sympathizers such as John Evans, the rector of St Ethelburga, London, still endeavoured to dispute this Anglican interpretation of Hooker, but they were exceptional. Hooker’s reputation as an arch-proponent of the Prayer Book ceremonies was too well established for his careful use of the Polity against kneeling reception at Communion to be taken seriously.109 The attempt by Codrington, a Bristol Whig, to use the Polity to undermine patriarchal notions of society similarly fell on deaf ears.110 The atmosphere of the 1680s was simply not receptive to any suggestion that government was achieved by the mutual consent of the people. After the upheavals of the Civil War, and the ominous indication of a possible repetition, during the exclusion crisis, it was not surprising that most Anglicans were anxious for a more elevated defence of both Church and State. This they achieved through the divine-right argument, which gave little ¹⁰⁶ Bliss, Restoration, 48. ¹⁰⁷ Ibid. 30. ¹⁰⁸ H. McAdoo, ‘Richard Hooker’, in The English Religious Tradition and the Genius of Anglicanism (Wantage, 1992), 110. ¹⁰⁹ J. Evans, The Case of Kneeling at the Holy Sacrament Stated & Resolved, Part II (London, 1683), 45. ¹¹⁰ Ashcroft, Revolutionary Politics, 225.

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scope to theories of sacred ordained natural laws, or to the problem of consent.111 The enduring legacy of Walton ensured that Anglicans could retain their devotion to Hooker’s apparent enthusiasm for the ecclesiastical establishment, whilst quietly ignoring the political and religious sentiments of the posthumous books. The acquiescence of most writers to this belief, willingly, or through ignorance, ensured that it was almost impossible for them to be quoted in a contrary way. Any dissension was minimal and could easily be discounted, as in the case of Baxter. It certainly did nothing to discourage late Restoration England from enthusiastically maintaining the rhetoric of Hooker, even if the reality was not an accurate fulfilment of the Polity’s vision of the Christian Church and State. Charles II, despite his Roman leanings, vociferously supported the religious and political status quo during the last years of his reign. Such tacit support for the Hookersponsored ideal enabled him to strengthen and maintain the affection of his subjects, and ensured that his reign subsequently acquired the Tory reputation for having been a golden era. It was no accident that for many years the commemoration of his restoration as spiritual and temporal head was solemnly kept by the Church to mark the restitution of the ‘proper’ order. ¹¹¹ J. Gascoigne, ‘Church and State Unified: Hooker’s Rationale for the English Post-Reformation Order’, Journal of Religious History, 21/1 (1997), 32.

5 The Mask of Discontinuity: Hooker in the Reigns of James II and William and Mary At the height of the exclusion crisis the future crowning of James II must have seemed an increasingly unlikely possibility. Consequently, when his coronation did take place, the Anglican hierarchy welcomed it as the final sign that the proponents of exclusion and Whig principles had been defeated. Providing James, although a Catholic, defended the Church of England, it is clear that the Church in turn intended to uphold the principles of the Restoration settlement and teach the duties of non-resistance and passive obedience. This obedience was swiftly tested, of course, and not found wanting, in the rebellion of the Protestant Monmouth.1 Nevertheless James was not the Tory stereotype his wishfulthinking supporters supposed him to be. Although he acknowledged their loyalty and promised shortly after his accession to preserve the government ‘in Church and State, as it is now by law established’ he soon failed to live up to these early Anglican expectations.2 His own memoirs record in a long-suffering way that ‘it was impossible for the king to do the least thing in favour of religion, which did not give disgust, notwithstanding all his precautions not to break in upon his engagement; and that the liberties he permitted to Catholics should in no ways interfere with the possessions, privileges and immunities of the Church of England’.3 Whilst James was undoubtedly grossly misrepresented by early historians of his reign as an intolerant Catholic ¹ A. Lacey, The Cult of King Charles the Martyr (Woodbridge, 2003), 172–3. ² P. Earle, The Life and Times of James II (London, 1972), 140. ³ J. S. Clarke (ed.), The Life of James II. King of England, 2 (London, 1816), 79.

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bigot, his open practice of Catholicism and rapid promotion of his religious compatriots at court certainly did little to reassure a country that equated Rome with oppression and murder. He was particularly unfortunate that the accuracy of this equation appeared to be confirmed by Louis XIV’s revocation of the Edict of Nantes, towards the end of 1685, and the subsequent flow of frightened Hugenot refugees into England. Although James publicly sympathized with the plight of the Hugenots his own undisguised lack of enthusiasm for the Protestant settlement, which his father had been martyred for, did little to reassure his own subjects that they too would not be subject to Roman religious coercion. His general lack of tact is clearly demonstrated by his public attitude towards Hooker. Whilst he fulfilled dutifully his condemned father’s final request to read Hooker, so that it would confirm him in his membership of the English Church, he recounted, as Lady Falkland had done earlier, how the judicious divine had, in fact, prompted his conversion to Rome.4 This was an unwelcome reminder from the supreme governor, to faithful churchmen, of the Roman ambiguities of their English religious champion, and a potential royal encouragement to exploit the high standing of the Polity to the Catholic advantage. Catholic polemicists were certainly not slow to take advantage of a climate that facilitated the production of devotional works and missionary treatises. At least 1,348 Catholic books were published between 1641 and 1700, of which a third were printed during James’s brief reign.5 The references which many of them made to the Polity, only served to support the Anglican belief that Catholicism was bent upon subverting their Church. In a militant passage, with a clear analogy for contemporaries, John Everard, an Irish Franciscan, described how the Commonwealth abandonment of the English Church had happened through ‘God’s sweetly-chastising Mercy’ so these scattered members might be received back into the Catholic Church. This was all as Hooker had predicted, in the fifth book of the Polity, when he anticipated that the Protestant Church was not likely to continue ⁴ Ibid. 630. ⁵ T. H. Clancy, English Catholic Books, 1641–1700 (Aldershot, 1996), p. ix; J. R. Jones, The Revolution of 1688 in England (London, 1972), 88–9.

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beyond another eighty years. ‘Nor could he judge otherwise’ writes Everard, ‘seeing it bears evidently the principles of corruption and mutability in its very constitution’ and that ‘the first Governors of it being none of those to whom Christ promised his continual assistance to the worlds end.’6 Many of the other proselytizing treatises, which referred to the Polity, were printings of earlier material, but the accession of a Catholic monarch gave them a new vibrancy and popularity. This enthusiasm for republishing earlier works is clearly illustrated by Pax Vobis, a work composed by Ignatius Brown, an Irish Jesuit, which had cited Hooker in support of the sacraments of confirmation and orders. There had been a solitary edition published in 1679, but by the end of James’s reign it had been reissued five times. The opportunity was also taken to publish works for the first time, which had previously only existed in manuscript form. The title page of the Benedictine Richard Huddleston’s A Short and Plain Way to the Faith and Church indicated that his nephew had waited until a favourable moment to publish his late uncle’s works, so that they might assist most effectively the ‘Common Good’. Like other missionary tracts from the 1640s and 1650s it predictably drew attention to Hooker’s recognition that scripture could not authenticate itself, which meant that there was a need for a ‘Supream Tribunal’.7 These treatises of Brown and Huddlestone display a common anxiety to show the areas of agreement between Anglicanism, as epitomized by Hooker, and Catholicism. By demonstrating such a parity of thought it was possible to show that many of the allegations made against Rome were Protestant distortions of the truth. It also served the ever useful polemical purpose of drawing attention to the numerous divisions within Protestantism between Puritan and pseudo-Catholic writers. Under James II this largely implicit aim was given public expression through the works of John Gother. Gother, who effectively became the principal champion of the new generation ⁶ J. Everard, A Winding-Sheet for the Schism of England, Contriv’d to Inform the Ignorant, Resolve the Wavering and Confirm the Well Principled Roman Catholick (Dublin, 1687), 86. ⁷ R. Huddleston, A Short and Plain Way to the Faith and Church. Composed Many Years Since by that Eminent Divine Mr Richard Huddleston of the English Congregation of St Benedict (London, 1688), 7, 9, 12.

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of apologists, was familiar with Protestant perceptions of Rome since he had been brought up by anti-Catholic Presbyterian parents. In his leading work entitled A Papist Misrepresented and Represented he described how he sought to ‘take off the Black and Dirt which has been thrown’ at the Catholic Church and ‘let the World see, how much fairer she is, than she’s painted’.8 Gother claimed to be surprised by the hostility with which members of the English Church viewed Rome when they had so many things in common. Both groups were clearly conscious that the main threat to their exposition of the faith came from radical Puritanism and not from each other.9 On this basis English churchmen such as Whitgift, Bancroft, Saravia, and Sutcliffe were all worthy of commendation because of the way they had resisted ‘the Puritans’. Hooker was esteemed most, however, by Gother ‘for the Service he did the Church of Rome, in his Writings for the Worship, and Discipline of the Church of England has had the praises of the Romanists, as Mr Walton in his life has observ’d’. The importance of Hooker to the Catholics had also been recognized by ‘Dr King, sometime Bishop of Chichester’, who had praised Walton for recalling how the Polity had been esteemed by Clement VIII.10 This desire to show agreement with Hooker was particularly important with regard to the newly animated controversy of the nature of Christ’s presence in the Eucharist. Protestant horror at the doctrine of transubstantiation quickly acquired a new momentum when the celebration of the Mass was not just limited to a few embassy chapels, but was taking place in the monarch’s private chapel. Obadiah Walker, the master of University College, Oxford, who had received a licence to print Catholic works, helped mount the Roman offensive through the private publication of Abraham Woodhead’s Eucharistic manuscripts. These older works of Woodhead were peppered with references to the Polity and clearly encouraged the new

⁸ J. Gother, A Papist Misrepresented and Reflected: Or, a Twofold Character of Popery (1685), 10. ⁹ J. Gother, An Agreement between the Church of England and Church of Rome, Evinced from the Concentration of Some of Her Sons with Their Brethren the Dissenters (London, 1687), 60. ¹⁰ Gother, An Agreement between the Church of England and Church of Rome, 60–1.

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generation of Roman Eucharistic apologists, such as Joshua Basset, the Anglican convert, to do likewise. Although Woodhead and Basset accepted that the Polity had held a carefully defined receptionist position11 they deemed it a nonsense for Hooker to deny ‘the real or substantial presence of Christ’s body’, since he had granted that ‘we receive by these instruments that which they are termed’.12 It was clear, Woodhead insisted, that Hooker believed in the real presence and merely differed with the Catholic Church over the manner of it.13 ‘Mr Hooker well observes’ that it is a question whether the presence is communicated ‘to the worthy Receiver only, or also to the elements or signs; or if present to the signs, whether not some other way present to them, than either’ consubstantiation or transubstantiation.14 This set Hooker apart from individuals, such as Jeremy Taylor, who believed that only the ‘vertue and efficacy of Christ’ were present.15 Both Woodhead and Basset quoted the same passage from the Polity to show that Hooker had accepted that the Eucharist not only made the recipient a partaker of the ‘grace of that body and blood which was given for the life of the world’, but was also able to impart ‘in true and real, tho mystical, manner, the very person of our Lord himself, whole, perfect, and entire’.16 This, Woodhead insisted, was not that far removed from transubstantiation.17 Hooker, he also pointed out, had been openly more sympathetic to this position, than to consubstantiation, because it followed a shorter route to the same carnal conclusion.18 Since the Polity so clearly recognized that Christ

¹¹ J. Basset, Reason or Authority: Or the Motives of a Late Protestants Reconciliation to the Catholic Church. Together with Remarks upon Some Late Discourses against Transubstantiation (London, 1687), 79; A.Woodhead, A Compendious Discourse upon the Eucharist. With Two Appendixes (Oxford, 1688), 1. ¹² Woodhead, A Compendious Discourse, 30–1. ¹³ Woodhead, A Compendious Discourse, 28; A. Woodhead, Two Discourses Concerning the Adoration of Our B. Saviour in the Eucharist (Oxford, 1687), 24. ¹⁴ Woodhead, A Compendious Discourse, 26. ¹⁵ Ibid. 27. ¹⁶ Basset, Reason and Authority, 67–8; Woodhead, A Compendious Discourse, 4, 148; Woodhead, Two Discourses, 6. ¹⁷ A. Woodhead, Church-Government Part V. A Relation of the English Reformation, and the Lawfulness Thereof Examined by Theses Deliver’d in the Four Former Parts (Oxford, 1687), 67. ¹⁸ Woodhead, A Compendious Discourse, 22.

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was present in the elements, commented Basset, it was a scandal for the world to remain ‘rent with . . . manifold contentions’.19 Anglicans were naturally deeply sensitive to any suggestion that Hooker had shown their logical destination to be the theology of Rome, since it only served to fuel nonconformist allegations that they were imperfectly reformed. Whilst William Sherlock may have pretended to have only suffered mild irritation from Gother’s depiction of a Romewards looking Church the swiftness of his response suggests rather more anxiety than he was prepared to admit to.20 Even during the English Church’s conflict with the Catholic James there were still nonconformists who were happy to question her credentials as a Protestant communion. Sherlock was certainly not alone in his concern to respond to Roman propaganda since over two hundred works of anti-papal polemic had been published by the end of James’s reign.21 Edward Gee, who was responsible for compiling a list of Anglican and anti-Roman writings composed under James, suggested that the Catholics had not expected any resistance from the clergy of the English Church. They believed that they were not prepared to ‘mark themselves out for Destruction, by daring so much as to mutter anything, much less write against the King’s Religion,’ for fear of being accused of disloyalty.22 Gee is clearly exaggerating, but he is correct that it was difficult to criticize Catholicism without also appearing to attack the king. Undoubtedly James believed that the English Church’s Hooker-sponsored doctrine of non-resistance and passive obedience meant that his will would ultimately be followed. In fact, as he discovered through his famous fiasco with the seven bishops, the doctrine, if correctly understood, only obliged obedience to a superior in all things lawful and actually demanded resistance, although passive in construction, to all illegal demands. ¹⁹ Basset, Reason and Authority, 67. ²⁰ W. Sherlock, A Vindication of Some Protestant Principles of Church-Unity and Catholick-Communion, from the Charge of Agreement with the Church of Rome (London, 1688), 1. ²¹ E. Gee, The Catalogue of All the Discourses Published against Popery, During the Reign of King James II. by Members of the Church of England, and by the Nonconformists (London, 1689). ²² Ibid. 4.

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Consequently most English clergy felt obliged to resist any attempt to dilute the Restoration establishment of religious uniformity, which laid the basis for their confessional state. As Gee put it they ‘valued their Religion and their Church much more than their own Safety, or worldly Interest’.23 In spite of Hooker’s special status as guardian of both these pillars, however, his involvement in this concerted response was limited. He appeared in the republication of devotional works such as A Companion to the Temple, by Thomas Comber, the firmly Protestant precentor of York, but his presence in direct refutations of Catholic practice was almost nonexistent.24 The listing by William Wake, a zealous Protestant who attracted royal disapproval, of the Polity as one of the works he had consulted to write his Defence of the Exposition of the Doctrine of the Church of England was exceptional.25 Hooker was absent from all but a couple of the 212 anti-popish works listed by Gee. Even when Hooker was quoted it was generally in response to the Roman ‘misinterpretation’ of his writings rather than as part of a concerted attempt to deploy Hooker against Catholicism.26 Clearly once again the successful exploitation of Hooker’s popish ambiguities made Anglicans reluctant to draw upon him. When Wake cited Hooker to criticize Jacques Bossuet, the bishop of Meaux, for refusing to countenance the possibility that unbaptized children might be saved, he suffered considerable Catholic criticism.27 Joseph Johnston, a Catholic controversialist, charged Wake with deliberately misunderstanding Hooker and distorting the nature of the dispute between the bishop of Meaux and the Hugenots which had ²³ Ibid. ²⁴ T. Comber, A Companion to the Temple: Or a Help to Devotion in the Use of the Common Prayer, Divided into Four Parts (London, 1688), 42. ²⁵ N. Sykes, William Wake Archbishop of Canterbury 1657–1737, 1 (Cambridge, 1957), 17–32; W. Wake, A Defence of the Exposition of the Doctrine of the Church of England, against the Exceptions of Monsieur de Meaux, Late Bishop of Condom, and His Vindicator (London, 1686), 163. ²⁶ W. Wake, An Exposition of the Doctrine of the Church of England, in the Several Articles Proposed by Monsieur de Meaux, Late Bishop of Condom, in his Exposition of the Doctrine of the Catholic Church (London, 1687), 60–2. ²⁷ Sykes, Wake, 22; Wake, A Defence of the Exposition of the Doctrine of the Church of England, 37.

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concerned ‘the Necessity of Baptism, and not the consequence of that Necessity’.28 Some Anglican writers, however, were able to utilize this Catholic manipulation of Hooker to their advantage. Henry Aldrich, a staunch canon of Christ Church, cited the Polity against those Catholics who claimed the English Church had a Zwinglian theology of the Eucharist. Only ‘if the Zwinglians hold as Mr Hooker says they do (whose authority for once we may prefer to the Discourser’s) they and we are agreed about the Eucharist in all that is essentially necessary: but then they hold more than a bare reception of the Benefits of our Saviour’s passion’.29 Undoubtedly aware of the way so many Catholics had used the Polity to show support for a carnal presence, Aldrich deemed it impossible for them to accuse Hooker of believing that Eucharistic elements were no more than symbols. Such a deft manoeuvre was very much the exception. It was predictably deemed to be much safer to put one’s trust in sixteenthcentury English divines whose Protestant credentials remained unquestioned. When discussing the failings of transubstantiation even Aldrich preferred to refer his readers to Thomas Cranmer’s work on the Eucharist.30 Works by other Reformation martyrs were also published, sometimes for the first time, to show the purity of the English Church. As one commentator put it, all Protestants could not but ‘be glad to meet with any Relic . . . of our Blessed Martyrs’.31 Anxious as English churchmen were, however, at the Catholic challenge to their integrity they were able to console themselves that James’s reign would not last indefinitely and eventually he would be succeeded by one of his Anglican daughters. Mary had been nurtured in the principles of the Restoration Church and somewhat to the ²⁸ J. Johnston, A Reply to the Defence of the Exposition of the Doctrin of the Church of England: Being a Further Vindication of the Bishop of Condom’s Exposition of the Doctrin of the Catholic Church. With a Second Letter from the Bishop of Meaux (London, 1687), 62. ²⁹ H. Aldrich, A Vindication of the Oxford Reply to Two Discourses There Printed A.D. 1687 Concerning the Adoration of Our Blessed Saviour in the Eucharist from the Exceptions Made to it in the Second Appendix to a Compendious Discourse on the Eucharist Published from the Same Press (Oxford, 1688), 50. ³⁰ H. Aldrich, A Reply to Two Discourses Lately Printed at Oxford Concerning the Adoration of our Blessed Saviour in the Holy Eucharist (Oxford, 1687), 50. ³¹ N. Ridley, An Account of a Disputation at Oxford Anno Dom, 1554 with a Treatise of the Blessed Sacrament: Both Written by Bishop Ridley, Martyr (Oxford, 1688), Preface.

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disapproval of her husband was clearly sustained in them by the reading of Hooker. Coming to her apartments one day he had noticed a copy of the Polity and had disparagingly commented that he supposed her chaplain, the High Church William Hooper, persuaded her to read such works.32 This scenario, of course, altered following the birth of the Old Pretender and the issue, by James’s opponents, of the famous invitation to William of Orange. Following his successful invasion it was generally agreed that it was not in the national interest that James should continue to rule as before. Reluctant revolutionaries such as Archbishop Sancroft, and his other episcopal colleagues, struggled to retain James, so that they might cement the old alliance of crown and bishops, but they were exceptional. The Glorious Revolution of 1688, with its Bill of Rights, was to succeed, where the exclusionists had failed, in both ousting James and curtailing the royal prerogative. This settling of the crown was far from straightforward, since the legal basis for a joint monarchy was decidedly shaky. Yet it did meet a deep need to do as little damage to the deeply held legal and constitutional beliefs and prejudices of both Whigs and Tories. In order to confirm further the legitimacy of the settlement there was also a desire to seek out earlier authorities to establish firmly the acceptability of what had happened. One such reassuring conservative figure was Hooker who offered the illusion of continuity. ‘The more James could be seen as the enemy of tradition, the easier it became to see him as ceasing to be a king; as being a victim of providence (through the instrument of a just invasion); as providing the extreme circumstances that might mark the limits of obedience.’33 Ironically, given the earlier discounting of his political doctrine, Hooker was to become a major constitutional source for post-1688 society. Traditionally Locke’s Two Treatises of Government has been seen as the most important and authoritative post-1688 deployment of Hooker. Although it was written against the background of the exclusion crisis its 1690 publication date ensured that it was rapidly ³² J. L. Abderdon, The Life of Thomas Ken (London, 1854), vol. 2, 160; H. A. L. Rice, Thomas Ken. Bishop and Non-Juror (London, 1964), 42. ³³ R. I. Aaron, John Locke (Oxford, 1955), 7; C. Condren, ‘The Creation of Richard Hooker’s Public Authority: Rhetoric, Reputation, Reassessment’, Journal of Religious History, 21/1 (1997), 53–4.

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associated with the maintenance of the new political settlement.34 Furthermore Locke undertook modest textual revisions to emphasize the relevance of the work to the contemporary situation.35 The preface hoped that this work would be ‘sufficient to establish the throne of our great redeemer, our present king William; to make good his title, in the consent of the people, . . . and to justifie to the world, the people of England, whose love of their just and natural rights, with their resolutions saved the nation when it was on the very brink of slavery and ruine’.36 Undoubtedly the Two Treatises circulated widely amongst Locke’s contemporaries since four English editions were published between 1688 and 1715. His reputation even travelled abroad since a summary of his principal points was placed in La Bibilothèque Universelle.37 The successful dissemination of his political presentation of the Polity is further demonstrated by the deployment of Hooker, in an unmistakably Lockean way, in several Whig treatises. In 1690 a tract called Political Aphorismes appeared, which was effectively a plagiarization of the Two Treatises, supplemented by further additions from the first book of the Polity.38 William Molyneux’s protest of 1698, concerning English Parliamentary interference in Ireland, similarly mobilized Locke’s political comprehension of Hooker. Molyneux, an expert in optics and a friend of Locke, affirmed the universal application of contractual principles. He traced the evolution of political society from a decision, by equals, to relinquish their natural liberty in return for the benefits of lawful government.39 Although Locke was undeniably well known to his peers his direct influence was rather more proleptic. Whilst he went on to become the esteemed philosopher of Hanoverian England his reading of Hooker, ³⁴ J. A. Downie, To Settle the Succession of the State. Literature and Politics, 1678– 1750 (London, 1994), 24–5; J. Locke, Two Treatises of Government, ed. P. Laslett (Cambridge, 1967), 51. ³⁵ Locke, Two Treatises, (1967), 46. ³⁶ Downie, The Succession, 41; Locke, Two Treatises (1967), The Preface. ³⁷ F. J. Shirley, Richard Hooker and Contemporary Political Ideas (London, 1949), 217. ³⁸ R. Eccleshall, ‘Richard Hooker and the Peculiarities of the English: The Reception of the Ecclesiastical Polity in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries’, History of Political Thought, 2 (1981), 101. ³⁹ W. Molyneux, The Case of Ireland’s Being Bound by Acts of Parliament in England (London, 1720), 127.

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with its emphasis on natural individual rights, was more limited in appeal to seventeenth-century England.40 Whig writers such as the lawyer William Atwood, or James Tyrell, the historian and close friend of Locke, appeared to be enthusiastic in their citation of the Two Treatises, but actually repudiated his suggestion of government dissolution during constitutional deadlock, preferring instead the view that Parliament had a responsibility to fill the vacant throne.41 Clearly the new Whig establishment did not want to endanger its fragile alliance with the Anglican Tories, by suggesting it had done anything as remotely revolutionary as had taken place in the Civil War. Locke, himself, had recognized that his views were unlikely to be popular and consequently published anonymously. The new Whig establishment preferred to use Hooker to extract a conservative model of the constitution from within the common law tradition. This tradition argued the likes of Peter Allix, that scholarly French pillar of the English Church, was based upon the confident assertion that Englishmen were in possession of ancient rights. His reading of the tenth chapter of the first book of the Polity confirmed that these rights were vested in Parliament and the monarch was obliged to maintain them through his coronation oath.42 It had been totally mistaken, the writer of A Friendly Debate agreed, for James to believe that he was competent to breach the constitution by changing the form of government from ‘an imperial crown’ to that of papal vassal.43 If he had only consulted Hooker, ‘that English oracle’ commented William Denton, a physician and Whig political writer, he would have seen that government was not solely for the benefit of the governor, ⁴⁰ J. Morrill, The Nature of the English Revolution (Harlow, 1993), 440–1. ⁴¹ W. Atwood, The History, and Reasons, of the Dependency of Ireland upon the Imperial Crown of England Rectifying Mr Molineux’s State of the Case of Ireland Being Bound by Acts of Parliament in England (London, 1698), 195; Eccleshall, ‘Richard Hooker’, 99; J. H. Franklin, John Locke and the Theory of Sovereignty. Mixed Monarchy and the Right of Resistance in the Political Thought of the English Revolution (Cambridge, 1978), 105– 6, 109–11, 114. ⁴² P. Allix, An Examination of the Scruples of those Who Refuse to Take the Oath of Allegiance (London, 1689), 21; Eccleshall, ‘Richard Hooker’, 100. ⁴³ A Friendly Debate between Dr. Kinsman, a Dissatisfied Clergy-Man and Gratianus Trimmer, a Neighbour Minister, Concerning the Late Thanksgiving Day (London, 1689), 6.

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but for the ‘profitableness’ of the governed.44 The writer of Political Aphorisms similarly reiterated the sentiment that English kingship was conditional, as the Polity had recognized that the monarch had a responsibility to ensure that the structure of society was preserved through the judicious use of law.45 England’s common law, Robert Atkyns, the lord chief baron of the exchequer, emphasized was ‘the very Soul that animates this Body Politick, as Learned Hooker describes it, the Parts of which Body are set to work in such Actions as common good requires’. Without such law the political body was held together with nothing but a rope of sand.46 This belief in a limited contract appealed to the majority of Whigs because, like the Tories, they were anxious to ensure the security of property, by restricting the lower classes to the traditional role of social dependence. By placing such an emphasis upon the law-making role of Parliament, and the monarch’s need to respect this ancient constitution, it avoided the whole issue of Lockean rights.47 Hooker, the writer of A Friendly Debate insisted, had himself recognized the legitimacy of Parliament serving as the expression of the whole political body. He had shown that approbation not only came from those who personally declared their consent, ‘but also when others do it in their Names, by Right at least originally derived from them; As in parliaments, Councils, and the like Assemblies’.48 Consequently in order to ensure that power did not pass to the masses, in 1688 this new generation of Whig writers adopted the belief that James had abdicated, leaving the throne vacant to be filled by Parliament on behalf of the general community. Parliament was deemed to have maintained an historic contract enshrined between king and people, in the ancient constitution, and to have saved ⁴⁴ W. Denton, Jus Regiminis: Being a Justification of Defensive Arms in General. And Consequently of Our Late Revolutions and Transactions to be the Just Right of the Kingdom (London, 1689), 12. ⁴⁵ Political Aphorisms: Or, the True Maxims of Government Displayed (London, 1690), 12. ⁴⁶ R. Atkyns, An Enquiry into the Power of Dispensing with Penal Statutes (London, 1689), 6–8. ⁴⁷ C. C. Weston, ‘English: Ancient Constitution and Common Law’, in J. H. Burns and M. Goldie (eds.), The Cambridge History of Political Thought (Cambridge, 1991), 374. ⁴⁸ A Friendly Debate, 28–9.

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England from extremes both of any sense of innovation and Roman Catholicism.49 This claim was, of course, something of a legal fiction since, as the exiled king pointed out, the term ‘was never before used to signifie anything but a free and voluntary resignation of a crown’.50 Nevertheless Sir George Treby, a Whig lawyer who later became solicitorgeneral, resolved the matter in favour of Parliament, by insisting that departure was historically the same as abdication since ‘it is a phrase and thing used by the learned Mr Hooker in his Book of Ecclesiastical Polity, whom I mention as a valuable authority’.51 Treby’s astute citation of Hooker, the guardian of Restoration tradition and limited change, served to emphasize that it was James, not his opponents, who had brought unsought changes into English political life. As the nation struggled to regain its political equilibrium this desire to employ Hooker, to emphasize that the Glorious Revolution merely repaired a temporary breach in England’s long-standing and excellent constitutional arrangements, was widespread. It was not just limited to the likes of Treby, and his Parliamentary compatriots, but was also useful in reassuring a wider audience that nothing innovative and unprecedented had happened. Notably at least two provincial quarter sessions and grand juries were treated to generous doses of the Polity from the presiding justice. At Cambridge, Sir Matthew Dudley, that violent Whig, praised Hooker for resisting sectaries.52 Even more impressive, however, was the Earl of Stamford, a strong military proponent of William of Orange, when he cited Book VIII of the ‘incomparable Hooker’ in his Leicestershire address to emphasize the importance of the ‘Body’ and that the ‘best Established dominion’ was ‘where the Law doth most rule the King’.53 If the aftermath of the Glorious Revolution compelled a reconsideration of Hooker’s political ideology it also challenged his ecclesiastical status. Both Church and king had been so closely linked by the Restoration that the marginalization of its dominant political ⁴⁹ D. MacCulloch, ‘Richard Hooker’s Reputation’, English Historical Review, 117 (2002), 802. ⁵⁰ The Life of James II. Late King of England (London, 1702), 338. ⁵¹ Eccleshall, ‘Richard Hooker’, 100. ⁵² G. Lamoines (ed.), Charges to the Grand Jury, 1689–1803 (London, 1992), 30–1. ⁵³ Lamoines, Charges, 41–2; MacCulloch, ‘Hooker’s Reputation’, 802.

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ideology was bound to have some sort of parallel effect upon the religious one. The accession of William and Mary marked a break with the immediate religious past in the same way that the restoration of Charles II had negated the Commonwealth years. These similarities were clearly recognized by Gilbert Burnet who urged the new government to seize the unexpected chance to reconcile the dissenters to the Church in a ‘spirit of love’, in contrast to their attempt to enforce submission back in the early 1660s.54 This desire for a new religious settlement was also present amongst the nonconformists. Their views ranged from Baxter’s desire to revive the Church Protestantism of Hooker to William Tong’s Presbyterian attempt to show that the Polity supported the abolition of episcopacy.55 William, who had little comprehension of the Hooker-sponsored high Anglicanism of his wife, demonstrated his approval of such sentiments by pressing the Church to be more accommodating towards the nonconformists. The comprehension proposals of the king’s ecclesiastical commission were too much, however, for most of the Church. Convocation’s lower house was completely intractable on the subject and William Jane, their High Church procurator, finished his statutory Latin speech with the famous words ‘Nolumus leges Anglicae mutari’.56 Consequently the comprehension bill was rejected by Parliament and only the accompanying bill for toleration became law. This effectively destroyed the reality of the polity Hooker had striven to defend. He had believed in a broad national Church that embraced the entire English ecclesial body, but the toleration act allowed nearly half a million dissenters to put themselves legitimately outside this structure.57 The Church of England had survived as an established Church, but it had ceased to be a national one. ⁵⁴ G. Burnet, An Apology for the Church of England with Relation to the Spirit of Persecution for Which She is Accused (Amsterdam, 1688), 3. ⁵⁵ R. Baxter, Richard Baxter’s Penitent Confession, and his Necessary Vindication in Answer to a Book Called, the Second Part of the Mischiefs of Separation, Written by an Unnamed Author (London, 1691), Preface; W. Tong, A Defence of M. H.’s Brief Enquiry into the Nature of Schism and the Vindication of It (London, 1693), 123. ⁵⁶ G. E. Aylmer, The Struggle for the Constitution. England in the Seventeenth Century (London, 1975), 221; S. C. Carpenter, Eighteenth Century Church and People (London, 1959), 16, 20. ⁵⁷ G. V. Bennett, ‘Conflict in the Church’, in G. Holmes (ed.), Britain after the Glorious Revolution, 1689–1714 (London, 1969), 161.

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Far from rendering Hooker obsolete, however, this new ecclesiastical scenario added yet another dimension to his usefulness. The exodus of the non-juring bishops had allowed William to replace them with men who were more latitudinarian in outlook. Although their critics viewed them as unprincipled individuals who were happy to abandon their Anglican principles, it is clear that most of them were men of equally high conduct with a similar affection for the English Church. Consequently they were anxious to demonstrate that they had not departed from Hooker’s principles. Gilbert Burnet, who had been made bishop of Salisbury on account of the close association he enjoyed with William, was proud of his enthusiasm for the Polity. In his autobiography he recorded how he had begun his ‘study with relation to our home matters with Hooker’s Ecclesiastical Polity . . . which did so fixe me that I never departed from the principles laid down by him, nor was I a little delighted with the modesty and charity that I observed in him which edified me as much as his book instructed me’.58 Like his disgruntled critics he was attracted to Hooker’s distinction between those things, which were essential to salvation and matters indifferent. The chief end of religion was to live well, and the scriptures had been given to aid this. There was no need for complex theological sophistry or logic since ‘true Religion is power and life, and far above these shadows’.59 Burnet, and his compatriots, differed from their adversaries, however, through their emphasis on the role of the national Church in the promotion of inessential forms and ceremonies only for the sake of decency.60 Whig latitudinarians, whilst valuing the Prayer Book as an expression of their English Protestant faith, believed that Hooker demonstrated that a more flexible attitude towards it was both historical and desirable. William Denton recounted how Hooker had shown the ceremonies of the Church to be ‘so innocent’ that all might follow them, but there was no lawful power under heaven that had the ⁵⁸ G. Burnet, Bishop Burnet’s Autobiography, in a Supplement to Burnet’s History of My Own Time Derived from his Original Memoirs, his Autobiography, his Letters to Admiral Herbert, and his Private Meditations All Hitherto Unpublished (Oxford, 1902), 460; W. M. Spellman, The Latitudinarians and the Church of England 1660– 1700 (London, 1993), 153–8. ⁵⁹ M. Greig, ‘Thought and Polemic of Gilbert Burnet, Ca. 1673–1705’, Ph.D. thesis (Cambridge, 1991), 25. ⁶⁰ Ibid. 33.

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right to command ‘submission to them upon penalties and Severities’ if any possessed ‘conscientious scrupulosities’ towards them.61 This use of the Polity to embarrass opponents of religious change reached its epitome in Stephen Nye’s mischievous anonymous attempt to involve Hooker in the Socinian controversy. Nye, the Unitarian rector of Little Hormead, Hertforshire, deliberately included Hooker amongst those nominal Trinitarians whose writings actually undermined their own claim.62 After a lengthy consideration of Hooker’s defence of the doctrine he concluded that the judicious divine had provided not more than an elaborate paradox in the face of so evident and natural a truth as the unity of God.63 Consequently it was to be regretted, Nye commented, that so many churchmen were so stubborn in their refusal to examine Hooker impartially, and admit that he could be mistaken. This, Nye insisted, was indicative of their perception that to surrender the Polity on any point was ‘to dishonour the Church of England it self; to part with Father Hooker, is to endanger the very Surplice and even the Cross in Baptism; nay, that Book of Books the Common-Prayer’. If Hooker was acknowledged to be wrong concerning the Trinity it would only encourage the nonconformists to be critical of other parts of the Polity. ‘Will they not be apt to pretend too, he may have erred in his profound Dissertations and Discourses for the Rites and Disciplines of the Church?’64 Although the Whig comprehension of Hooker’s approach to Church forms, Nye’s mischievousness aside, was much closer to Hooker’s original intentions this was far removed from the Restoration belief that such practices gave expression to the Church’s status as a divine body. Their opponents were horrified and believed that they were using the Polity to suggest that the established faith was no more than a vehicle for promoting state respectability and morality.65 As ⁶¹ W. Denton, Some Remarks Recommended unto Ecclesiasticks of All Perswasions (London, 1690), 24, 39, 46. ⁶² S. Nye, Considerations on the Explications of the Doctrine of the Trinity (London, 1694), 18, 35, 38, 44. ⁶³ S. Nye, Considerations on the Explications of the Doctrine of the Trinity, by Dr Wallis, Dr Sherlock, Dr S-th, Dr Cudworth, and Mr Hooker; as Also on the Account Given by those that Say the Trinity is an Inconceivable Mystery (London, 1693), 10, 26–9, 32. ⁶⁴ Ibid. 27. ⁶⁵ J. Miller, The Glorious Revolution (London, 1983), 64–5.

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Henry Dodwell, a non-juror who returned to the communion of the Church of England, put it, ‘we have hereby undermined our whole Religion, and put it in the power of the Civil Magistrate’ to subvert it utterly.66 Whilst such allegations were not fair, it is true that amongst the Whig clergy there was a great deal of suspicion regarding proponents of the spiritual independence of the Church, and there was a resultant desire to emphasize the essential unity of Church and Commonwealth. Such a rationale undoubtedly helped to promote further the Whig interest in Book VIII, where Hooker had set out their essential unity under the prince. It was difficult for their opponents to discount this, since, unlike the subject of original contract, which had been condemned as an unwarranted interpolation for almost forty years, there had never been any suggestion that Hooker’s depiction of the relationship between the secular and religious polities was not genuine. Consequently enthusiastic Whig churchmen, such as William Wright and Edward Welshman, were not slow in pointing out to all non-juring sympathizers and campaigners for the independence of the Convocations that their position was flawed, according to Hooker. They were not only being unhistorical, but had abandoned the Polity’s belief in the ‘Christian Commonwealth’ for a Roman belief in the independence of ecclesiastical power.67 Hooker’s eighth book, Wright insisted, had already exposed the failings of the Jesuitical objection to the English religious settlement, and shown that ‘it cannot be maintained that a Church, and Commonwealth, which receives the true Religion, are two distinct Societies; unless we restrain the Name of a Church in a Christian Commonwealth, to the clergy, excluding all the rest of Believers, both Prince and People’.68 The Polity clearly demonstrated, Wright pointed out, that the prince served as the supreme governor who united both Church and ⁶⁶ E. Welshman, A Defence of the Church of England from the Charge of Schism and Heresie as Laid against it by the Vindicator of the Deprived Bishops (London, 1693), 2. ⁶⁷ E. Welshman, A Second Defence of the Church of England from the Charge of Schism and Heresy, as Laid against it by the Vindicator of the Deprived Bishops (London, 1698) 13; W. Wright, A Letter to a Member of Parliament; Occasioned by a Letter to a Convocation-Man, Concerning the Rights, Power, and Privileges of that Body (London, 1697), 18. ⁶⁸ Wright, Letter to a Member of Parliament, 19.

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Commonwealth. Only the ‘Supreme Temporal Magistrate’ had the power to call and dissolve solemn assemblies about the Church; ‘and that according to the Patern of the Jews, the like Power in Causes Ecclesiastical is by the Laws of this realm annexed unto the Crown’.69 Welshman insisted that this was enshrined, as Hooker had recognized, in the oath of supremacy, which not only excluded all foreign power and acknowledged the king’s power over spiritual persons in temporal matters, but recognized his supreme authority over spiritual persons in spiritual matters. The only times that kings had not been capable of such authority was when they had ‘profess’d themselves open Enemies unto Christ’, but this was no longer the case.70 Now, Wright stressed, it was made clear by the Polity that the king, the ‘Christian Temporal Magistrate’, was ‘to exercise that Power according to the Laws of his Country’.71 In spite of these carefully orchestrated attempts to suggest that Hooker should not be equated with an unswerving loyalty to the religious ideology of the Restoration many Anglicans continued to cling tenaciously to this belief. John Norris, a fellow of All Souls and rector of Bemerton, spoke for many when he insisted that the Act of Toleration had altered nothing since it did not ‘affect the Preceptive part of the Law, . . . or Null the obliging force of it. All that it can do is only to remove the penalty.’72 This anxiety to believe that the Restoration religious status quo was unchanged was reinforced by the production of new treatises, which stressed the continued vitality of the old Hookerian order.73 Conciliatory works, such as John Hacket’s life of Archbishop Williams, which suggested that Hooker had always recognized that true national conformity would only ever be achieved ⁶⁹ Ibid. 22. ⁷⁰ Welshman, A Defence, 7; Welshman, A Second Defence, 14. ⁷¹ Wright, Letter to a Member of Parliament, 16. ⁷² J. Norris, The Charge of Schism Continued: Being a Justification of Christian Blessedness for his Charging the Separatists with Schism, Notwithstanding the Toleration (London, 1691), 17. ⁷³ P. M., The Church of England and the Continuation of the Ceremonies Thereof, Vindicated from the Calumnies of Several Late Pamphlets; More Particularly that Entitled the Vanity, Mischief, and Danger of Continuing Ceremonies in the Worship of God (London, 1690), 11; J. Clutterbuck, A Plain and Rational Vindication of the Liturgy of the Church of England Collected out of the Discourses of the Reverend Bishops and Doctors of the Same Church, by Way of Question and Answer (London, 1694), The Epistle, 40, 54–5.

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through the compelling spiritual example of the Church, were exceptional.74 In spite of the caustic comments passed on each other by clerical opponents, however, it should be stressed that the religious polity actually enjoyed remarkable stability under William and Mary. Following his initial interference William was pragmatic enough to realize that his handling of ecclesiastical affairs lacked either skill or tact. He soon left Church patronage to the wise governance of Mary and Archbishop Tillotson who sought to promote religious calm. As one apt commentator put it: ‘the bishops they appointed were mostly moderates, neither very High nor very Low church, men of good character, competent preachers and conscientious pastors; there were no more rabid Whigs like Burnet.’75 The durable nature of the religious polity was less obvious, of course, to critics of the post-1688 settlement. A state of contentment was hardly obvious with the departure of eight bishops and some four hundred priests over their Hooker-sponsored refusal to subscribe to the new oaths. Whilst it is impossible to make a neat divide between political and religious beliefs it is clear that this was motivated primarily by a desire to be faithful to the doctrine of passive obedience. Abednigo Seller, a vociferous proponent of absolute and unconditional obedience, insisted that Hooker would have ‘hated the Deductions that some Men make from him, that because Government arose out of Compact, therefore the people may call their Princes to an account’.76 Given Hooker’s own emphasis on the unity of Church and State it has been suggested that there is something ironic in the Nonjuring schism which appeared to separate them on the grounds of ⁷⁴ John Hacket, a conciliatory churchman who became bishop of Coventry and Lichfield at the Restoration, had produced this classic biography in the 1650s. Its pacific emphasis, however, ensured that it was not published until the 1690s when the passing of the toleration act had permanently removed the possibility of enforcing coercive measures against the dissenters. J. Hacket, Scrina Reservata: A Memorial Offer’d to the Great Deservings of John Williams D. D. Who Some Time Held the Places of Ld Keeper of the Great Seal of England, Ld Bishop of Lincoln, and Ld-Archbishop of York (London, 1693), Part I, 4. ⁷⁵ J. Miller, The Life and Times of William and Mary (Golborne, 1974), 158. ⁷⁶ A. Seller, The History of Passive Obedience Since the Reformation (Amsterdam, 1689), 29.

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faithfulness to tradition. Naturally the Nonjurors did not view it this way themselves. They stressed that their Church was still linked to the rightful monarch and consequently they were maintaining the true Church of England ‘in a Remnant’, though they were separated politically and religiously from the rest of the nation.77 Whilst Hooker never considered the possibility of an exiled monarch there was always the implication, in his theory, that when the old organic balance of Church and State succouring each other broke down, under pressure from an unsympathetic civil power, then passive obedience might dictate putting the interests of the Church above civil allegiance.78 Whilst later Nonjurors were indeed to react against the notion of Church–State union on any terms, as an unacceptable political entanglement inimical to the spiritual integrity of the Church, and to seek an independent institutional continuity within Hooker’s supposed enthusiasm for divine-right episcopacy, these were not contemporary concerns.79 Back in 1689–91, much to the embarrassment of the later Nonjurors, both Sancroft and Ken were faithful to the union as postulated by Hooker and had reluctantly accepted the canonical legality of the lay deprivations of the Nonjuring bishops. The persistence of such old-fashioned Hooker-sponsored extreme Toryism, amongst the Nonjurors and their conformist sympathizers, was naturally repugnant to the Whigs who were so busy pressing the Polity into their own service. The writer of Animadversions on a Discourse Entituled, God’s Ways of Disposing of Kingdoms mourned that there were still so many individuals who continued to ascribe to princes those powers above law, which were never given by the consent of the nation. If there was to be ‘such consent of Men, as the Learned and Judicious Mr Hooker thought absolutely necessary for the making of Laws; this consent either must lose the nature of consent, or want authority’.80 Those of a Whig sympathy also ⁷⁷ J. Gascoigne, ‘The Unity of Church and State Challenged: Responses to Hooker from the Restoration to the Nineteenth-Century Age of Reform’, Journal of Religious History, 21/1 (1997), 62. ⁷⁸ P. B. Nockles, The Oxford Movement in Context. Anglican High Churchmanship 1760–1857 (Cambridge, 1994), 54. ⁷⁹ Gascoigne, ‘Hooker’, 62. ⁸⁰ Animadversions on a Discourse Entituled, God’s Ways of Disposing of Kingdoms (London, 1691), 4.

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found it hard to believe, following James’s stormy reign, that any loyal churchman should seek to maintain the doctrine of passive obedience.81 Timothy Wilson reminded Seller, his Nonjuring opponent, that although Hooker would never have condoned violence it was clear from Book VIII that monarchical government depended upon an original compact. Consequently the Parliamentary representatives of the people were permitted to serve as ‘the repairer of [any] Breeches’ that might occur in this settlement.82 Whilst many Whigs may have disagreed with these old-fashioned Tory approaches to authority they undoubtedly served to perpetuate their own interest in Hooker. The persistence of these opinions enabled them to develop their own brand of conservative, but nonetheless distinctive constitutionalism. By contrasting themselves against this uncompromising Tory approach they were able to end the anti-establishment flirtation of the exclusion crisis without appearing to compromise any of their revolutionary principles.83 The perpetuation of this extreme royalism, however, should not disguise the fact that there were other Tories who sought to retain their principles of passive obedience and loyalty to Hooker, whilst embracing the changes of 1688. This desire to accommodate their political creed was immediately apparent in the early discussions surrounding the legitimacy of William and Mary. The oath of allegiance, which had been largely drafted under the auspices of Daniel Finch, the Tory earl of Nottingham, deliberately dropped the customary reference to ‘rightful and lawful’ rule. This meant that it was possible for many Tories with genuine scruples to swear obedience on the grounds that William and Mary were their de facto rulers, if not their de jure ones.84 The writer of A Vindication of Those who have taken the New Oath of Allegiance used the Polity to stress that the word allegiance, within the oath, signified no more than a peaceable compliance to the present ruler. ‘That great Man, Mr Hooker, who was so exact both for Sense and Expresson, relating the story of Calvin’s returning ⁸¹ T. Bainbridge, Seasonable Reflections, on a Late Pamphlet, Entituled, a History of Passive Obedience since the Reformation (London, 1689/90), 3. ⁸² Eccleshall, ‘Richard Hooker’, 101. ⁸³ Ibid. 102. ⁸⁴ Miller, Glorious Revolution, 31; W. A. Speck, Reluctant Revolutionaries. Englishmen and the Revolution of 1688 (Oxford, 1988), 110.

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to Geneva, from whence he had been banish’d, tells us, That of the Ministers themselves which had staid behind in the City when Calvin was gone, some upon knowledge of the Peoples earnest intent to recall him to the Place again, had beforehand written their Letters of Submission and assur’d him of their Allegiance for ever after.’85 Such a distinction applied to the contemporary situation allowed Tories to remain nominally faithful to the Stuarts whilst reluctantly conceding regal authority to William and Mary. Not all Tories were so guarded, however, in their use of Hooker to support the new settlement. William Lloyd, who had been one of the seven bishops tried by James, sought to reconcile the clergy through a highly contentious work in which he described how princes could only resolve differences between each other through the ‘Law of Nations’. This was made up of such customs as were observed among all princes, in the same way that English common law consisted of all customs observed in the country. The last resort of this ‘Law of Nations’ was war, where God, who had ‘given Princes the Power of the Sword’, would display his judgment by awarding victory to one of them. Hooker, Lloyd emphasized, had said of the ‘Law of the Nations, that it can be no more prejudiced by the Lawes of any Kingdom than these can be by the Resolutions of private Men’.86 Not surprisingly Lloyd’s emphasis on the divine mandate to rule being awarded through victory in war did not commend itself to his fellow Tories. This extreme justification did not support their desire to salvage as much as possible of the Restoration settlement, by suggesting that little had changed. Furthermore the emphasis on princely triumph in battle might easily be misconstrued to justify a popular uprising and offer a mandate for a repetition of the ‘grand rebellion’ of the Civil War. So serious was the concern regarding Lloyd’s book that it was actually proposed in the House of Lords that it should be burnt; a motion which was only defeated by eleven votes. At the other extreme to Lloyd were the Hooker-sponsored attempts of some Tories to provide a constitutional justification for 1688. In ⁸⁵ A Vindication of those who have Taken the New Oath of Allegiance to King William and Queen Mary; Upon Principles Agreeable to the Doctrines of the Church of England (London, 1689), 7–8. ⁸⁶ W. Lloyd, A Discourse of God’s Ways of Disposing of Kingdoms. Part I (London, 1691), 31–2.

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spite of their earlier feigned ignorance of his unacceptable political opinions the need to accept that the monarchy was more constitutionally limited, than they had previously conceded, encouraged them to recognize that Hooker was not only an ecclesiastical thinker. A clear indication of this change of approach is offered by Thomas Long, a prebendary of Exeter, who had been citing Hooker, since the 1650s, against all who sought to dissent from Prayer Book worship. Not once in his many writings did he show any awareness that Hooker was a political writer.87 Following 1688, however, Long suddenly recognized that Hooker’s constitutional approach offered a way of accepting the departure of James whilst preserving the principle of passive obedience. He described how the English Church’s support for passive obedience had always walked a middle way between absolutism and populism. Although ‘the king be not strictly jure divino, (i.e.) so as to make other species of government unlawful; yet he is the minister of God, and not of the people, though the people be conveyed, medias populo’.88 Whilst the monarch enjoyed this supremacy, however, he had never been granted absolute power. Human agreement had freely set up this form of government as being the best way ‘to suppress Violence, redress Injuries, and distribute Justice’. To this purpose Hooker had recognized that public society rested upon the twin foundation of human sociability and ‘an order expressly or secretly agreed on touching the manner of their union in living together’.89 In England these two pillars of society were upheld within a constitutional monarchy where authority was divided between king and people gathered in Parliament. If the monarch broke his coronation oath by acting in a despotic manner, therefore, it was permissible to resist since ‘laws they are not, which public approbation hath not made’.90 Although not all Tories were willing to concede to a belief in conditional kingship, even pretty inflexible ones were now often ⁸⁷ Eccleshall, ‘Richard Hooker’, 106–7. ⁸⁸ T. Long, The Historian Unmask’d or Some Reflections on the Late History of Passive Obedience Wherein the Doctrine of Passive-Obedience and Non-Resistance is Truly Stated and Asserted (London, 1689), 8. ⁸⁹ T. Long, A Resolution of Certain Queries Concerning Submission to the Present Government (London, 1689), 1. ⁹⁰ Long, The Historian Unmask’d, 51; Long, A Resolution of Certain Queries, 2.

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prepared to embrace the constitutionalism embodied in the common law tradition esteemed by Hooker. By grafting the doctrine of non-resistance onto it, it was possible to resist any radical ideas that might have arisen in the aftermath of the Revolution settlement. Lewes Sharpe, the rector of Moreton Hampstead, Devon, adopted this approach and vigorously denounced Whig contractual theories in The Church of England’s Doctrine of Non-Resistance Justified and Vindicated. Royal power came from God, Sharpe insisted, and not from the people, which meant that sovereignty was unconditional and irresistible. Common law authorities such as Bracton and Fortescue, however, demonstrated that the monarchy did not need to be absolute. England’s ‘dominium politicum et regale’ was the outcome of ‘the Sovereign’s Condescentious Acts of Grace’ rather than the result of an initial communal decision. Through this location of sovereignty in the prince, rather than the king-in-Parliament, Sharpe was able to uphold the case for non-resistance by drawing upon the usual accounts of England’s juridical superiority. It was not impossible for the monarch to ignore his own self-imposed limitations, but Sharpe insisted that this had never happened.91 He prudently avoided any direct comment on the upheavals under James, but seems to have been prepared to adjust to any settlement, providing the social fabric remained unchanged. In support of this Sharpe cited Hooker’s caution that the subversive would always find an audience before warning against those intent on exacerbating conflict with lies about the exercise of sovereign authority.92 Whilst some of these Tory machinations show a strong degree of consensus with the Whigs regarding Hooker’s political doctrine this should not be overstated. Most Tories still anticipated that at some point they would witness the restoration of the Stuarts. This meant that some of them still preferred to promote the view that Hooker’s extant political writings were to be regarded with caution. Anthony Wood, in his monumental work on the alumni of Oxford University, continued to maintain, in both Hooker’s biography, along with other related ones, that they had been tampered with. He rehearsed the ⁹¹ L. Sharpe, The Church of England’s Doctrine of Non-Resistance, Justified and Vindicated, as Truly Rational and Christian; and the Damnable Nature or Rebellious Resistance Represented (London, 1691), 36–7, 42. ⁹² Ibid. 51.

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failings of Gauden’s belief that they were accurate and drew upon the traditional stories to remind his readers that the ‘poysonous assertions against the regal power’ were a sure sign that they were ‘corrupted books’.93 This belief that 1688 might yet be reversed also affected the outlook of many Whigs. Throughout William’s reign there was a constant passing of non-committal messages between the exiled king and leading Whig ministers of the crown, who were anxious not to be completely stranded if there should be a change of regime. George Saville, the moderate Whig marquis of Halifax, warned his friend, Sir John Reresby, the former governor of York, that they both had wives and children so must not become too intimate with William.94 It was not until the succession act of 1701, following the death of the duke of Gloucester, that it was made clear that after Anne the Stuart line was at an end in England. These covert Whig activities, however, did nothing to diminish their hostility to the old Restoration understanding of Hooker as a proponent of passive obedience. Their confident public dissemination of the ‘Glorious Revolution’ as a confirmation and continuation of English rights and privileges ensured that most proponents of passive obedience were forced to abandon or severely modify their belief. Such an emphasis on the balanced constitution, as expressed in common law, led to a new-found enthusiasm amongst Whigs, and some Tories, for the previously discounted political theory of the Polity. This approach helped provide a conservative justification of the change of monarchs, without necessarily having to embrace Locke’s belief that power was vested within the people. The traditional historiography of the Church has encouraged the belief that this political shift was accompanied by the triumph of religious latitudinarianism. Whilst there was ‘a hardening of Protestant feeling’ it is clear that this was not the case.95 Never at any point, even following the embarrassingly vociferous Catholic exploitation ⁹³ A. Wood, Athenae Oxonienses. An Exact History of All the Writers and Bishops Who Have Had Their Education in the University of Oxford, 1 (London, 1691), 263, and 2 (London, 1692), 179, 209–10. ⁹⁴ M. Ashley, England in the Seventeenth Century (1603–1714) (Harmondsworth, 1962), 184. ⁹⁵ S. C. Carpenter, Eighteenth Century Church and People (London, 1959), 237.

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of Hooker, was there any likelihood that he would be abandoned as the guardian of via media Anglicanism. Although Whig sympathizers on the episcopal bench welcomed the opportunity to promote a more expansive Church they continued to recognize the Polity as a seminal work in the understanding of it. In the case of the Restoration settlement loyalists they found that it was equally possible, in spite of the improved position of the Nonconformists, to maintain their old view of the Church with Hooker serving as the champion of Prayer Book Anglicanism. Nevertheless the Glorious Revolution had effectively undermined the Polity’s belief in the essential homogeneity of Church and State. Nonconformists were now tolerated and there had been a definite shift towards Parliament. The new sovereigns had not succeeded to the throne as divinely appointed monarchs, but because Parliament had facilitated it.96 Such a change was not necessarily apparent to contemporaries, however, since the mainstream Whig usage of Hooker was able to fashion an image of a proponent of legitimate political action in Parliament. This drew heavily upon Book I, but the accompanying interest in the thought of Book VIII also went some way towards restoring the credibility of the posthumous books. Those arguments, which Hooker had devised against disturbers of the religious status quo, were now applied in support of the balanced constitution. In the same way that a set of sixteenth century Reformed opinions had been transplanted to the defence of the Restoration settlement, Hooker was interpreted afresh in support of the new Parliamentary orientated government, which flourished after 1688. Here the rhetoric of Hooker’s doctrine of consent achieved the dual task of rebutting arbitrary power whilst constructing a convincing portrayal of an established power structure.97 ⁹⁶ J. Carter, ‘The Revolution and the Constitution’, in G. Holmes (ed.), Britain after the Glorious Revolution, 1689–1714 (London, 1969), 40. ⁹⁷ Condren, ‘The Creation of Richard Hooker’s Public Authority’, 54; Eccleshall, ‘Richard Hooker’, 116.

6 The Indian Summer of Restoration Anglicanism: Queen Anne and the Tory Revival By the time Queen Anne acceded to the throne Hooker had become a widely respected authority whose support was considered to strengthen any cause in which it was cited. As a result of this there existed many rival interpretations of the Polity, which ranged from Nonjuring presentations of him as the guardian of apostolic Anglicanism to the Lockean comprehension of him as the guardian of inherent universal natural rights. Unsurprisingly the most successful claimants for Hooker, however, were usually those who enjoyed the strongest political backing. Consequently the Tory revival, under Queen Anne, ensured that the old Restoration presentation of Hooker enjoyed something of an Indian summer. Following a Catholic king, then a Calvinist one, the reign of an Anglican monarch, with a known dislike for the Whigs, was an occasion eagerly anticipated by all Tory enthusiasts. When William died and that ‘Sunshine’ day came, as one historian puts it, ‘the enthusiasm in manor house and country parsonages knew no bounds’. In ecclesiastical matters Anne was clearly a faithful grand-daughter to Charles I, regarding his Hooker-inspired faith, and publicly stressed that her principles ‘must always keep me entirely firm to the interests and religion of the Church of England, and will incline me to countenance those who have the truest zeal to support it’.1 Such early unambiguous royal support clearly assisted the Tory victory in the ¹ G. V. Bennett, White Kennet 1660–1728, Bishop of Peterborough (London, 1957), 56; G. Holmes, British Politics in the Age of Anne (London, 1967), 61.

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ensuing Parliamentary elections and encouraged their attempts to reinvigorate their comprehension of the Hooker-sponsored settlement of Church and State. Although it was later to become apparent, to the irritation of many Tories, that Anne’s desire for unity made her less rigorous than anticipated, her religious sympathies always remained undimmed. Much of the old historiography has unwittingly created the impression that the attempts to marginalize the developments of 1688 were old-fashioned, stuffy, and totally lacking in originality. Clearly the Church party was anxious to maintain a perceived tradition, but this should not disguise the fact that many of their leaders were considered to be men of considerable innovative learning, perception, and experience who sought to find new ways to impress their will upon the nation.2 This ingenuity is immediately apparent in their continued attempt to locate a new source of conformist authority, through the recently revived Convocations. By establishing the largely Tory-orientated Convocation of Canterbury, as the spiritual counterpart to the House of Commons, they hoped to circumvent the restraining influence of a moderate episcopal bench, which had helped to frustrate such measures as the Occasional Conformity Bill. Francis Atterbury, that scourge of ‘Erastianism in high places’, asserted that Convocation had been a national synod, and saw this confirmed in the ‘Pramunientes’ clause of the royal writ which bade bishops bring their representative clergy with them to Parliament.3 Such a claim exploited the ambiguities enshrined within the structure of the sixteenth century, which had assumed that the supreme governor would direct the Church, through the bishops and Convocations, but allowed for Parliament to confirm the articles of religion which they defined. Although Atterbury and his ilk saw themselves as the maintainers of a Hooker-sponsored settlement the Polity was conspicuously absent from their arguments. Undoubtedly this primarily stemmed from a reluctant recognition that Wright and Welshman had successfully established that Hooker had believed in the essential unity of the ² G. Rupp, Religion in England, 1688–1791 (Oxford, 1986), 70. ³ Holmes, British Politics, 29; J. Miller, The Glorious Revolution (London, 1983), 66–7; Rupp, Religion in England, 57.

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Church and the State, and would not have supported any notion of ecclesiastical independence. Building upon this the likes of Matthew Tindal, an Erastian Deist, undoubtedly hoped to embarrass his proConvocation opponents by reminding them how Book VIII showed that the clergy possessed no separate powers of jurisdiction. Hooker had believed in the unity of Church and State, Tindal insisted, and it was not ‘till the Time of the Laudean Faction’ that there had been any attempt to claim a separate religious autonomy.4 If the successors of the ‘Laudean Faction’ generally deemed it prudent to avoid the direct citation of Hooker in this debate, however, his presence was heavily marked in most of their other initiatives to maintain a vigorous appearance of intellectual reliability and academic credibility. Not surprisingly Hooker was at the forefront of all Anglican apologetics in defence of the visible structures and ceremonies of the Church. Charles Wheatley, the scholarly vicar of Furneaux Pelham, drew upon him in his classic illustration of the Prayer Book and William Nicholls, in another apologetic work, which is known to have circulated amongst eminent Continental scholars, similarly perpetuated the image of an Anglican worthy.5 In general a renewed, and sometimes innovative emphasis, was also being placed upon Hooker the man, in order to ensure the correct reading of his Polity. There was also the hope, following the reluctant recognition that the removal of legal sanctions against dissenters was irreversible, that the compelling example of Hooker’s life would promote the virtues of Anglican conformity. Both approaches are clearly illustrated by John Prince, the vicar of Totnes and Berry Pomeroy, whose writings were circulating in the early years of Anne’s reign. His account of The Worthies of Devon presented Hooker as a commanding Anglican exemplar. Prince was ⁴ J. Gascoigne, ‘The Unity of Church and State Challenged: Responses to Hooker from the Restoration to the Nineteenth-Century Age of Reform’, Journal of Religious History, 21/1 (1997), 61–2; J. Marshall, ‘The Ecclesiology of the Latitude-Men, 1660– 1689’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 36 (1985), 421. ⁵ W. Nicholls, A Defence of the Doctrine and Discipline of the Church of England: In Two Parts (London, 1730), pp. xiv, 20, 266, Additional notes on the Common Prayer; C. Wheatley, A Rational Illustration of the Book of Common Prayer of the Church of England: Being the Substance of Every Thing Liturgical in Bishop Sparrow, Mr L’Estrange, Dr Comber, Dr Nichols, and All Former Ritualists, Commentators or Others upon the Same Subject (Oxford, 1819), 1.

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adamant that the learning of this ‘renowned Author’, combined with his personal piety, meant that he would rest with ‘the most glorious Company of the Patriarchs and Apostles’ until he should awake to receive his heavenly glory.6 ‘In short His whole Life seemed a Lecture of Piety, and a deep Veneration of the Majesty of God, Whom he said by his Grace, he loved in his Youth, and feared him in his Age.’7 Prince’s biographical details placed him firmly in the tradition of Walton, since he recounted such stories as Jewel’s presentation of his staff to the young Hooker and the judicious divine’s tending of the sheep.8 He was also indebted to Walton’s disparagement of the later books, which allowed him to criticize indirectly the increased use the Whigs were making of them. Since their reliability remained in doubt he concluded that it was safer to join with Clement VIII, Charles I, Ussher, Morton, and Hales in commending the ‘Worth and Excellency’ of the other five undisputed books.9 This Tory commitment to maintaining Walton’s careful presentation of Hooker was further confirmed by the publication of two new editions of the Life and Polity in 1705. Whilst the editions of the Polity were effectively the standard text of 1662, with minor corrections of accumulated printing errors, Walton’s prefatory corrective biography was materially enlarged in one of them.10 John Strype, the ecclesiastical historian and biographer, had incorporated new material, which primarily expanded upon Walton’s depiction of Archbishop Whitgift as a zealous proponent of the Church. He was shown to have opposed Travers’s elevation to the mastership of the Temple, and to have supported Hooker during his dispute over the possibility of popish salvation.11 Strype’s publication of the allegations made against Hooker showed Travers to be an inflexible ⁶ J. Prince, Danmonii Orientales Illustres: Or the Worthies of Devon (Exeter, 1701), 398, 399. ⁷ Ibid. 397. ⁸ Ibid. 393, 395. ⁹ Ibid. 398. ¹⁰ R. Hooker, The Folger Library Edition of the Works of Richard Hooker, ed. W. Speed Hill, 1 (Cambridge, Mass., 1977), p. xxiv. R. Hooker, The Works of that Learned and Judicious Divine, Mr. Richard Hooker, in Eight Books of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity Completed out of His Own Manuscripts (London, 1705). ¹¹ R. Hooker, The Ecclesiastical Polity and Other Works of Richard Hooker: With His Life by Izaak Walton and Strype’s Interpolations, ed. B. Hanbury (London, 1830), pp. lxxi–lxxxvii.

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Puritan, in contrast to his opponent’s more considered discussion of the matter.12 Such interpolations were important because they not only embellished Hooker’s High Church credentials, but continued to lend vitality to the Anglican framework in which Walton’s Life directed that the Polity should be read. Even more innovative in this desire to ensure a Tory reading of the Polity was Benjamin Bragg’s publication of an anonymous divine’s Faithful Abridgment of that Learned and Judicious Richard Hooker.13 This was the first condensed version of the Polity to be produced, and its compiler used the preface to make clear his hope that this new demonstration of Hooker’s ‘subtil Genius’ would serve as a corrective to Whig religious and political principles. ‘When our Church is beset by a Herd of Men, whom nothing but Anarchy or a Common-wealth can please . . . it’s high time to pour in the Antidote, and strive to recover her: this Book hitherto has foil’d them, and we hope this Abridgment, coming out so seasonable in this Hurry of Whiggism, may be a means to open the Eyes of some blind Zealots . . . ; or at least to call back your Indifferent or Moderation Men, more bravely to defend her Canons and Constitution.’14 By reading Hooker all true sons of the Church, Bragg insisted, would be instructed in the ‘Force of our Ecclesiastical Laws’ and would be able to counteract the continued nonconformist hostility to all non-Calvinist governments they could not control. Their behaviour during the Civil War, machinations under Charles II, and abuse of toleration under William, proved that they remained a threat to both the religious and political settlement. More subtle was the perceived Latitudinarian threat, Bragg worried, which was posed by the increasing ‘Lukewarmness’ of men who were not wholly for Hooker or Travers. It was possible to counteract a known enemy, but a secret inner one, like a snake in the grass, was almost impossible to detect. They should either stand with ‘Judicious and Pious Hooker’ or openly admit themselves to be of a contrary opinion so ‘that we may know the utmost of their Force’ and be better able ‘to encounter their Number’.15 ¹² Ibid. pp. xcii–xciv. ¹³ R. Hooker, A Faithful Abridgment of the Works of that Learned and Judicious Richard Hooker (London, 1705). ¹⁴ Ibid., Preface. ¹⁵ Ibid.

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This equation of contemporary nonconformists and their sympathizers with political subversion of the sixteenth-century Puritans, as denounced by Hooker, was central to the Tory refusal to make further concessions to the dissenters. Such an approach is clearly demonstrated by the fierce scrutiny which the dissenting academies, a perceived threat to the Anglican hegemony of Oxford and Cambridge, were placed under.16 Samuel Wesley, a distinguished divine and poet, as well as being father to the ‘founder’ of Methodism, was at the forefront of this campaign against independent academies. Wesley insisted that the Puritan plea that they would conduct themselves quietly if admitted to the universities, or permitted their own academies, was not supported by their behaviour in Elizabethan England or during the Civil War. Both the Polity, and Walton’s Life, showed how Hooker had predicted that they would betray and ruin the universities. This ‘Meek and Holy Man . . . whose righteous Soul they so long vexed’ had warned that ‘Their opinions undermin’d the Universities, and that Men were inclin’d to expect the Dissolving those Corporations by them’.17 The Polity’s warnings against the Puritan desire to overturn lawful authority, Wesley emphasized, had proved frighteningly accurate, as the execution of Charles I demonstrated.18 Furthermore, Wesley insisted, Walton’s Life made clear that the current generation of dissenters were still a threat to the monarchy. That this was undoubtedly so was clearly vindicated by Samuel Palmer, a leading nonconformist proponent of dissenting academies, whom Wesley claimed believed that a tyrant could and ought to be put to death. In this ‘he and his party go beyond their own Interpolations of Hooker, beyond King John’s Charter, . . . both of which secure the Prince’s Person, tho’ he shou’d become a tyrant in exercise’.19 As Wesley’s reference to the ‘Interpolations of Hooker’ makes clear there was still a widespread Tory reluctance to accept the post 1688 Whig political reading of Book VIII, in spite of some attempts to rehabilitate their view of the Polity, and to abandon ¹⁶ Rupp, Religion in England, 172. ¹⁷ S. Wesley, A Reply to Mr Palmer’s Vindication of the Learning, Loyalty, Morals, and Most Christian Behaviour of the Dissenters Towards the Church of England (London, 1707), 13, 123, 125. ¹⁸ Ibid. 11, 123. ¹⁹ Ibid. 89.

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their belief in Hooker as a key proponent of the high shibboleth of passive resistance. They remained adamant that Hooker had attributed the prince’s power to God and held him accountable to none other. Clearly this reluctance to moderate their view of Hooker initially sprang out of the general euphoria at the accession of Anne and the hope that society could return to the pre-1688 norms. Although such Tory belligerence, combined with opposition to the foreign campaigns, facilitated a Whig recovery this seems only to have heightened their intransigence regarding Hooker, rather than to have moderated it. The 1706 election to Parliament prompted a fierce and often violent conflict between the parties, which tended to support the Tory fear that any concession would put the Church and Commonwealth in further danger. This belief was confirmed in print, for them, by the sensation caused by Matthew Tindal’s The Rights of the Christian Church Asserted, which revived the Lockean misdescription of Hooker. The Polity, according to Tindal, had recognized that since all possessed natural rights all power was conditional and, if abused, the power would naturally return to the people. Consequently Hooker, Tindal insisted, must also have recognized that the monarch was perfectly entitled to exercise his authority over the Church, since he could only usurp his authority by usurping the natural rights of the people.20 Furthermore Tindal argued Hooker’s emphasis on matters indifferent showed that he would never have agreed to any notion of an independent power of jurisdiction, based on jure divino theories. ‘Had the Author of the Rights writ when Mr. Hooker did, the Clergy wou’d have look’d on his Book as a Service design’d the Church against both Papists and Puritans; or had Mr Hooker writ his Ecclesiastical Polity now, the High-Fliers wou’d never have left preaching against him, till they had got him indicted for writing against the Church’.21 The suggestion that the Church party was guilty of manipulating Hooker was clearly not one which they found at all palatable. At least twenty responses were produced to Tindal. The most substantial ²⁰ M. Tindal, The Rights of the Christian Church Asserted against the Romish and All Other Priests Who Claim an Independent Power over It (London, 1706), 309. ²¹ M. Tindal, A Defence of the Rights of the Christian Church (London, 1709), 153–7; Tindal, Rights of the Christian Church, 309.

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of these was a satirical dialogue in three volumes by the moderate Tory, William Oldisworth.22 He excused the vigour of his response on the grounds that, when confronted with outrageous opinions, even learned writers like Hooker were prepared to taunt their enemies with a scornful wit.23 Tindal’s own views, he insisted, had blinded him to the fact that the Polity had ascribed to kings an original right of dominion, and demonstrated that no king could be subject to any other predominancy.24 Consequently Oldisworth was particularly incensed by the gloss which Tindal put on Hooker’s comments concerning God’s lordship over the Jews. So eager was Tindal to portray Hooker as a ‘radical contractualist’, he transcribed his remarks on Jewish polity to mean God’s rule of the Jews would have been illegitimate without their initial consent.25 Whilst the Church party attributed the Whig misuse of Hooker to this sort of ideological bias they also continued to stress their belief that the nonconformists had ‘vilely mangled’ the latter books, and made them ‘speak that after his Death which his Soul abhorred while he was Living’.26 Wesley described how these republican interpolations which pleased ‘some People so highly that for their sake they cou’d almost forgive him all the rest of the Book’ were not in the copy that Bishop Sanderson had seen in Hooker’s own writing. Neither were republican sentiments supported by Walton’s reproduction of the missing fragments of Book VIII which had survived amongst Ussher’s papers.27 Oldisworth was equally dubious about the reliability of Book VIII and stressed that ‘this Chapter is for good reasons believed to be spurious: and at least not to be very correct, which is plain from the Language, extremely faulty, and unlike Hooker’s exactness’.28 ²² R. Eccleshall, ‘Richard Hooker and the Peculiarities of the English: The Reception of the Ecclesiastical Polity in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries’, History of Political Thought 2/1 (1981), 110. ²³ W. Oldisworth, A Dialogue between Timothy and Philatheus. In Which the Principles and Projects of a Late Whimsical Book: Entituled the Rights of the Christian Church, &c. Are Fairly Stated and Answer’d in Their Kind, 1 (London, 1709), Preface, p. vii. ²⁴ Ibid., vol. 3, 228. ²⁵ Eccleshall, ‘Richard Hooker’, 110; Oldisworth, Dialogue, vol. 3, 228. ²⁶ Wesley, A Reply, 123. ²⁷ Ibid. 14. ²⁸ Oldisworth, Dialogue, vol. 3, 228.

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Nevertheless, there was a growing awareness that it was no longer sufficient to discount the latter books as corrupt. Although Oldisworth maintained a traditional scepticism concerning their authenticity, he was also astute enough to recognize that they enjoyed greater contemporary credibility than ever before. Consequently he endeavoured to show how the posthumous books, even in their corrupted form, were far from supportive of Whig opinions. His close examination of the text of Book VIII suggests a reluctant recognition that only through the presentation of a thorough Tory assessment could he hope to prevent them from adhering to the Whig interpretation. Oldisworth described how much of the Whig case depended upon Hooker’s supposed statement ‘That what Power soever Kings and States had in religious Matters before the Coming of Christ, they are fully authorized by the Gospel to exercise the same, in all Affairs pertinent to the State of the true Religion.’ This was supposed to demonstrate that the Church could not enjoy any form of separate independence from the State. Oldisworth insisted, however, that it merely referred to the external ‘Regimen of the Church’ and did not vindicate the Erastian notions of the Whigs.29 Book VIII, even in its corrupt state, recognized that there was a difference between ‘the Secular and Temporal Orders . . . notwithstanding the Union of Church and Commonwealth’. This was clear from Hooker’s recognition that an excommunicated man was not ‘Discommuned, or Banished the State, and a Man Discommuned is not therefore Excommunicated and excluded the Church; He tells us elsewhere, that Power may be of Divine Institution, tho’ it grew from agreement among Nations: A Maxim that ought to be your Aversion; And to shew the apparent Distinction between the Power of the Church and State.’ It was absurd, therefore, for the Whigs to suggest that kings might personally determine matters of doctrine, excommunicate, or order how the sacraments should be administered. Oldisworth demands what more ‘could an Author say to explain himself more clearly or to contradict you strenuously’?30 When such ridiculous notions were put forward it was not difficult for Hooker and his sympathizers to ‘exert the sprightly remains of youthful Wit, ²⁹ Ibid. 227–8.

³⁰ Ibid. 228.

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and laugh all their Enemies to scorn’ for being as dull as they are deceitful.31 Impressive as Oldisworth’s deployment of Book VIII was it had its limitations. Oldisworth was unable to use it, as it stood, to deny or refute Hooker’s consensual account of political origins. Naturally if he had been pressed on the point he would have deflected it by reference to its supposed corruption. Nevertheless, as his own actions suggest, he realized that this was increasingly inadequate. The only alternative to Walton’s deflectionary tactic, however, was to admit that the text was correct and Hooker was wrong. Amazingly this was exactly what the Nonjuring Charles Leslie did. Leslie, who fought a ceaseless campaign on behalf of non-resistance in the pages of his periodical, The Rehearsal, was exactly the sort of man one would expect to be a Hooker enthusiast. Certainly he retained his devotion to the old Church–State ideal of an organic union as defended by Hooker.32 Consequently his Whig opponents sought to embarrass him by reminding him that legislative authority was located in the king-in-Parliament. An article in the Observator, a Whig periodical, announced ‘that you may see, that what we old Whigs call Constitution, is no new Doctrine, nor the Invention of Republicans and Dissenters, I will give you in the Words of a noted Royalist, and Great Divine of the Church of England, the fam’d Mr. Hooker, in his Eccles. Polit. Lib 1. Cap 10 . . . ’33 Leslie, rather than responding by accusing his opponents of misconstruing Book I, on account of the perversion of Book VIII, simply accepted that he was being presented with an accurate picture of Hooker’s true views. ‘It is a long time since I thought Mr Hooker to have gone wrong in this matter, and I have seen the mischief it has done. He is quoted by Mr. Lock, by Observators and Reviews, and most of the republican writers; but I have not attacked him, because of the reputation he has (otherwise) deservedly obtained in the Church of England; yet I would not be misled by him.’34 Clearly Leslie was reluctant to distance himself publicly from Hooker, but having accepted Book VIII as genuine he had little choice ³¹ Ibid., p. viii. ³² P. B. Nockles. The Oxford Movement in Context. Anglican High Churchmanship 1760–1857 (Cambridge, 1997), 55. ³³ Eccleshall, ‘Richard Hooker’, 102. ³⁴ Ibid. 102–3.

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but to do so. Although Leslie’s enforced abandonment of the Polity was exceptional it was clearly a public triumph for those Whigs who desired to harness Hooker exclusively to their own political cause. Leslie himself assisted this by accepting that Hooker seemed to say exactly the same as his ‘learned’ arch-opponent Benjamin Hoadly, the latitudinarian rector of St Peter-le-Poor, London.35 Hoadly, who was subsequently to ensure that Hooker’s views became totally central to the Whig belief in a trinitarian legislature, was adamant that there were no grounds for supporting extreme absolutism. ‘The great, and judicious Hooker’, he stated, in no way supported ‘Unlimited Submission’ and allowed for the ‘lawfulness of Resistance’.36 Some Tories, in spite of the persistent strain of patriarchalism amongst a number of their members, were also anxious to move in the direction of a trinitarian legislature, whilst they believed could be combined with their affection for Hooker and a belief in absolute obedience. Under William and Mary some moves had already been made away from notions that sovereignty was exclusively vested in the king, but even Sharpe’s doctrine of limited monarchy, though built upon extensive constitutional foundations, remained within the mould of conventional Toryism. This new enthusiasm for a system of checks and balances, which allowed remedial action to be taken against a constitutional imbalance was publicly aired in two accession sermons by Offspring Blackall. Blackall was a consummate diplomat since allegations that he had been a non-juror for two years had not prevented him becoming a faithful chaplain to King William. His stress that the judicious divine offered a Tory model for contemporary circumstances should, consequently, be seen as a careful emphasis designed to further the acceptability of his approach. Right at the start he announced that he knew ‘not how to begin a Discourse upon this Subject better, than in those Words wherewith the judicious Mr Hooker begins his Learned Discourse of the Laws of Ecclesiastical policy’. Hooker had recognized that it was always easier ‘to perswade a ³⁵ Ibid. 102. ³⁶ B. Hoadly, The Measures of Submission to the Civil Magistrate Consider’d (London, 1706), 154, 161–2.

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Multitude that they are not so well govern’d as they ought to be’, than it was to convince them of their good fortune.37 Without recourse to any other authorities Blackall insisted that although sovereignty was absolute and irresistible it could be vested in any form of government from a republic to a patriarchy. There was ‘no one Sort or Form of Government that can truly be said to be of Divine Institution. The power of Government . . . is from God . . . but the designation and appointment of particular Persons to the Administration, this is Humane.’38 In England the outcome of human decision had been a king in Parliament. The king should be held in ‘the highest Honour’ by his subjects, but if a prince does not conform to divine law ‘it is impossible that they should be both comply’d with by an Active Obedience’.39 Blackall emphasized that this eventuality, however, should not arise because the government was incapable of harming the populace ‘but with their own Consent, by Representatives of their own Choosing; and it may be reasonably hop’d, that they will never be so foolish as to give their Consent to their own destruction’.40 Blackall’s political attitude clearly shows a strong degree of consensus with the non-Lockean Whig approach to Hooker; an approach which, no doubt, helped to smooth his appointment to the see of Exeter by fulfilling his sovereign’s desire for moderate Tories in positions of influence. Nevertheless any growing divergence of approaches, regarding Hooker, should not be overstated. Whatever Blackall’s apparent similarities to Hoadley it did not prevent the latter from continuing a major controversy with him on the subject of passive obedience and non-resistance. There was no apparent need, of course, to be conciliatory since the foreign victories, to some extent the union with Scotland,41 and the following rumours of a proJacobite French invasion, had all served to strengthen the hands of the Tory opponents. ³⁷ O. Blackall, The Subjects Duty. A Sermon Preached at the Parish-Chruch of St Dunstan in the West (London, 1705), 5. ³⁸ Ibid. 18. ³⁹ Ibid. 11. ⁴⁰ Blackall, Subjects Duty, 15; Eccleshall, ‘Richard Hooker’, 109. ⁴¹ It is important to realize that not all Tories opposed this. For example John Arbuthnot, the Tory physician and wit, and Daniel Defoe, the Whig writer, were both enthusiastic proponents of the union.

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The new links with the established Presbyterian Church of Scotland were naturally anathema to English Tory Anglicans brought up on the Restoration understanding of Hooker. By contrast English dissenters, who were usually also Calvinist in sympathy, were naturally pleased and clearly felt encouraged to make occasional appeals to Hooker’s statements on predestination, in order to recall their former dominance in English theology. John Edwards, a Calvinist divine resident in Cambridge, drew liberally upon Hooker’s sermons to stress such points as perseverance in grace and God’s eternal decrees. Hooker, Edwards rejoiced, recognized that ‘the NonConformists (heretofore called Puritans) or Calvinists are Sound in the Faith, and Orthodox in their Principles, and profess all Christian Truths necessary to Salvation’.42 Unsurprisingly the Tories felt threatened and in 1709 Henry Sacheverell preached his famous assize sermon in which he commended non-resistance and provocatively denounced the Whig government’s policies of toleration towards dissenters. In retrospect it would have been better if the government had allowed it to pass away without comment. By seeking to make an example of him it unintentionally created a Tory martyr and fostered a final dramatic flowering of the Restoration belief in Hooker as the guardian of an unalterable settlement of Church and State. The fact that Sacheverell’s speech of defence was reported to have been written for him by the Tory propagandists, Swift and Atterbury, while the prosecutor’s were all Whigs, made it immediately clear that an ideological battle was about to commence. ‘Thus the trial immediately became not a question of proving Sacheverell’s innocence or guilt, but of re-expounding the arguments of principles between the parties—the Church of England and Dissenters; the Revolution and hereditary right to the throne.’43 A key part of this struggle concerned the tussle between the two sides for the authentic interpretation of Hooker. His citation was prominent both in the trial and the contemporary literature generated by it. The ultra-Tories were well aware that the public excitement surrounding the trial offered a major opportunity to assert the ⁴² J. Edwards, The Doctrine of Faith and Justification Set in a True Light (London, 1708), 34, 313–14; J. Edwards, Vertitas Redux (London, 1707), 539, 549–50. ⁴³ J. A. Downie, To Settle the Succession of the State. Literature and Politics, 1678–1750 (London, 1994), 74–6; Holmes, British Politics, 92, 168.

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doctrine of passive obedience, and sought to demonstrate that it had been ‘the General opinion of our most Orthodox and Able Divines from the Time of the Reformation to This Day’.44 Sir Constantine Phipps, a Jacobite lawyer who was defending Sacheverell, predictably mobilized Hooker by quoting from a ‘Treatise of Church government: To which is added a Treatise of the Regal Power, and of the Novelty of the Doctrine of Resistance, Publish’d by Dr Bernard in his Clavi Trabales’.45 Less obviously Phipps also quoted Book VIII, which suggests that he recognized the shifting opinion concerning its authenticity, and sought to captitalize upon it, rather than resist it. Hooker had recognized: That Subjection which we owe to lawful Powers, doth not only import, that we should be under them by Order of our State, but that we shew all Submission towards them, both by Honour and Obedience; He that resisteth them resisteth God: And resisted they be, if either the Authority it self, which they exercise, be denied, or if Resistance be made, but only so far forth as doth touch their Persons, which are invested with Power.46

Even though authority might appear to be conferred upon princes, Phipps insisted, it was held through divine right. It was nowhere prescribed that government must be by princes, ‘yet the Law of God doth give them, which once are exalted unto that place of Estate, Right to exact at the Hands of their Subjects general Obedience in whatsoever Affairs their Power may serve to Command, and God doth ratifie Works of that Sovereign Authority, which Kings have received by Men’.47 This conservative use of Hooker, by Sacheverell’s proponents, was highly contentious. Only just before the impeachment Hoadly had published The Original and Institution of Civil Government, that seminal, lengthy, and far-reaching Whig analysis of Hooker’s political opinions, which went far beyond the usual discreet references to the ⁴⁴ Collection of Passages Referr’d to by Dr Henery Sacheverell in his Answer to the Articles of his Impeachment (London, 1710), 3; The Tryal of Doctor Henry Sacheverell Before the House of Peers, for High Crimes and Misdemeanours (Dublin, 1710), 135, 138. ⁴⁵ A Compleat History of the Whole Proceedings of the Parliament of Great Britain against Dr Henry Sacheverell (London, 1710), 212–13. ⁴⁶ Ibid. 212. ⁴⁷ Ibid. 213.

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Polity.48 Hooker, Hoadly declared, ‘the darling of the Old Church of England’, could be used to undermine the opinions of those who clung to outlandish political opinions.49 The Polity demonstrated the consensual legitimacy of a constitution in which legislative power was shared between the monarch, commons and lords. This meant that ‘there must remain in the Governed Society a Right to defend, and preserve itself from Ruine’.50 Such an approach was further emphasized by the second edition of Hoadly’s Measures of Submission to the Civil Magistrate, which stressed that ‘Unlimited Non-Resistance’ could in no way be located in the scheme ‘espoused and established by the Excellent and Judicious Mr Hooker, which founds the Authority of Governours upon the Voluntary Compact of Men’.51 Even if Book VIII’s belief in an original compact was discounted, due to the argument that it had been corrupted, this was no problem since, Hoadley argued, it also followed from the writings published by Hooker in his lifetime.52 Had Hooker lived, Hoadly insisted, he would have been dubbed ‘a Man of Revolutionary Principles’ for these opinions even though his intention was simply ‘to bring his Adversaries to a due sense of the Authority of Governours and Laws’.53 Eccleshall, commenting on the work, describes how the effect was to depict ‘Whigs as heirs to one who had defined the political, as well as ecclesiastical via media’.54 Hooker’s principles, Hoadly insisted, secured the structures of political society, but recognized that good government required constitutional safeguards to prevent the ruler from ruining ‘those Societies of which they are the Guardians and Patrons’.55 At the trial itself, Major James Stanhope, who had served with distinction in the Peninsula, and one of the managers of the impeachment charges, also confidently cited Hooker in promotion of consensual government. He insisted that, but for his ‘fear of tiring their Lordships, he might, from many passages out of . . . Hooker, evince ⁴⁸ B. Hoadly, The Original and Institution of Civil Government Discuss’d (London, 1710), 129–200. ⁴⁹ Ibid. 130. ⁵⁰ Ibid. 139. ⁵¹ B. Hoadly, The Measures of Submission to the Civil Magistrate Consider’d (London, 1710), p. xli. ⁵² Hoadly, Institution of Civil Government, 135. ⁵³ Ibid. 135–6. ⁵⁴ Eccleshall, ‘Richard Hooker’, 103–4. ⁵⁵ Hoadly, Institution of Civil Government, 200.

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beyond Contradiction that the Constitution of England was founded upon Compact; and that the Subjects of the Kingdom have in their several publick and private Capacities as legal a Title to what were their Rights by law, as a Prince to the Possession of his Crown’.56 Consequently when Phipps, at a high-profile trial, challenged these complacent assumptions there was an immediate furore. Stanhope insisted that the trial also heard a passage from the eighth book, which affirmed the limited nature of kingship in communities with established constitutional restraints.57 Eccleshall insists that such a retort to the eclectic Tory usage of the Polity demonstrated that it was safer for them to cite Hooker’s condemnation of faction than it was to embrace the intimate and sometimes embarrassing details of his political doctrine.58 Ironically, of course, as Eccleshall points out, the passage chosen for quotation, by Stanhope, if read to the end concludes with Hooker’s denial of a communal right to depose tyrants. This was exactly the sort of ambiguity which continued to justify Tory references, by the likes of Sacheverell’s defence, to the supposedly expunged passages, which made the king only accountable to God, in Clavi Trabales.59 The continued enthusiasm of Sacheverell’s counsel for the works of Hooker was also highlighted by the publication, just after the trial, of a collection of all the sources that they had referred to. These included two lengthy extracts from Clavi Trabales and Book VIII. Such a presentation of Hooker clearly continued to enjoy a popular acceptability since the work had run through four editions by the end of the year.60 Furthermore both passages appeared, one year later, in The Primitive Doctrine of the Church of England Vindicated.61 Moreover, on the back of the wave of pro-Sacheverell popularity the Tories clearly felt able to condemn confidently the Whig misuse of Hooker. George Smalridge, the future bishop of Bristol, vehemently ⁵⁶ A Compleat History of the Whole Proceedings, 86; Tryal of Doctor Henry Sacheverell, 61, 135–7. ⁵⁷ A Compleat History of the Whole Proceedings, 212. ⁵⁸ Eccelshall, ‘Richard Hooker’ 109. ⁵⁹ The Tryal of Dr. Henry Sacheverell, Before the House of Peers, for High Crimes and Misdemeanours (London, 1710), 158–60. ⁶⁰ Collections of Passages Referr’d to by Dr Henry Sacheverell, 6. ⁶¹ The Primitive Doctrine of the Church of England Vindicated, According to the Apostolick Doctrine of Passive Obedience and Non-Resistance (London, 1711), 8–9.

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criticized the Whig attempts to deploy Hooker against Sacheverell. ‘But the scraps of those Excellent Authors serv’d only to show their Inimitableness, and expose the Declarations they were tagg’d to. Indeed these Purple Patched quite put me out of conceit with the Coat: And the Soldier might have pass’d Muster much better, had it not been for the affection of the Scolar.’62 Although the trial had been expected to signal the silencing of old Restoration ideologies the lenient sentence passed upon Sacheverell effectively turned it into a Tory victory. It had effectively humiliated the government and breathed new life into the old Tory view of Hooker. Sacheverell’s personal popularity showed that large numbers of the populace were still prepared to embrace beliefs that equated religious nonconformity with political sedition. This enthusiasm was further confirmed by the 1710 election when the Tories won a majority.63 Once in power they passed an occasional conformity bill, which was followed, three years later, by another one which confined the educational activities of dissenters to the families of noblemen. They were also able to order that Tindal’s The Rights of the Christian Church, with its Lockean presentation of Hooker, was to be burnt as a threat to both Church and State.64 Although the will of the lower house of Convocation was still being thwarted by the upper house the leading Whig bishops, such as Tenison, Lloyd and Cumberland, were becoming increasingly aged and infirm. The translation of High Churchmen, such as John Robinson, the bishop of Bristol, to the see of London, seemed to indicate that in time men of his persuasion might reasonably hope to dominate the episcopal benches.65 The standing of the Whigs had clearly taken a severe battering and their self-esteem and confidence were obviously shaken. Whilst the Whig association with the Polity had been challenged, ⁶² G. Smalridge, The Thoughts of a Country Gentleman upon Reading Dr Sacheverell’s Tryal. In a Letter to a Friend (London, 1710), 77. ⁶³ S. C. Carpenter, Eighteenth Century Church and People (London, 1959), 82; Holmes, British Politics, 48, 93; H. Sacheverell, D. Sacheverell’s True Character of a Low=Church=Man Drawn to the Life (London, 1710), 3. ⁶⁴ J. Israel, Radical Enlightenment. Philosophy and the Making of Modernity (Oxford, 2001), 98. ⁶⁵ G. Every, The High Church Party 1688–1718 (London, 1956), 147; D. D. Szechi, Jacobitism and Tory Politics, 1710–14 (Edinburgh, 1984), 61.

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however, it would be foolish to deny that their contractual argument, although temporarily abated, continued to hold considerable sway. Their opponents may have deliberately chosen to perceive the likes of Tindal as being representative of their ‘misuse’ of Hooker, but this did not change the fact that most of them actually continued to use him to promote their own brand of conservative constitutionalism. The widespread unpopularity of the Whigs, and popular enthusiasm for Sacheverell and his supporters, potentially owed more to the general disillusionment of a war-weary nation, not to mention royal discontent with Whig tactlessness on the death of Prince George, than to the successful restatement of any abstract Restoration premises. Any revival of enthusiasm for the ideas of full-blown non-resistance could only be temporary with the imminent accession of the Hanoverians; an eventuality that was not eagerly anticipated by most Tories. Clearly the accession of a Lutheran prince, who did not speak English, being proclaimed supreme governor of the English Church was not one, which sat well with their comprehension of Hooker.66 Unsurprisingly they were consequently confused in their response between outright Jacobites, those who reluctantly accepted the change and a few Hanoverian enthusiasts. Such uncertainty, regarding the succession, undoubtedly helped to restore the Whig equilibrium. Only four years after Sacheverell’s impeachment, Sir John Willes (a Whig lawyer) felt able to publish a defence of England’s trinitarian constitution, which cited the ‘Learning’ and ‘Authority’ of Hooker extensively.67 The three pages of text, which were quoted by Willes demonstrated that absolute monarchy was inconsistent with civil society and that all governments arose from composition and agreement unless the commission was ‘immediately and personally’ received from God. There was no need to elaborate upon the words of the Polity which have been ‘so full and clear’, but two rules of government, ‘which are founded upon Mr Hooker’s Principles’, might be drawn from them. First, government ‘was made for Man, and not Man for Government; consequently the good of the people is the supreme Law in ⁶⁶ Holmes, British Politics, 87; Szechi, Jacobitism, 3, 153–8, 164, 194–9. ⁶⁷ J. Willes, The Present Constitution and the Present Succession Vindicated: In Answer to a Late Book Entituled, the Rights of the Crown of England Asserted (London, 1714), 1.

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all Countries. And therefore all Notions of Government, which are inconsistent with the good of the People, must necessarily be false and erroneous.’ Secondly, there is no place in scripture that specifies any universal form of government. Only the principle of obedience from subjects to their governors can be located; ‘But to what particular Persons it is to be paid, must be determined by the Laws of each Nation.’68 Individuals such as Willes ensured that the Whigs regained a strong voice, and that their political opinions were the ones in the ascendancy at the accession of the house of Hanover. The Nonjurors and ultra-Tories, in spite of a spirited revival under Anne, ultimately lost the polemical battle to keep the perception of Hooker as the upholder of divine right monarchy as a majority view. It was left to the 1715 and 1745 Jacobite risings to extinguish finally any fading hopes of a return to the old Restoration political status quo. Instead Georgian England, as suggested by the charges to the provincial quarter sessions, publicly embraced the belief that Hooker was the arch-proponent of the historic balanced threefold constitution.69 Only a few years after the excitement surrounding Sacheverell, the historian James Tyrell confidently claimed that all ideas of arbitrary monarchy were completely alien to Elizabethan divines such as Hooker and Bilson.70 ‘Hooker was a greater man than Filmer . . . yet it is plain that he makes a clear Distinction between Oeconomical government, and that Politick or Civil Power, which arises from Compact between Men.’71 Tory attempts to maintain the confessional state also foundered with the accession of George I.72 Toleration, in spite of all their efforts to thwart it, finally came to mean genuine freedom for the dissenters. It was imperfect since the universities remained closed, the Test Act remained in force, and there was much social intolerance, but, unlike 1688, it did mark a decisive break with the past.73 ⁶⁸ Ibid. 5–6. ⁶⁹ G. Lamoine (ed.), Charges to the Grand Jury, 1689–1803 (London, 1992), 255, 267, 434–5; W. A. Speck, Reluctant Revolutionaries, Englishmen and the Revolution of 1688 (Oxford, 1988), 18. ⁷⁰ J. Tyrell, Bibliotheca Politica: Or, an Enquiry into the Antient Constitution of the English Government, With Respect to the Just Extent of the Regal Power, and the Rights and Liberties of the Subject (London, 1718), 4. ⁷¹ Ibid. 96–7. ⁷² Nockles, Oxford Movement, 54. ⁷³ Carpenter, Eighteenth Century Church, 91.

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The internal ecclesiastical divisions, and their differing treatments of Hooker still remained, but they became much less conspicuous after the Bangorian controversy resulted in the suppression of the Convocations.74 The prolonged suspension of this body deprived the High Churchmen of a public platform from which to air their views, and ensured that their theology came to bear a diminished influence upon public life. This greatly impeded the Church Tories, but did not result in a wholesale abandonment of their old principles. Peter Nockles has convincingly demonstrated that throughout the eighteenth century Hooker remained a key Tory exponent of the organic union of Church and State.75 Certainly Hooker played a key role in such notable disputes as the bitter feud between the Tory political writer Henry Lord Bolingbroke and Robert Walpole, that leading Whig.76 Neither did the new Whig supremacy compel the Tory abandonment of the Polity as an important authority regarding the English Church. Reprints of the Polity and Walton’s prefatory Life, along with the liturgical commentaries, of the likes of Sparrow and Wheatley, continued to be regularly published. Whilst old-fashioned Caroline theology, of a Nonjuror type, may have become a little diluted, it could still be located within Hanoverian Anglicanism. The Unbloody Sacrifice by John Johnson, a diligent parish priest with Nonjuring sympathies, the writings of Daniel Waterland, and the teaching given to John Keble and Edward Pusey by their parents, clearly demonstrate that it continued to enjoy a small, but respectable following.77 Hooker’s importance as a commentator upon the English Church, however, was not just marginalized to this faithful remnant, but proved to be equally enduring amongst more mainstream groupings. Whilst opposing the Tory interpretation of the Polity their opponents had never ceased to esteem Hooker as a figure whose opinions and life commanded respect. Even at the height of the Sacheverell trial, Edward Bentley, the former chaplain to Stillingfleet, had apparently seen nothing incongruous in commending Walton’s Life of the ⁷⁴ Ibid. 115, 132. ⁷⁵ Nockles, Oxford Movement, 54, 63. ⁷⁶ C. Condren, ‘The Creation of Richard Hooker’s Public Authority: Rhetoric Reputation and Reassessment’, Journal of Religious History, 21/1 (1997), 56. ⁷⁷ Nockles, Oxford Movement, 115; G. Rowell, K. Stevenson, and R. Williams (eds.), Love’s Redeming Work. The Anglican Quest for Holiness (Oxford, 2001), 192.

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‘Judicious and Pious Mr. Hooker, Author of the justly admired Books of Ecclesiastical Polity’ to the readers of his biography of the late Whig bishop. The influence of Walton, even upon the Whigs, was still surprisingly strong since Bentley retained the traditional bias that Walton was an ‘Ingenuous and Faithful Biographer’, but Gauden who had been guilty of ‘taking Things upon trust, without a due Examination, thereby suffered himself to be led into divers notorious mistakes concerning him’.78 This desire to present Hooker as the voice of a moderate, slightly ‘Erastian’, Anglicanism was unable to come to full fruition until the accession of the Hanoverians, but swiftly went on to become the dominant interpretation of Georgian England. Its importance was encapsulated in leading Whig works such as William Warburton’s The Alliance Between Church and State. Warburton was popular since he avoided the total Erastianism of Hoadley, which many Whig clerics found offensive, whilst still managing to use Hooker to promote a close alliance of Church and State, which gave the upper hand to the latter. He enthusiastically commended Hooker’s criticism of the Puritan attempt to subordinate secular power to ecclesiastical and commended the Polity for resisting attempts to claim that any form of Church government could ever be divinely ordained.79 Instead he argued, along the lines of Locke, that Hooker had recognized that all government was the result of an original social contract. The State had entered into an alliance with the Church for political reasons and consequently protected it by test and endowment laws. In return the Church had abandoned its right to be an independent power.80 Warburton used block capitals to emphasize that ‘             ⁷⁸ R. Bentley, Life and Character of that Eminent and Learned Prelate Dr Edw. Stillingfleet Lord Bishop of Worcester Together with Some account of the Works he Has Publish’d, in The Works of that Eminent and Most Learned Prelate Dr. Edw. Stillingfleet, Late Lord Bishop of Worcester, 1 (London, 1709), 1. ⁷⁹ Eccleshall, ‘Richard Hooker’, 76; W. Warburton, The Alliance Between Church and State: or the Necessity and Equity of an Established Religion and a Test-Law Demonstrated (London, 1741), 30. ⁸⁰ J. Gascoigne, ‘The Unity of Church and State Challenged: Responses to Hooker from the Restoration to the Nineteenth-Century Age of Reform’, Journal of Religious History, 21/1 (1997), 64.

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  ,    ’.81 Whilst this may have met the realities of eighteenth-century religious life it was a long way removed from Hooker’s vision of Elizabethan England where the State enjoyed a divine character. Like Locke, before him, Warburton had diminished the connection between natural law and its divine origin. Warburton’s obvious enthusiasm for Locke and his promotion of an established, rather than a national Church, were clearly not acceptable to all, but they demonstrated the continued adaptability of Hooker to current circumstances. In spite of the relentless pressure to maintain the old Hooker-sponsored confessional state, the natural long-term consequences of the 1688 settlement had made the adaptation of many cherished Restoration beliefs inevitable. The swift displacement of Tory influence, following the death of Queen Anne, shows how superficial much of its apparent vigour was as it became clear there could never be a straightforward return to the ideology of the Stuart state. Even the public revulsion at the excesses of the French Revolution, in the 1790s, with its execution of a king and overthrow of a national Church, did little more than refocus attention on Hooker’s belief in the organic union of Church and State.82 Not until the constitutional upheavals of the 1820s and 1830s was the Caroline legacy of interest in Hooker, minus the political outlook, to rear its head successfully again, as the Church of England rethought its role in the nation. Against the challenges of rationalism and Continental liberalism the Oxford Movement was to seek stability in the reassuringly figure of Hooker.83 Through Keble’s edition of the Polity he was to be rescued from all the multifarious uses he had been put to over the previous century. Once again Hooker’s liturgical and ecclesiastical arguments, which had so endeared him to the Laudian divines, were to see him enshrined as the icon of a Catholic and Reformed Anglicanism. ⁸¹ Ibid. 66. ⁸² D. MacCulloch, ‘Richard Hooker’s Reputation’, English Historical Review, 117 (2002), 807. ⁸³ Ibid. 808.

Hooker’s Reputation: A Conclusion The contemporary challenges facing the Church of England and her worldwide Communion have served to create a desire for a substantive, theologically grounded understanding of the Anglican philosophy. Although this laudable quest for an Anglican identity has exposed many ecclesial divisions it has also demonstrated that nearly all of these groups, ranging from the conservative Evangelicals to the progressive Liberals, claim to be the true heirs of the classical tradition established in the first century and a half of independent English Church life. Unsurprisingly many of these groups have the same historic heroes and Richard Hooker, as the editors of The Anglican Quest for Holiness note, has been appealed to by a remarkable spectrum of Anglicans regarding the central question of where the heart of Anglicanism lies.1 Once again Hooker has become integral to the interpretation and identification of Anglicanism.2 In some respects this would undoubtedly have pleased Hooker since he seems to have recognized that no text could exist in a vacuum. His reluctance to use the Bible as the sole authority to conclude every debate reflects his sense that it is ‘always being read by a historical community whose corporate sense of what the scripture says and skills in “translating” scriptural doctrine into new situations must equally be taken with theological seriousness’.3 It is also true that Hooker seems to have had his eyes as much on posterity as on the immediate course of ecclesiastical or career politics.4 The famous opening lines from the Preface to the Polity certainly state that he was writing with a view to the future so ‘there shall be for mens information extant thus much concerning the present ¹ G. Rowell, K. Stevenson, and R. Williams (eds.), Love’s Redeeming Work. The Anglican Quest for Holiness (Oxford, 2001), p. xxiii. ² R. Williams, Anglican Identities (London, 2004), 1, 39, 50–6. ³ Rowell, Love’s Redeeming Work, p. xxviii. ⁴ P. Lake, ‘The “Anglican Moment?”, Richard Hooker and the Ideological Watershed of the 1590s’, in S. Platten (ed.), Anglicanism and the Western Christian Tradition (Norwich, 2003), 119.

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state of the Church of God established amongst us, and their careful endevour that could have upheld the same’.5 Whilst Hooker’s official reasons for writing his Polity were to see off a Presbyterian threat he actually took the opportunity to redefine, albeit somewhat guardedly, the nature of the Church and to break with the extant tradition of conformist apologetics. Within the Polity Hooker offered a vision of the English Church not as it was, but as it could be, if ever her members came to a full understanding of what its ‘central characteristics and claims, its foundation documents and history, really meant’.6 Throughout the seventeenth century, as Hooker had hoped, the Polity did indeed provide a focus for reflection upon the theological and political outlook of English life. The treatment and response to Hooker is of considerable significance, since it not only charts Hooker’s own influence, but offers an index to the changing understandings of the Reformation. At the start of the century the identity of the English Church was largely defined negatively by pointing out the internal failings of her opponents and consequently was, doctrinally speaking, open to being redefined theologically. It was in this context that Hooker began to emerge as a representative of the distinctive nature of the Church; something which in the short term was to prove to be both ‘an elusive asset and a liability’.7 In spite of the initial lack of positive interest in the Polity, the likes of Willet were swiftly critical of the claims of a dubiously Reformed writer to be speaking representatively on behalf of the Church. This early recognition of Hooker’s motivation, to distance the Church from Reformed opinion, naturally also encouraged Catholic writers to treat Hooker as theologically typical of the Church of England. Whilst the possibility of a non-papal Catholic identity clearly appealed to the growing numbers of avant-garde churchmen there was still a determination, amongst some Calvinist conformists, to rescue Hooker for what they regarded still as the mainstream Reformed position, through the republication of his unambiguously Calvinist sermons. ⁵ Hooker, Lawes, 1. 1. 9–13 (Preface, 1. 1). ⁶ Lake, ‘Anglican Moment?’, 99, 116. ⁷ C. Condren, ‘The Creation of Richard Hooker’s Public Authority: Rhetoric, Reputation and Reassessment’, Journal of Religious History, 21/1 (1997), 43.

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Nevertheless this hope soon floundered upon the ceremonially centred church of Archbishop Laud and Charles I, which enthusiastically drew upon Hooker’s doctrines of tradition and indifference. Although both moderate conformists and a minority of Puritans were genuinely horrified by this unexpected citation of Hooker, in support of a distinctive divine-right Church, they were soon overtaken by the assumption that the Polity opposed their position. The ‘Protestants’ of both England and Scotland, who were being pushed to the margins as they strove to maintain the validity of their Reformed status, increasingly agreed without demur with the Catholic polemicists regarding Hooker’s proximity to Rome. Hooker’s significance and representative status, as Conal Condren puts it, was effectively ‘assured by an uneasy alliance of his church’s enemies’.8 Consequently when royal power crumbled in the early 1640s the behaviour of the avant-garde churchmen meant that Hooker’s name was deeply entangled in the theological, ecclesiological, and even some of the political issues over which the Civil War was to be fought. This establishment of Hooker’s authoritative place in public debate, combined with the outbreak of widely variable political and religious arguments, also ensured that the Polity was subject to a much more varied exploitation. Hooker was cited in support of Parliament, the Commonwealth, the Levellers, and by Catholics all hoping that the mention of the judicious divine would ensure a more receptive audience. The expansion of this overall hostility towards both Church and king meant that loyalists who had previously viewed the avantgarde interpretation of Hooker as extreme now embraced it. Any attempts to return to a more Reformed comprehension of Hooker soon drowned in the torrents of political and religious confusion. By the eve of the Restoration the proponents of the old English Church had abandoned any desire for a broad comprehension, and had replaced it with a determination to enforce obedience to the immutable divinely ordained order of Church and State.9 At the actual Restoration there were a few attempts to use Hooker to promote a broad religious settlement, but the combined ⁸ Ibid. 43. ⁹ J. Gascoigne, ‘The Unity of Church and State Challenged: Responses to Hooker from the Restoration to the Nineteenth-Century Age of Reform’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 21/1 (1997), 60.

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opposition of a staunch Cavalier Parliament and zealous High Churchmen ensured that it was a Laudian understanding of the Polity which triumphed; Reformed divines, such as Baxter, were left in no doubt that Hooker was theologically unsympathetic to nonconformists. Walton’s corrective biography also successfully confirmed that Hooker had been opposed to Calvinist excesses and that he enjoyed the respect of Roman Catholics, without in any way seeking to leave behind the decent perfection of the English Church. Indeed so great has Walton’s enduring effect been with regard to creating the iconic status of the Polity that one commentator has recently suggested that he, not Hooker, deserves to be known as the inventor of Anglicanism.10 There were challenges in the latter half of Charles I’s reign to the Restoration settlement, culminating in the exclusion crisis, but these all ultimately ended in failure. With the exception of Humfrey’s dogged persistence and Baxter’s incredible volte-face the nonconformists remained respectfully suspicious of Hooker and continued to accept the Catholic and avant-garde reading as an authentic one. Whilst Anglican posterity came to regard the second Caroline period as a golden period, however, it actually left them ill prepared for the reign of James II. The practical out-workings of the doctrine of non-resistance, as well as the royal-sponsored confidence of Catholic polemicists regarding Hooker, placed the hierarchy in a real quandary. If the reign had gone on indefinitely they would have been potentially embarrassed into a permanent silence regarding the Polity. Whilst the Glorious Revolution initially resolved this dilemma it ensured that Hooker also became a meaningful political figure and not just an ecclesiastical one. The Whig recognition that Hooker could confer respectability upon the results of 1688 meant that the Polity’s consideration of government was no longer glossed into oblivion, but began to be considered seriously. Apart from Locke’s explosive theory of social contract most Whigs were anxious to use Hooker to defend the existing fabric of society, whilst providing constitutional safeguards against the abuse of monarchical power. ¹⁰ J. Maltby, ‘Suffering and Surviving: the Civil Wars, the Commonwealth and the Formation of “Anglicanism”, 1642–1660’, in S. Platten (ed.), Anglicanism and the Western Christian Tradition (Norwich, 2003), 143.

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Although this was unacceptable to the Tories an increasing number of them also turned to Hooker. In him they found a political authority that could reassure them that nothing untoward had happened, and that they had not surrendered any point of principle. The subsequent revival of the more extreme Restoration political glossing of Hooker, which took place under Queen Anne, was no more than a sweet second flowering of blooms that swiftly withered with the accession of the Hanoverians and the arrival of Whig dominance. The post-1688 importance of the Whigs, which severely curtailed the Polity’s ideal vision of a confessional state, might also have been expected to have curtailed Hooker’s role as an Anglican icon. Although there was ultimately a growth in moderate Erastianism, along with a considerable lessening of inclination towards an inflexible Hooker-sponsored vision of a divine Church, the Polity clearly remained an important statement of Anglican identity to all shades of English churchmanship. Whilst moderate latitudinarians, such as William Warburton and William Paley, may have heavily influenced the eighteenth century, Nockles has also demonstrated, in The Oxford Movement in Context, that the old Restoration Anglican belief in the ‘organic union of two interrelated divinely-ordained powers’ continued to persist.11 Not just the Nonjurors, but such notables as the political theorist Edmund Burke, that long-lived President of Magdalen Martin Routh, and even George III, showed themselves to be conscious of this heritage.12 Consequently when the early Tractarians quoted Hooker in their support they were not inventing a new claim, but drawing upon a traditional emblem, which for over two hundred years had already been recognized as being the badge of a cohesive ecclesiastical group. ¹¹ Nockles, Oxford Movement, 29, 53, 54, 63, 185. ¹² E. Burke, Speech on Toleration Bill 17 March, in P. Langford (ed.), The Writings and Speeches of Edmund Burke, Vol. 2, Party, Parliament and the American Crisis 1766– 1774 (Oxford, 1981), 385; E. Burke, A Vindication of Natural Society: Or, a View of the Miseries and Evils Sharing to Mankind from Every Species of Artificial Society. In a Letter to Lord **** by a Noble Writer, in I. Harris (ed.), Pre-Revolutionary Texts (Cambridge, 1993), 33; A. Cobban, Edmund Burke and the Revolt against the Eighteenth Century. A Study of the Political and Social Thinking of Burke, Wordsworth, Coleridge and Southley (London, 1929). 239–45; J. F. H. New, Anglican and Puritan. The Basis of Their Opposition, 1588–1640 (London, 1964), 25; Nockles, Oxford Movement, 58, 60, 63, 64, 149.

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Although Hooker became an abridged emblem for the values and identity of Anglicanism this examination of the contingencies and argumentative structures involved shows that this was never a foregone conclusion. The history of the Polity decisively vindicates the broader principle that there is nothing natural about the way texts become associated with given groups. Hooker may have broken new ground on the nature of grace, but his masking of this behind his elusive and often idiosyncratic formulations meant that it was and remains hard to categorize him authoritatively into any theological group. His determination to avoid the fate of others who had challenged Reformed orthodoxies meant that his Polity offered a series of ‘trade-offs and transactions between different (Erastian and clericalist, royal and parliamentary) constituencies and sorts of arguments’. Such a combination, Lake comments, ultimately ensured that it was rendered ‘eminently glossable for . . . widely divergent polemical purposes’.13 These different groups did not necessarily misread Hooker— although there were some obviously biased interpretations—so much as emphasize different aspects of the Polity whilst ignoring others. They were all united in the belief that Hooker was an authority that carried intellectual weight across disputes and was part of a common, if contentious vocabulary. Such was his authority that writers clearly assumed an easy familiarity with his name and recognized that he served as an evocative expression to strengthen an argument by association. On the political front this ideological dispute was never settled definitively, since Hooker continued to be fought over well into the eighteenth century. Similarly, although the Jesuits and nonconformists may have assisted the effective capture of Hooker, as an Anglican theological emblem, there were still internal differences of emphasis under the ecclesiastical shadow of his judicious banner. This development of Hooker continues to the present day. As always his reputation remains dependent upon the discreet marginalization of some sections of the Polity, as well as the explicit citation of others. Such an approach, of course, was partly invited by the Polity with its recognition that ‘wisdome which is learned by tract of time’ may find that ‘the lawes that have bene in former ages establisht, ¹³ Lake, ‘Anglican Moment?’, 119–20.

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needful, in later to be abrogated’.14 Without such a treatment it is certainly true that Hooker’s Polity, a work, which initially aroused little interest, would ever have been transformed into the public iconic expression of a unique seventeenth-century Anglican tradition. It is certainly salutary to realize that as late as 1662 Fuller’s History of the Worthies of England had described how ‘in our late times’ the Polity had been viewed as ‘an old almanack out of date, but blessed by God; there is now a revolution which may bring his works again into reputation.’15 By the start of the eighteenth century Hooker’s enduring Anglican appeal had been so assured, however, that a subsequent reader of this book felt compelled to scribble in the margin that it was hard to believe that ‘he was speaking of the greatest divine that ever adhered to the Christian Church’.16 ¹⁴ Hooker, Lawes, 1. 336. 27–29; (IV. 14. 1). ¹⁵ T. Fuller, The History of the Worthies of England (London, 1662), 264. ¹⁶ Early 18th-cent. annotation in Fuller, The Worthies of England [Durham Dean and Chapter Library, E. V. 3.], 264.

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Index Alchemist, The (Ben Jonson) 32 Aldrich, Henry 157 Allen, William 118–19 Allestree, Richard 132 Alliance between Church and State (William Warburton) 196 Allix, Peter 160 Andrewes, Lancelot 10, 40–2, 45–6, 48, 56, 59, 106 Animadversions on a Discourse Entitled, God’s Ways of Disposing of Kingdoms 169 Anne, Queen 174, 176–7, 182, 194, 197, 202 Apologie for Our Publick Ministrie (William Lyford) 75 Apology for the Discipline of the Ancient Church (William Nicholson) 77 Apology of the English Church (John Jewel) 115 Arminianism 4, 38, 45–6, 47, 78 Assheton, William 120–1 Atkinson, Nigel 5–6, 31 Atkyns, Robert 161 Atterbury, Francis 177, 178 Atwood, William 160 avant-garde churchmen 26–7, 45, 47, 48, 50, 53, 54, 199–200 Baillie, Robert 56 Bancroft, Richard 26, 153 Barbon, John 93–5 Barksdale, Clement 124 Baro, Peter 9, 25 Barrett, William 9, 25, 30 Bartholomew Fair (Ben Jonson) 32 Basset, Joshua 154 Baxter, Richard 60–1, 79, 80, 86, 89, 91–2, 121, 126, 128–33, 141–4, 149, 163, 201 Bayly, Thomas 67, 68 Bedell, William 35 Bentley, Edward 195, 196 Bernard, Nicholas 90–1, 93, 108, 189 Bilson, Thomas 132, 141, 194 Blackall, Offspring 186–7

Bonnell, James 148 Bosher, Robert 82 Bossuet, Jacques 156 Bragg, Benjamin 180 Brerely, John (pseudonym) 34–5, 53 Brough, William 68 Brown, Ignatius 152 Buckeridge, John 26 Burnet, Gilbert 163, 164, 168 Burton, Henry 51 Calvin, John 6, 12, 23, 86, 170–1 Calvinism 46, 49, 188 and Richard Hooker 4–7, 9, 10, 13, 23, 35, 37–8, 48–9, 61, 77–8, 112, 124, 199, 201 Carlton, Charles 56 Casaubon, Meric 84 Catechism of the Church of England (William Nicholson) 124 Catholics, and Richard Hooker 24, 32–6, 39, 49, 65–9, 73, 103–4, 117–19, 125, 127–8, 144–9, 150–7, 174–5, 179, 199–201 Certain Reasons Why the Booke of Common Prayer Being Corrected Should Continue 59 Charles I 45–7, 56, 72, 88, 108, 134, 176, 181, 200 Charles II 81, 82, 86, 88, 97, 103, 125, 127, 145, 148, 149, 163, 180 Cheynell, Francis 54, 61, 72 Chillingworth, William 52–4, 61 Christian Letter 12, 22, 23, 25, 27, 28, 30, 31 Church of England’s Doctrine of Non–Resistance Justified and Vindicated (Lewes Sharpe) 173 Church-History of Britain (Thomas Fuller) 75 Clarke, Samuel 97, 114 Clavi Trabales (Nicholas Bernard) 91, 93, 99, 108, 189, 191 Clement VIII, Pope 118–19, 153, 179 Collection of Private Devotions (John Cosin) 48 Comber, Thomas 156

Index

229

Committee, or Popery in Masquerade (Roger L’Estrange) 144–5 Commonwealth regime, opposition to the Prayer Book 73 Companion to the Temple (Thomas Comber) 156 Convocation of Canterbury 177, 195 Cosin, John 42, 48, 86 Covell, William 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 33, 34, 37, 43, 44 Cowper, Sir William 50 Cranmer William 105 Cranmer, George 36, 107, 112 Cranmer, Thomas 157 Cressy, Hugh 103 Crofton, Zachary 89, 90, 92, 95–6 Cromwell, Oliver 58, 64, 79 Cromwell, Richard 79

exclusion crisis 123, 133–5, 137, 140, 143–5, 148, 150, 158, 170, 201

Day, John 42 Defense of the Exposition of the Doctrine of the Church of England (William Wake) 156 Defensive Vindication of the Publike Liturgy . . . of the Church in England 72 Denton, William 144, 145, 160, 164 Directory of Public Worship 60 Discourses Concerning Government (Algernon Sidney) 136 Dispute against the English-Popish Ceremonies Obtruded upon the Church of Scotland (George Gillespie) 55 divine right of kings 46–7, 63–4, 87, 91, 99, 130, 133, 134–7, 148, 167, 175, 186, 188–9, 194, 200 Dodwell, Henry 166 Drummond, William 32 Dryden, John 147 Dudley, Sir Matthew 162 Dugdale, Sir William 146 Durel, John 96

Gauden, John 75, 85, 86, 96–105, 109, 110, 116, 121, 141–2, 146, 174, 196 Gee. Edward 79, 80, 155, 156 George I, King 194 Gillespie, George 55–6, 83–4 Good, John 34 Goodman, John 128 Gother, John 152–3, 155 Goulde, William 124 Great Tew Group 52, 58, 70, 85 Green, I. M. 82–3, 121 Gregory, Francis 128

Earle, John 71 Eccleshall, R. 190, 191 Edward VI, King 64 Edwards, John 188 Elborow, Thomas 95 episcopacy 76–7, 84–6, 93, 95–6, 99–102, 112, 121, 163, 169 limited episcopacy 82, 85, 86, 90, 94, 101, 142–3 Evans, John 148 Everard, John 151–2

Faithful Abridgement of that Learned and Judicious Richard Hooker (Benjamin Bragg) 180 Falkland, Lady Elizabeth 35, 151 Falkland, Viscount 52, 58 Falkner, William 129, 147 Featley, Daniel 38, 84 Featley, John 84 Field, Richard 39 Filmer, Sir Robert 133–7 Finch, Daniel 170 Fisher, John 32 Freeman, Irenaeus 90 Friendly Debate, A 160, 161 Fuller, Thomas 75–6, 104, 204

Hacket, John 167 Hakewill, George 38 Hales, John 105, 126, 179 Hall, John 63 Hall, Joseph 38 Hammond, Henry 71–2, 73, 78, 112 Heylyn, Peter 54, 72, 73, 76, 77, 80, 120, 134 History of the Rebellion (Edward Hyde) 70, 88 Hoadly, Benjamin 186, 187, 189–90, 196 Holdsworth, Richard 39 Hooker, Mrs, wife of R.H. 106–7 Hooker, Richard: Anglican icon 25, 55, 69, 89–92, 95–6, 112, 114–22, 125, 127, 132–3, 140, 145, 147, 148, 178, 180, 197, 202–4 Calvinism 4–7, 9, 10, 13, 23, 35, 37–8, 48–9, 61, 77–8, 112, 124, 199, 201 Catholics 24, 32–6, 39, 49, 65–9, 73, 103–4, 117–19, 125, 127–8, 144–9, 150–7, 174–5, 179, 199–201

230

Index

Hooker, Richard (cont.) daughters 22, 107 divine right of kings 46–7, 63–4, 87, 91, 130, 133, 134–7, 148, 167, 175, 186, 188–9, 194, 200 episcopacy 76–7, 84–6, 93, 95–6, 99–102, 112, 121, 142–3, 163, 169 Laudian use of Hooker 32, 47, 50–2, 57, 60, 63, 79–80, 90, 93, 116, 201 marriage and wife 104, 106–7 monument 50 original compact (contract) theories 46, 63, 87, 99, 135, 137, 161–2, 168, 170, 190–1, 196, 201 Prayer Book 47–8, 50, 55, 57, 59, 64, 71–4, 83–5, 89–96, 148, 172, 175 preaching 28–9 Presbyterians 23, 61–2, 72, 75–7, 84–6, 142–4, 163, 199 Puritanism 2–3, 8, 29, 31, 33–4, 36, 38, 53, 66, 69, 85–6, 104, 181, 196 Reformed tradition 7, 9, 10, 24, 28, 36–8, 43, 51, 61, 71, 76–80 sacramental theology 24, 28–30, 34, 39, 41, 56, 68, 90, 126, 152, 153–5, 157 salvation 2, 7, 47, 49, 78, 117, 164, 179 see also Life of Hooker Hooker, Richard, works: Certayne Divine Tractates, and Other Godly Sermons 37 Dangers of New Discipline 59 Discourse of Justification 37 Discovery of the Causes of the Continuance of these Contentions concerning Church-Government 59 works in libraries 35–6 see also Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity Hooper, William 158 Huddleston, Richard 152 Humfrey, John 102, 140, 201 Hunton, Philip 58 Hyde, Edward (Earl of Clarendon) 58, 70–1, 87–8, 123 Irenicum (Edward Stillingfleet) 86, 143 Jackson, Henry 37 James I, 19, 26, 32, 39, 43, 49, 108, 116, 133 James II 150–3, 155, 157–8, 160, 161, 171, 172, 201 Jane, William 163 Jewel, John 5, 36, 37, 68, 115–16, 132, 141, 145 Johnson, John 195

Johnston, Joseph 156 Jonson, Ben 31–2 Keble, John 13–14, 109, 112, 195,197 King, Henry 108, 118, 153 Kirby, Torrance 31 Lake, Peter 8, 26, 28, 30, 31, 100, 203 Laud, William 26, 32, 40, 46–7, 48, 51, 53, 54, 56, 58, 108, 200 Laudianism 49, 54–5, 58, 69, 70, 71, 82, 83, 99, 120, 178 Laudian use of Hooker 32, 47, 50–2, 57, 60, 63, 79–80, 90, 93, 116, 201 Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity: Preface 2, 31–2, 49, 63, 140, 198 Book I 2–3, 32, 135, 140, 160, 175, 185 Book II 2–3 Book III 2–3, 142 Book IV 3, 8 Book V 3, 50–1, 71–2, 74–5, 77, 84, 125, 142, 151–2 Book VI 3, 36, 40, 62–3, 106, 107, 109 Book VII 3, 62, 76, 99–102, 106, 107, 109, 112, 113, 142 Book VIII 3–4, 57–8, 62–3, 91, 99, 106–9, 129–32, 134–5, 140, 146, 162, 166, 170, 175, 178, 181, 183-6, 189, 191 John Keble’s edition 14–16, 197 Latin edition 71, 118 new editions 62, 96, 179, 180, 195 in libraries 35–6, 128 and Richard Baxter 128, 129–33, 141–4, 163 and Sir Robert Filmer 134–7 and John Gauden 97–103 and John Locke 137–40, 158–60, 174, 182, 196–7, 201 and William Oldisworth 183–5 and Algernon Sidney 136–7 and Matthew Tindal 182–3, 192 and Isaac Walton 105–10, 118–19, 183, 195, 201 Leslie, Charles 185–6 L’Estrange, Sir Roger 93, 94, 144, 147 Life of Hooker (John Gauden) 96–9, 104–5, 116 Life of Hooker (Isaac Walton) 105–7, 109–10, 111, 112, 114, 116–18, 120, 122, 124, 147, 179–80, 195–6, 200, 201 limited episcopacy 82, 85, 86, 90, 94, 101, 142–3 Lloyd, William 171

Index Locke, John 137–40, 158–60, 174, 196–7, 201 Long, Thomas 172 Ludlow, Edmund 111 Lyford, William 75 MacCulloch, Diarmaid 27, 37, 39 Martin, Jessica 111 Marvell, Andrew 126 Mary II 69, 157–8, 163, 168, 170–1, 186 Measures of Submission to the Civil Magistrate (Benjamin Hoadly) 190 Milton, Anthony 26 Moderation of the Church of England (Timothy Puller) 145 Molyneux, William 159 Montague, Richard 17, 42–3, 49, 56 Morley, Bishop 92 Morton, Thomas 36, 105, 179 Nethersole, Edward 22 Nalson, John 128, 129 New Gagg (Richard Montague) 42 Nicholls, William 178 Nicholson, William 77, 90, 124 Nockles, Peter 195, 202 noncomformists 128–9, 143, 144, 147, 163, 175, 181, 183, 201 nonjurors 169, 194, 195, 202 Norris, John 167 Norris, Sylvester 33 Nye, Stephen 165 oath of allegiance 170 oath of supremacy 167 Observations upon Aristotles Politiques (Sir Robert Filmer) 134 Oldisworth, William 183–5 Original and Institution of Civil Government (Benjamin Hoadly) 189–90 Oxford Movement 13, 15, 16, 197 Oxford Movement in Context (Peter Nockles) 202 Page, William 48, 50 Paley, William 202 Palmer, Samuel 181 Pamp, F. E. 109 Papist Misrepresented and Represented (John Gother) 153 Parbo, Edmund 22 Parker, Henry 57–8, 63, 92 Parker, Samuel 120 Parry, Henry 106

231

Patriarcha (Sir Robert Filmer) 133–7 Patrick, Simon 120 Patterson, W. B. 32 Pax Vobis (Ignatius Brown) 152 Perkins, William 22, 43 Peter, Hugh 58, 61, 108 Philips, Fabian 108 Phipps, Sir Constantine 189, 191 Pierce, Thomas 78, 79 Political Aphorisms 159, 161 Prayer Book 47, 50, 55, 57, 59, 60, 64, 71–4, 81, 83–5, 89–96, 164, 172, 178 Preces Privatae (Lancelot Andrewes) 41 predestinarian doctrine 7, 25, 30, 31, 38, 40, 78, 188 Presbyterian Church of Scotland 188 Presbyterianism 2, 39, 60–1, 65, 74–6, 79, 81, 83–5, 88, 99, 101 and Richard Hooker 23, 61–2, 72, 75–7, 84–6, 142–4, 163, 199 Primitive Doctrine of the Church of England Vindicated 191 Prince, John 178–9 Protestant Apology for the Roman Church (John Brerely) 34 Prynne, William 50, 89, 102 Puller, Timothy 145 Puritanism 8, 25, 27–8, 30, 32, 69, 80, 82, 88, 96, 103, 116, 152, 188 and Richard Hooker 2–3, 29, 31, 33–4, 36, 38, 53, 66, 69, 85–6, 104, 181, 196 Pusey, Edward 195 Reresby, Sir John 174 Rainolds, John 5, 37–8 Rational Account of Roman-Catholicks Concerning the Ecclesiastical Guide in Controversies of Religion (Abraham Woodhead) 125 Rationale upon the Book of Common Prayer (Anthony Sparrow) 124 Raven, Roger 22 Rehearsal Transposed (Andrew Marvell) 126 Relation of the Conference between William Laud and Mr Fisher the Jesuit 48 Relation of the State of Religion (Edwin Sandys) 33 Religion Laici (John Dryden) 147 Religion of Protestants (William Chillingworth) 53 Resbury, Nathaniel 147 Restoration Church 82, 102, 119, 157 Reynolds, Edward 82, 86

232

Index

Rights of the Christian Church Asserted (Matthew Tindal) 182, 192 Robinson, John 192 Rogers, Thomas 22, 31 Roundhead Reputations (Blair Worden) 110

Trevor-Roper, Hugh 70, 120 True Cavalier (John Hall) 63 Two Treatises of Government (John Locke) 137, 158, 159–60 Tyrell, James 146, 160, 194

Sacheverell, Henry 188–9, 191, 192, 193, 194, 195 sacramental theology 24, 28–30, 34, 39, 41, 56, 68, 90, 126, 152, 153–5, 157 salvation 2, 7, 43, 47, 48, 78, 117, 164, 188 and Catholics 27, 49, 179 Sancroft, Archbishop 158, 169 Sanderson, Robert 38, 77–8, 108, 124, 183 Sandys, Edwin 22, 33, 36, 40, 106, 107 Saravia, Hadrian 14, 112, 153 Saville, George 174 Savoy Conference 82, 89, 91, 92, 102, 121, 142 Seller, Abednigo 168, 170 Sharpe, Lewes 173, 186 Sheldon, Gilbert 70, 99–100, 105, 111, 116–17 Sherlock, William 155 Shirley, Sir Robert 76 Short and Plain Way to the Faith and Church (Richard Huddleston) 152 Sidney, Algernon 136–7 Sisson, C. J. 106, 107 Skinner, Robert 49 Smalridge, George 191 Smith, Richard 66–7 sola scriptura 8, 33, 61, 66–7, 94 Sparrow, Anthony 72, 74, 124, 195 Speculum Baxterianum 144 Spenser, John 36, 37, 40, 49–50, 106, 107 Spurr, John 127 Stanhope, Major James 190, 191 Stapleton, Thomas 118, 119 Stillingfleet, Edward 86, 103, 141, 143, 195 Strype, John 179 Supplication Preferred by Mr Walter Travers 114

Unbloody Sacrifice (John Johnson) 195 Ussher, James 59, 62, 75, 91, 105, 179

Talbot, Peter 66 Taylor, Jeremy 84, 154 Thorndike, Herbert 78 Thorold, Thomas 51, 67 Throckmorton, Iob 21, 22 Tillotson, Archbishop 168 Tindal, Matthew 178, 182–3, 192, 193 Tong, William 163 Travers, Walter 7, 75, 104, 179, 180 Treby, Sir George 162

Vane, Sir Henry 102–3, 121 Vane, Thomas 66 Venner’s Insurrection (1661) 88 via media, and English Church 1, 5, 16, 17, 42, 44, 49, 98, 116, 145, 175, 190 View of the New Directory (Henry Hammond) 71 Vindication of Those who have Taken the New Oath of Allegiance 170 Voak, Nigel 9, 10, 31, 43 Wadsworth, James 35 Wake, William 156 Walker, Obadiah 153 Walton, Isaac 105–22, 123, 127, 146, 149, 153–4, 179 Walton’s Lives (Isaac Walton) 111 Walwyn, William 62 Warburton, William 196, 197, 202 Ward, Samuel 35, 38–9 Warner, John 50 Warwick, Sir Philip 46 Waterland, Daniel 195 Welshman, Edward 166, 167, 177 Wesley, Samuel 181, 183 Wheatley, Charles 178, 195 White, Francis 42, 49 Whitgift, John 9, 23, 25, 26, 48, 84, 106, 110, 113, 115, 153, 179 Willes, Sir John 193, 194 Willet, Andrew 23–5, 26, 27, 38, 56, 199 William III (William of Orange) 158, 163, 164, 168, 170–1, 174, 176, 186 Wilson, Matthias 65–6, 68 Wilson, Thomas 60 Wilson, Timothy 170 Wood, Anthony 124, 132, 173 Woodford, Samuel 122 Woodhead, Abraham 67, 125, 153 Worden, Blair 110 Worthies of Devon (John Prince) 178 Worthies of England (Thomas Fuller) 104, 204 Wright, William 166, 167, 177