HOOKER, RICHARD

born March 1554?, Heavitree, Exeter, Devon, Eng. died Nov. 2, 1600, Bishopsbourne, near Canterbury, Kent theologian who created a distinctive Anglican theology, and a master of English prose and legal philosophy. In his masterpiece, Of the lawes of ecclesiasticall politie, which was incomplete at the time of his death, Hooker defended the Church of England against both Roman Catholics and Puritans and affirmed the Anglican tradition as that of a threefold cord not quickly brokenBible, church, and reason. Additional reading C.J. Sisson, The Judicious Marriage of Mr. Hooker and the Birth of The Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity (1940, reprinted 1974), is essential for any biography of Hooker. Other works on his life and thought include Peter Munz, The Place of Hooker in the History of Thought (1952, reprinted 1971); John S. Marshall, Hooker and the Anglican Tradition (1963); A.F. Scott Pearson, Thomas Cartwright and Elizabethan Puritanism, 15351603 (1925, reissued 1966), on the Admonition Controversy; Robert K. Faulkner, Richard Hooker and the Politics of a Christian England (1981); and Stanley Archer, Richard Hooker (1983).