Hooker, Richard 1554-1600
English theologian

Born near Exeter, Devon, he studied at Corpus Christi, Oxford, where he became a Fellow in 1577. He tookorders in 1581, and in 1584 became rector of Drayton-Beauchamp near Tring. After a lengthy controversy over his appointment as Master of the Temple in 1585, he resolved to set forth the basis of Church government, and in 1591 accepted the living of Boscombe near Salisbury, where he began his eight-volume work Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity (1594, 1597, 1648, 1662). It is mainly to this work that Anglican theology owes its tone and direction.