a very eminent writer and divine, was born at Heavytree, near Exeter, in the year 1553. Some of his ancestors were mayors of that city, and he was nephew to John Hooker the historian. He was first supported by this uncle at the university of Oxford, with the addition of a small pension from Dr Jewel, bishop of Salisbury, who in 1561 got him admitted as one of the clerks of Corpus Christi College. In 1573 he was elected scholar. In 1577 he took the degree of master of arts, and was admitted a fellow the same year. In July 1579 he was appointed deputy professor of the Hebrew language; and in October the same year he was, for some trivial misdemeanor, expelled the college, but immediately restored. In 1581 he took holy orders; and being appointed to preach at St Paul's Cross, he went to London, where he was unfortunately drawn into an unhappy marriage with Joan Churchman, the daughter of his hostess. Having thus lost his fellowship, he continued in the utmost distress till the year 1584, when he was presented to the rectory of Drayton Beauchamp in Buckinghamshire. In this retirement he was visited by Mr Edwin Sandys and Mr George Cranmer, his former pupils. They found him, with a Horace in his hand, tending some sheep in the common field, his servant having been ordered home by his Xantippe. Mr Sandys's representation to his father, of his tutor's situation, procured the latter the mastership of the Temple. In this situation he met with considerable molestation from one Travers, lecturer of the Temple, and a bigoted puritan, who in the afternoon endeavoured to confute the doctrine delivered in the morning. From a situation so disagreeable he solicited Archbishop Whitgift to remove him to some country retirement, where he might prosecute his studies in tranquillity. Accordingly, in 1591 he obtained the rectory of Boscamb in Wiltshire, together with a prebend in the church of Salisbury, of which he was also made subdean. In 1594 he was presented to the rectory of Bishopsgrove in Kent, where he died in the year 1600. He was buried in his own parish church, where a monument was erected to his memory by William Cooper. His great work on Ecclesiastical Polity, first published in 1594, is a strenuous defence of the English establishment; but it is at the same time remarkable for its liberal views of civil government. In this respect Hookery it coincides nearly with the theory of Locke; and, indeed, Hoadley says that the author was "styled the father of the Whigs." Hooker is beyond all question one of the most dignified and eloquent of our early writers. "I know not," says Mr Hallam, in his Constitutional History of England, "whether any later writer has more admirably displayed the capacities of our language, or produced passages more worthy of comparison with the splendid monuments of antiquity." He was the author of several sermons and tracts. His life, by Isaac Walton, is well known. Dr Gardiner, bishop of Worcester, published his works in folio, with a life by himself, in 1662. This collection has been several times reprinted, both in folio and in octavo. The last edition, in three vols. Svo, with Walton's life prefixed, was published in 1830.