more original course than the ordinary controvertists, who fought their battles with conflicting interpretations of scriptural texts on passages from the fathers. He inquired into the nature and foundation of law itself, as the rule of operation to all created beings, yielding thereto obedience by unconscious necessity, or sensitive appetite, or reasonable choice; reviewing especially those laws that regulate human agency, as they arise out of moral relations, common to our species, or the institutions of political societies, or the intercommunity of independent nations; and having thoroughly established the fundamental distinction between laws natural and positive, eternal and temporary, immutable and variable, he came with all this strength of moral philosophy to discriminate by the same criterion the various rules and precepts contained in the Scriptures. It was a kind of maxim among the Puritans that Scripture was so much the exclusive rule of human actions, that whatever, in matters at least concerning religion, could not be found to have its authority, was unlawful. Hooker devoted the whole second book of his work to the refutation of this principle. He proceeded afterwards to attack its application

more particularly to the episcopal

scheme

of Church government, and to the various ceremonies or usages which those sectaries treated as either absolutely superstitious, or at least as impositions without authority. It was

maintained by this great writer, not only that ritual observances are variable according to the discretion of ecclesiastical rulers, but that no certain form of polity is set down in Scripture as generally indispensable for a Christian Church. Far, however, from conceding to his antagonists the fact which they assumed, he contended for Episcopacy as an apostolical institution, and always preferable, when circumstances would allow its preservation, to the more democratical model of the Calvinistic congregations. 'If we did seek,' he says, 'to maintain that which most advantageth our own cause, the very best way for us, and the strongest against them, were to hold, even as they do, that in Scripture there must needs be found some particular form of Church polity which God hath instituted, and which for that very cause belongeth to all Churches at all times. But with any such partial eye to respect ourselves, and by cunning to make those things seem the truest which are the

fittest to serve our purpose, is a thing which we neither like nor mean to follow.'" 1

Hooker's birthplace was Heavitree, a district of Exeter. The original name of the family was Vowell, but in the sixteenth century this was generally dropped. His great-grandfather and grandfather were both mayors of Exeter (1493, 1537). His father seems to have been in poor circumstances. Richard was educated at Exeter Grammar School, where he made rapid progress. "His complexion (if we may guess by him at the age of forty) was

sanguine, with a mixture of choler; and yet, his motion was slow even in his youth, and SO was his speech, never expressing an earnestness in either of them, but an humble gravity suitable to the aged. And it is to be observed (so far as inquiry is able to look back at this distance of time) that at his being a school-boy he was an early questionist, quietly inquisitive, why was this, and that was not, to be remembered? why this was granted, and that denied? This being mixed with a remarkable modesty, and a sweet serene quietness of nature; and with them a quick

1 Hallam, Constit. Hist., i., p. 216.

apprehension of many perplext parts of learning imposed then upon him as a scholar, made his master and others to have an inward blessed divine light, and therefore to consider him to a little wonder."

1

His parents wished to apprentice him; but the schoolmaster appealed to his uncle, John Hooker, first chamberlain of Exeter, the editor of Holinshed, who was in a better position. The uncle introduced him to his friend Bishop Jewel of Salisbury, who sent for the boy and his teacher, bestowed an annual pension on his parents to keep him at his books, and in 1568 (his fifteenth year) obtained for him a clerk's place at Corpus Christi College, Oxford.

The President of Corpus, Dr. William Cole, interested himself in the boy, and he had a good tutor in Dr. John Reynolds. Here he continued "still increasing in learning and prudence, and so much in humility and piety that he seemed to be filled with the Holy Ghost, and even like St. John the Baptist to be sanctified from his mother's womb, who did often bless the day in which she bare him." He often journeyed on foot from Oxford to

1 Walton's Lives.

Exeter, and paid on the way several visits to Bishop Jewel, one of which is described in detail by Walton.

Jewel died in 1571; but he had already interested his friend Bishop Sandys of London (afterwards Archbishop of York) in this wonderful youth; and Sandys, though a Cambridge man, sent his son (afterwards Sir Edwin) to be Hooker's pupil at Corpus. Edwin Sandys and George Cranmer (another pupil, grandnephew of the Archbishop, and cousin to Izaak Walton) became his chief friends through life.

In 1573, when nearly twenty, Hooker was elected Scholar of Corpus, the rule limiting the age to nineteen being relaxed because of his unusual proficiency. He became B.A. in 1573-74, and M.A. and Fellow in 1577. He was well acquainted with Greek and Hebrew music and poetry. Henry Savile, afterwards Sir Henry, the mathematician and astronomer was one of his Oxford friends. In 1579 he was appointed by the Earl of Leicester, Chancellor of the University, to be deputy Dr. Thomas Kingsmill, Professor of

to

Hebrew.

In October of that year a curious accident