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Professor David Loades' latest book is on The Cecils under Elizabeth I [see picture of front cover above].
His book The Life and Career of William Paulet (c. 1475-1572): Lord Treasurer and First Marquis of Winchester
will be published by Ashgate before Christmas.
============================================= David's latest books and all other publications can be purchased direct
from http://www.historyhouseofoxford.co.uk Please direct all enquiries to: mailto:judith@history.u-net.com ============================================ CONTACT DETAILS POSTAL:
Professor David Loades The Cottage Priory Lane Burford Oxfordshire OX18 4SG England TELEPHONE:(01993)
822625 FAX:(01993) 824129 E-MAIL: mailto:david@history.u-net.com ============================================
To be published shortly by http://www.davenantpress.co.uk in advance of the anniversary of the burning of Hooper
in the precints of Gloucester Cathedral on February 9th 1555:
John Hooper, Tudor Bishop and Martyr c.1495-1555 by David Newcombe
ISBN 978-1-85944-006-3 Paperback 400pp
approx £19.99
John Hooper, Bishop
of Gloucester and Worcester was one of the outstanding figures of the English Reformation. Less of a leader than Thomas Cranmer,
and less of a theologian than Nicholas Ridley - he exceeded both in the rigour of his vision of the Church. In theology he
was closer to Bullinger than he was to either Bucer or Melanchthon or, indeed, Calvin. To John Foxe, he was an outstanding
martyr, and such has remained his reputation.
But it was as a preacher and a pastor
that he made his chief mark. Austere and inflexible in his discipline, both to himself and to others, he made a huge impression
upon his contemporaries, and has been called the ‘father of English puritanism’.
Under Henry VIII he chose to be exiled
in Zurich where his time spent with Bullinger led to a passionate commitment to the theology of the Swiss reformers. He returned
to England under Edward VI. and fell into a bitter dispute with Cranmer and Ridley. The Vestiarian Controversy was central
to Hooper’s reluctance to accept a bishopric. His eventual acceptance and the ensuing thoroughness of his reforms made
him an uneasy colleague. Deprived of his see in Mary’s first visitation, he was one of the first to die in the flames
for his convictions.
David Newcombe writes of a man ‘who
never expected to die in his bed… who always prayed for the opportunity to make this ultimate statement of belief and
trust in a power greater than himself…. But then Hooper always knew how to make his point most powerfully.’
David Newcombe is an independent scholar
based in Cambridge and was the first Senior Research Officer on the British Academy John Foxe Project. The Project was initially
based at the University of Wales, Bangor. In 1996 it moved to the Humanities Research Institute at the University of Sheffield
where it remains.
Cover illustration :A woodcut showing the burning of John Hooper at Gloucester, February 9th 1555, The Actes
and Monuments of John Foxe
The cover to Dr. Newcombe's book was designed
by:
Bookcraft
Ltd 18 Kendrick Street Stroud, Gloucestershire GL5 1AA, UK
http://www.bookcraft.co.uk
David Loades
has provided the Preface to Dr. Newcombe's book, which we reproduce below:
Hooper was a man, who, in his own lifetime was
respected, even feared, but not much loved. Although entirely English by birth and upbringing, he acquired his characteristic
theology in Switzerland, and from the time of his return in 1549 until his death in 1555, remained a slightly alien figure.
He has been described as ‘the father of English puritanism’, but the later puritans were High Calvinists, and
that Hooper certainly was not. To historians of the English reformation he has tended to be a single issue man, and his part
in the first vestiarian controversy in 1551 has been frequently and carefully examined. However until now the context of his
whole life has been neglected. As Dr.Newcombe makes clear, there is good reason for this. Apart from the fact that he graduated
B.A. from Oxford in 1519, everything which is known about his early life has to be deduced from the few scraps of information
which he included in later letters. There were innumerable Hoopers in Devon and Somerset at the end of the fifteenth century,
so neither the identity nor the location of his parents can be firmly determined. All that can be said with reasonable certainty
is that Hooper senior was a man of means – probably connected with the cloth trade – and a staunch religious conservative.
Years later, when he was famous, John was referred to as an erstwhile White monk, or Cistercian, and it is thought, on reasonable
evidence, that he was professed at Cleeve in Somerset. The trouble is that there were several John Hoopers among the ex-religious
after 1540, so even this identity is not absolutely certain. Nor do we know whether he was professed before his Oxford days
or after. If he really was born in about 1495 (which is little more than a conjecture) he might very well have entered Cleeve
as an adolescent. It is perhaps more likely that his mentors there would have identified a potential university student than
that his father would have done so, particularly at that date. If that is the case, he would already have been about nineteen
or twenty (a mature age for a freshman) when he matriculated. If he had lodged in a monastic hall, that might account for
the fact that no college affinity is known.
He appears to have remained at Cleeve for about
twenty years, until the dissolution in 1538, and was presumably ordained priest, although no record of that survives. When
Cleeve was dissolved he did not opt to be transferred to another house, but instead entered the household of Sir Thomas Arundel,
probably as steward. Several other ex-monks are known to have followed a similar course, and it was while in Arundel’s
service that he dabbled in ‘the courtier’s life’, to which he later made reference. His conversion to reformed
beliefs seems to have happened quite suddenly, at some time between 1538 and 1540 as a result of reading the works of Ulrich
Zwingli. Which works these may have been he never specified, but they may well have included De Vera et Falsa Religione…Commentarius,
published at Strasburg in 1525. Such books were forbidden reading in England, but were always available on the fringes of
the court in a way which they were probably not at Cleeve. Hooper had almost certainly left Oxford immediately after his first
degree, and would have had no contact with the subversive literature which began to arrive there soon after. 1539-40 was not
a good time to undergo a conversion to evangelical doctrine, particularly not sacramentarian doctrine such as Zwingli’s,
and when he realised what had happened, Arundel sent his steward to Stephen Gardiner for ‘friendly admonition’.
Given the short fuses which both men are known to have possessed, Dr.Newcombe speculates that this encounter was probably
abrasive. Gardiner honoured his undertaking to Arundel, and returned his steward unharmed, but Hooper knew that thereafter
he would be a marked man.
His flight, which seems to have occurred early
in 1540, was precipitate, and apparently without Arundel’s permission. He went first to Paris and then apparently to
Strasburg, but how long he stayed, and what he did while he was there, we do not know. Given his strong Zwinglian convictions,
he may not have found Martin Bucer’s cure much to his taste, and he probably returned to England at some point in 1542
or 1543, perhaps encouraged by news of the collapse of the Howard ascendancy following the misdemeanours of Queen Catherine.
Back in England he was ‘retained by master St.Loe’, who Dr.Newcombe argues was John St.Loe of Somerset, but in
what capacity and for how long is again unclear. In spite of the evangelical ascendancy which was established at court in
the wake of the King’s last marriage in 1543, Hooper’s fairly extreme views on the sacrament of the altar still
made England a perilous place for him. In spite of authorising the English bible, suppressing monasteries and drastically
altering the ecclesiastical calendar, Henry’s hatred of sacramentaries remained visceral and obsessive. As a result
he fled a second time, probably in 1544, although it is not until 1546 that he finally surfaces in the records. The letter
which he then wrote to Bullinger from Strasburg raises more questions than it answers. He knew of event in England up to Christmas,
but not of the death of Henry VIII at the end of January. He stayed only a few weeks in Strasburg before moving on to Basle,
so his letter was probably written early in February – which would have been 1546 by contemporary dating methods. Shortly
afterwards, probably towards the end of February, John Hooper got married.
He was a mature age for such as adventure, being
somewhere between forty-five and fifty years old. Although passionate about his faith, Hooper was not naturally a warm hearted
man, and there is an inevitable suspicion that he married more because that was what a reformed pastor ought to do than out
of any particular affection for the lady concerned. Anna de Tsrcleras was a protestant with aristocratic connection, was probably
a widow, and had fallen out with her family over religion. There may have been a sense in which he was taking her under his
protection. She must also have been about twenty years his junior, because two children were born of their union, in spite
of her allegedly delicate health. It is perhaps significant that he chose his bride from among one of the continental reformed
congregations with which he was familiar, rather than in England. In spite of some attempts which have been made to argue
that Hooper was an old fashioned Lollard, the fact is that he was far more sympathetic to the theology of Heinrich Bullinger
than to anything which was then available in England. This, in addition to the birth of his first child in 1548, may explain
why he was less than eager to return a second time. It must have been obvious from at least the middle of 1547 that religious
affairs in England had moved decisively in a protestant direction since the old king’s death. By 1548 the country was
already a refuge for those fleeing from the Imperial Interim, such as Martin Bucer and Peter Martyr, but it was 1549 before
Hooper returned, to a position in the Household of the Lord Protector.
When he came back, he found himself something
of an instant celebrity, although it is not very obvious why this should have been so. Apart from his attack on Gardiner’s
Eucharistic theology, published in Zurich in 1547 he had written nothing, and although he must have spoken French, and perhaps
German, it is not known that he preached in either of those languages. There would have been little demand for sermons in
English where he had been, and if he had ever preached before he left England for the second time, we have no record of it.
Although he was sometimes described as ‘doctor’ and even ‘professor’ of Divinity, there is no clear
evidence of his having taken any academic qualification since his B.A, thirty years earlier. In so far as he was a ‘great
learned man’, he was self taught, and that may partly explain the suspicion with which he was regarded in established
ecclesiastical circles in England.
What he had done – and again we do not
know quite how – was to establish a special friendship with Heinrich Bullinger. To judge from their letters, this only
began with his second period of exile, and yet within a few months they were sufficiently close for Hooper and his new wife
to take up residence with the Zurich pastor. It may well be that Bullinger saw in the older man qualities of mind, and a level
of conviction, well above the ordinary. He may also have recognised in Hooper an evangelist for the truth who was very much
needed in England, particularly after Martin Bucer, with whom Bullinger did not entirely agree, had gone there to exercise
his persuasive powers upon Archbishop Cranmer. It also seems that Hooper had never entirely abandoned his connections with
the cloth trade, or rather had resurrected them after emerging from Cleeve. There was already a Swiss ‘network’
in London among the Merchant Adventurers, and it may well have been through those links that the expectations of Hooper as
an evangelist had been inflated. However it came about, Hooper was swiftly lionised by the London Godly, and within a few
months was receiving invitations to preach at court. His audience must have been pleased with what they heard, because in
May 1550 he was offered the vacant see of Gloucester.
Hooper’s conscience was a great source
of strength to him, and to many of those who came in contact with him, but it did not make him any less abrasive. He did not
like bishops, and by 1551 had spent a good deal of ink and energy lambasting ‘prelates’ and ‘prelacy’;
on the other hand such an offer provided an irresistible challenge to spread the truth into a ‘dark corner’ of
England. It was also a reflection of the high esteem in which he was now held by the minority council. In a sense Hooper had
returned to England only just in time, because within a few months his patron had fallen from power, and everyone closely
associated with him was under scrutiny. However in this respect Hooper’s life was charmed. Once the Earl of Warwick
was firmly established in power he became anxious to demonstrate his reformed credentials, and Hooper became an ideal ally.
The existing bench of bishops had been strongly influenced by Cranmer, and contained several of his leading allies, notably
Nicholas Ridley, recently promoted from Rochester to London. Warwick now wanted his own allies on the bench, and started with
Hooper and John Knox, the Scot who was presently preaching in Newcastle. Knox was not interested, and Hooper, while not declining
the invitation, refused absolutely to be consecrated with the formalities still decreed by the new Ordinal. In the prolonged
struggle which followed, and which constitutes one of Hooper’s chief claims to fame, the bishop elect was backed by
several members of the council and even (apparently) by the young king personally. However, he ignored all inhibitions upon
the public airing of the dispute, and rejected a compromise proposal whereby the oath by the saints would be omitted, but
the consecration vestments retained. Eventually Ridley convinced the council that a bishop owed a duty of obedience, and that
such defiance was intolerable. John Hooper’s inflexible conscience landed him in the Fleet instead of on the bishop’s
throne in Gloucester.
After about three weeks he gave way, and thanks
to the Earl of Warwick’s influence, the offer was still open to him. It has been plausibly argued that only Bullinger
had enough influence over Hooper to have induced such a surrender, although how the advice was conveyed we do not know. Relations
with Ridley continued to be tense, because Hooper had given strong and public backing to the establishment of a Strangers’
church in London, which the bishop regarded as an infringement of his jurisdiction. On that issue Ridley did not prevail because
Jan Laski, the pastor, continued to be strongly backed by Warwick, who had abandoned Hooper over the issue of obedience. Early
in March 1551 the new Bishop of Gloucester was duly consecrated, wearing vestments, and immediately went down to his diocese
to grapple with its many problems.
Dr. Newcombe concludes that the state of Gloucester
was probably not as black as Hooper’s famous visitation makes it appear, but it undoubtedly contained strong conservative
elements among both the clergy and the laity, who regarded their new Father in God with everything from grudging respect to
outright loathing. He was certainly a very marked contrast to his eirenic and mildly conservative predecessor John Wakeman.
Hooper did nothing by halves. He preached tirelessly, kept open house and put the fear of God into delinquents irrespective
of their order or status. Although his austerity was forbidding top some, his absolute integrity won many admirers, not least
among those whom he took to task. The English climate did not suit Anna, who seems to have been constantly ailing, but who
nevertheless bore John a second child (their son Daniel) while she was in Gloucester. For about two and a half years Hooper
battled to impose his vision of the truth upon the people of Gloucestershire, and seems to have enjoyed rather more success
either than he realised or than he is usually given credit for. His efforts were eventually frustrated, not by any weakness
in him, nor by the excessive intransigence of those with whom he had to deal, but by the death of King Edward on the 6th
July 1553. Towards the end of his life, worried by the illegitimacy (as he saw it) of both his half sisters who were his designated
heirs, and encouraged by the Duke of Northumberland, Edward nominated his cousin Jane Grey to succeed him on the throne. Bishop
Hooper’s reaction surprised everyone, because one of the reasons behind the young king’s action had been the desire
to preserve his protestant religious settlement. Mary, the elder of the two sisters, and the heir by Henry VIII’s will
was a notorious conservative, and as some suspected a papist. Nevertheless, as soon as the news of Edward’s death reached
Gloucester, Hooper joined in the proclamation of Mary, and even sent some men to her aid. As he had been, at least for a while,
the Duke of Northumberland’s favourite bishop, this reaction calls for some explanation.
In the first place, Hooper was no longer close
to Northumberland. He had, for sufficient reasons, come to the conclusion that the Duke was a ‘carnal gospeller’,
one whose professed zeal for the faith imperfectly concealed a desire to plunder the church and reduce it to subordination.
Hooper was much in favour of ‘unlording’ prelates, but he believed that the resources thus freed should be deployed
to aid struggling parishes, and the poor generally, rather than be allowed to filter into the hands of rich and parasitic
courtiers. In this respect his austere integrity had given him a clear and uncompromising vision. He also had a conscience
about obeying the law, and little as he might like the prospect, Mary was the lawful heir, not only by her father’s
will, but more importantly by the authorising statute of 1544. At the same time, he was more than a little disillusioned with
the state of the English church. So much seemed to have been promised, and so little achieved. Mary might well prove to be
a scourge to all that he held dear – but she was the scourge of the Lord – a penance inflicted by God for the
shortcomings of which he was so keenly aware. So, having made his decision, he waited, not, one suspects, without a certain
gloomy satisfaction, for whatever the new Queen would decide to do about him. He was summoned to the council on the 29th
August and imprisoned in the Fleet on the 1st September on what appear to have been spurious charges of debt. As
Mary had not even been crowned at this time, and no action had been taken against Thomas Cranmer, this suggests that his enemies
were busy, and the obvious suspect is Stephen Gardiner, newly appointed Lord Chancellor. Certainly someone was very anxious
to get him out of Gloucester. Rather surprisingly, given their vulnerability, he did not make any arrangements for his wife
and family, and it was towards the end of the year before Anna and Rachel made their way to Frankfort. It cannot even be proved
that Hooper arranged this, although the fact that they took refuge with Vallerand Poullin suggests that he probably did. Daniel,
who cannot have been more than a year or so old, remained behind with foster parents.
In spite of the urgency with which he had been
despatched to prison, Hooper was to remain there for almost eighteen months. This was not because anyone was having second
thoughts about him, but because it took that long to re-establish what Mary regarded as a ‘proper’ ecclesiastical
authority – that is the Pope. It was not until Julius III had effectively bargained the ex-monastic lands against the
restoration of his jurisdiction that Reginald Pole was able to take up his office as Cardinal Legate, and begin formal proceedings
against heretics. Hooper did not waste this enforced and extremely uncomfortable leisure. He wrote treatises and letters,
and continued to receive visitors in spite of all difficulties and obstacles.. No doubt the conditions were sometimes harsh,
but both Hooper and John Foxe made the most of his hardships, because after all, they were both creating a martyr. In a sense
he continued his ministry, but not to his flock in Gloucester which was now in other, and unsympathetic hands. Hooper was
one of the first to be tried, and one of the first to die. In accordance with the policy which was then in place, he was burned
at Gloucester, where his steadfastness and courage outfaced even his most committed enemies. Did he really hurl himself recklessly
into the flames, as Miles Huggarde, the catholic polemicist, alleged? Hooper never did anything recklessly. His self sacrifice
was all of a piece with his unflinching Christology and austere lifestyle. Although John Rogers had already heroically shown
the way, more burnings were needed to establish the credentials of a church which had been so much tarnished by opportunism.
Hooper knew that this was his moment, and probably welcomed it. He was degraded as a priest, his Episcopal orders (of course)
not being recognised, and he died a cruel death in a slow fire. He could not know what the outcome would be, or whether posterity
would execrate him or venerate him. However, he had done his duty to God.
Without the Elizabethan Settlement, which arrived
just four years later, no one would remember John Hooper today, and without John Foxe he would be little more than a footnote.
However, as it is we can recognise him for what he was, a man of learning, conscience and absolute inflexibility of purpose.
He is not an appealing figure in the same sense as Latimer, or even Cranmer, but he is a fair representative of the hard edge
of controversial theology, and Dr. Newcombe’s study is an overdue tribute to a man whose life and death were so representative
of the times in which he lived.
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