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 6^th 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 29^th August and imprisoned in the Fleet on the 1^st 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.