Richard Hooker is known today as the prophet of Anglicanism, and a founder of Anglican theological thought. The nephew of John, he was born in 1554 in Heavitree, then a village to the east of Exeter. His parents were the poor relations of the family. He was recognised as an enquiring child. With the financial support of his uncle he was able to attend Exeter Grammar School. He showed great promise at school, and his uncle sought for him the patronage of his friend John Jewel, the Bishop of Salisbury. Jewel could ensure a place at Corpus Christi College which was well known for its liberal Protestant leanings. Jewel was the first major apologist of the Church of England.

At Oxford Richard gained both bachelor's and master's degrees, and was ordained into holy orders. His progress was obviously followed and approved of in Exeter, for the Mayor and Corporation in 1582 awarded him a pension of £4 per year "for as long as it shall please this house". He had gained a reputation as an able scholar and teacher, tutoring the sons of some of the most famous men in England including the son of the Bishop of London, Edwin Sandys, a renowned Protestant, and the great nephew of Archbishop Thomas Cranmer. Word reached Queen Elizabeth that Hooker was teaching a more tolerant version of faith and worship that fitted well with her own desires to build a broad church where Protestants and Catholics could worship without the violence and persecution that had been so much a part of English life since the Reformation. Richard was often embroiled in religious disputes. His position as a fellow at Corpus Christi meant that he was expected to enter into debate, and to preach at Paul's Cross at St Paul's in London, where notable liberal clerics would expound their theology. Richard's sermons there challenged Puritanism and he was regarded as controversial.

In 1584 he was given the living at St Mary's, Drayton Beauchamp, in Buckinghamshire. But he was not to stay long there, and probably spent barely any time there. Queen Elizabeth made him Master (Rector) of the Temple Church in the City of London in the following year. At this prestigious church judges, lawyers and powerful men of the city worshipped each Sunday. His sermons could not be but influential. Controversy followed him in this role, but he had the support of the Queen and the Establishment. He began to expound from the pulpit there the ideas that were to be set down and developed in his great book Of the Laws of Ecclesiatical Polity. He seems to have begun writing the book in about 1586. In 1591, Hooker left the Temple and was given the living of St. Andrew's, Boscomb in Wiltshire, to support him while he wrote. He had probably set down the draft of the entire work by that date. He lived mainly in London but apparently did spend time in Salisbury where he was Subdean of Salisbury Cathedral, and made use of the Cathedral Library. The first four volumes of Of The Laws were published in 1593.

He probably met his wife to be Joan , daughter of John Churchman a distinguished London merchant who became Master of the Merchant Taylors Company in about 1584. He married her in about 1588. Early biographers have suggested that his marriage was a failure, his wife a scold and he had made the mistake of marryuing his landlady's daughter. The evidence does not support this. Hooker lived with his wifes parents for some 6 years, and they seem to have been a considerable support and help to him. He had four daughters and two sons with Joan, but they all died in infancy or before the age of 20 except the eldest daughter Alice.

In 1595, Hooker became Rector of the parishes of St. Mary the Virgin in Bishopsbourne and St. John the Baptist, Barham in Kent, and left London to continue his writing. He published the fifth book of Of the Laws in 1597. He died 3 November 1600 at his Rectory in Bishopsbourne and was buried in the chancel of the church being survived by his wife and four daughters. The final three volumes of his mighty 8 volume work were published posthumously.

His will includes the following provision: "Item, I give and bequeth three pounds of lawful English money towards the building and making of a newer and sufficient pulpitt in the p'sh of Bishopsbourne." The pulpit can still be seen in Bishopsbourne church, along with a statue of him.

Hooker's prose is admired for its sophistication and clarity, his immense legacy to theology the notion of a church founded in the Scripture, reason and tradition.

Sir Joseph Dalton Hooker (1817–1911)

Born in Halesworth, Suffolk, when his father was professor at Glasgow University, six year-old Joseph accompany him to the university almost every day and attend his lectures, thus forming an interest in plant distribution. Another early enthusiasm was travellers’ tales – he recalled sitting on his grandfather’s knee, looking at the pictures in Captain Cook’s Voyages.

He was educated at the Glasgow High School,and went on to study medicine at Glasgow University, graduating M.D. in 1839. But his principal interest was botany. His degree qualified him for employment in the Naval Medical Service. He joined renowned polar explorer Captain James Clark Ross's Antarctic expedition to the South Magnetic Pole after receiving a commission as Assistant-Surgeon on HMS Erebus, for William's income would not allow Joseph to travel as a self-financed, gentlemanly companion to the captain as Charles Darwin had done on the Beagle. Instead as a lowly assistant surgeon he was subject to naval discipline and had many shipboard duties to perform.

Between 1839 and 1843, the Erebus, visited many places including Madeira, the Cape of South Africa and the Antarctic.They wintered in New Zealand and Van Diemen's Land (Tasmania). The trips ashore allowed him to collect plants in relatively unknown regions. When the Erebus returned to England in 1843 Hooker needed to find paid botanical employment. Although his father had been made the first Director of Kew, the appointment had reduced his income and he was still unable to give his son much financial support. Fortunately his influence was sufficient to secure an Admiralty grant of £1000 to cover the cost of The Botany of the Antarctic Voyage's plates, and Joseph received his assistant surgeon's pay while he worked on it. The book eventually formed six large volumes: two each for the Flora Antarctica, 1844–7; the Flora Novae-Zelandiae, 1851–3; and the Flora Tasmaniae, 1853–9. Nonetheless Hooker's Antarctic publications never made any money, and much of his time in the 1840s was taken up with searching for paid employment.

Shortly after his return from the Antarctic, Hooker received a letter from Charles Darwin congratulating him on his achievements, and asking whether Hooker would be interested in classifying the plants Darwin had gathered in the Galápagos. These first letters marked the beginning of a lifelong correspondence, through which the two became friends and collaborators, and debated their many scientific interests. Darwin shared with Hooker his theory of evolutionary biology many years before On The Origin of the Species was published. Although the two would argue over questions such as plant distribution, Darwin trusted and respected Hooker and valued his opinions.

In 1848 Joseph obtained a government grant for a trip through northern India and Nepal. He surveyed the flora there and sent back specimens to Kew, managing to collect about 7000 species on that trip. Among them were some twenty-five previously unknown species of rhododendron, some of which can be seen in Kew's Rhododendron Dell. In Sikkim he and his colleague succeeded in annoying the elderly raja by crossing the country's borders into Tibet despite an injunction not to do so. As a result they were arrested and imprisoned in November 1849. The British government secured their release within weeks by threatening to invade Sikkim. His book The Rhododendrons of Sikkim-Himalaya was followed by two volumes of Himalayan Journals, and The Flora of British India, which were dedicated to Darwin.

n 15 July 1851 Hooker married Frances Harriet (1825–1874), eldest daughter of John Stevens Henslow, the Cambridge professor of botany who had taught Darwin. Joseph and Frances had four sons and two surviving daughters, but Hooker's favourite daughter, Minnie, died in 1863 when she was just six years old. Frances died in 1874 and in 1876 Joseph married Hyacinth Jardine Symonds(1842–1921), , with whom he had two more sons.

The 1850s also saw the appearance of several of Hooker's most important publications. These were largely taxonomic, concerned with classifying and naming new species and with reclassifying previously known ones. The herbarium and gardens at Kew had grown substantially since his father had been put in charge. When the government finally agreed that the director could not cope alone their decision gave Joseph the secure, paid employment he sought: he was appointed assistant director on 5 June 1855. In 1865 Hooker's father died and Joseph succeeded him as director of Kew. Hooker was by this time a highly regarded botanist with a worldwide reputation, though he might not have secured the position without his father's constant assistance. His contributions to the Gardens included the T-Range glasshouses, the first Jodrell Laboratory and the Order Beds, where the plants are arranged according to the Bentham-Hooker classification. Joseph remained director of Kew until his retirement in 1885.

The public function of Kew became a source of controversy in various ways under Joseph. He believed that the garden's primary objectives were scientific and utilitarian, not recreational, and he complained about the need to create elaborate floral displays for those he regarded as mere pleasure or recreation seekers. The role of science was paramount in his life. In 1873 he was elected president of the Royal Society, where he instituted various reforms designed to broaden public participation in the society, including the ladies' soirées. When he retired from the presidency in 1878 Hooker was particularly proud of the £10,000 he had helped raise which allowed the restrictively high membership fees to be reduced.

The full list of his publications was consdiderable. Some of the more important later ones include: Outlines of the distribution of Arctic plants (1862); the Student's Flora of the British Isles (1870); Genera plantarum (with George Bentham, 1860–83); the Flora of British India (1855–97). As well as writing he continued to travel, and visited Syria, Morocco and the Rocky Mountains of Colorado and Utah. He was highly regarded in his lifetime and received numerous honorary degrees including ones from Oxford and Cambridge. He was created CB in 1869; KCSI in 1877; GCSI in 1897; and received the OM in 1907. The Royal Society gave him their royal medal in 1854, the Copley in 1887, and the Darwin in 1892. He received numerous prizes and awards from both British and foreign scientific societies.

Hooker died in his sleep at midnight at his home, in Sunningdale, on 10 December 1911 after a short and apparently minor illness. He was buried, as he wished to be, alongside his father in the churchyard of St Anne's on Kew Green on 17 December.

Joseph being presented with plants in Sikkim