Family of John HOOKER and Anastasia BRIDGEMAN
| Name: |
John HOOKER1 |
| Sex: |
Male |
| Alt. Name: |
John HOKER |
| Alt. Name: |
John VOWELL |
| Father: |
Robert Vowell HOOKER (c. 1473-1538) |
| Mother: |
Agnes DOBELL (c. 1500- ) |
| Birth |
c.1527 |
Exeter, Devon, England |
| Education |
Dr. Moreman's School, |
Menheniot, Cornwall |
| Education |
Exeter College, |
Oxford University, Oxford |
| Education |
Studied Law |
Cologne, Germany |
| Residence |
Between 1542 and 1556 |
with Peter Martyr Vermigli, Strasbourg, Alsace |
| Occupation |
Between 1555 and 1601 (age 35-82) |
Chamberlain of Exeter. Appointed 21 September 1555. |
|
|
Tudor Exeter, a prosperous city with a population rising to perhaps eight or nine thousand, was the economic and political centre of the south-west. The grant of county status in 1537 meant that it had its own sheriff and, by the Elizabethan period, its own lord lieutenant. The government of the city was in the hands of the chamber, a self-perpetuating body of 24 councilmen, recruited for the most part from the wealthiest merchant families. The chamber provided the mayor and the sheriff each year, while eight of their number, together with the recorder, enjoyed the rank of alderman. There were also four bailiffs, the senior of whom was the receiver of revenues.
|
| Occupation |
1568 |
MP for Athenry, Ireland |
| Occupation |
1571 |
MP for Exeter |
| Occupation |
1586 |
MP for Exeter |
| |
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Election writs were sent to the sheriff of the city, who conducted elections in the guildhall. Candidates had to be resident freemen. The electors, in theory, were the freeholders and they are so described in the act book of the chamber in 1588. On other occasions, however, they are called simply the commons or (as on the surviving returns) the citizens of Exeter. It is clear that they were expected to approve the two names presented to them by the chamber. For example in 1588 the chamber, ‘having thought and considered what persons should be most fit to be proposed to the freeholders at the next county day’, suggested Edward Drew and John Peryam as ‘the fittest persons’ to be elected, ‘if the said freeholders ... shall so like or think it good’. But by the early Stuart period, if not earlier, the freeholders were objecting to the formal nature of their role in the procedure. As early as 1593, when the chamber put forward two names as usual, it was agreed that the electors might nominate others and choose ‘whom they like better.
The Exeter MPs in this period were either leading merchants or legal advisers to the city.John Hooker alias Vowell, chamberlain for many years, kept a journal of the 1571 Parliament.
Exeter usually paid wages to its Members. In 1558 the rate was 3s.4d. a day, rising to 4 s. in
1571 and to 5s. by 1589, but in 1597 it was reduced to 4s. ‘after the old rule’. Hooker carefully worked out his own payment in 1571 including eight days’ travelling expenses. |
| Occupation |
by 1583 |
Coroner, Exeter |
| Occupation |
1564 |
Bailiff Exilond [ Exe Island], Exeter |
| Occupation |
1566 |
Judge of Admiralty Court, Devon |
| Occupation |
|
English historian, writer, solicitor, antiquary, and civic administrator |
| Death |
1601 (age 81-82) |
|
| Burial |
1601 |
Exeter, Devon, England |
|
Possibly in the Cathedral |
Wife: Anastasia BRIDGEMAN
| Name: |
Tobias HOOKER1 |
| Sex: |
Male |
| Birth |
1559 |
|
| Name: |
Magdelyn HOOKER1 |
| Sex: |
Female |
| Birth |
1563 |
|
| Name: |
Zechariah HOOKER1 |
| Sex: |
Male |
| Spouse: |
Grace BATTISHILL (c. 1580-1668) |
| Birth |
c. 1572 |
|
| Education |
M.A.1587, B.D. 1594. |
|
| Baptism |
6 June 1562 |
St Mary Major, Exeter |
| Occupation |
Rector |
St. Michael's, Caerhays, Cornwall. |
| Death |
1643 (age 70-71) |
Caerhays, Cornwall |
| Burial |
1643 |
St Michael Caerhays, Cornwall. |
| Probate |
28 Jan 1643 |
Administration granted to Grace, his widow. Estate £194. 10s. |
| Name: |
George HOOKER1 |
| Sex: |
Male |
| Birth |
c. 15742 |
|
| Name: |
Thomas HOOKER1 |
| Sex: |
Male |
| Birth |
c. 15752 |
|
| Name: |
Grace HOOKER1 |
| Sex: |
Female |
| Birth |
c. 15762 |
|
| Name: |
Dorothy HOOKER1 |
| Sex: |
Female |
| Birth |
c. 15782 |
|
| Name: |
Peter HOOKER1 |
| Sex: |
Male |
| Birth |
c. 15792 |
|
| Name: |
John HOOKER1 |
| Sex: |
Male |
| Birth |
c. 15802 |
|
| Death |
Nov 1601 |
Exeter |
| Buried |
Nov 1601 |
St Mary Major, Exeter. |
| Name: |
Andrew HOOKER1 |
| Sex: |
Male |
| Birth |
c. 15822 |
|
| Name: |
Anne HOOKER1 |
| Sex: |
Female |
| Birth |
c. 15832 |
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Note on Husband: John HOOKER 1519-1601 (1)
This John was the historian.
His will has not been found. The will for a John Hooker who died in November
1601 is that of his son, though it is often wrongly attributed to this John
Hooker.
Note on Husband: John HOOKER 1519-1601 (2)
Hooker’s father died from plague in 1537, leaving the boy well provided for. After a period at Oxford he went abroad, studied law at Cologne and lived for some time in the house of Peter Martyr at Strasbourg, attending the great theologian’s divinity lectures. Following a short visit to England, he planned a tour of France, Spain and Italy, but owing to the outbreak of war was ‘driven to shift himself homewards again’. He was in Exeter during the years 1543-4, and reported that when the Spanish ambassador, the Marquess of Nazarra, visited the city, he ‘would very fain have had [Hooker] with him, and did promise to keep and entertain him at his return home in the university of Salamanca’. But Hooker had adequate private means to support him while he studied astronomy and English history and began his antiquarian works. He was friendly with Sir Peter Carew and dedicated works to such west-country magnates as the 2nd Earl of Bedford and Sir Walter Ralegh. For Carew, he developed the deep admiration reflected in his Life of Sir Peter Carew.
Hooker served his city for almost the whole of Elizabeth’s reign. He began to collect the records in the mayoral year 1558-9, and continued these ‘annals’ until 1590. One of the early Elizabethan entries notes that
in 1558 [1559 NS] upon the 30 [sic] of Jan. began a Parliament at Westminster, and many were the suitors to be burgesses of the city for the same.
About 1561 he was put in charge of the rebuilding of the city high school.
In 1568 he went over to Ireland on legal business connected with Sir Peter Carew’s lands. Writing in May to Carew, he asked to be commended to
Mr. Mayor and his brethren, with an excuse for my absence, and that I may be borne withal until I have exploited and brought to effect your matter and cause now taken in hand.
While in Ireland he was returned as Member of Parliament there for Athenry, and a speech of his in support of the royal prerogative caused the sitting to break up in confusion: he had to be escorted to Carew’s house, for fear of violence. Among his writings is a journal of this Irish Parliament. He had apparently some success in dealing with his patron’s affairs, but on another visit to Ireland in 1572 he wrote to Carew:
If you do mind to save that you have purchased and to keep that you have gotten, you must determine to come over yourself.
His connexion with Ireland ended at Carew’s death in 1575, though Carew’s will refers to a deed of 1574 appointing him a feoffee for the Irish property.
Returned to the English House of Commons in 1571, ke kept a journal of the proceedings which was discovered in the nineteenth century ‘fast falling into decay, stowed away under the rafters of the roof of the Exeter Guildhall’ and published in the Transactions of the Devonshire Association. The Victorian editor had no great opinion of ‘the dry details recorded by the pen of Hoker, who only now and then departs from a mere catalogue of bills read and passed’. Hooker recorded his own appointment to the committee dealing with the bill for dissolving the Bristol merchants guild (12 Apr.). He disliked merchants,
"who attain to great wealth and riches, which for the most part they do employ in purchasing of lands, and by little and little they do creep and seek to be gentlemen."
But he naturally favoured a new charter for the Merchant Adventurers of his own city, as being good for obedience, concord and unity.
He drew up an account of his parliamentary expenses at 4s. a day, allowing eight days for travelling, including Sundays and Easter and adding a day to the session for good measure. He claimed a total of £13 8s.
An ‘observer of moderate attention and ordinary intelligence’, Hooker was at this time collecting tracts on parliamentary procedure. Returned to another Parliament in 1586, Hooker had apparently lost interest. At any rate nothing is known to have been written by him on its proceedings, nor do the other surviving journals indicate that he contributed to its business.
After the death of his patron Carew in 1575, information about Hooker is concerned mainly with his literary activities. His ‘Synopsis Chorographical of Devonshire’, written about 1599, circulated freely in manuscript, and Westcote and later writers borrowed, often verbatim, from it. Richard Carew used it in his Survey of Cornwall, describing the author as ‘the commendable, painful antiquary and my kind friend’. Hooker’s writings on Exeter, the Description, the Catalogue of the Bishops, and a number of other books and pamphlets give a vivid and detailed picture of the city and its government. His accounts of contemporary affairs are often coloured by his puritan outlook:
"Be the preachers never so godly, and earnest to call, let all the great bells of St. Peter’s ring out never so loud, there will not be half so many gained into the church as one with a pipe and whistle shall gain into the streets to see vain and foolish spectacles. For let there be a bearbaiting, a bullbaiting, an interlude or any such vanity, every man is in haste to run headlong into it, and the time never too long to have their fill thereof.
"
Few details of his domestic life survive. Writing to the Exeter corporation just before his death, he described himself as ‘unwieldy and imperfect ... my sight waxeth dim, my hearing very thick, my speech imperfect and my memory very feeble’. He died between 26 Jan. and 15 Sept. 1601
Sources
| 1 | www.heardfamilyhistory.org.uk. This GEDCOM is predominantly the work of Nick Heard, but it incorporates the collaborated work of many other family historians. You are welcome to use the information herein but please acknowledge the source. Every effort has been made to ensure the data is accurate, but any use you make of it is entirely at your own risk. (c) Nick Heard 2009
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