Richard Hooker

Richard Hooker (c. 1553/1554–1600) was an English theologian and Church of England clergyman whose monumental Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity established the intellectual foundations of Anglican ecclesiology and political theology. Educated at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, he rose to become Master of the Temple in London before retreating to parish ministry to complete his writing. His argument that Christian authority draws on Scripture, tradition, and reason — later popularized (not by Hooker himself) as the "three-legged stool" — gave Anglicanism its defining epistemological character and influenced later political philosophers including John Locke, who cites Hooker by name thirteen times in the Second Treatise of Government. Hooker wrote in measured, elegant prose against both Roman Catholic and Puritan critics, defending the Elizabethan Settlement as consonant with patristic Christianity and natural law. He is venerated as a foundational theologian in the Anglican Communion and listed among the select company of theologians in the Church of England's calendar of saints.