The Judicious Hooker
WE need not dissent from Professor Sisson's conclusion that "the authority of Walton's Life of Hooker, as a record of facts, may now be taken to be gravely undermined in respect of many of its most picturesque incidents," unless to suggest that the word " may " is perhaps an under-statement. From his discovery of new material in the records of the Court of Chancery, and from other sources equally neglected by previous biographers, such as parish registers, Professor Sisson has been enabled to rewrite the entire story of Hooker's marriage and to demolish the legend of a simple scholar trapped into a misalliance with a shrew, the daughter of an impoverished lodging-house keeper and his scheming wife. That Joan Churchman " brought him neither beauty nor portion " is demonstrably untrue ; she brought with her a dowry of L700, as befitted the daughter of a wealthy London citizen shortly to be elected Master of the Merchant Taylors' Company ; for, while Walton is correct in stating that John Churchman fell upon evil days, the catastrophe did not occur until after Hooker's death. Equally, the fable, incorporated by Walton in his Appendix, about Hooker's widow (now Mrs. Nethersole) being summoned to London by Archbishop Whitgift some four months after Hooker's death to be examined by the Privy Council touching the disappearance of the MSS. of the three remaining books of the Ecclesiastical Polity, and, after a preliminary interrogation at Lambeth, being found dead in her bed next morning at her lodgings, has the ground cut away from under it by Professor Sisson's discovery that she survived her first husband by three years.
But the author's inferences are liable to outstrip his data. The confession alleged to have been made by Mrs. Nethersole to Archbishop Whitgift regarding the fate of Hooker's papers is not necessarily untrue in substance because the story of the circumstances under which it was made is demonstrably false in detail: and while Professor Sisson's account of the publication of the first instalment of the Polity is admirably lucid and throws much light upon the difficulties of Elizabethan publishers, his own suppositions with regard to the publication of the ihree remaining books are in some degree confusing and certainly inconclusive. Take also his handling of Walton's anecdote of Sandys and Cranmer visiting Hooker at his country parsonage at Drayton Beauchamp. This anecdote makes mention of Hooker being called away " to rock the cradle." Professor Sisson drily observes that none of Hooker's known children was yet born in that year. But it does not follow that Hooker was non-resident at Drayton Beauchamp, and the fact that his friend Edwin Sandys enjoyed a prebend at York while he was employed elsewhere affords but little support to such an inference. " I have little doubt," " I take it for certain," " There is every reason for believing ": these are phrases that historians are accustomed to regard with a professional suspicion which the Sanders Lecturer in Bibliography has done nothing to allay. Professor Sisson held such excellent cards in his hand that it is a pity he should have over-called it. None the less, these Lectures contain many fresh and useful contributions to our knowledge of Hooker's private life and posthumous importance, and the documentary appendices which occupy a good deal of the book add greatly to its value.
CHARLES SMYTH.
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