John Hooper - Vestments Controversy

Vestments Controversy

Hooper became Warwick's chaplain and, after a course of Lenten sermons before the king, he was offered the bishopric of Gloucester. This led to a prolonged controversy (see vestments controversy); in his sermons before the king and elsewhere Hooper had denounced the "Aaronic vestments" and the oath by the saints, prescribed in the new Ordinal; and he refused to be consecrated according to its rites. Thomas Cranmer, Nicholas Ridley, Martin Bucer and others urged him to submit. Confinement to his house by order of the Council proved equally ineffectual; and it was not until he had spent some weeks in the Fleet prison that the "father of nonconformity" consented to conform, and Hooper submitted to consecration with the legal ceremonies (8 March 1551).

Once installed as bishop, Hooper set about his episcopal duties with enthusiasm. His visitation of his diocese (printed in English Hist. Rev. Jan. 1904, pp. 98–121) revealed a condition of almost incredible ignorance among his clergy. Fewer than half could say the Ten Commandments; some could not even repeat the Lord's Prayer in English. Hooper did his best; but in less than a year the bishopric of Gloucester was reduced to an archdeaconry and added to Worcester, of which Hooper was made bishop in succession to Nicholas Heath. He was opposed to Northumberland's plot for the exclusion of Mary Tudor from the throne, but this did not save him from speedy imprisonment when she became queen.

He was said to have been given sanctuary at Sutton Court, before being sent to the Fleet Prison on 1 September on a doubtful charge of debt. The real cause was his steadiness to a religion, which was still by law established. Edward VI's legislation was repealed in the following month, and in March 1554 Hooper was deprived of his bishopric as a married man. There was still no statute, by which he could be condemned to the stake, but he was kept in prison. The revival of the heresy acts in December 1554, was swiftly followed by execution. On 29 January 1555, Hooper, John Rogers, Rowland Taylor and others were condemned by Gardiner and degraded by Bonner. Hooper was sent down to suffer at Gloucester, where he was burnt on 9 February, meeting his fate with steadfast courage and unshaken conviction.

Hooper was the first of the bishops to suffer, because he represented the extreme reforming party in England. While he expressed dissatisfaction with some of Calvin's earlier writings, he approved of the Consensus Tigurinus negotiated in 1549 between the Zwinglians and Calvinists of Switzerland. It was this form of religion that he laboured to spread in England, against the wishes of Cranmer, Ridley, Bucer, Pietro Martire and other more conservative theologians. He would have reduced episcopacy to narrow limits; his views had considerable influence on the Puritans of Elizabeth's reign, when many editions of Hooper's works were published. He was notable for his belief that a bishop should observe a vow of poverty and resigned the profits of the See of Gloucester to the Crown. He was also notable for his sense of social justice, and spoke eloquently of the distress caused by the economic crisis of the early 1550s. He wrote to William Cecil pleading for the Council to take action on the price of essential goods, for "all things here be so dear that the most part of the people lack ... their little livings and poor cottages decay daily."