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The following Epitaph was long since presented to the world, in memory of Mr. HOOKER, by Sir WILLIAM COWPER, who also built him a fair Monument in Borne Church, and acknowledges him to have been his spiritual father.

THOUGH nothing can be spoke worthy his fame,
Or the remembrance of that precious name,
Judicious HOOKER; though this cost be spent
On him, that hath a lasting monument
In his own books; yet ought we to express,
If not his worth, yet our respectfulness.
Church-ceremonies he maintain'd; then why
Without all ceremony should he die?
Was it because his life and death should be
Both equal patterns of humility?

Or that, perhaps, this only glorious one
Was above all, to ask, why had he none?
Yet he, that lay so long obscurely low,
Doth now preferr'd to greater honours go.
Ambitious men, learn hence to be more wise,
Humility is the true way to rise:

And God in me this lesson did inspire,

To bid this humble man, "Friend, sit up higher."

AN

APPENDIX

TO THE

LIFE OF MR. RICHARD HOOKER.

AND now having, by a long and laborious search, satisfied myself, and I hope my reader, by imparting to him the true relation of Mr. Hooker's life; I am desirous also to acquaint him with some observations that relate to it, and which could not properly fall to be spoken till after his death, of which my reader may expect a brief and true account in the following Appendix.

And first, it is not to be doubted but that he died in the forty-seventh, if not in the forty-sixth year of his age; which I mention because many have believed him to be more. aged: but I have so examined it, as to be confident I mistake not; and for the year of his death, Mr. Camden, who in his Annals of Queen Elizabeth, 1599, mentions him with a high commendation of his life and learning, declares him to die in the year 1599; and yet, in that inscription of his monument, set up at the charge of Sir William Cowper, in Borne Church, where Mr. Hooker was buried, his death is there said to be in

anno 1603; but doubtless both are mistaken; for I have it attested under the hand of William Somner, the Archbishop's Registrar for the province of Canterbury, that Richard Hooker's will bears date October 26, in anno 1600, and that it was proved the third of December following1.

And that at his death he left four daughters, Alice, Cicely, Jane, and Margaret; that he gave to each of them an hundred pounds; that he left Joan, his wife, his sole executrix; and that, by his inventory, his estate (a great part of it being in books) came to 1,0927. 9s. 2d. which was much more than he thought himself worth; and which was not got by his care, much less by the good housewifery of his wife, but saved by his trusty servant, Thomas Lane, that was wiser than his master in getting money for him, and more frugal than his mistress in keeping of it. Of which will of Mr. Hooker's I shall say no more, but that his dear friend Thomas, the father of George Cranmer, (of whom I have spoken, and shall have occasion to say more), was one of the witnesses to it.

One of his eldest daughters was married to one Chalinor, sometime a schoolmaster in Chichester, and are both dead long since. Margaret, his youngest daughter, was married unto Ezekiel Clarke, Bachelor in Divinity, and Rector of St. Nicholas in Harbledown, near Canterbury, who died about sixteen years past, and had a son Ezekiel, now living,

1 And the reader may take notice, that since I first writ this Appendix to the Life of Mr. Hooker, Mr. Fulman, of Corpus Christi College, hath showed me a good authority for the very day and hour of Mr. Hooker's death in one of his books of Polity, which had been Archbishop Laud's. In which book, beside many considerable marginal notes of some passages of his time, under the Bishop's own hand, there is also written in the title-page of that book (which now is Mr. Fulman's) this attestation :

"Richardus Hooker vir summis doctrinæ dotibus ornatus, de Ecclesia præcipue Anglicana optime meritus, obiit Novemb. 2. circiter horam secundam postmeridianam, Anno 1600."

and in sacred orders, being at this time Rector of Waldron in Sussex. She left also a daughter, with both whom I have spoken not many months past, and find her to be a widow in a condition that wants not; but very far from abounding. And these two attested unto me, that Richard Hooker, their grandfather, had a sister, by name Elizabeth Harvey, that lived to the age of 121 years, and died in the month of September, 1663.

For his other two daughters I can learn little certainty, but have heard they both died before they were marriageable. And for his wife, she was so unlike Jephtha's daughter, that she staid not a comely time to bewail her widowhood; nor lived long enough to repent her second marriage; for which, doubtless, she would have found cause, if there had been but four months betwixt Mr. Hooker's and her death. But she is dead, and let her other infirmities be buried with her.

Thus much briefly for his age, the year of his death, his estate, his wife, and his children. I am next to speak of his books; concerning which I shall have a necessity of being longer, or shall neither do right to myself or my reader, which is chiefly intended in this Appendix.

I have declared in his Life, that he proposed eight books, and that his first four were printed anno 1594, and his fifth book first printed, and alone, anno 1597; and that he lived to finish the remaining three of the proposed eight: but whether we have the last three as finished by himself, is a just and material question; concerning which I do declare, that I have been told almost forty years past, by one that very well knew Mr. Hooker and the affairs of his family, that about a month after the death of Mr. Hooker, Bishop Whitgift, then Archbishop of Canterbury, sent one of his Chaplains to inquire of Mrs. Hooker for the three remaining books of

Polity, writ by her husband: of which she would not, or could not, give any account: and that about three months after that time the Bishop procured her to be sent for to London, and then by his procurement she was to be examined by some of her Majesty's Council, concerning the disposal of those books: but by way of preparation for the next day's examination, the Bishop invited her to Lambeth, and after some friendly questions, she confessed to him, "that one Mr. Clarke, and another Minister that dwelt near Canterbury, came to her, and desired that they might go into her husband's study, and look upon some of his writings: and that there they two burnt and tore many of them, assuring her, that they were writings not fit to be seen; and that she knew nothing more concerning them." Her lodging was then in King-street in Westminster, where she was found next morning dead in her bed, and her new husband suspected and questioned for it; but he was declared innocent of her death.

And I declare also, that Dr. John Spencer, (mentioned in the Life of Mr. Hooker,) who was of Mr. Hooker's college, and of his time there, and betwixt whom there was so friendly a friendship, that they continually advised together in all their studies, and particularly in what concerned these books of Polity

this Dr. Spencer, the three perfect books being lost, had delivered into his hands (I think by Bishop Whitgift) the imperfect books, or first rough draughts of them, to be made as perfect as they might be by him, who both knew Mr. Hooker's hand-writing, and was best acquainted with his intentions. And a fair testimony of this may appear by an epistle first and usually printed before Mr. Hooker's five books, (but omitted, I know not why, in the last impression of the eight printed together in anno 1662, in which the publishers seem to impose the three doubtful books to be the undoubted