The Evening Lecturer at the Temple was Walter Travers—an eminent man, of insinuating manners and of an irreproachable life. He had been nursed in the presbytery of Geneva, and was the correspondent of Beza in the French, and of Knox in the Scottish Church; above all, Travers was the firm associate of Cartwright, and the consulted oracle of the English dissenters. He ruled over an active party of the younger members, and, by insensible innovations, appears to have there established the new ecclesiastical commonwealth, which at first consisted of the most trivial innovations in ceremonies and the most idle distinctions. Travers was looking confidently to the mastership, when the appointment of Hooker crossed his ambitious hopes.
With the disciples of parity, a free election, and not a royal appointment, was a first state principle. To preserve the formality, since he could not yet possess the reality, Travers suggested to the new master of the Temple that he should not make his appearance till Travers had announced his name to the body of the members, and then he would be admitted by their consent. To this point in “the new order of things,” the sage Hooker returned a reasonable refusal. “If such custom were here established, I would not disturb the order; but here, where it never was, I might not of my own head take upon me to begin it.” The formality required was, in fact, a masked principle, which cast a doubt on his right and on the authority which had granted it. “You conspire against me,” exclaimed the nonconformist, “affecting superiority over me;” and condensing all the bitterness of his mingled religion and politics, he reproached Hooker that “he had entered on his charge by virtue only of an human creature, and not by the election of the people.” With Travers the people were more than “human creatures;” the voice of the people was a revelation of Heaven; this sage probably having first counted his votes. These were the inconveniences of a transition to a new political system; the parties did not care to understand one another. These two good men, for such they were, now brought into collision, bore a mutual respect, connected too by blood and friendly intercourse. But in a religious temper or times, while men mix their own notions with the inscrutable decrees of Heaven, who shall escape from the torture of insolvable polemics? Abstruse points of scholastic theology opened the rival conflict. A cry of unsound doctrine was heard. “What are your grounds?” exclaimed Travers. “The words of St. Paul,” replied Hooker. “But what author do you follow in expounding St. Paul?” Hooker laid a great stress on reason on all matters which allowed of the full exercise of human reason. Two opposite doctrines now came from the same pulpit! The morning and the evening did not seem the same day. The son of Calvin thundered his shuddering dogmas; the child of Canterbury was meek and merciful. If one demolished an unsound doctrine, it was preached up again by the other. The victor was always to be vanquished, the vanquisher was always to be victor. The inner and the outer Temple appeared to be a mob of polemics.
Travers was silenced by “authority.” He boldly appealed to her majesty and the privy council, where he had many friends. His petition argued every point of divinity, while he claimed the freedom of his ministry. But there stood Elizabeth’s “black husband,” as the virgin queen deigned in her coquetry to call the archbishop. The party of Travers circulated his petition, which was cried up as unanswerable; it was carried in “many bosoms:” Hooker was compelled to reply; and the churchmen extolled “an answer answerless:” the buds of the great work appear among these sterile leaves of controversy.[2]
The absence of Travers from the Temple seemed to be more influential than even his presence. He had plenteously sown the seeds of nonconformity, and the soil was rich. Hooker had foreseen the far-remote event; “Nothing can come of contention but the mutual waste of the parties contending, till a common enemy dance in the ashes of them both.” It must be confessed that Hooker had a philosophical genius.
It was amid the disorders around him that the master of the Temple meditated to build up the great argument of polity, drawn from the nature of all laws, human and divine. The sour neglect and systematic opposition of the rising party of the dissenters had outwearied his musings. Clinging to the great tome which was expanding beneath his hand, the studious man entreated to be removed to some quieter place. A letter to the primate on this occasion reveals, in the sweetness of his words, his innate simplicity. He tells that when he had lost the freedom of his cell at college, yet he found some degree of it in his quiet country parsonage: but now he was weary of the noise and opposition of the place, and God and nature did not intend him for contention, but for study and quietness. He had satisfied himself in his studies, and now had begun a treatise in which he intended the satisfaction of others: he had spent many thoughtful hours, and he hoped not in vain; but he was not able to finish what he had begun, unless removed to some quiet country parsonage, where he might see God’s blessings spring out of our mother earth, and “eat his own bread in peace and privacy.”
The humble wish was obtained, and the great work was prosecuted.
In 1594, four books of the “Ecclesiastical Polity” were published, and three years afterwards the fifth. These are for ever sanctioned by the last revisions of the author. The intensity of study wore out a frame which had always been infirm; and his premature death left his manuscripts roughly sketched, without the providence of a guardian.
These unconcocted manuscripts remained in the sole custody of the widow. Strange rumours were soon afloat, and transcripts from Hooker’s papers got abroad, attesting that in the termination of the “Ecclesiastical Polity,” the writer had absolutely sided with the nonconformists. The great work, however, was appreciated of such national importance, that it was deemed expedient to bring it to the cognizance of the privy council, and the widow was summoned to give an account of the state of these unfinished manuscripts. Consonantly with her character, which we have had occasion to observe, in the short interval of four months which had passed since the death of Hooker, this widow had become a wife. She had at first refused to give any account of the manuscripts; but now, in a conference with the archbishop, she confessed that she had allowed certain puritanic ministers “to go into Hooker’s study and to look over his writings; and further, that they burned and tore many, assuring her that these were writings not fit to be seen.” There never was an examination by the privy council, for the day after her confession this late widow of Hooker was found dead in her bed. A mysterious coincidence! The suspected husband was declared innocent, so runs the tale told by honest Izaac Walton.
These manuscripts were now delivered up to the archbishop, who placed them in the hands of the learned Dr. Spenser to put into order; he was an intimate friend of Hooker, and long conversant with his arguments. However, as this scholar was deeply occupied in the translation of the Bible, he entrusted the papers to a student at Oxford, Henry Jackson, a votary of the departed genius.