HOOPER, George (1640-1727)

HOOPER, George (1640–1727)

cons. 31 Oct. 1703 bp. of ST ASAPH; transl. 14 Mar. 1704 bp. of BATH AND WELLS

First sat 10 Nov. 1703; last sat 1 July 1717

b. 18 Nov. 1640, s. of George Hooper gent. and Joan, da. of Edmund Giles gent. of White Ladies Aston, Worcs. educ. St Paul’s; Westminster; Christ Church, Oxf. matric. 1657, BA 1661, MA 1663, BD 1673, DD 1677; ord. deacon 1666, priest 1668. m. 2 May 1679, Abigail (1655-1726), da. of Richard Guilford, Lambeth, brewer,1 2s. (d.v.p.), 6da. (5 d.v.p.).2 d. 6 Sept. 1727; will 2 Apr. 1722, pr. 1 Dec. 1727.3

Almoner to Princess Mary, The Hague 1678-9; chap. to Charles II 1681, to James II bef. 1687, to William III and Mary II 1691.

Rect. Havant, Hants 1671, E. Woodhay, Hants 1672-91, St Mary, Lambeth 1675-1703; chap. to George Morley, bp. Winchester, 1672-3, to Gilbert Sheldon, abp. Canterbury 1673; precentor Exeter Cathedral 1677-1704; dean, Canterbury 1691-1703; prolocutor convoc. 1701-2.

Commr. to visit London Hospitals 1691,4 charitable funds for Vaudois Protestants 1699;5 mbr. SPG 1701.6

Also associated with: Duke Street, Westminster, 1673-1703; Kensington, London c.1715, and Berkeley, Glos. bef. 1727.

Likenesses: oil on canvas by T. Hill, Bishop’s Palace, Wells; oil on canvas by T. Hill, 1723, Christ Church, Oxf.; mezzotint by G. White after T. Hill, 1728, NPG D35964.

Ecclesiastical apprenticeship

Born in Worcestershire into a minor gentry family, George Hooper benefited from early recognition and support from his head master at Westminster, Richard Busby, and his tutor at Oxford, Edward Pococke.7 After several years in Oxford as one of the leading young students of Christ Church, in 1672 he migrated to the diocese of Winchester as chaplain to Bishop George Morley. Hooper’s early career shadowed that of his lifelong friend Thomas Ken, the future bishop of Bath and Wells. Despite his ‘unpromising … exterior’ (he became bald at such an early age that Archbishop Sheldon advised him to wear a wig contrary to clerical tradition), he was identified as a candidate for leading office in Church and state.8 When in 1672 he was engaged to be married, Morley suggested to Sheldon that Hooper be appointed chaplain to secretary of state Henry Coventry‡.9 Neither marriage nor chaplaincy appointment took place, but the request may have led to Hooper’s move to Sheldon’s household at Lambeth in 1673.10 Service to both Morley and Sheldon probably drew Hooper to the attention of the court, and following Sheldon’s death he was appointed chaplain and almoner to Mary, princess of Orange at The Hague. Hooper championed high church ceremony in the religious practice of the princess which brought him into direct conflict with the Calvinist inclinations of William of Orange. According to his daughter, Abigail Prowse, during the Popish Plot agitation Hooper refused to share William’s expression of admiration for the proposed toleration of Dissenters. William told him that should William have any say in English affairs, Hooper would never become a bishop. Thomas Ken had replaced him as Mary’s chaplain by 14 Dec. 1679.11

Back in England, Hooper gained a reputation as ‘one of the first rank of pulpit men in the nation’, as John Evelyn wrote after hearing his sermon before the king on 5 Nov. 1681 on the usurpations of the Church of Rome.12 In 1682, reportedly at the request of Henry Compton, bishop of London, Hooper wrote a defence of Church ceremonial, a strict liturgy and the use of vestments while rejecting the doctrine of Roman Catholicism; the intention seems to have been to defend Anglican orthodoxy while reaching out to Dissenters.13 In July 1683 he expressed exasperation with ‘the silly people’ of Newbury, whose obsession with new taxes to the exclusion of threats to Church and state left them vulnerable to manipulation by Whigs who wanted to underplay the Rye House Plot.14 In autumn 1683 his diligent service to Exeter Cathedral impressed his bishop, Thomas Lamplugh, later archbishop of York.15 Lamplugh entrusted to Hooper the preservation of Church privileges during the town’s charter renewal the following year.16 During this period rivalries emerged between Hooper and Jonathan Trelawny, the future bishop of Exeter, whose family wielded political influence in the West Country. John Fell, bishop of Oxford, suggested that the solution to the problem would be for Hooper to relinquish his concerns in the region in favour of the Trelawny interest; in return Trelawny could use his own influence to procure Hooper a position in Oxford.17 Hooper, however, clung doggedly to his Exeter preferments, though material self-interest could be justified on the grounds of his growing family. He displayed limited flexibility in his pastoral judgments. He attended James Scott, duke of Monmouth, before and at his execution.18 Like his colleagues Thomas Ken, Francis Turner, of Ely, and Thomas Tenison, the future archbishop of Canterbury, he denied Monmouth the sacrament, though in his case apparently less for failing to acknowledge that Monmouth’s invasion was an act of rebellion than for his insistence that his adultery with Lady Henrietta Wentworth was a marriage in the sight of God.19 Gilbert Burnet, the future bishop of Salisbury listed Hooper among the participants in the pamphlet war against Catholicism in James’s reign, though the only title publicly attributed to him between James’s accession and the Revolution was a 1685 edition of The Church of England free from the Imputation of Popery.20 He was one of two men recommended to James II in 1687 for the deanery of Christ Church by William Sancroft, archbishop of Canterbury.21 He played host to Ken before and during the trial of the seven bishops in June 1688.22

After the Revolution, despite pressure from, amongst others, the patristic theologian Henry Dodwell, Hooper took the oaths to the new regime.23 Francis Turner was extremely concerned that he might also persuade his friend Thomas Ken to do so.24 Despite the enduring hostility of William III, Hooper prospered for his acquiescence. He remained a chaplain in ordinary and was, in 1691, advanced to dean of Canterbury following the promotion of the incumbent, John Sharp, to York. Prowse alleged that Mary II took advantage of William’s absence overseas to appoint Hooper, and that the promotion would never have taken place had William been in England to express his opposition. A measure of reconciliation with William III was supposedly effected after Mary’s death through the recommendation of Hooper’s former Christ Church pupil Thomas Pelham, the future Baron Pelham.25

Hooper was hostile from the outset to Archbishop Tenison. In 1699 Tenison deprived Thomas Watson, bishop of St Davids; Hooper was later reported to have composed a treatise to prove that archbishops had never before exercised such authority.26 Prowse recounted that it was Hooper’s reputation as a high church clergyman which encouraged Robert Harley, later earl of Oxford, to establish a friendship with him, made visible by their confidential discussions on a boat in the middle of the Thames between Harley’s lodgings at York Buildings and Hooper’s Lambeth rectory.27 By February 1701 Harley enjoyed a working understanding with Laurence Hyde, earl of Rochester, who approved Hooper’s nomination as prolocutor of the lower house of Convocation that month. Hooper’s election, understood as a victory for the high church party, was initially welcomed by Francis Atterbury, the future bishop of Rochester, self-appointed leader of the radical high churchmen, but Hooper was less strident in defence of Convocation’s constitutional independence from Parliament and of religious orthodoxy than Atterbury wished and his moderation was overtaken by radical demands; he did not stand again for election as prolocutor at the start of the 1702 session.28 In 1702 Rochester recommended Hooper as archbishop of Armagh, but the Irish primacy was vetoed as too great a career leap by Sidney Godolphin, Baron (later earl of) Godolphin. A newsletter’s mention of Hooper as a possible replacement for Thomas Sprat, bishop of Rochester, should he be translated to Armagh, may suggest his wider credibility as a candidate for an episcopal see.29

Bishop of St Asaph 1703-4

Hooper’s potential as a man of business was recognized by Harley, who was instrumental in Hooper’s elevation to St Asaph.30 Godolphin arranged to meet Hooper to discuss his advancement on 25 May.31 In a letter of 1 June 1703 Daniel Finch, 2nd earl of Nottingham swept aside the nomination by John Churchill, duke of Marlborough, of Knightly Chetwood, chaplain general to the army in the Netherlands, on the grounds that Hooper’s translation was too far advanced, though Thomas Bruce, 2nd earl of Ailesbury, in 1714 recalled recommending Hooper’s promotion to Marlborough, and Marlborough acting upon it.32 The royal warrant for the congé d’élire recommending Hooper to the dean and chapter of St Asaph was dated 7 June 1703.33 Relations with Tenison were smoothed by a meeting at Lambeth over ‘some part of a bottle of wine’ when the archbishop was ‘very gracious’.34 Hooper accepted the post but petitioned for five commendams to supplement his new episcopal revenue, including the contentious post at Exeter as well as the deanery of Canterbury, the archdeaconry of St Asaph and rectory of Landrinio and any three benefices within the diocese of St Asaph.35 The whiggish clergyman Maurice Wheeler professedly thought it odd that a man who spoke ‘Scotch’ should be offered a bishopric in Wales, perhaps a glance at Hooper’s obstruction of Whig Church policy.36 Despite the employment of a recent legal precedent which enabled his commendams as ‘dispensations of retainer’, the law officers’ opinion was that the commendams contravened the act against pluralities, and Hooper’s consecration, scheduled for 21 Oct. 1703, was postponed. Atterbury suspected ‘a design to give [Hooper], the chief hand in ecclesiastical affairs’; and even though Atterbury thought Hooper’s elevation would mean that he himself would be ‘kept under and oppressed’ as much as he was during the time of John Tillotson, the previous archbishop of Canterbury, he conceded that advancement ‘sought Him; and not He it’.37

Hooper’s consecration was delayed until 31 Oct. 1703 while a grant was obtained allowing him to hold the precentorship of Exeter Cathedral for only as long as it took him to procure a private act of Parliament permanently annexing the archdeaconry of St Asaph to the bishopric.38 Atterbury maintained that Hooper postponed the ceremony to receive the Michaelmas profits from Lambeth, though he mistakenly consoled himself with the idea that Hooper would be kept from attending the House and voting on ‘some trying bills’; in the event the Lords did not sit until 4 November.39 Certainly Archbishop Tenison, whose hands were tied by the influence of Harley and Sharp at court, was determined to compensate for such a nakedly political appointment. Atterbury reported that Hooper felt ‘the utmost uneasiness’ when his Lambeth rectory was filled by the Whig Edmund Gibson†, later successively bishop of Lincoln and London, although Gibson had already been deputizing for Hooper there.40 In both Convocation and in the Lords, Hooper remained a thorn in the side of the high-fliers. By the end of 1703 he was suspected of advising the government on strategies for managing high church extremists.41

Hooper demonstrated a tendency to drag his feet over parliamentary attendance. Suffering from a cold, he missed the first two opportunities to sit in the Lords, on 4 Nov. and 9 November. Taking his seat on 10 Nov., the day after Anne addressed Parliament, he was appointed to the committee on the Address. Thereafter, his appearances coincided with debates on which he held strong opinions (such as the ‘Church in danger’, the Union with Scotland and the Sacheverell trial), with personal interest (as in May 1715 in an appeal from exchequer) or with the impeachment in 1717 of Oxford. He was named to the standing committee for privileges only once (on 9 Apr. 1713) and, with the exception of the sessions between October 1704 and May 1706, and November 1709 and May 1710, was rarely in the chamber to be nominated to select committees. He did make a brisk start, attending his first parliamentary session for 81 per cent of sittings, almost certainly because of the introduction of the occasional conformity bill. Charles Spencer, 3rd earl of Sunderland, correctly forecast that Hooper would support the measure. On 14 Dec. 1703, he voted with John Sharp and seven other Tory bishops in favour of the bill; when it was thrown out, Hooper registered his dissent.

According to Atterbury, within a month of taking his seat Hooper was employing his interest at court to replace Richard Kidder, bishop of Bath and Wells, killed during the great gale of 26-27 Nov. 1703, though Abigail Prowse remembered the queen sending for Hooper as soon as news of Kidder’s death reached London.42 It was hoped that Hooper could ‘sweeten’ the uncompromising nonjuror Ken, who proved willing to recognize his friend as his legitimate successor.43 Hooper requested that he be allowed to retain the precentorship of Exeter and use the £200 stipend to provide a pension for Ken, but this was opposed by Trelawny.44 In December 1703 it looked as though Hooper would be ‘too nimble’ for Trelawny, but the bishop of Exeter, now supported by Harley and Godolphin, challenged Hooper’s argument that he continued in the precentorship by the queen’s wish.45 Hooper thus began to feel the effects of having defied government ministers over the occasional conformity measure. Trelawny threatened Godolphin that he would tear up their electoral pact in the Cornish boroughs if Hooper were allowed to keep his Exeter commendam.46 Atterbury thought Hooper had engineered the timing of his translation from St Asaph to Bath and Wells in order to maximize his income, calculating that he had earned £3,600 that year.47

Throughout the first few months of 1704 Hooper attended the House regularly, performing the junior bishop’s task of reading prayers at the opening of each sitting. On 14 Jan., when the verdict in the case of the Aylesbury men (Ashby v. White) was overturned, Hooper joined fellow Tories in entering a dissent. He preached the martyrdom sermon before the lords on 31 Jan. 1704, affirming the doctrine of passive obedience.48 On 1 Mar. 1704, he registered his dissent from the resolution to retain the address to the crown regarding the ‘Scotch Plot’. He was included in a list of members of both Houses drawn up by Nottingham in 1704 which may indicate his support over the plot.

Bath and Wells

The congé d’élire directing his election as bishop of Bath and Wells was issued on 19 Jan. 1704 and Hooper was elected six days later, and translated on 14 March.49 On 21 Mar. Hooper was one of those to register his dissent against the rejection of the rider in the bill for raising recruits to the armed forces (to the effect that recruits should have the consent of local Church officers). He then protested against the passage of the bill. On 25 Mar. he registered his dissent twice against resolutions regretting that the conspirator Robert Ferguson was not censured, imprisoned and prosecuted before his papers were laid before the House. In May Atterbury reported gleefully that Hooper’s discharge from payment of first fruits was hanging ‘in the hedge’ and causing him considerable anxiety.50 The factionalism amongst clerical Tories heightened as Hooper and his associate Henry Compton locked horns with Trelawny over Hooper’s desire to retain his place on the Exeter chapter. Trelawny was also aggrieved over Hopper’s pretensions to electoral influence in the county, in direct conflict with his own.51 On 17 July Harley expressed his resentment towards Hooper’s ingratitude to the ministry, telling Godolphin that Trelawny should be mollified if only to ‘please a man of interest and mortify another who hath made her Majesty very ill returns’ for her favours.52

Hooper was absent from the Lords until 30 Nov. 1704, weeks into the 1704-5 session. Thereafter he attended 47 per cent of sittings. According to Prowse, the queen had pressed Hooper to use his influence with the Tory activists in the Commons to dissuade them from tacking the third occasional conformity bill to the land tax bill. Hooper refused, claiming that he lacked influence in the Commons. Godolphin reminded Hooper of his obligations to the ministry, but Hooper was adamant that he could not vote against his ‘honour and conscience’.53 On 14 Dec. 1704, in anticipation of the division in the Lords, he received the proxy of William Beveridge, his successor at St Asaph. The following day Hooper protested both against the rejection of the second reading of the occasional conformity bill and the rejection of the bill itself, arguing ‘largely and very fully’ for the measure.54 Abigail Prowse later recounted that John Sharp ‘merrily’ remarked on the disappointment of Hooper’s former ministerial patrons at his conduct; Hooper responded that they could have back their episcopal seat if they reimbursed his costs in attending the House. Godolphin tried to extract Hooper’s waived first fruits in retribution; Hooper refused to pay.55 Over the Christmas period in 1704 he attended the St Stephen’s dinner at Lambeth. On Christmas day itself he dined at the home of Thomas Sprat with William Nicolson, bishop of Carlisle, and Nicholas Stratford, bishop of Chester. There he again argued vehemently against the archbishop’s powers of deprivation. Despite his opinion, he did not bring in the petition of the deprived Thomas Watson to the House at the start of January, leaving that role to Francis North, 2nd Baron Guilford.56 He did, however, dissent from the Lords’ rejection of the petition on 22 January. On 2 Mar. he was elected to a smaller than usual committee to consider the bill for the relief of the creditors of Thomas Pitkin and the discovery of Pitkin’s fraudulent practices.

It was probably in this session that Hooper was challenged in the House, and in the presence of the queen, by Charles Montagu, Baron Halifax, over a sermon that he had preached before the Commons on 4 Apr. 1701.57 Flourishing a copy of the printed sermon, Halifax accused Hooper of Catholic sympathies and invited the Lords to censure the bishop. The House ordered Hooper to read the offending passage from the sermon at the bar. Permitted to read the whole sermon to provide the proper context for the passage in question, Hooper was vindicated and Halifax forced to withdraw. Hooper’s daughter suggested that Tenison had put Halifax up to the challenge. The incident certainly allowed Tenison to show his displeasure with Hooper: warming himself by the fire in the Lords’ chamber, he caustically declared ‘he thought plain sermons best for he did not like wit in ’em’.58 The session ended on 14 Mar. 1705 and Hooper returned to his new diocese. Hooper was at ease politically in Somerset, where both county gentry and civic elite were staunchly Tory, and the dominant electoral influences were Thomas Thynne, Viscount Weymouth, and John Poulett, 4th Baron Poulett. The dissolution of 5 Apr. 1705 was followed by an election campaign in which Harley, Godolphin and Marlborough opposed the tackers and sought more ‘moderate’ government in Church and state. The Wells electorate returned the Tory Maurice Berkeley‡.

Hooper’s ongoing dispute with Trelawny over his Exeter precentorship influenced the election in the diocese of Exeter. Hooper expressed his support for the tackers’ parliamentary candidates for the Cornwall county seats through his friends among the clergy there, led by Archdeacon Edward Drewe. They sought to frustrate the Trelawny electoral campaign, which enjoyed the full support of Godolphin and the ministry. Hooper’s political allies in the diocese were unsuccessful, and Trelawny and Godolphin secured the election of Hugh Boscawen†, the future Viscount Falmouth.59 Hooper was prepared to bide his time. Tenison told William Cowper, later Baron and Earl Cowper, that Hooper had told his clergy to have patience:

that notwithstanding her majesty had lately preferred some people not so acceptable to the Church, the same was from reason of state; and that in a little time she would shew them her inclination was otherwise, and that she would convince the world it was not of choice, but for a present purpose only.60

Hooper returned to the Lords on 12 Nov. 1705, the eleventh day of business in the autumn 1705 session, and attended 30 per cent of sittings. On 15 Nov. 1705 he left the chamber rather than vote on Rochester’s motion calling Anne to summon the heir presumptive Sophia to England.61 Hooper (again closely allied to Compton) thereby avoided open opposition to Rochester and Nottingham, who signed the protest against the vote’s defeat. On 20 Nov. he and Compton were the only two bishops to vote for the proposal that the lord mayor of London be included on the list of lords justices named in the regency bill.62 On 30 Nov. 1705 he registered his dissent from the resolution on the Protestant succession (that no further instructions be given to the committee of the whole following the successful move to prohibit repeal or amendment of the Act of Uniformity). Three days later he signed protests against the rejection of three riders that would have prevented the lords justices from giving the royal assent to any bill repealing or altering laws against Catholics, from changing the succession to the crown, and from repealing or altering the Habeas Corpus Act, the toleration of Protestant dissenters, the frequency of parliaments and the treason laws. He did not, however, sign the protest against the bill itself.

If support for the queen and her objection to the presence of her successor had been his motive for rejecting the motion proposed by Rochester on the succession, one might have expected that his intervention in the ‘Church in danger’ debate of 6 Dec. 1705, would have been similarly tactful. His speech amounted to an attempt to claim the high ground. The summary in Timberland emphasizes Hooper’s profession of moderation, arguing that the difference between high and low Church had been exaggerated. Nicolson’s report emphasized the difficulties Hooper believed the Presbyterian settlement of the Church of Scotland would cause any proposed union, providing an opportunity for Scots and English Protestant Dissenters joining to oppose a Church of England which they thought ‘Anti-Christian’. Hooper’s praise of ‘Western Shepherds’ who saw that clouds were gathering in the northern sky presumably flattered his diocese and himself. Nicolson considered the speech ‘a rambling … discourse upon nothing’.63 Predictably, Hooper protested against the resolution that the Church was not in danger under the queen’s government. On 31 Jan. 1706, in the division on the regency bill, Hooper and Nathaniel Crew, bishop of Durham, voted with the minority against the motion (proposed by John Somers, Baron Somers) to repeal the ‘place’ clause in the 1701 Act of Settlement.64

Hooper missed the last three months of business in spring 1706 and arrived nine weeks after the start of the autumn 1706 session. He attended only 18 per cent of sittings but took part in the debates that commenced on 15 Feb. 1707 on the union with Scotland. In the committee of the whole on 21 Feb. he supported the unsuccessful demand of John Annesley, 4th earl of Anglesey, for debate on the first article to be postponed. Speaking on 24 Feb. he claimed it was impossible to reconcile two kingdoms with very different ecclesiastical structures (two ‘strong liquors of a contrary nature in one and the same vessel’). The proposed 16 Scottish representative peers would be a ‘dead weight’ in the Lords; they should not, he asserted, be allowed any vote concerning the English Church.65 On 27 Feb. he registered his dissent from ratification of the last four resolutions (having not been present at the passing of the first 21). On 4 Mar. he supported the rider to the ratification bill of the Union on the Scottish church (that nothing in the bill should be construed as an acknowledgement that Presbyterianism was the true Protestant religion) this time voting with Nottingham.66 Whereas, as was customary, he had previously been routinely named to committees when in attendance, during this session he was often not nominated even when his name appears in the presence list. Whether this indicates a disengagement from business, or whether he had simply left the chamber, is unclear. The session ended on 8 Apr. 1707 and Hooper failed to attend the brief session later that month.

It is probable that he spent the summer months in the diocese, since he arrived at the House one month late for the start for the October 1707 session. He attended 19 per cent of sittings. He was in London at Christmas when he attended the St Stephen’s dinner at Lambeth.67 Despite not being listed as present, he was appointed to the committee on the earl of Exeter’s estate bill on 24 Jan. 1708. Though listed as present on 19 Feb. he was one of the few peers not nominated to the committee on the Harwich to London highways bill.

The end of the session on 1 Apr. 1708 was followed by election campaigns. The June election saw a nationwide Whig victory. Somerset did not follow the national trend; there, Hooper was actively and successfully engaged in procuring for his son-in-law, John Prowse‡, the support of the Tory gentry. In May 1708 Prowse was elected unopposed for the county.68 On 16 Nov. 1708 Hooper arrived on the first day of the new session but then attended for only four per cent of sittings. At the end of the year, Weymouth feared that the Junto ministry would attempt a repeal of the Test and pressed Hooper to attend diligently. Hooper prevaricated and then blamed the bad weather for his failure to attend.69 In the event he attended the House on only three occasions in February, March and April. He was not present on 21 Jan. 1709 for the division on the protests concerning the election of Scottish representative peers, an issue on which he might have been expected to show a keen interest. He missed almost four months at the start of the winter 1709-10 session, but in total attended 22 per cent of sittings during that session. He explained that he had been absent during the autumn due to ill health, convalescence after surgery for a swelling on his back being complicated by a bout of colic and a ‘feverish distemper’.70 He was present on 27 Feb. 1710 when the Sacheverell trial opened in Westminster Hall and attended on 21 separate days throughout the next six weeks. The instances in which he was named to committees on days which he was listed present continued to diminish, but on 13 Mar. he was chosen to the committee ‘to search and inspect precedents of impeachments, concerning high crimes and misdemeanors’, and on the following day to the committee on the bill for more effectual provision for the poor in Kingston upon Hull. On 14 Mar. he registered his dissent from the resolution not to adjourn the House. On the same day he also dissented (with Sharp, Compton and Sprat) from the resolution that it was not necessary to include in an impeachment the ostensibly ‘criminal’ words, since this went against legal precedent. Two days later, on 16 Mar., Hooper spoke in the debate on the first article of impeachment.71 On the question of resistance, he insisted that ‘original compact’ was a ‘dangerous’ concept; the necessity for resistance in extraordinary circumstances was a fact that should be concealed from the populace. Sacheverell had merely obeyed the imperative of preaching up passive obedience at a time when resistance was being justified.72 Given his own willingness to take the oaths to William and Mary, Hooper left himself open to charges of hypocrisy. On 16, 17 and 18 Mar. he entered protests against the conduct of the proceedings and on 20 Mar., he found Sacheverell not guilty. He registered his protest against the majority verdict. The following day he dissented against the censure of Sacheverell. Hooper was shortly afterwards to snub Thomas Parker†, later earl of Macclesfield, who as Member for Derby had led the prosecution on the fourth article and was ‘vital’ to the Whig case, when Parker was made lord chief justice and turned up at the Wells assizes.73

Parliament was dissolved in September 1710. In a list drawn up the following month, Harley indicated that, despite Hooper’s former unreliability, he expected to be able to rely on Hooper’s support for an administration inclusive of Tories. With the start of the new Parliament in November, Hooper arrived one week into the start of business and again attended 22 per cent of sittings. On Christmas Day he took communion at Westminster Abbey; the following day at Lambeth saw the most well attended St Stephen’s dinner in its history.74 The nomination of Hooper, with Compton and Tenison, as one of the three chairmen of Convocation was interpreted as a ministerial device to undermine Tenison’s authority. Hooper refused to act in this role (as Compton and Tenison were both ill, it would have exposed him to possible opprobrium as a ministerial placeman) and in February Tenison was appointed sole president. The parliamentary session ended on 12 June 1711 but Hooper did not attend after 3 May.

Harley’s creation as earl of Oxford and the construction of a largely Tory ministry had coincided with a renewed bond between him and Hooper, yet with a diminished political role for the bishop. It was noted that Oxford often sat with him on the episcopal bench to discuss the weather and visited Hooper at Kensington (where he lived in close proximity to Weymouth) several times a week, but did not include him in political discussions.75 According to Prowse, Hooper was several times invited to join the Privy Council by Oxford, but refused.76 He did not attend the parliamentary session that opened in December 1711, registering his proxy with Henry Compton, who appears to have exercised it in favour of the restraining orders on the duke of Ormond on 28 May 1712. He was in Bath with his family at the start of October, where he ‘expressed great zeal’ for the bill on commerce with France and also ‘an earnest desire to use his own words to have the gentlemen made as free to serve as the queen is now to command by repealing the triennial act.’77

Hooper suffered from poor health for much of the following year. On 9 Feb. 1713 he wrote to Compton expressing surprise that his name was listed in the Gazette as a Lent preacher; his health, he claimed, would not permit the journey and he asked Compton to present his excuses. Five days later he wrote to Oxford that the winter had rendered him ‘not hardy enough’ to cope with travel during bad weather. Delighted with the peace of Utrecht, he asked Oxford to present his apologies to the queen for his absence from court..78 Oxford noted that Hooper should be contacted in advance of the next session and by the end of March Hooper was back at his lodgings in Kensington, clearly at Oxford’s request.79 He was present on 9 Apr., the first day of the session, but attended only ten per cent of sittings. That day he was one of the overwhelming majority of peers chosen to the committee on privileges, but was not one of the almost as large group chosen to the committee on the Lords Journal. In May he wrote to Oxford that he had been ill and prevented from obeying the queen’s commands, but Oxford made another note on 31 May that Hooper be contacted concerning the bill to confirm the French Commercial Treaty.80 He was counting on Hooper’s support in the forthcoming division and calculated that Hooper would support confirmation of the eighth and ninth articles of the treaty. Perhaps for this reason, Hooper was entrusted with preaching at the thanksgiving service in June.81 On 30 June he was appointed to the committee considering the method taken by the crown to demand supplies. On 6 July, with the summer recess approaching, Hooper was concerned about a new vacancy in his diocese in the gift of the privy seal and contacted the lord keeper, Simon Harcourt, Baron Harcourt, for assistance.82 The following day he preached a thanksgiving sermon for the peace before the House, but in a coded signal of unfulfilled Tory aspirations for the Church, prayed that the queen would yet ‘perform her whole work’.83 Compton died that day, 7 July; Hooper’s daughter claimed that he was offered the see of London on the death of Compton, but that ‘he refused, as the revenues of it were no way answerable to the great expense, of always living in and near London, to a man of his extensive acquaintance, besides the great business belonging to that Diocese, he said required a younger man, for he was then above seventy’; others thought Hooper’s attendance in the House far too indifferent for a bishop of London and that Harcourt had blocked the promotion.84

In 1713 Hooper and other Hanoverian Tories such as Sir Thomas Hanmer‡ were pressed by Nottingham to join an opposition alliance.85 Hooper refused, remaining in the Oxford camp and supporting the ministry’s policy on trade with France. He did not join the Tory revolt and actively supported the commerce bill in Somerset.86 Indeed, Oxford’s brother described Hooper, together with all the ‘western gentlemen’, as being ‘perfectly easy’.87 By the start of February 1714, in obedience to a summons from Oxford, Hooper was preparing to travel to London for the new parliamentary session.88 At about this time his name was mentioned as a possible successor to John Sharp as archbishop of York, but if the position were offered, he turned it down on the grounds he did not want to leave his daughter, who was settled in Somerset.89 He did not appear in the House until 17 Mar., but thereafter attended 23 per cent of sittings. He was in the House on 5 Apr. for the division on the perceived danger to the Protestant succession. On 13 Apr., when the Lords considered the queen’s reply to an address on the threat from the Pretender, Hooper (with William Dawes, archbishop of York, George Smalridge, bishop of Bristol, and John Robinson, bishop of London) now voted against the ministry.90 On 16 Apr. he was chosen to the committee to draft the address to the queen thanking her for the peace. In or about May it was forecast that he would support the schism bill. The bishop was in the House on 7 June for the bill’s second reading, on 11 June for the division on extending the bill to Ireland and on 15 June for the bill’s passage. On 20 June he wrote to Oxford that he would leave Kensington the following day.91 He promptly registered his proxy in favour of Philip Bisse, bishop of Hereford; it was vacated at the end of the session.

The summer months of 1714 saw both the resignation of Oxford and the death of the queen. Hooper failed to attend the first Parliament of the new reign, but undertook his traditional diocesan role at the coronation as escort to the monarch. Jostled aside by the king’s military aides, he was the victim of Tenison’s muddled handling of the ceremonial when the archbishop prevented Hooper from receiving communion with the king.92 Hooper’s detractors claimed that he tried to mobilize opinion against the king.93 Abigail Prowse, however, subsequently wrote of the friendly correspondence Hooper enjoyed with George I, conducted through Charles Townshend, 2nd Viscount Townshend.94 Whatever the truth of either claim, the accession of George I coincided with Hooper’s further withdrawal from the business of Parliament unless it was for his own private concerns or in support of his old (if intermittent) ally, Oxford. He attended the House on only 27 occasions between 1715 and his death in 1727.

Much of his time was spent in diocesan affairs, where his daughter’s account shows he sought to enhance academic standards and the authority of the bishop over the clergy.95 One aspect of this scheme was the weakening of the influence the family of Robert Creighton, the long-deceased bishop, held over the cathedral chapter.96 Creighton’s son, also Robert Creighton, had been precentor of Wells Cathedral since 1674; the younger Creighton’s sons-in-law, Marshall Brydges and Henry Layng, had been chancellor and sub-dean since 1696 and 1698 respectively. Hooper refused further appointments of Creighton family members to clerical posts, especially following the lease of a canonical house in July 1714 to Robert Creighton (son of the precentor), who ‘often attempted to make use of it as a qualification for a canonry’. Resentment from the Creighton family was bought off by the promotion of Henry Layng to the archdeaconry of Wells and the appointment of another Creighton son-in-law as chancellor of the diocese. Hooper’s quest to improve diocesan revenues led to his victorious exchequer case against the tenants of West Buckland for rent arrears in February 1713, confirmed after an appeal to the Lords on 27 May 1715.97

On 6 Sept. 1727 he died at the home of his daughter Abigail Prowse in Berkeley, Gloucestershire. Ten days later, George Hooper was buried in Wells Cathedral next to his wife.98 Abigail Prowse inherited his entire (but undefined) estate, both real and personal. The wife of John Prowse and mother of Thomas Prowse‡, her manuscript biography of Hooper formed the basis for subsequent biographies.99 Both Atterbury and Burnet provided more critical commentaries. In a moment of pique, Atterbury accused Hooper of manipulating Church preferments for material gain and claimed that he alone was responsible for Hooper’s rise in the Church: without the high Tory agenda in Convocation in 1701, Hooper would never have come to prominence.100 Burnet, from the other end of the political spectrum, thought otherwise, judging Hooper an ambitious man who was ‘reserved, crafty and ambitious’.101

B.A./M.C.K.

  • 1 LPL, ms 3016, f. 19v.
  • 2 Ibid. f. 20.
  • 3 TNA, PROB 11/618.
  • 4 CSP Dom. 1690-1, p. 474.
  • 5 Ibid. 1699-1700, p. 93.
  • 6 Ibid. 1700-2, p. 358.
  • 7 W. Marshall, George Hooper 1640-1727, pp. 1-14; LPL, ms 3016, f. 1.
  • 8 Plumptre, Life of Ken, i. 50; LPL, ms 3016, f. 2v.
  • 9 Bodl. Tanner 43, f. 31.
  • 10 LPL, ms 3016, f. 2.
  • 11 Ibid. f. 3v; Sidney Diary, i. 201.
  • 12 Evelyn Diary, iv. 260; Hooper, A Sermon Preached before the King (1682).
  • 13 LPL, ms 3016, f. 5r; Hooper, Church of England Free from the Imputation of Popery (1683), passim.
  • 14 CSP Dom. July-Sept. 1683, p. 87.
  • 15 Tanner 34, f. 214.
  • 16 Ibid. 141, f. 115.
  • 17 Longleat, Bath mss, Thynne pprs. 12, f. 240.
  • 18 Verney ms mic. M636/40, J. to Sir R. Verney, 16 July 1685; Marshall, George Hooper, 30-32.
  • 19 Account of What Passed at the Execution of the Late Duke of Monmouth (1695); LPL, ms 3016, f. 5.
  • 20 Burnet, iii. 108-9.
  • 21 Tanner 30, f. 93.
  • 22 Marshall, George Hooper, 50-51.
  • 23 Stowe 746, f. 140.
  • 24 Tanner 27, f. 32.
  • 25 LPL, ms 3016 ff. 6, 8.
  • 26 Bodl. Rawl. Letters 7, f. 25.
  • 27 LPL, ms 3016, ff. 9-10.
  • 28 Atterbury, Epistolary Corresp. iii. 8-11, 22, 28-29, 59.
  • 29 Luttrell, Brief Relation, v. 251; Add. 70073-4.
  • 30 Add. 70242, Hooper to R. Harley, n.d.; HMC Portland, iv. 72.
  • 31 Longleat, Portland misc. f. 72.
  • 32 Add. 61118, f. 177; Add. 22221, f. 22-23.
  • 33 CSP Dom. 1703-4, p. 263.
  • 34 Atterbury, iv. 414-15.
  • 35 CSP Dom. 1703-4, pp. 264-5; Atterbury, iii. 93.
  • 36 Christ Church Lib. Oxf. Wake mss 23/143.
  • 37 Atterbury, iii. 96-97, 126, 132.
  • 38 Ibid. 133.
  • 39 Ibid. 115, 126.
  • 40 CSP Dom. 1703-4, p. 23; Atterbury, iii. 115.
  • 41 Atterbury, iii. 156.
  • 42 Ibid. 145; LPL, ms 3016, f. 11v.
  • 43 Glos. Archives, Lloyd Baker mss D3549/2/2/1, no. 141; LPL, ms 2872 ff. 76, 78; HMC Wells, ii. 483.
  • 44 LPL, ms 2872, f. 80; CSP Dom. 1703-4, p. 262.
  • 45 Christ Church Lib. Oxf. Wake mss 17 f. 82.
  • 46 LPL, ms 3016, f. 12.
  • 47 Atterbury, iii. 172-3.
  • 48 Hooper, Sermon Preach’d before the Lords Spiritual and Temporal … on Monday Jan. the 31st 1703/4 (1704), 9.
  • 49 HMC Wells, ii. 483.
  • 50 Atterbury, iii. 182-3.
  • 51 Ibid. 182-3, 220-2, 226, 229, 233, 234; HMC Portland, iv. 101-2.
  • 52 Add. 28055, ff. 94-95.
  • 53 LPL, ms 3016, f. 13.
  • 54 Nicolson, London Diaries, 253-4.
  • 55 LPL, ms 3016, f. 13r.
  • 56 Nicolson, London Diaries, 259, 260, 266.
  • 57 Hooper, Sermon [on Phil. iii. 20], Preach’d before the House of Commons, April 4, 1701 (1701).
  • 58 LPL, ms 3016, f. 14-17; Verney ms mic. M636/53, R. Palmer to R Verney, n.d.
  • 59 HP Commons 1690-1715, ii. 141.
  • 60 Cowper, Diary, 9.
  • 61 T. Sharp, Life of John Sharp, i. 309-10.
  • 62 Nicolson, London Diaries, 307.
  • 63 Timberland, ii. 159-60; Add. 75379, Rachel Lloyd’s notes; Nicolson, London Diaries, 322.
  • 64 Nicolson, London Diaries, 368.
  • 65 Timberland, ii. 169, 175.
  • 66 Bodl. Ballard 31, f. 61.
  • 67 LPL, ms 1770, f. 54v.
  • 68 HP Commons 1690-1715, v. 224.
  • 69 Longleat, Bath mss, Thynne pprs. 12. ff. 301, 303.
  • 70 Add. 32096, f. 79.
  • 71 Timberland, ii. 273.
  • 72 Cobbett, Parl. Hist. vi. 846.
  • 73 LPL, ms 3016, f. 16r.
  • 74 Nicolson, London Diaries, 525.
  • 75 Bodl. Rawl. Letters 15, f. 59; LPL, ms 3016, f. 15v.
  • 76 LPL, ms 3016, f. 16.
  • 77 Add. 70252, Poulett to Oxford, 5 Oct. 1712.
  • 78 Add. 70242, Hooper to Oxford, 9, 14 Feb. 1713.
  • 79 Add. 70332, Oxford memo, 7 Feb. 1713; Add. 70242, Hooper to Oxford, 28 Mar. 1713.
  • 80 Add. 70242, Hooper to Oxford, 14 May 1713.
  • 81 Add. 72496, ff. 77-78.
  • 82 Add. 41843, f. 34.
  • 83 Hooper, Sermon preach’d before both Houses of Parliament … July 7, 1713 (1713), 21.
  • 84 LPL, ms 3016, f. 15v; HMC Portland, vii. 160.
  • 85 HP Commons 1690-1715, iv. 187; Rev. Pols. 239-40.
  • 86 Add. 70252, Poulett to Oxford, 5 Oct. 1714.
  • 87 Add. 70236, E. Harley to Oxford, 26 Sept. 1713.
  • 88 Add. 70242, Hooper to Oxford, 10 Feb. 1714.
  • 89 Bodl. Add. A269, f. 31; LPL, ms 3016, f. 15v.
  • 90 Add. 47087, f. 68.
  • 91 Add. 70242, Hooper to Oxford, 20 June 1714.
  • 92 LPL, ms 3016, f. 16-17.
  • 93 TNA, SP 35/11, f. 91.
  • 94 LPL, ms 3016, f. 17r.
  • 95 Ibid. ff. 17v-18r.
  • 96 Marshall, George Hooper, 116-24.
  • 97 Life of Richard Kidder ed. A.E. Robinson (Somerset Rec. Soc. xxxvii), 207-9.
  • 98 LPL, ms 3016, f. 20.
  • 99 LPL, ms 3016.
  • 100 Atterbury, iii. 98, 172-3.
  • 101 Burnet, i. 523.