The present writer had occasion, in 1884, in narrating the two hundred and fifty years' history of the Hartford Church, of which Mr. Hooker was the first pastor, to publish, in a volume of local imprint and limited circulation, together with the biographies of subsequent pastors, the story of Mr. Hooker also. Subsequent repeated visits to the scenes of Mr. Hooker's English ministrations, as well as investigations at home, have added to the facts there narrated. Still, in addressing on the same theme the wider constituency of the MAKERS OF AMERICA series, the writer could not, without awkwardness and even affectation, avoid the frequent use of language in which he had already narrated the same biographical and historical incidents. He has therefore drawn without hesitation on his own previous statements, so far as the altered proportions of a separate biography and added facts and illustrations suited him to do. The valuable bibliography of Mr. Hooker's published writings (found in Appendix II.) was compiled by J. Hammond Trumbull, LL.D., to whom indebtedness is due, also, for the discovery and rescue from oblivion of the most important manuscript documents illustrative of Mr. Hooker's chief title to remembrance. HARTFORD, CONN., September 1, 1891. LIFE OF THOMAS CHAPTER I. BIRTH AND BOYHOOD ASSOCIATIONS. Come, Hooker, come forth of thy native soile. THOMAS HOOKER was born at Marfield in Leicester County, England, probably on July 7, 1586. This little hamlet of Marfield — variously spelled in Leicester records as Mardifeud, Mardefelde, Markfelde, Markfild, Marefield, as well as Marfield - is one of four tithings which make up the parish of Tilton, or Tilton super montem, as the old chronicles often have it; the other three being Tilton, Halstead, and Whatborough. These four tithings or towns have for their common place of worship the stately gray-stone church of St. Peter, dating from the days of King John, built on the hill-top corner of the Tilton précinct of the parish, and commanding one of the widest and most beautiful landscape-views of Midland England. Around the church lies the churchyard, with four gates giving access to the four precincts of the ground allotted as a burial-place to the inhabitants I of the four tithings which constitute the parish. The church itself is an interesting specimen of Early English architecture, with embattled tower, surmounted by an old, but later-added spire, pierced by eight open windows, a landmark visible from far. The word "steeple-chase" is said to be of Leicester County origin, and to have been derived from the many spires surmounting the hill-tops of this county, toward some one of which, in default of game, the disappointed hunters directed their chase; the first to gain which was accounted victor as if he had been "in at the death" of fox or deer. It is with a feeling of surprise that one sees so stately and beautiful an edifice in so comparatively quiet and solitary a spot. Four ancient bells hang in the tower, three of them bearing the inscription I. H. S. Nazarenvs. Rex. Ivdeorum. Fili. Dei. Misere. Mei.; and one, of somewhat later date, the motto, Praise the Lord. These bells doubtless in former times summoned a far larger congregation to worship in the house below them than they can have gathered for several centuries past. The Wars of the Roses did much, in the two hundred years before the period at which our story begins, to depopulate the whole region; but the wonder still remains here, as well as in many other parts of England, how such churches as the traveller finds in the quietest and most secluded portions of the land could have been built amid so sparse a population as at any time lived on the soil about them. But in young Hooker's day matters in this respect |