Richard Hooker: the Confident Church of England Reformer

Richard Hooker is generally acknowledged as a critical sixteenth-century figure in the Church of England. He has been claimed by a variety of advocates for positions inside and outside the Church of England and for positions that developed later. An apparently eirenic attitude to Roman Catholics and occasional criticisms of central figures of the Protestant Reformation should not obscure the fact that he was a confident upholder of the Reformation of the Church of England, and that his careful defence of its institutions did not, in his mind, exceed a careful reformed position. His defence provides a platform convenient for ecumenical discussions