I am greatly indebted to the editors and other associates of the Folger Library edition of Hooker's works, especially to John E. Booty, W. D. J. Cargill Thompson, Joseph G. Devine, S. J.., Georges Edelen, William P. Haugaard, W. Speed Hill, and P. G. Stanwood, for their comments on earlier versions of this note. The task of making a case for the 1648 text of Book vi as a genuine part of the Laws was undertaken very much in the collegial spirit of the edition. I am now informed by Professor Stanwood that his work on the MSS. and early editions provides no evidence against, and perhaps even some positive support for, the conclusions advanced here on grounds of content.

¹ The Works of … Mr. Richard Hooker, ed. Keble, John, revised by R. W. Church and F. Paget, Oxford 1888, i. xxxiv—xxxviGoogle Scholar. In spite of his misgivings about 1648, which he described as ‘a series of dissertations on Primitive and Romish Penance', Keble published it as Book vi of the Laws in his edition, iii. 1–107. The first three chapters are included in Richard Hooker, Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, An Abridged Edition, ed. with introds. By McGrade, A. S. and Vickers, Brian, London 1975Google Scholar.

² Hill, W. Speed, ‘Hooker's Polity: the Problem of the “Three Last books”’, The Huntington Library Quarterly, xxxiv (1971), 336Google Scholar. Although both R. A. Houk and C. J. Sisson accepted 1648 as belonging to the Laws, I agree with Hill that they have not made a strong case for its inclusion.

³ I will refer to the Laws in the usual way, by book, chapter, and section, assuming for this purpose that 1648 is indeed part of Book vi. The section divisions, which are due to Keble, are retained in the Folger edition. The present reference is vi, ii, 1.

⁴ This lost draft has been known only through Cranmer's and Sandys's comments, which Keble published as an appendix to Book vi (Works (1888), iii. 108–39) from a MS. preserved at Hooker's Oxford college, Corpus Christi. Rudolph Almasy is engaged in the promising task of reconstructing Hooker's treatment of lay-eldetrs by reading these notes in the light of the large contemporary literature on the subject. The fascinating assortment of Hooker's own working notes for the Laws recently discovered at Trinity College, Dublin (MS.364, fols. 69–84. Stanwood, P.G., ‘Richard Hooker Manuscripts’, Long Room [Dublin], xi (1975), 7–10Google Scholar) includes much material pertaining to Book vi. A transcription of the Cranmer-Sandys notes more accurate than Keble's is in preparation by Professor Stanwood for the Folger edition of Hooker. For the dating of these notes to the early 1590s, see Hill, ‘The Problem of the “There Last Books'”, 334 n.

⁵ ‘The Problem of the “Three Last Books”’, 320 n.

⁶ Works (1888), iii. 130, 139.

⁷ vi, i, 1.

⁸ ‘And because besides the power of order which all consecrated persons have [discussed in the second part (chapters 76–81) of Book v of the Laws], and the power of jurisdiction which neither they all nor they only have, there is a third power, a power of Ecclesiasticall Dominion, communicable as we thinke, unto persons not Ecclesiasticall, and most fit to be restrayned unto the Prince or Soveraigne commaunder over the whole bodie politique: the eight booke we have allotted unto this question, and have sifted therin your objections against those preeminences royall which thereunto appertaine’: W. Speed Hill, general ed., The Folger Library Edition of the Works of Richard Hooker; I, Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity: Preface, Books I to IV, ed. Edelen, Georges, Cambridge, Mass, and London, 1977, 35–36Google Scholar.

⁹ On the problem of reconciling the beginning and end of the Laws, see Munz, Peter, The Place of Hooker in the History of Thought, London 1952Google Scholar; my ‘The Coherence of Hooker's Polity: The Books on Power’, Journal of the History of Ideas, xxiv (1963), 163–82Google Scholar; and Thompson, W. D. J. Cargill, ‘The Philosopher of the “Politic Society”: Richard Hooker as a Political Thinker’, in Hill, W. Speed, ed., Studies in Richard Hooker: Essays Preliminary to an Edition of His Works, Cleveland and London, 1972, 3–76Google Scholar. On Hooker's close association with those engaged in struggles about religion in parliament during his work on the Laws, see Sisson's, C. J. classic The Judicious Marriage of Mr. Hooker and the Birth of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, Cambridge 1940Google Scholar. The polemical thrust of the Laws is emphasised in Professor Cargill Thompson's essay and in both of the editors' introductions to the abridged edition of the Laws referred to in n. 1 above.

¹⁰ The stinging survey of the varieties of ‘unworthiness’ of contemporary bishops in the last chapter of Book vii of the Laws is one evidence of such tension: Works (1888), iii.302–14; McGrade and Vickers, abridged edition, 317–25. Similar anguish is shown about the current operations of the judicial system in this passage from Hooker's working notes (see above, n. 4): ‘A commendation of the iudges that now are, and an exhortation to care for the bridling of the malice of inferiour officers or actes in theire Courtes by whose practise’ of verie purpose to peruert iustice protract suites impoverish suters and enrich them selues care not with how false suggestions nor by what fraud they abuse both lawes Courtes iudges and whatsoeuer is or should be most sacred. Theire pretense to doe what they may for theire Courtes. Theire purpose to make a pray of them and a gain by theire causes without respect of either conscience or common honestie. The blame of these mens disorders is layd vpon justice it self, with theire corruptions the Courtes wherein they deale are diffamed and made hatefull to the common sort whose maner is to blame for all thinges amisse the greatest that are in sight and to thinke that all thinges amisse in iudgment proceed from faltiness in the iudg. It standeth therfore iudges vpon to stop as much as in them lieth all malitious procedinges': Trinity College, Dublin MS.364, fol. 79, in Professor Stanwood's transcription.

¹¹ The newly discovered working notes include more than a hundred references to one or another legal source, the majority of them pertaining to matters Hooker must have treated in the Cranmer-Sandys draft, such as the determination of the kinds of cases falling under the jurisdiction of ecclesiastical courts, the historical support of ecclesiastical jurisdictions by the English crown, the types of censures and penalties to be imposed by ecclesiastical judges, the nature of jurisdiction in general, and so on.

¹² Trinity College, Dublin MS.364, fol. 77^v Cf. the passages quoted in note 10 above and note 21 below.

¹³ vi, iii, 1. The ‘seeing then’ at the beginning of this sentence (the ‘then’ is omitted in the Dublin MS. of the text) may seem to call for more preparation than is provided by the last sentence of chapter 2 immediately preceding it: ‘In doctrines referred unto action and practice, as this is which concerneth spiritual jurisdiction, the first step towards sound and perfect understanding is the knowledge of the end, because thereby both use doth frame, and contemplation judge all things'.

¹⁴ Although the last sentence of chapter 2 and the first sentence of chapter 3 may seem to be tacked on loosely to the discussions immediately preceding and following them and may thus be suspected as a splice binding originally unconnected essays, it should be noted that the doctrine of the causal primacy of ends or purposes in ‘practical’ matters is profoundly important for Hooker's chief philosophical mentor, Aristotle. For ends as causes see Metaphysics, i.3; xii.7–10; Physics, ii.3 and 8; for the importance of final causes in matters of action and practice, see, for example, the opening chapters of die Nicomachean Ethics and the Politics and the distinction of four senses of ‘best’ government or constitution at Politics, iv. 1, 1288b 21–1289a 25, which serves to organise Aristotle's whole treatment of the subject.

¹⁵ Along with Matthew xvi. 18 (‘Thou art Peter, and on this rock I shall build my church …'), Matthew xvi.19 and John xx.22–33 were taken by the medieval canonists to support both the sacerdotal power of absolution and more general, sometimes universal ecclesiastical jurisdiction. Tierney, Brian, Foundations of the Concilar Theory, Cambridge 1955; reprinted 1958, 31–2Google Scholar, wrote: ‘Gratian himself used the phrase potestas ligandi et solvendi in two quite different senses. In one context it was clearly identified with the power of remitting sins conferred on all the Apostles. Elsewhere it was treated as a power of jurisdiction inhering in the Papacy Very occasionally one finds a Decretist text which, commenting on this passage, developed Gratian's view of the power of the keys as a public authority inhering in the Papacy. Much more frequently the canonists accepted Gratian's opinion with little or no comment and went on, without any apparent sense of incongruity, to discuss various technical problems connected with the power of the keys considered as the sacerdotal power of absolution'. For Hooker's exegesis, which also elicits both penitential and broader powers of jurisdiction from these texts with no apparent sense of incongruity, see note 21 below.

¹⁶ ‘[Y]et seeing they [confession and satisfaction] belong as well to the discipline as to the virtue of repentance, and only differ for that in the one they are performed to man, in the other to God alone; I had rather distinguish diem in joint handling, than handle them apart, because in quality and manner of practice they are distinct': vi, iii, 6.

¹⁷ v, i-iii; also see chapter 76.

¹⁸ Three times: vi, iv, 7 (Origen) and 16 (Chrysostom), and v, 8 (Cyprian, cited very appositely).

¹⁹ vi, iii, 1 and 3; iv, 7 (two passages) and 16; v, 5 and 6; vi, 2 and 14; and perhaps vi, 17.

²⁰ vi, ii, 2. Christ invested the Church with spiritual power ‘for the benefit and good of souls, as a mean to keep them in the path which leadeth unto endless felicity, a bridle to hold them within their due and convenient bounds, and if they do go astray, a forcible help to reclaim them'.

²¹ ‘Our Lord and Saviour in the sixteenth of St. Matthew's Gospel giveth his Apostles regiment in general over God's Church. For they that have the keys of the kingdom of heaven are thereby signified to be stewards of the house of God, under whom they guide, command, judge, and correct his family. The souls of men are God's treasure, committed to the trust and fidelity of such as must render a strict account for the very least which is under their custody. God hath not invested them with power to make a revenue thereof, but to use it for the good of them whom Jesus Christ hath most dearly bought…. This is that grand original warrant, by force whereof the guides and prelates in God's Church, first his Apostles, and afterwards others following them successively, did both use and uphold that discipline, the end whereof is to heal men's consciences, to cure their sins, to reclaim offenders from iniquity, and to make them by repentance just. Neither hath it of ancient time for any other respect been accustomed to bind by ecclesiastical censures, to retain so bound till tokens of manifest repentance appeared, and upon apparent repentance to release saving only because this was received as a most expedient method for the cure of sin': vi, iv, 1.

²² On Hooker's conception of the Church as a politic society, see the essay by Professor Cargill Thompson cited above (note 9) and 31–4 of my introduction to the abridged edition of the Laws cited earlier. The most relevant passages in the Laws are in, i and viii, i. To think of repentance as the primary aim of jurisdiction and of spiritual healdi as the aim of repentance seems especially appropriate to Hooker's inclusive idea of the Church. While Calvin, for example, recommends moderation and a spirit of mildness in the administration of ecclesiastical censures (Institutes, iv, 12, sects. 8 and 10), his order of ends is clearly different from Hooker's. ‘There be three endes which the Church hath respect vnto in such corrections…. The first is, that they shoulde not, to the dishonour of God, be named amonge Christians that lead a filthy and sinful life, as though his holy Church were a conspiracy of naughty and wicked men…. The seconde ende is, least (as it is wont to come to passe) with the continuall company of the euill, the good should be corrupted…. The thirde ende is, that they themselves confounded with shame may beginne to repent of their filthinesse': ibid., sect. 5, in Norton's translation of 1578. The passionate insistence of men like Barrow and Greenwood on separating open sinners from the Church or else forming a true church separate from the corrupt congregations of the establishment was one the most disturbing factors to emerge in England in the early 1590s, when Hooker was in the midst of work on the Laws.

²³ vi, iii, 5.

²⁴ vi, vi, 13; my emphasis.

²⁵ Cf. the division of his treatment of episcopal authority carefully laid out at the end of chapter 3 of Book. VII. After stating the four parts of the constructive case he would make for the power of bishops, he concludes: ‘This done, we may afterwards descend unto those by whom the same either hath been heretofore, or is at this present hour gainsaid'. Chapter 3–6 of 164.8 and chapters 4–16 of Book vii thus have die same form, an exposition of truth followed by a refutation of error, but in the one case there is no advance notice, in the other there is.

²⁶ vi, v, 1; my emphasis.

²⁷ vi, v, 9.

²⁸ VI, V, 2.

²⁹ vi, vi, 14.

³⁰ Most of the rest of the anti-Romanism in 1648 is concentrated in an earlier, also discrete portion of the text, sections 6–13 of chapter 4. This long passage is clearly framed as a unit by its opening and closing words: ‘They are men that would seem to honour antiquity', at the beginning, and ‘No, no; these opinions have youth in their countenance; antiquity know [sic] them not', at the end, and like the first thirteen sections of chapter 6 it could be dropped from 1648 without loss to the coherence of the overall argument. Deletion of both passages would reduce 1648 to the scale indicated earlier.

³¹ For example, he addresses himself directly and extensively to Roman conceptions of secular and ecclesiastical power in viii, i, 3–4; ii, 14; iii (throughout); and ix, 9–11.

³² The imputation of ‘popery’ was, of course, the most common of commonplaces in Disciplinarian attacks on official Anglicanism. A whole book of the Laws (Book iv) is concerned with refuting the assertion, ‘that our form of Church polity is corrupted with popish orders, rites, and ceremonies, banished out of certain reformed churches, whose example therein we ought to have followed'. Hooker had personal cause to be sensitive to such accusations, for sympathy with Rome had been one of the chief charges brought against him by his opponent at the Temple in the 1580s, Walter Travers: see Travers's supplication to the Privy Council and Hooker's reply, printed by Keble in Works (1888), iii.548–96, 560–7 and 578–85. In connexion with the matters at issue in Book vi, indeed, he may have needed to clarify his position vis à vis Rome in order to calm friends as well as opponents. George Cranmer had advised him to delete a passage from his treatment of lay-elders ‘because it favoureth the papistes in some points': ibid., 127; while he and Sandys seem to have thought a settlement with the Disciplinarians could be arrived at if only they would admit that their platform of lay-elders had been first founded by Calvin rather than God: ibid., 128. The suggestion is that the choice between lay-elders and ‘episcopall regiment’ is a matter of convenience, and the inconveniences of presbyterianism that occur to them are not conspicuously spiritual ones: ‘contempt of the prince and nobility, insolency of the base people, &c. and such other as at your leasure you may conceave'. If Hooker had deeper reasons than these for denying the exercise of ordinary ecclesiastical jurisdiction to laymen, he may have wished to assure his supporters that those reasons allowed him to be as critical of Rome as they had a right to wish him.

³³ Works (1888), i.123. On this testimony and the statement to the same effect by Hooker's defender, William Covel, in 1603, see Hill, “The Problem of the “Three Last Books'”, 320; and Sisson, The Judicious Marriage of Mr. Hooker, 80–2. We are not entitled to question the independence of Covel's testimony on grammatical grounds, because he wrote three years after Hooker's death, ‘from his [Hooker's] own mouth I am informed’ that the last three books were completed. He presumably thought this a good Latinate way to describe his present state: ‘informatus sum—I am in a state of having been informed—by Hooker personally', or, ‘I have been and remain “informed” by Hooker'.

³⁴ Hill, 320–4; Sisson, 95–106.