Hooker’s Influence

Charles Mills Gayley’s book from almost a century ago, Shakespeare and the Founders of Liberty in America, may prove interesting to some readers of TCI. Two chapters in particular deserve consideration: “Shakespeare and Hooker”, which argues the great playwright was reading the great theologian, and “Richard Hooker and the Principles of American Liberty”, which argues something similar with regards to the American founders and the philosophy of Hooker.

And in a similar vein, another more recent essay¹ contends that Montesquieu read the eminent divine.

1. Sheila Mason, “An Essentialist Inheritance: From Hooker to Montesquieu.” Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century 242 (1986): 83–124.