Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 27.djvu/284

 passed for the division of the huge, unwieldy parish. By this act about twenty chapels of ease were converted into parish churches, and non-resident curates into resident vicars.

Hook became a royal chaplain soon after he went to Coventry, and in 1838 preached before the young queen at the Chapel Royal the memorable sermon ‘Hear the Church,’ in which he argued that the church of England was not founded, but reformed, in the sixteenth century, that the Roman catholics in England in the reign of Elizabeth quitted the national church, and that the bishops of the English church trace their succession back to the apostles. The sermon was invested with an exaggerated importance never dreamed of by the preacher. It ran through twenty-eight editions, and about a hundred thousand copies were sold. Hook was very commonly looked upon at this time as a member of the Oxford or tractarian school, but his views had been formed long before the ‘Oxford Tracts’ were issued. He was for a certain time with the tractarians, but was never of them. Although he disapproved of the book entitled ‘An Ideal of the Christian Church’ (1844), written by [q. v.], he voted in convocation at Oxford against the proposals to condemn the book and its author. His bitterest trial at Leeds was connected with a church established there by Dr. Pusey and his friends. This church, St. Saviour's, of which Hook laid the foundation-stone in 1842, was consecrated in October 1845, a fortnight after Newman had seceded to the church of Rome. It became a separate parish church under the Leeds Vicarage Act in the autumn of 1846, and soon afterwards several of the clergy and some of the laity connected with it joined the church of Rome. Old opponents, after a long silence, declaimed once more against Hook, and credited his teaching with responsibility for this result. At the same time he was reproached by the more advanced members of the Puseyite school for his condemnation of the teaching and practice of some of the clergy at St. Saviour's. During these troubles he delivered the lecture, December 1846, afterwards published, entitled ‘The Three Reformations: Lutheran, Roman, Anglican.’

Hook had sketched as early as 1838, in a letter to his friend Page Wood, the outlines of a scheme of national education, which he formally propounded in 1846 in a celebrated letter to the Bishop of St. David's (Thirlwall). The main points of Hook's scheme, which excited bitter opposition from many churchmen, were (1) all children ought to receive elementary education; (2) the state alone can enforce this education; (3) religion is an essential part of education, but in England the state cannot undertake this part because there is no one religion common to the whole people; therefore (4) let the state establish rate-paid schools in which all children, to whatever religion they belong, may receive elementary secular instruction; (5) let class-rooms be attached to such schools in which at certain hours the clergy of the church and dissenting ministers may give religious instruction separately to the children of their several flocks. In everything touching the real welfare of the working people Hook was interested. He warmly advocated the Factory Ten Hours Bill, introduced by (afterwards Lord Shaftesbury [q. v.]), although it was vehemently opposed by the rich manufacturers of Leeds, and by the vast majority of the tory party to which he had hitherto adhered. He supported the early closing movement. He opposed the encampment of the militia on Woodhouse Moor, an open tract of high and healthy ground adjacent to Leeds, and urged the town council to secure it as a public park. He would not support a scheme for providing bands of music to play on the moor on Sundays, but would not sign a protest against it. He preached a sermon in the parish church pointing out the confusion introduced by the puritans between the Jewish Sabbath and the Christian Sunday which did not disfavour innocent recreation. During a strike among the colliers near Leeds the men proposed that their claims should be referred to three arbitrators, the first to be chosen by the masters, the second by the men, the third by the vicar of Leeds. In 1842 and 1843 a set of chartists were elected churchwardens. The vicar told them that he should have been better pleased if a body of good churchmen had been elected, but as they had been appointed he should trust them to act with fairness. His trust was justified. He lectured repeatedly at mechanics' institutes and similar institutions, and performed no kind of work with keener zest.

In February 1859 he was appointed to the deanery of Chichester, one of the poorest deaneries in England, a very slender recognition of his services. But Hook was not ambitious, and welcomed the prospect of comparative rest. He left Leeds a very different place from what he found it. He found it a stronghold of dissent, he left it a stronghold of the church; he found it with fifteen churches, he left it with thirty-six; he found it with three schools, he left it with thirty; he found it with six parsonage-houses, he left it with twenty-nine.

At Chichester he soon embarked upon his