Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 27.djvu/293

 ether. 5. ‘Discourses of Earthquakes,’ termed by Mallet ‘a diffuse sort of system of physical geology, full of suggestive thoughts’ (Quarterly Journal of Science, i. 59). 6. ‘Lectures for improving Navigation and Astronomy.’ Waller died before a projected second volume appeared, and some of the remaining manuscripts furnished Derham's ‘Philosophical Experiments and Observations’ in 1726. An abridgment of Hooke's ‘Micrographia’ was published at London in 1780. His unpublished remains were collected by Dr. Thomas Stack into one volume, believed to exist in the library of the Royal Society (Notes and Queries, 1st ser. xii. 429). A few of his papers are preserved in the British Museum (Addit. MSS. 6193–4).

 HOOKER, alias VOWELL, JOHN (1526?–1601), antiquary and chamberlain of Exeter, was born there in or about 1526, being the second son of Robert Hooker, who was mayor of Exeter in 1529, by his third wife, Agnes, daughter of John Doble of Woodbridge, Suffolk. His parents died when he was about ten years old. He was educated in Cornwall at a famous school kept by Dr. John Moreman, vicar of Menheniot, and thence proceeded to Oxford. Corpus Christi College was most probably the college to which he belonged, although Exeter has been suggested, for under a tablet in the hall of Corpus, inscribed with Latin verses concerning the founder, are these words: ‘Hanc repurgatam tabellam restituit Johannes Hooker, generosus, Exoniensis, 1579’ (, Survey of the Antiquities of the City of Oxford, ed. Clark, 1889, i. 551). On leaving Oxford he travelled in Germany, and at Cologne he kept the common exercises of a lecture and disputations in the law, a circumstance leading to the inference that he graduated in that faculty before he left England. He next visited Strasburg, where he sojourned with Peter Martyr. After returning to England for a short time, he proceeded to France with the intention of travelling through Italy and Spain, but in consequence of the wars he was ‘driven to shift himself homewards again.’ Not long afterwards he married, took up his residence in the parish of St. Mary Major in his native city, was in Exeter when it was besieged by the rebels in 1549, and applied himself to the study of astronomy and English history.

He was elected the first chamberlain of the city of Exeter on 21 Sept. 1555. He mentions his appointment in his manuscript ‘History of Exeter.’ His fee he tells us was 4l. a year, and his liveries brought 32s. more. His office chiefly concerned the orphans, but he was also to see the records safely kept, to enter the acts of the corporation in the absence of the town clerk, to attend the city audits, to survey the city property, and to help and instruct the receiver (, Hist. of Exeter, p. 242). As solicitor to Sir Peter Carew, he went to Ireland on his client's business; and he was elected burgess for Athenry in the Irish parliament of 1568. On 20 March 1568–9 the lord deputy of Ireland and the Irish council granted him a license to print the Irish acts of parliament at his own charges (Calendar of the Carew MSS. 1515–74, p. 387). In 1569 he spoke vehemently in the Irish House of Commons in support of the royal prerogative, and so irritated the opposition that the house broke up in confusion, and his parliamentary friends deemed it necessary to escort him to his lodgings in the house of Sir Peter Carew, to protect him from personal violence. Browne Willis states that he and Geoffrey Tothill were elected burgesses for Exeter to Queen Elizabeth's third parliament, which assembled at Westminster on 8 May 1572 (Notitia Parliamentaria, vol. iii. pt. ii. p. 80), but his name does not appear in the ‘Official List of Members of Parliament,’ 1878. He died at Exeter in November 1601, and was buried on 8 Nov. in St. Mary Major's. 