'Richard Hooker was born in Exeter in 1553 or 1554, educated there and at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, where he became and remained a fellow until called to the task out of which issued his great treatise. That calling was to become Master of the Temple, in 1584, effectively chaplain to the luminaries, present and future, of the legal profession. It was a post of tremendous importance, not merely in its immediate circumstances but in the general religious conditions of the time. He resigned this post to become vicar of Bishopsbourne (Kent), where he died in 1600. There is little else that we know about Hooker...' from the introduction to Ecclesiastical Polity by Arthur Pollard