Business as usual? The immediate reception of Richard Hooker's 'Ecclesiastical Polity'

The ideological valence or resonance of Hooker's "Ecclesiastical Polity" ha s proved to be a controversial subject. This article attempts to bring to b ear on the problem the immediate response to Hooker's book of a number of c ontemporaries - moderate Puritans, avant-garde conformists and Catholics. I t concludes that none of these groups saw the "Polity" as a mere restatemen t of English reformed orthodoxy, the continuation of English conformist bus iness as usual, and suggests that modern commentators should take these con temporary evaluations into serious account in their own analyses of Hooker.