George Hooper

George Hooper (18 November 1640 – 6 September 1727) was a learned and influential English High church cleric of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. He served as bishop of the Welsh diocese, St Asaph, and later for the diocese of Bath and Wells, as well as chaplain to members of the royal family. Early life George Hooper was born at Grimley in Worcestershire, 18 November 1640. His father, also George Hooper, appears to have been a gentleman of independent means; his mother, Joan Hooper, was daughter of Edmund Giles, gentleman, of White Ladies Aston, Worcestershire. From Grimley his parents moved to Westminster. He was elected a scholar of St Paul's School while John Langley was high-master (1640–1657), but then was transferred to Westminster School under Richard Busby, who thought him very promising, and obtained a king's scholarship there. Hooper as elected to a Westminster studentship at Christ Church, Oxford, in 1657: he graduated BA 16 January 1660, MA 1 December 1663, BD 9 July 1673, and DD 3 July 1677. He remained at Oxford as college tutor until 1672, and made the acquaintance of Thomas Ken. Under Dr. Edward Pococke he became a good Hebrew and Syriac scholar, but also learned enough Arabic to apply it to Old Testament exegesis. Clergyman In 1673 Bishop Morley persuaded Hooper to come and reside with him as his chaplain at Winchester. Ken was the bishop's chaplain at the same time. In the same year Morley presented Hooper to the living of Havant, where he seems to have gone into residence at once, and contracted an ague from the dampness of the place. Ken, then incumbent at East Woodhay in Hampshire, then resigned the living to make way for his friend. Hooper was instituted at Woodhay in 1672. Isaac Milles, the exemplary parish priest of the neighbouring village of High Clere, frequently mentioned Hooper as "the one of all clergymen whom he had ever known in whom the three characters of perfect gentleman, thorough scholar, and venerable divine met in the most complete accordance."