Monument to William Hooke, South Enclosure

Reasons for Designation

The monument to William Hooke is listed at Grade II for the following principal reasons:
* It commemorates a leading C17 Independent minister, who served as chaplain to Oliver Cromwell and whose transatlantic connections helped maintain England's links with the Puritan colonies during and after the Commonwealth.
* It is located within the Grade I registered Bunhill Fields Burial Ground (q.v.), and has group value with the other listed tombs in the south enclosure.

Details

635-1/0/10273 BUNHILL FIELDS BURIAL GROUND 21-FEB-11 Monument to William Hooke, South enclo sure

GV II Headstone of William Hooke, probably early C20

LOCATION: 532729.7, 182231.4

MATERIALS: Slate

DESCRIPTION: The monument takes the form of an upright slate slab with an arched top. The inscription gives Hooke's dates of birth and death, and describes him as 'Teacher of the First Church in New Haven Connecticut 1644-56, Chaplain to Oliver Cromwell & Master of the Savoy Hospital until the Close of the Commonwealth'. A subsidiary inscription records the monument's erection 'by the New Haven Church through the generosity of a collateral descendant.'

HISTORY: William Hooke (1600/1-1678) was an Independent minister, writer and (from 1656) a chaplain to the family of the Lord Protector. Born in Hook, Hampshire and educated at Trinity College Oxford, he became rector at Upper Clatford, Hampshire in 1627 and vicar of Axmouth, Devon in 1631. In 1637 he and his family emigrated to North America, establishing a church at Taunton, Massachussetts before taking a post at the church in New Haven, Connecticut. Hooke's wife Jane was related to Oliver Cromwell, who on William's return to England in 1656 engaged him as one of his family chaplains, and afterwards installed him as Master of the Savoy Hospital, then an extension of the Cromwellian court. Following the Restoration he was ejected from the Savoy and forced to go into hiding for a time, but he remained an important link between London Puritans and the New England colonies. He published a number of tracts, including The Privilege of the Saints on Earth (1673) and A Discourse Concerning the Witness (issued posthumously in 1681).

Bunhill Fields was first enclosed as a burial ground in 1665. Thanks to its location just outside the City boundary, and its independence from any Established place of worship, it became London's principal Nonconformist cemetery, the burial place of John Bunyan, Daniel Defoe, William Blake and other leading religious and intellectual figures. It was closed for burials in 1853, laid out as a public park in 1867, and re-landscaped following war damage by Bridgewater and Shepheard in 1964-5.

SOURCES: Corporation of London, A History of the Bunhill Fields Burial Ground (1902). A W Light, Bunhill Fields (London, 1915). Susan Hardman Moore, entry on Hooke in The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, www.oxforddnb.com (retrieved on 9 June 2009).

REASONS FOR DESIGNATION: The monument to William Hooke is listed at Grade II for the following principal reasons: * It commemorates a leading C17 Independent minister, who served as chaplain to Oliver Cromwell and whose transatlantic connections helped maintain England's links with the Puritan colonies during and after the Commonwealth. * It is located within the Grade I registered Bunhill Fields Burial Ground (q.v.), and has group value with the other listed tombs in the south enclosure.

Legacy

The contents of this record have been generated from a legacy data system.

Legacy System number:

508642

Legacy System:

LBS

End of official list entry

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