8 EAKLY DAYS 



Caerhayes-in Cornwall, from whose son Valentine the modem 

 Hooker family traces its descent. Post-Keformation Hookers 

 tended to Puritanism. In the Laudian persecutions the Eev. 

 Thomas Hooker escaped to America, and there founded a 

 family which has won its own meed of distinction in Church 

 and State. ' Fighting Joe Hooker,' for instance, gained his 

 by-name in the War of North and South. 



Another Hooker is recorded as fighting under Fairfax 

 and Essex in our own Civil War, afterwards settling down at 

 Crediton. 



Among the 2000 clergy who were driven from their hvings 

 after the Act of Uniformity were several Hookers. One is 

 mentioned as minister of the Presbyterian chapel at Crediton, 

 another at Chumleigh. The chapel registers show that many 

 of the name became Nonconformists. Zeal for the Protestant 

 cause led some to join in Monmouth's ill-starred rebelhon ; 

 those who escaped the scaffold at Exeter ended their Hves 

 as slaves in Barbados.* 



The Joseph Hooker already mentioned, seventh in descent 

 from John, migrated from Exeter and set up in business at 

 Norwich, where his son WiUiam Jackson was bom in 1785. 

 Lydia Vincent, Joseph Hooker's wife, claims special notice for 

 her artistic heritage. George Vincent,^ her cousin, studied under 

 ' Old Crome ' with Cotman^and J. B. Crome, and during his short 

 career, was one of the hghts of the Norwich School. Lydia's 

 sister had married ' William Jackson of Canterbury — ^indeed 

 Jacksons and Vincents intermarried for several generations — 

 and their only son was godfather to his cousin WilHam Jackson 

 Hooker, to whom he afterwards left the Jackson property. 



1 Based on Devon Worthies, by the late Robert H. Hooker of Weston-super- 

 Mare, who erected the beautiful statue of the Judicious Hooker in the Cathedral 

 Close at Exeter. 



' George Vincent (1796-1836 ?), the landscape painter, was born and edu- 

 cated in Norwich. A pupil of John Crome, he exhibited, chiefly Norfolk views, 

 at Norwich between 1811 and 1831, and in London 1814-31, where he lived 

 from 1818. His etchings date between 1821 and 1827. 



* John Sell Cotman (1782-1842) was a landscape and portrait painter, 

 chiefly in water-colours. He studied in London in 1798 and exhibited there 

 180O-6 and again 1825-39. He was Drawing Master in Norwich 1807-34, 

 and in King's Coll., London, 1834-42 ; etched plates of Norfolk buildings and 

 antiquities 1811-39, and published etchings of ' Architectural Antiquities of 

 Normandy ' made in 1817-20 (see vol. ii. p. 197). 



