Early life
Hook was born the son of James Hook, FRS and his wife Anne Farquhar, daughter of Sir Walter Farquhar MD, in London on 13 March 1798, and educated first at Blundell's School in Tiverton, Devon, then Winchester College, and Christ Church, Oxford, where he graduated in 1821. He obtained his MA in 1824, and his BD and DD in 1837. On taking Holy Orders in 1822, he served first as a curate at his father's church, St Mildred's Church, Whippingham on the Isle of Wight, later as vicar at St Mary's Church, Moseley, Birmingham, and, in 1828, vicar of the Holy Trinity Church, Coventry. He married Anna Delicia, (1811 – 5 April 1871) daughter of Dr John Johnstone of Birmingham on 4 June 1829 and they had several children.[1] One daughter, Charlotte Jane Hook, married William Stephens, who went on to be Dean on Winchester from 1895 to 1902.
Leeds
His support for the ideals of the Tractarians exposed him to considerable criticism, but his "simple manly character and zealous devotion to parochial work gained him the support of widely divergent classes", according to the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica.[2]
Leeds invited him to be its Vicar in 1837. The city was expanding as one of the seats of the early Industrial Revolution, in which non-conformists played a large part. The established church in the city was a minority denomination and dissenters were even elected as churchwardens. In 1842 the elections produced a slate of Chartist churchwardens.[3]
Hook rebuilt his church, using the church rate levied by the city authorities; this was in the face of objections from non-conformists. He went on to drive through the division of Leeds into 21 parishes, each with its own church. He accepted a reduction in his income and moved to a smaller parsonage, under a deal meaning that ground-floor seats of parish churches in Leeds were bought by the Ecclesiastical Commissioners, rather than allowing pew rentals[4]
Hook fostered the building and support of some 30 schools. His interest in the education of children was contentious at the time, before the Education Acts of the late nineteenth century. His insistence on the necessity of education, and the duty of society to provide it, to some extent, was not what some of his richest parishioners believed.
The minster remains as a physical legacy of Hook's work, being a significant early High Church Gothic revival design.
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