Common Right in Richard Hooker's Theology

Juridical sources are significant in Richard Hooker's Of the Lawes of Ecclesiasticall Politie, a Reformed natural law apology for the government of the late Elizabethan church and state. These include the works of medieval and Tudor English jurists. However, this article identifies a previously unnoticed use of English legal sources in The Lawes when, in only one isolated chapter, Hooker explains the English law on ministers holding multiple offices and being absent from their livings. Here, he uniquely uses the juristic term ‘common right’ – almost certainly because pluralities and absenteeism were matters within common law jurisdiction. Framing common right as an expression of the natural law, Hooker invests it with a normative strength that it did not have in common law usage. Just over a decade after Hooker published this chapter, Sir Edward Coke introduced a similar understanding of common right to English adjudication in Dr Bonham's Case. The article explores the relationship between and alignment of Hooker's and Coke's use of the term common right and the similar strength that they give to the term, and ponders whether Hooker could have had any influence on the jurisprudence of Dr Bonham's Case.