Thomas Hooker

Thomas Hooker ( born July 5, 1586 Markfield, Leicestershire, † July 7, 1647 in Hartford, Connecticut) was one of the leaders of the first Puritanergeneration in New England. He was one of the founders of the colony of Connecticut.

Life

Hooker studied theology at the University of Cambridge. He stopped for the most part firmly to the doctrine, but not on the rite of the Anglican established church and therefore had to suffer after 1630 under the persecution of the Puritans by the Arminian Archbishop of Canterbury, William Laud. 1630 he fled to Holland, where he was the right hand man of William Ames. In 1633 he emigrated to the colony of Massachusetts, founded four years earlier, in which already had settled a few thousand Puritans. He was appointed the first pastor of Newport (now at Cambridge ( Massachusetts)). His former estate is now on the campus of Harvard University.

Thomas Hooker moved in June 1636 with a hundred people scoring group from the Bay westward to the Connecticut and founded the city of Hartford, the first and largest settlement center of the colony of Connecticut. Not far away was located since 1633 in Windsor the first house, which was also attached. The group is also the widowed Ann Edwards was with her son William Edwards. Ann Edwards later married James Coles. Ann and William Edwards were ancestors of Jonathan Edwards.

Hooker's theory of the state

The Congregationalist Hooker and his followers were like the circle around Roger Williams with the theocracy of John Winthrop in Boston disagree. For Hooker the basis of state power lay in the free consent of the people, to whom he conceded the privilege to choose the government. " Hooker was of the opinion that the basis of state authority should be the will of the people and the support of state power should be elected by the citizenry ." Hooker played a leading role in the drafting of the Fundamental Orders of Connecticut in 1639, are considered the first written constitution of a modern democracy. In preparation of this Constitution " in 1638 he held a famous sermon as faith requirement classically formulated. As in Massachusetts was the American understanding of democracy, the active and passive voting rights only to men of a certain property to ( freemen ).

Together with the colony of John Davenport at New Haven (Connecticut) won the residents of Hartford supple and restrained in the 17th century an internally tolerant independence, the Boston until a century later should fight with violence: the cradle of American democracy.

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