Elizabethan and seventeenth-century prose

Among the books which give a first-hand account of Elizabethan England is the Survey of London by John Stow, ‘Conteyning the Originall, Antiquity, Increase, Moderne estate, and description of that City’. In turning to the theological and religious prose of the seventeenth century we turn to a rich inheritance, and no figure stands out more attractively than Richard Hooker, a priest who became the formidable defender of the Anglican via media between Puritanism and Rome. In reading Hooker’s sermons, one finds oneself in contact with a man deeply and sensitively aware of human need, especially of the pressure of doubt, yet full of warm personal assurance for those he addresses.