Anne Hooper (Protestant)

Anne Hooper or Anne de Tscerlas ( – 7 December 1555) was a Flemish Protestant activist. She became one of the first wives of an English bishop when her husband became the Anglican Bishop of Gloucester and Worcester. She corresponded with other activists and died of the plague in the same year as her husband, John Hooper became a Protestant martyr.

Anne Hooper
Born
Anne de Tseclaes

Flemish Region probably Antwerp
Died7 December 1555
Frankfurt
NationalityFlemish
Known forcorrespondence
Spouse(s)Bishop John Hooper

Life

Hooper was born in the Flemish Region and she and her sister, not her parents or brother, became Protestants.[1] They had left Antwerp due to discrimination and they had taken refuge in Strasbourg. Anne was living at the house of Jacques Bourgonge when she met John Hooper at the home of John and Anne Hilles. They had similar religious beliefs. John studied at the University of Basle and they married each other in Basle in 1547.[2]

In 1548 her daughter was born and the Swiss reformer Henry Bullinger was there as godparent at her baptism. In 1549 Anne had written to her family in Antwerp. By this time her father had died and her brother took the unopened letter from his mother and burnt it. The same year they returned to England.[1]

Hooper was a correspondent of Henry Bullinger. She, Lady Jane Grey and Anne Hilles were friends of his. Her husband became the reformed Anglican Bishop of Gloucester and Worcester and as a result Anne became one of the first wives of an English bishop.[2]

The catholic "Bloody Mary" came to the English throne and the Protestants were under threat. Anne went abroad in 1553 leaving her husband behind. He was called to account on 22 January 1555 by the Bishop of Winchester and one of the first demands of Hooper was that he renounced his wife.[3]

Her husband was burnt to death on 9 February 1555 for his beliefs. Anne wrote her last extant letter to Bullinger asking him to publish one of her husbands writings.[4] Hooper and her daughter, Rachel, died in Frankfurt in 1555 of the plague.[2] She had been exiled together with others from Blackfriars in Gloucester. Her son, Daniel, survived her and his guardians were Edward Oldsworth and Valérand Poullain. She left twenty pounds to her son who later lived with Valérand Poullain.[1]

References
  1. Ben Lowe (2 March 2017). Commonwealth and the English Reformation: Protestantism and the Politics of Religious Change in the Gloucester Vale, 1483–1560. Routledge. pp. 297–. ISBN 978-1-351-95038-1.
  2. J. Chappell; K. Kramer (19 November 2014). Women during the English Reformations: Renegotiating Gender and Religious Identity. Springer. pp. 47–48. ISBN 978-1-137-46567-2.
  3. Carole Levin; Anna Riehl Bertolet; Jo Eldridge Carney (3 November 2016). A Biographical Encyclopedia of Early Modern Englishwomen: Exemplary Lives and Memorable Acts, 1500-1650. Taylor & Francis. pp. 68–. ISBN 978-1-315-44071-2.
  4. Rachel Basch, ‘Hooper, Anne (d. 1555)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, April 2016 accessed 7 June 2017
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