British astrologer, the author of “Bellum Hibernicale,” a sober and judicious book and some few other writings.
Born of good parentage, Booker was learned in Latin from youth. He went to London at age 15 to become a haberdasher’s apprentice, then a schoolmaster at Hadley’s. He was a clerk to one City Alderman then to another through whom he became “well respected of the most eminent citizensons of London, even to his dying day.”
Booker studied astrology from childhood, becoming proficient, and famed in 1632 and 1633 for a prediction based on a solar eclipse in 18 Aries that “the king of Bohemia, and Gustave King of Sweden, would die during the effects of the eclipse.” He was honest and serious about astrology, in which predictions were his specialty.
In 1643, Parliament appointed him licenser of books on “Mathematicks, Almanacks, and prognostications,” which led to his first meeting with Lilly the following year. After an initial competitiveness, they became lifelong friends. In 1646, he met Ashmole, whose wife thereafter asked him horary questions.
In 1667, he was afflicted with dysentery which consumed him to nothing before he died on 4/08 OS. Ashmole bought Hooker’s library, giving his widow more than it was worth (140 pounds) as an act of generosity. He left two sons and two daughters.
Link to Wikipedia biography