Born in St. Mary's parish, Oxford, he was the son of Henry Jackson, a mercer, and was a relation of Anthony Wood.
[1] In 1607 John Spenser, president of Corpus Christi College, employed Jackson in transcribing, arranging, and preparing for the press Richard Hooker's papers.
Jackson printed at Oxford in 1612 Hooker's answer to Walter Travers's Supplication, and four sermons in separate volumes; of that on justification a ‘corrected and amended’ edition appeared in 1613.
John Keble suggests that Jackson, aggrieved by Spenser's treatment, retained his own recension of Hooker's work when he delivered up the other papers, and that when his library at Meysey Hampton was plundered and dispersed by the parliamentarians in 1642, his version of book viii., or a copy of it, came into James Ussher's hands.
Jackson collected the ‘testimonies’ in honour of John Claymond prefixed to Shepgreve's ‘Vita Claymundi,’ and translated Plutarch's ‘De morbis Animi et Corporis.’ Among Wood's manuscripts are ‘Collectanea H. Jacksoni,’ regarding the history of the monasteries of Gloucester, Malmesbury, and Cirencester.