Definition of "hooke"

Like as the cunning fisher takes the fishe By traitor baite wherby the hooke is hidde: So Pleasure serues to vice in steede of foode To baite our soules theron too licourishe.

1592, Philippe de Mornay, A Discourse of Life and Death‎

XLIX In this great passion of unwonted lust, Or wonted feare of doing ought amis, He started up, as seeming to mistrust 435 Some secret ill, or hidden foe of his: Lo there before his face his Lady is, Under blake stole hyding her bayted hooke; And as halfe blushing offred him to kis, With gentle blandishment and lovely looke, 440 Most like that virgin true, which for her knight him took.

1590, Edmund Spenser, Spenser's The Faerie Queene, Book I‎, published 1921

Concernyng the seconde case, to be trained in, (which these our men cal to be drawen to the shot) thou ought to take heede, not straight way to beleve those thinges, which are nothyng reasonable, that thei be as they seeme: as shoulde be, if the enemie should set afore thee a praie, thou oughtest to beleeve that in the same is the hooke, and that therin is hid the deceipte.

1560, Peter Whitehorne, Machiavelli, Volume I‎