JEWEL

JEWEL, JOHN, Bishop of Salisbury, and one of the fathers of the Protestant Church in England, was born May 24, 1522, at Buden, in the parish of Berry Narber in Devonshire. After attending various schools in that county, he was entered of Merton College, Oxford, in 1535, and passed under the care of John Parkhurst, afterwards Bishop of Norwich. After graduating as B.A. when only eighteen years of age, he began to teach, and soon became one of the most noted tutors in the university. At this time the Reformation was beginning to make head in England, but under the tyranny of Henry VIII. it was almost as dangerous for any one to vindicate as to oppose it. Jewel, a Protestant at heart, contented himself with inculcating the principles of the Reformation in his private lectures. On the accession of Edward VI. he openly declared himself a zealous Protestant; and when the famous Italian reformer Peter Martyr settled at Oxford as professor of theology, and began to hold public disputations there after the fashion of that age, Jewel became his secretary and intimate friend. The premature death of Edward, and the accession of his sister Mary to the throne, threw the chief power into the hands of the Roman Catholics for the last time in the history of England. So prominent a reformer as Jewel could not but be marked out for vengeance. Expelled from his college, he began to teach in the town, and his popularity with his scholars remained undiminished. Severer measures were then adopted; and the alternative was laid before him of submission or death. He hesitated, and yielded a little. At length a prey to keen remorse, and with little hope of security in compliance, he sought safety in flight. With difficulty he found his way to Frankfurt, where he made a public confession of sorrow for his weakness in temporizing with Popery. On the invitation of Peter Martyr he removed to Strasburg, where he lived for a while and assisted his friend in the composition of some of his works. With the death of Queen Mary the sun began again to shine on the persecuted Reformers. Jewel returned

to England, and in a short time was appointed to the see of Salisbury. The remainder of his life was spent in strengthening the outworks of English Protestantism, and in expounding the doctrinal system on which it is based. By tongue and pen he did his best to eradicate whatever relics of Popery continued to haunt his diocese. There was no effort of mind or body which he was not ready to make in furtherance of that aim. The zeal and unwearied apostolic self-devotion with which he wrought in the good cause at length destroyed his health, and cut short his noble career. In the course of one of his tours through his diocese, he died at the village of Monkton Farleigh, September 22, 1571, in his fiftieth year.

Jewel, though a keen partisan, was allowed by the men of every party in his own day to have possessed every virtue under heaven. His learning was as much beyond dispute as his virtue, and the imprint of both is stamped on every page of his voluminous works. By far his greatest achievement is his Apology for the Church of England, which was written in Latin, and published in London in 1562. This work, which is one of the ablest defences of English Protestantism, was attacked by a great many Popish writers. The Defences, in which its author replied to these attacks, added greatly to the value of the work, and gave it such a pre-eminence that by the orders of Elizabeth and James copies of it were chained in every parish church of England and Wales for the general behoof of the people. In many remote parishes these volumes were still to be seen since the beginning of the present century.

With the exception of some of his sermons, Jewel's writings are nearly all controversial. More fortunate than most works of their class, they are still highly valued for their views on the points at issue between the churches of Rome and England, as also on many of the special doctrines of the English Church itself. A complete list of his works is given in Wood's Athen. Ozon, and in the Biogr. Britt. The most detailed life of him is that by Dr. Lawrence Humphrey, his successor in the diocese of Salisbury.