John Jewel

John Jewel (alias Jewell) (24 May 1522 – 23 September 1571) of Devon, England was Bishop of Salisbury from 1559 to 1571.

Life

He was the youngest son of John Jewel of Bowden in the parish of Berry Narbor in Devon, by his wife Alice Bellamye, daughter of Richard Bellamye. He was educated under his uncle John Bellamy, rector of Hampton, and other private tutors until his matriculation at Merton College, Oxford, in July 1535.

There he was taught by John Parkhurst, afterwards bishop of Norwich; but on 19 August 1539 he was elected scholar of Corpus Christi College, Oxford. He graduated BA in 1540 and MA in 1545, having been elected fellow of his college in 1542.

He made some mark as a teacher at Oxford, and became after 1547 one of the chief disciples of Pietro Martire Vermigli, known in England as Peter Martyr. He graduated BD in 1552, and was made vicar of Sunningwell to the south of Oxford, and public orator of the university, in which capacity he had to compose a congratulatory epistle to Queen Mary on her accession.

In April 1554 he acted as notary to Cranmer and Ridley at their disputation, but in the autumn he signed a series of Catholic articles. He was, nevertheless, suspected, fled to London, and thence to Frankfurt, which he reached in March 1555. There he sided with Cox against Knox in what would later be called the Troubles at Frankfurt. However, he soon joined Martyr at Strasbourg, accompanied him to Zürich, and then paid a visit to Padua.

Reign of Queen Elizabeth I

Upon Elizabeth's succession he returned to England, and made earnest efforts to secure what would now be called the Elizabethan Settlement. His attitude was strongly distinguishable from that of the Elizabethan Puritans, as he gradually formulated it under the stress of office and responsibility. In his last sermon his strongly argued against the Puritan faction as worse than the Roman Catholic disputants he was opposing.