people already part of Jewel’s life, most notably Richard Smith and
Thomas Harding; but also Thomas Heskyns, who with Harding had
been deprived by Jewel of his living as the chancellor of the diocese of
Salisbury in 1559. These were but the tip of the iceberg. As Catholics,
those who departed fell from the grace of the subsequent Protestant and
national histories of England, yet it may plausibly be argued that
they were a far more substantial group, both ecclesiastically and
academically, than their more celebrated Protestant expatriates who
endured exile during Mary’s reign. Most of the Marian exiles who left
the universities were fellows of their respective colleges, though there
were notable exceptions, such as the former vice-chancellor of Oxford,
Richard Cox; the list is bolstered in adding to it the foreign divines such
as Peter Martyr Vermigli. Among those Marian exiles that enjoyed
ecclesiastical preferment were both William Barlow, bishop first of St
Davids and then of Bath and Wells and John Scory, the bishop of
Chichester, who with Cranmer administered the burial rites to Edward
VI, and after conforming, fled. Coverdale of Exeter was cited by the
council, but was allowed to leave for Denmark in February 1555. The
Marian bishops that survived into Elizabeth’s reign were never allowed
that much liberty.
The largest exodus under Elizabeth largely occurred from 1559 to
1563: from the time when the oath of Supremacy was first promulgated
to when it was enjoined upon all those who held any public office. The
Elizabethan government especially denuded the universities: 25 fellows
were ejected from New College Oxford alone, many of whom figure
largely in Jewel’s polemical life.^4 Aside from them, Oxford’s first reader
in Greek, its Regius Professor in Greek, its vice-chancellor, its proctor
and several doctors in theology and civil and canon law, as well as
several rectors were expelled; Cambridge’s Regius Professors in civil law
and divinity, and the Masters of St John’s College and Clare Hall, inter
alios, were all ejected. The individuals concerned here almost all made
their way either to the established university town of Louvain to the east
of Brussels, or to Philip II’s new university at Douai, some 20 miles to
the north of Cambrai. Paul IV had issued the bull for the university’s
establishment in 1559, Pius V confirming this in January 1560. The
university’s raison d’etrewas the combating of Protestantism and the
strengthening of the Catholic faith, though its immediate cause was that
the Farnese had denied their subjects any privileges to attend foreign
universities. In 1559 the Netherlands was at peace, and being close to
England, and having already a history of English Catholic émigrés
THE CATHOLIC REACTION TO JEWEL 117
(^4) Southern,Recusant Prose, pp. 43–57, gives an abbreviated calendar of the men who
fled England upon Elizabeth’s accession. Though incomplete, it gives evidence of why
Elizabethan Protestants would lament the failure of the arts and sciences at the universities.