confronts the reader only when the entire corpus of Jewel’s writings,
both as apologist and as correspondent, is considered. When thus
comprehending the entirety of Jewel’s writings, one is compelled to
wonder about the coherence of his thought on the monarch’s function
and place in the realm, for it was only by her good pleasure that the
‘scenic dress’ of which he disapproved, continued; for, as he would later
write to Bullinger and Lavater in 1566 concerning the desired alteration
in the official stance on vestments, Elizabeth ‘is not able to bear any
change in religion at this time.’^4 One must also question the unity of
Jewel’s thought on what a Protestant commonwealth should be, and
what he believed the nature and character of English Protestantism was?
Finally, how could Jewel function while holding two seemingly
contradictory opinions?
This seeming duplicity of Jewel is not some Puritan/Anglican
dichotomy, some struggle between Canterbury and Geneva; but is
instead an expression of Jewel’s resignation to the reality that the
required mode of Protestant reform in England was one identified with
his doctrine of the role of the godly prince. This doctrine, for all intents
and purposes termed Erastian, had been the reality of English religion
since Henry VIII, and in a modified form was that of Zurich.^5 However
vacillating she may be, Jewel had cast his Protestant hopes on Elizabeth.
The returning exiles, or at least Jewel, had hopes for her religious zeal,
and that religion would be materially restored to the favor and status it
had officially enjoyed in Edward’s day. ‘Concerning the state of religion,
it has been effected (would that it were with good portents!) so that it
exists as it was in your late times here under Edward,’^6 he would write
to Martyr; but this official status, as Jewel would note, still fell short of
Edward’s time. Elizabeth had obstacles to overcome in 1559 which
Edward, the young Josiah, was able to face in different ways. Unlike
Edward, who had several bishops, including the archbishop of
Canterbury, to lead the charge for the change of religion, Elizabeth was
faced with a combatively conservative House of Lords, led by an
episcopal bench thoroughly Catholic in their religion;^7 and a precarious
international position complicated by Mary’s ineffectual part in the
A PRELATE PUBLIC AND PRIVATE 157
(^4) ‘Sed regina ferre mutationem in religione hoc tempore nullam potest’, Jewel, letter 8
February 1566. Works, IV, p. 1267.
(^5) Though the term derives from the Heidelberg doctor, the doctrine he defended was
alive and well before Erastus’s confrontation with Withers.
(^6) ‘De religione transactum est (utinam bonis auspiciis!) ut esset eo loco, quo fuit ultimis
tuis temporibus sub Edouardo.’ Jewel, Letter to Martyr, May 1559, Works, I, p. 1209.
(^7) Only one of the sitting bishops would subscribe to the change of religion, Anthony
Kitchin of Llandaff. Carlson, ‘The Bishops and the Queen’ (Dissertation, Princeton
University, 1962), p. 65.