sentiments that the royal decree made vestments pure, vindicated
Parker’s claims for a monarchical, ecclesiastical primacy; and essentially
defined the supreme governor’s prerogative as a unilateral royal
privilege.^73 Although Parker had to implore Cecil for his, the Queen’s and
the council’s visible backing, it was largely the first two who were the
political impetus for Parker’s actions.^74 Parker hardly needed this
motivation, finding the precisian disruption of unity and order catalyst
enough.^75
Jewel remained silent to his English audience on the matter of
vestments per se, initially seemingly above the fray, but nonetheless he
refused Laurence Humphrey a benefice in his diocese, due to
Humphrey’s ‘vain contention about apparel’.^76 Jewel’s position vis-à-vis
Humphrey and the Puritans was no different than that assumed in
Frankfurt when with the Coxians he would have the face of an English
Church. His earliest apologetics, though seemingly facing Rome, also
gave the back of the hand to Puritanism, elevating the right of the
monarch above any quibbling about non-essentials. Liberty of
conscience had given way to a principle of unity adumbrated and
realized in the prerogative of the prince. Horton Davies notwithstanding,
the Puritans failed, as the Presbyterians would come to learn, owing to
the status of England’s Church as a national institution, governed by Her
Majesty, and happily bolstered even by the most zealous of her clergy.
For Hooper and the Puritans adiaphora had been an appeal to the right
of conscience; for Parker, Jewel and other Elizabethan apologists, it had
become a presupposition for royal prerogative. But as the 1566 letter to
Bullinger demonstrates, this value Jewel posited in the prerogative of the
prince did not leave Jewel without sympathy for the concerns of
Humphrey and Sampson, but it did entail looking at them in a different
light.
The dilemma of a private man in public life: Jewel’s private
correspondence
Any assessment that places Jewel on the radical side of the English
establishment party comes from his private and personal life and not his
174 JOHN JEWEL AND THE ENGLISH NATIONAL CHURCH
English Church History(London, 1914), pp. 467 sq.
(^73) Bullinger to Sampson and Humphrey, Zurich Letters, Vol I, pp. 345–55.
(^74) Cf. Elizabeth’s letter of 25 January 1564 to Parker and Cecil’s thoughts as well.
Correspondence, pp. 223 ff.
(^75) Parker to Grindal, 28 March 1566, Correspondence, pp. 272–74.
(^76) Jewel, Letter to Archbishop Parker, 22 December 1565, Works, IV, p. 1265.
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