published works. Jewel’s personal letters to Zurich, largely written to
Martyr and Bullinger, reveal an individual alternately encouraged and
discouraged by the state of English religion, but possessed also by an
impertinently cynical attitude with respect to his nation’s spiritual
disposition. This incredulity appears in terse and deprecatory comments
about vestments and the thoroughness of reform. He sees the pace of
religious change and the apathy of those who say they want it as a
problem. Jewel had written Martyr in the spring of 1559 that some
satisfied themselves with only a half reformed Church, instead ‘seeking
after a golden, or, as it rather seems to me, a leaden mean’.^77 This
cynicism further manifests itself in cryptic and unflattering allusions
Jewel made respecting the person of Elizabeth, which shall be treated
below. Not that all of Jewel’s sentiments betray disillusion, for he
believed some real reform had been effected.
What [Josiah Simler] you write, that you hope that our bishops will
be consecrated without any superstitions and fetid ceremonies, I
suppose that is, without oil, the chrism, or the tonsure, you are not
mistaken. For uselessly the bilge would be emptied, if we should
suffer these relics to remain in the bowl. Those oiled, shaven and fat
hypocrites (personatos) we have sent to Rome, from whence we
initially received them.^78None denied that some reform had been accomplished; it is Jewel’s
disaffection with its pace and thoroughness that seemingly limits his
enthusiasm, though not his loyalty, for the Elizabethan Settlement.
Several substantial areas of complaint emerge from the letters Jewel
wrote to his friends in Zurich, for example, the plight and future of the
English ministry and those things which either hindered or denoted the
imperfection of reform.
Jewel had wished neither the dignity nor the duties of the episcopal
office: ‘I [have been appointed] to Salisbury; but this obligation I have
absolutely determined to discard.’^79 For Jewel, the duties of a bishop
would be a burden and a distraction from study, and as had been the
wont of those who previously had desired the quiet of a scholar’s life, for
example, Anselm and Augustine, the episcopacy was a privilege not
happily embraced. Jewel expressed greater concern, however, for the
A PRELATE PUBLIC AND PRIVATE 175
(^77) Jewel,Works, p. 1210.
(^78) ‘Quod scribis, sperare te episcopos apud nos sine ullis superstitiosis et putidis
ceremoniis inaugurari, hoc est, opinor, sine oleo, sine chrismate, sine novacula; nihil
falleris. Frustra enim exhausta esset sentina, si istas reliquias pateremur in fundo residere.
Unctos istos et rasos, et personatos ventres Romam remisimus, unde illos primum
accepimus.’ Jewel, Letter to Simler, 2 November 1559, in Works, IV, p. 1220.
(^79) ‘Ego ... Sarisburiensis: quod ego onus prorsus decrevi excutere.’ Jewel, Letter to
Martyr, 1 August 1559, Works, IV, p. 1215.