Jewel probably would have been horrified to have known that his private
letters would somehow be made public. Yet while his missives betray him
as a less than politic subject and a far from assured scholar, they also
present him as a reluctant English prelate.
As opposed to his busy, abstemious and penurious life as John Sarum,
Jewel recalled his days in Zurich as a time of otiosity, enjoyed with his
mentor, Martyr; a season passed in a city reformed and zealous for the
Protestant faith. For Jewel, Zurich always remained a beau ideal: ‘O
Zurich! Zurich!’ Jewel wrote to Martyr in the summer of 1559, ‘how
much more often I now think of you than ever I thought of England
when I was in Zurich.’^86 None of the exiles corresponded with Zurich to
the extent Jewel did. Jewel’s correspondence comprised some 31 per cent
of all the epistolary remains of the English to Zurich between the time of
Mary’s death and Jewel’s in 1571, 36 of 117 letters. And while Jewel
wrote more letters to Zurich than any of the other former exiles, he
nonetheless would often preface his letters with apologies for not writing
as often as he should. While others, for example, Humphrey or Cox,
wrote as if to a group of concerned arbiters, men interested in England
for the Gospel’s sake, Jewel’s letters affect a personal bent, beyond the
topoi of ritual niceties; letters not merely concerned with public issues,
but with the personal concerns of both recipient and writer. Jewel never
appealed to those in Zurich as arbiters, or as bishops in absentia,
whatever his deference to them. Certainly Jewel voiced his concerns, but
not as Sampson and Humphrey who sought some sort of accreditation
from Zurich in their struggle against vestments.^87
Jewel’s identification theologically with Zurich, his place of residence
during his time as a Marian exile, and specifically his identification with
his Oxford and later Zurich mentor, Peter Martyr, demands little
substantiation. Jewel had accompanied Martyr to Zurich from
Strasbourg when the latter had to leave the Imperial city due to pressure
brought on him because his Eucharistic views were at variance with the
Lutheran consubstantiation allowed under the Peace of Augsburg.^88 Such
an identification of Jewel with Zurich and Martyr is also seen in Jewel’s
private correspondence spanning the 13 years of his post-exilic life.
Zurich as an ideal or archetype is one key to understanding Jewel’s
thoughts toward the Puritans and their relation to the prerogative of the
prince. Yet Jewel’s narrow identification with Zurich does not preclude
other associations, even with Geneva. Nor should it rule out that Zurich
represented for Jewel a Reformed body of thought favorable to the
178 JOHN JEWEL AND THE ENGLISH NATIONAL CHURCH
(^86) ‘O Tigurum, Tigurum! quanto ego nunc saepius de te cogito, quam unquam de
Anglia, cum essem Tiguri!’ Jewel, Works, IV, 1210.
(^87) SeeZurich Letters, Vol. I, Letters LXVIII, LXIX and LXXI, pp. 151–55, 157–64.
(^88) Cf. Chapter One.
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