the questions of the day pertaining both to humanism and, more
specifically, to the Reformation. Initially Jewel’s education had fallen
under the aegis of the conservative Peter Burrey, later preferred to the
vicarage of Croydon. Parkhurst did not scruple to argue with Burrey in
front of their wards about the day’s great questions. Burrey had
ambitiously assumed to tutor both Jewel and a fellow Devonshire
student but proved unequal to the task. (Humphrey opined of Burrey
that he was ‘hominem mediocri literatura praeditum’.)^13 Eventually, with
Burrey lacking the ability to tutor both, Jewel found himself as the ward
of Parkhurst. Born in 1511, Parkhurst was educated at the grammar
school attached to Magdalen College, at that time one of the more
humanistically inclined schools at Oxford. He entered Merton probably
about 1524, obtaining his BA in 1529 and MA sometime before 1533.^14
Having obtained his MA, Parkhurst was also made a fellow of the
college. Parkhurst gave Jewel assignments in reading Coverdale’s and
Tyndale’s translations of the New Testament, ostensibly as an exercise in
grammar and rhetoric, to compare them for their differences in
translation and style. Despite this concession the assignment could not
be considered less than provocative.^15 Yet whatever advantages,
academically and politically, Parkhurst enjoyed over Burrey, he also
showed himself a scholar unequal to his ward, and in August 1539,
apparently with Parkhurst’s aid, Jewel moved to Corpus Christi College,
where in October 1540 he received his bachelor’s degree.
Corpus Christi, while created to advance philology in Hebrew, Greek
and Latin, was certainly not a Protestant institution: Morwen its
president, according to Humphrey, once remarked to Jewel: ‘Amarem te
Iuelle, si non esses Zvvinglianus: et, Haereticus fide, vita certe videris
Angelus, et, Honestus es, at Lutheranus.’^16 Nonetheless, it was far more
inclined to humanism than Merton or the rest of Oxford. Its foundation
was in part made possible by Merton’s former warden, Rawlins, who
leased the lands and apparently some buildings owned by Merton to the
new college. More than anything this is probably what brought about
the complaints of the Merton Fellows against Rawlins and what led to
his removal.^17 Richard Foxe, bishop of Winchester, a close friend of
Bishop John Fisher, Sir Thomas More and Erasmus founded Corpus in
- No doubt the college’s foundation was a poke in the conservative
10 JOHN JEWEL AND THE ENGLISH NATIONAL CHURCH
(^13) ‘A man gifted with a mediocre literary style.’ Humphrey, Vita Iuelli, p. 18.
(^14) Registrum Annalium Collegii Mertonensis, 1521–1567, edited by John M. Fletcher.
Oxford Historical Society, New Series Vol 23 (Oxford, 1974), pp. 42, 56.
(^15) Humphrey, Vita Iuelli, p. 21.
(^16) ‘I would love you Jewel, were you not a Zwinglian and by faith a heretic. You
certainly seem an angel by life, but you are a Lutheran.’ Ibid., p. 25.
(^17) Martin,Merton, p. 146.
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