queen’s chapel. Wretched me! This thing will easily be made into a
precedent.’^102 The crucifix in Elizabeth’s chapel showed Jewel just what
crosses he had to bear. Yet, though made a matter for a disputation, the
affair resulted in neither what Jewel feared for himself, nor what he
hoped with respect to the queen’s chapel: Jewel stayed and so did the
crucifix. Perhaps the specter of too much change, losing her new bishops
as well as her old, did not sit well with Elizabeth. The crucifix’s status
became neither royally proscribed precedent, nor a definition of true
religion. Though a grievous situation, the crucifix did not touch the basic
doctrinal integrity of the Settlement, as it never stood as interpretive of
it. Consequently, Jewel, though having withstood his archbishop and
monarch on the question,^103 came out with his episcopal orders and the
1559 Settlement, intact. Though aired in public, in the end his
opposition appears as a private spat, without any significant
consequences for the English Church. From this incident we see that
Jewel could not condone all of Elizabeth’s religious sensibilities. To the
extent he embraced and endorsed the Settlement, as it contained the
royal will’s definition for the established Church, Jewel remained an
Erastian. However much of a popish precedent they may have set, that
the crucifix and the royal chapel were not religious law, spared Jewel.
Nonetheless, he did not see the monarch’s prerogative as absolute; after
all, he had been an exile. Yet even this was not some repudiation on
Jewel’s part of Mary’s legitimacy, but merely his recognition that he
could not live with his legitimate monarch’s religion. Jewel himself
understood that changes in religion, especially as they affected matters of
state, contained dangers:
I know that all changes in the commonwealth are offensive and
serious, and that many things are often tolerated by princes by
reason of the times; and this initially, probably was not
inconvenient; but now that the full light of the gospel has shone
through, the very vestiges of error must, as far as possible, be
removed.^104Having survived the issue of the crucifix, whatever other disaffection
lurked in Jewel’s soul he kept well under lock and key: the public persona
A PRELATE PUBLIC AND PRIVATE 185
(^102) ‘Crucula illa argenteola male nata, male auspicata, adhuc stat in larario principis.
Me miserum! res ea facile trahetur in exemplum.’ Jewel, letter to Martyr, 16 November
1559, in Works, IV, p. 1224.
(^103) A debate was held between those who argued for the propriety of the crucifix in the
queen’s chapel, archbishop Parker and Richard Cox, and those who argued against it,
Grindal and Jewel. See Jewel’s letter to Martyr, 4 February 1560, in Works, IV, p. 1228.
(^104) ‘Scio omnes in republica magnas mutationes odiosas et graves esse, et multa saepe a
principibus temporis causa tolerari; atque illud fortasse ab initio non fuit incommodum:
nunc vero postquan erupit lux omnis evangelii, quantum quidem fieri potest, vesitgia ipsa
erroris.’ Jewel, Works,IV, p. 1245.