amusements and small regard for the finery of his office. Jewel produced
something almost annually, as well as attending to his duties as a
preacher and prelate: his sermons show themselves as the products of
exacting work, and often reveal that clever twist of phrase so abundant
in his letters. Yet whatever he produced, in comparison with other
Reformers, it seems but slight, and that no doubt stemming from the
exertions of his episcopal duties. Jewel’s literary remains run to some
2300 pages, but even this is deceiving, for a good portion of this contains
much of Harding’s several works, most of which Jewel reproduced in his
own two large responses to him, almost 100 pages of letters, 30 pages of
Pope Pius V’s bull against Elizabeth, over 300 pages of sermons, and this
does not take into account the copious quotes from others that make up
the large part of his writings. Thus while Jewel certainly produced
important controversial pieces, it may be wondered what he would have
produced had he spent the remainder of his life at Oxford instead of
Salisbury, had he been a don instead of a bishop, and had he died at 59
as opposed to 49. His mentor, Peter Martyr, for example, who arrived in
Frankfurt in 1542 and died in Zurich in 1562, wrote extensively over
several areas of theology as well as producing a number of his
commentaries. Martyr’s Defensio doctrinae veteris et Apostolici de
sacrosancto eucharistiae sacramento adversus Stephanam Gardinerem,
runs over 700 large folio pages, and reproduces only a modicum of
Gardiner’s diatribes. Nonetheless, Jewel produced more than his fellow
English Protestants, whether bishop or no, and that over the span of 12
years. Also, as shall be treated below, Jewel produced items that were
never published. He was well-versed in the Church Fathers, and also in
the early Church historians, for example, Eusebius, Socrates and
Sozomen. Whatever provisos may be made, Jewel was the intellectual
leader of Elizabeth’s early episcopal bench.
Jewel’s personal library, instead of staying at Salisbury cathedral was
bought by Laurence Humphrey for Magdalen College.^48 At first the
Magdalen community used the collection as regular library books, over
time the volumes being replaced by newer editions. When it occurred to
someone that the books had a value apart from their contents is not
known, and they now reside in the Old Library of Magdalen College. A
survey of the books gives some indication of Jewel as a scholar, with
different books used differently by Jewel in his works. Some of the books
provide indifferent information, for some of them were purchased late in
his life, and thus could not have been part of his research for his
apologies. But the investigation into what his underlining and marginalia
reveal has several, often real difficulties to overcome. This is made baldly
LIFE AS A BISHOP IN SALISBURY 219
(^48) Neil Ker, ‘The Library of Jewel’, pp. 256–65.