every expectation of seeing him again soon.^134 No years are listed on
these letters, only the calender dates of 15 and 22 October for the first
two, and St Paul’s Eve on the third (24 January). A specific fact
mentioned in the 15 October letter, the deprivation of Judge Hales,
makes evident that this was written in 1553.
Though believing himself an outcast, in the third letter Jewel stated
that he and Randolph live ‘miserably enough, but better perhaps than
they like who are vexed that we still live at all’.^135 But even this modicum
of comfort changed by the end of the year. Jewel, according to Strype,
served as the notary for Cranmer and Ridley at their Oxford disputation
in April 1554,^136 and it was at some point after this that the Dean of
Christ Church, Richard Marshall, forced Jewel to subscribe to the
traditional faith in writing.^137 The date of Jewel’s recanting is probably
October 1554, as there was a visitation at Oxford then, and numerous
persons were deprived.^138 The visitation, acting upon the first Marian
injunctions, issued 4 March 1554, reset the ecclesiastical clock to the
reign of Henry VIII, and repealed any notion that bishops acted by the
authority of the queen (regia auctoritate fulcitus). Most importantly for
Jewel, ‘that no person be admitted or received to any ecclesiastical
function, benefice, or office, being a sacramentary, infected or defamed
with any notable kind of heresy or other great crime.’^139 According to
Humphrey, Jewel soon thereafter took flight, fleeing to London on foot,
though by an alternative route that he might not be detected. Hobbled
from an earlier illness, Jewel collapsed beside the road and was found by
Augustine Bernherus, Hugh Latimer’s Swiss servant, who took Jewel to
Anne Warcup; and so Jewel, according to Humphrey, was delivered from
the enemies of God, even as Daniel had been delivered from the mouths
of the lions, frustrating them as the Magi had Herod.^140 Though nothing
Jewel wrote during this time concerning his flight remains, the Marian
persecutions and the Marian church became emblematic in his thought.
Humphrey’s account, however, raises a huge question: why was Jewel
imperiled if he had subscribed and if, as seems the case from the A Brieff
Discours off the Troubles Begonne at Franckford, he had attended Mass.
Apart from Cranmer, no one who subscribed and even did the minimum,
38 JOHN JEWEL AND THE ENGLISH NATIONAL CHURCH
(^134) That Parkhurst got all three of these letters seems a safe assumption since they were
housed at Parkhurst’s cathedral in Norwich till transferred at some point to Cambridge.
(^135) Jewel,Works, p. 1192.
(^136) John Strype, Remains of Thomas Cranmer(Oxford, 1840) I.483. See also John
Foxe,Acts and Monuments(London, 1877), Vol VI, p. 471.
(^137) Humphrey, Vita Iuelli, pp. 81–82.
(^138) Strype,Ecclesiastical Memorials, III, xvi,
(^139) Gee and Hardy, Documents Illustrative, pp. 380–81.
(^140) Humphrey, Vita Iuelli, p. 82.
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