CHAPTER TWO2 Jewel and the struggle for the Elizabethan Church
Elizabethan Church
The prospects and duties of an Elizabethan Protestant
Mary Tudor’s death on 17 November 1558 brought a formal end to the
expatriation of Jewel and the other exiles. Her death had been rumored,
Humphrey noted, on several occasions, but with the confirmation of the
news, the exiles began their pilgrimage back to England.^1 Jewel and most
of the other exiles returned to England at the end of 1558 and the
beginning of 1559.^2 The first exiles to set out were those in Strasbourg,
chiefly Sir Anthony Cooke, Edmund Grindal (who had taken Bucer’s
English writings with him to his former home, giving them to Conrad
Hubert), Thomas Sampson and Edwin Sandys. Cooke, according to
Sandys, left the day after Mary’s death had been established, 20
December; Sandys left on the 21st. News had come even before the
confirmation had arrived on 19 December, for on 17 December Sampson
had already been inquiring of Peter Martyr whether he should take up a
post under Elizabeth’s new polity. Jewel and others set out from Zurich
on 7 January, reaching Strasbourg by the month’s end, England at the
beginning of March 1559. Jewel wrote Martyr of his 57-day journey:
‘What a life it was, with water, and earth, and even heaven itself enraged
at us, and by every means impeding our return.’^3 Jewel’s winter trek, and
the sad plight of Parkhurst who was robbed of most of his belongings en
route, demonstrates the undaunted expectations that flourished within
the exile community of an imminent change in English religion.
Nonetheless, many of the English exiles who had attached themselves to
Geneva delayed their return, some for political reasons, for example,
Christopher Goodman, some due to their work on the Geneva Bible, for
example, John Foxe, and some because their expectations were not as
high as those of exiles associated with other cities.^4
(^1) Humphrey, Vita Iuelli, p. 97.
(^2) Jewel wrote Peter Martyr from Strasbourg 26 January 1559 and then wrote again
subsequent to his arrival in England, 20 March 1559, Works, IV, pp. 1196–201.
(^3) ‘Quae illa vita fuit, cum et aqua, et terra, et coelum ipsum nobis indignaretur, et
omnibus modis reditum nostrum impediret!’ Letter to Martyr, 20 March 1559, IV, p. 1198.
(^4) See Patrick Collinson, The Elizabethan Puritan Movement(London: Jonathan Cape,
1967; reprint, Oxford, Clarendon Paperbacks, 1991), pp. 45–46.