used both in English parish churches and by Jewel in his replies to
Harding.
These works, similar in both their material content and the
circumstances of their appearance, give an ample insight into Jewel’s
own theology and also his positive assessment of the nature of the
Church of England. As to the circumstances of their composition, both
were written at the behest of Sir William Cecil; both were anonymous.
Indeed, so anonymous was the Epistola, that the first three editions of
Jewel’s collected works did not contain it, including the nearly
exhaustive Parker Society Edition. There is a printed edition of the
Epistolain the British Library and also a manuscript copy in the Public
Record Office.^123 John Booty, in the course of research for his doctoral
work and the publication of his Jewel as Apologist for the Church of
England,made the identification of this text with the work alluded to by
Sir Nicholas Bacon in a letter to Sir Nicholas Throckmorton: ‘I have
caused the Bishop of Sarum to fayne an epistle sent from hince thither,
and have printed it secretly, and send you herwith certen copyes, if more
be printed there, the matter shall have more probabilite.’^124 Booty is of
the opinion that the British Library edition was printed in Paris, though
why this is he does not say, though it was indeed intended for the French.
Since there were some copies already printed in England, it may never
have appeared in Paris. The pseudonymous Epistola was to feign
appearance of being written by laity in response to questions from a
friend in France, and seems to have been commissioned by Cecil as an
answer to libels about the English Church then current in France
following the Colloquy of Poissy. As this work made not even a ripple
upon the surface of the English ecclesiastical lake, its use for the
inquiring historian is limited to the insights garnered from its contents
respecting both the mind of its author and the mind of the English
establishment in handling criticisms of the Elizabethan Settlement.
Jewel’s main argument in the Epistolarevolves around the libels that
England’s is a fractured ecclesiastical state, one in which some defend,
while some defame, the use of vestments; one at odds with itself both
doctrinally and ceremonially; one which saw the faithful in contention
with their crown and convocation.^125 Jewel’s response is not only to
86 JOHN JEWEL AND THE ENGLISH NATIONAL CHURCH
his soothing pages and clawebackes,” lege sodes“in goode fellowshipe I pray thee reade,”
operae pretium est videre“it is a world to see,” and magnum silentium “all mum, not a
word.” If quality without bulk were enough, Lady Bacon might be put forward as the best
of all sixteenth-century translators.’ C.S. Lewis,English Literature in the Sixteenth
Century, p. 307.
(^123) Booty, Jewel as Apologist, p. 209.
(^124) Calendar of State Papers, 1561–1562, p. 104.
(^125) ‘Nos omnes, studiis et contentionibus, in factiones et sectas distractos esse: nihil
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