must answer for someone whose polemic had moved Reformation
principles in a radical direction. As in all of his disputes, Jewel wished to
show not merely the veracity of his position, but its catholicity and
antiquity as well. The quote from Augustine distanced him from Knox’s
heretofore novel interpretation and political assertions, and gave his
view a distinct pedigree, though this idea did have its apologists
elsewhere.^118
In so doing, Jewel retained a set of categories each necessitated by his
need for a political conservatism closely aligned with Protestant notions
of Reform. Jewel had assented to Mary’s succession, though he quickly
fled when ostensibly imperiled by the conservative elements at Oxford.^119
Jewel had delivered the Oxford oration upon Mary’s accession, but, if
Humphrey is to be followed, only fled when the religious climate became
too hot for his health. Upon Mary’s death, Elizabeth became the godly
prince^120 who also would champion the truth of the Gospel. As both their
claims rested on the same premise of legitimacy,^121 of necessity the
legitimacy of Mary’s claim to the throne must be defended in the same
way as Elizabeth’s, notwithstanding Knox’s form of contract
government. Jewel never answered Knox’s arguments per se; instead he
cuts out the premise on which they are built, namely, a sovereignty
residing in the estates. Jewel circumvents Knox’s canon of authority,
God’s revelation in both Scripture and nature (male headship and
physical disposition), on the one hand, with like scriptural authority,
Numbers 27; and on the other, in a manner akin to his ad majorem
arguments regarding the Donation of Constantine (cf. Chapter Two), by
reposing in interpretive authorities whose collective and individual
stature dwarfed Knox’s: first the litany of current Protestant divines who
dissented from the Scot, but ultimately St Augustine. Thus Jewel gives
antiquity’s sanction to his arguments about legitimacy, and by this also
silently argues for the right of Elizabeth as sovereign of England against
not only those Protestants who questioned her prerogatives as Supreme
Governor, but also against those who would eventually seek a papal
deposition of her.^122
192 JOHN JEWEL AND THE ENGLISH NATIONAL CHURCH
(^118) For a brief synopsis of the view of the state or commonwealth in Tudor England, see
Alan G.R. Smith, The Emergence of a Nation State. The Commonwealth of England:
1529–1660, 2nd ed. (London, 1997), pp. 87–96. Cf. the brief but informative essay on
sixteenth-century English political theory, Christopher Morris’s Political Thought in
England: Tyndale to Hooker(Oxford, 1953).
(^119) Le Bas, Life of Jewel, pp. 30–33. Cf. Humphrey, Vita Iuelli, pp. 74–82.
(^120) I never recall Jewel referring to her as ‘princess’.
(^121) Political as opposed to personal, for if Anne Boleyn were Henry VIII’s lawful wife,
then Catherine of Aragon could not have been.
(^122) Cf. Jewel’s A View of a Seditious Bull, published upon Pius V’s bull of
excommunication against Elizabeth, in which he frees the consciences of her Catholic
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