kingdom.^23 Parkhurst, upon his return from exile wrote to Josiah Simler
in Zurich:
Let others have their bishoprics; my Cleeve is enough for me ....
When I was lately in London ... Parker ... threatened me with I
know not what bishopric. But I hope for better things; for I cannot
be ambitious of so much misery. I am king here in my parish, and
for two years act as sole bishop.^24Considered by some a poet,^25 in 1542, owing to one of his flattering
epigrams, Parkhurst endeared himself to Catherine Parr during Henry
VIII’s visit to Oxford, and became her chaplain. Parkhurst was already
the chaplain to the Duke and Duchess of Suffolk, Charles Brandon and
his wife Mary, Henry VIII’s sister. Parkhurst was granted the plumb of
Bishop’s Cleeve in 1549 by Lord Thomas Seymour, the brother of
Edward Seymour, the duke of Somerset and the Lord Protector. Thomas
Seymour had married the thrice-widowed queen Catherine Parr, shortly
following Henry’s demise. Parkhurst attended Catherine just before her
death in 1548. Shortly thereafter, and not too much before Thomas
Seymour’s downfall, he was granted his living at Cleeve which was near
Seymour’s castle of Sudeley, about 30 miles west of Oxford. While
Parkhurst quit his duties with Merton, he would still come to hear
Jewel’s lectures and to bless Jewel with his munificence.^26
Parkhurst’s removal to Cleeve nearly coincided with the arrival from
Strasbourg of Peter Martyr Vermigli. While Jewel never forgot his debt
to Parkhurst,^27 without a doubt he now looked to Peter Martyr, both on
a personal and an academic level. Though having formally been in the
Protestant camp for only seven years, Martyr was easily one of the most
learned men in the Protestant world: skilled in both Hebrew and Greek,
12 JOHN JEWEL AND THE ENGLISH NATIONAL CHURCH
(^23) Jewel,Works, IV, p. 1228. Parkhurstus in regno suo.
(^24) Robinson, ed., Zurich Letters, p. 61.
(^25) Parkhurst’s epigrams and poems are printed in Iohannis Parkhursti, Ludicra sive
Epigrammata Iuvenilia(London: John Day, 1573). Short Title Catalog, 19299.
(^26) Humphrey, Vita Iuelli, pp. 29–30.
(^27) At some point during Edward VI’s reign Jewel reprimanded his mentor for seeking to
hire him to tutor a student, when, Jewel said, there is nothing he could do that would ever
be an equitable return for all that Parkhurst had done for him: Hoc solum in suavissimis
literis mihi displicebat, quod cum tradis puerum, me abs te orari, neque vero orari solum,
sed etiam pertio conduci video. Qua quidem hercle in re insignem ego mihi fieri injuriam
arbitor. Nam et tu hoc, quidquid est, officii jam olim es promeritus, ut nulla tibi videatur
posse a me par referri gratia: Jewel, Works, IV, p. 1194. The editor of Jewel’s works, Ayre,
dates this letter to Jewel’s time in Strasbourg, but this hardly seems likely, especially with
the reference to Jewel unable to get the boy admitted into Parkhurst’s college, something
that could only have been written by Jewel while still at Oxford. Also, Jewel’s comments
about the irresponsible letter carriers who had not delivered his previous letters to
Parkhurst hardly seems to fit with the period of Jewel’s stay in Strasbourg.
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