CHAPTER SIX6 Jewel and the identity of the English national Church
English national Church
Jewel and his legacy
Jewel died on 23 September 1571 at the Episcopal house of Monkton
Farley in Wiltshire while on a visitation of his diocese. He was 49 years
old. Both Humphrey and Parkhurst record the incidentals of Jewel’s
death, though Humphrey does so more fully.^1 Both present Jewel’s death
as peaceful, dying in the midst of prayer, giving pious admonitions to
those around him. Apparently pneumonia brought on Jewel’s death, and
though knowing he was sick, he refused to suspend the visitation even
though begged to do so, responding that it became a bishop to die in the
pulpit. His duties seemed to have increased in the last year of his life,
finishing the third edition of his Defense of the Apologie, attending
Parliament in the spring, preaching at Paul’s Cross against the
Presbyterians, and then undertaking a visitation. In the spring of 1571 he
had also been placed on the Court of High Commission, replacing
Richard Cox, and promising Parker his full support in enforcing
uniformity against the Puritans and Presbyterians.^2
Edwyn Sandys, bishop of London and archbishop Matthew Parker
must have conceived publishing a biography of Jewel shortly thereafter,
and entrusted the task to the erstwhile nonconformist Laurence
Humphrey. The chief source of Humphrey’s life seems to have been both
Humphrey’s own recollections and especially those of Parkhurst, at least
that is how Parkhurst saw it. Parkhurst notes in a letter to Rudolph
Gualter dated 9 March 1572 that Humphrey had already sent him two
letters,
asking and entreating me that (as he was formerly my pupil, and
always very close to me) I should send him a thorough account of
what I know of him. In order to gratify a friend and to discharge a
just debt to the spirit of my dearest Jewel, I have written many but
not all things. These I shall send to Oxford in a couple of days. I can
tell more of Jewel than the whole of England.^3(^1) Parkhurst,Letter Book, pp. 108–09; Humphrey, Vita Ivelli, pp. 252–57.
(^2) John Strype, The Life and Acts of Matthew Parker: the first Archbishop of Canterbury
in the Reign of Queen Elizabeth,4 volumes (Oxford, 1821), II, pp. 66, 75.
(^3) R.A. Houlbrooke ed., The Letter Book of John Parkhurst. Compiled during the years