Along with Parkhurst, Humphrey was the logical choice for the prelates
to draft for the project: he had been at Oxford when Jewel was there,
had been a companion of Jewel at Zurich during the Marian exile,^4 and
as noted, upon Jewel’s death, Humphrey purchased the bishop’s library
on behalf of Magdalen College.^5 Though Humphrey had not shared the
warmest of ecclesiastical relations with Jewel, Jewel had denied
Humphrey a benefice in Salisbury diocese due to the Magdalen
president’s contrariness about vestments, the two never seemed to have
been permanently alienated by it. Humphrey eventually did conform, yet
the former rift between the two could never be inferred from the Vita
Iuelli: Humphrey is always adulatory.
Humphrey composed his biography of Jewel over the two years
following the bishop’s death, signing the dedicatory epistle on 23
September 1573, two years to the day after Jewel’s demise.^6 Humphrey
dedicated the book to Parker and Sandys professing that hagiographical
and morally pedagogical ends guided his writing: to hold Jewel up as an
exemplar of the scholarly life and to cast him as a paragon in the proper
and pious governance of the Church. As an exemplary bishop and
administrator, Jewel’s life demonstrated the best way to defend the
Church, providing a means and pattern for the future fight against the
papal hydra. As a scholar Jewel’s life would supply an illustration to
the English clergy of pious erudition, thus providing the English ministry
with an archetypical guide in bringing happiness to those whose souls
they guarded.^7 In regard to Jewel’s academic rigor, Humphrey wanted the
manner and discipline of Jewel’s scholarly life, both at Oxford and at
Sarum, placed before all those at the universities. Humphrey hoped to
incarnate by this image (he uses the word speculum, mirror) the
singleness of mind and discipline required of students. The students thus
piously chastened, emboldened against pleasure’s seductions, and having
been captivated by a love of the truth Jewel proclaimed, would
themselves then seek to defend the Church of England from error.^8 These
226 JOHN JEWEL AND THE ENGLISH NATIONAL CHURCH
1571–1575(Norfolk: Norfolk Record Society, 1974–75), p. 66.
(^4) There is some confusion about the exact details surrounding Humphrey’s flight from
England and his relation to the Marian church. See Christina Garrett, Marian Exiles
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1938), pp. 193–94.
(^5) Ker, ‘Library,’ pp. 256–65.
(^6) Humphrey, Vita Iuelli, p. xxix.
(^7) Ibid., pp. xx–xxiii.
(^8) ‘Secundo. Speculum est Theologorum, ut non male labores et cogitationes suas ponant,
nec in res inutiles, nugatorias aut impias, operam conferant, nec animos infirmos et egrotos
in deteriorem partem applicent, sed ut in solidae cognitionis indagatione versentur, et
veritatem Iuelli exemplo fortiter contra omnia inimicorum iacula defendant, et Britanni
cum sint, illum clarissumum Scythicarum Ecclesiarum gubernatorem Britannionem
imitentur, qui dogmatum impietatem et Valentis Imperatoris surorem in Christianos
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