Jewel’s progress at Oxford paralleled that of Protestantism in
England. Under the direction of Thomas Cranmer and Nicholas Ridley,
the bishop of London, and attended by the constant oversight of first
Somerset and then Northumberland, the Reformation made several
material advances, in the implementation of the communion service, in
the imposition of Cranmer’s Book of Homilies, the publication in 1549
of the first Book of Common Prayer (to be followed in 1552 by a more
radical one), the issuing of the XLII articles of religion, and especially in
regard to the nature of those preferred for ecclesiastical advancement
and appointment: the already mentioned placements of Bucer in
Cambridge and Martyr in Oxford, but also Nicholas Ridley’s
advancement from Rochester to London, Miles Coverdale’s appointment
to Exeter, John Ponet’s to Winchester, John Scory’s to Chichester and
John Hooper’s to Worcester.^78 Furthermore, in 1548 the government
made the former head of the Capuchin Order, Bernardino Ochino, who
like Martyr needed to get out of the empire following the battle of
Muhlberg, rector of a small Stranger church, largely ministering to
Italians; in 1550 it made the Polish nobleman John à Lasco minister in
charge of the large Stranger church in London.^79 John Knox, who had
made a name for himself as a preacher in Scotland and had consequently
found himself on a French galley, was turned over to the Edwardine
government and became a chaplain to the king.^80 Knox was joined as
chaplain by Edmund Grindal, Andrew Perne, Robert Horne, William Bill
and John Harley.^81 The importance of the liturgical changes, largely
effected by Cranmer, have little bearing on Jewel’s life under Edward VI,
though they do affect him during Mary’s reign. He was ordained under
Cranmer’s ordinal, and thus officiated as a priest with first the 1549 and
then the 1552 editions of the Prayer Book. The matter of Jewel’s
relationship to the Edwardian Prayer Books shall be addressed in
discussing the controversy at Frankfurt. There is no evidence for the
extent that he used the Book of Homilies, and orator that he was, it may
be wondered if he did.^82 Jewel’s hand in all of this reforming activity
during Edward’s reign was ephemeral at best, as none of the sermons he
JEWEL TILL 1558 25
(^78) Elton,Reform and Reformation, pp. 339–40.
(^79) Diarmaid MacCulloch, The Boy King: Edward VI and the Protestant Reformation
(Berkeley, 2002), p. 79.
(^80) W. Stanford Reid, Trumpeter of God (New York, 1974), pp. 54–69. Reid confesses
ignorance on how Knox obtained his release, while Dickens indicates that Edward’s
government intervened, English Reformation, p. 235.
(^81) Under Elizabeth, Grindal became bishop of London, Horne of Winchester, Perne the
dean of Ely and Bill the dean of Westminster; Harley became bishop of Hereford under
Mary. Cf. John Knox, The Reformation in Scotland(Edinburgh, 1982), p. 99, where a
facsimile of their signatures is reproduced.
(^82) It is postulated that Jewel had a hand in the writing of the Elizabethan Homilies, and