Jewell, John

(May 24, 1522-Sept. 23, 1571). English reformer, apologist, and Bishop of Salisbury. He was born at Buden in the parish of Berimber, Devonshire, England. Jewell received his B.A. in 1540, and his M.A. in 1545, both from Corpus Christi College, Oxford. He was a fellow at Corpus Christi College, 1542-1553, and vicar of Sunningwell, 1551-1553. When Queen Mary came to the throne in 1553, Jewell fled to the continent where he was an exile from 1553 until the death of Mary in 1558. While on the continent he lived and worked at Frankfurt, Strassburg, and Zurich. He was influenced by the Calvinism of those places. After returning to England, he was consecrated Bishop of Salisbury on Jan. 21, 1560, and served in that position until his death. In 1562 Jewell wrote An Apology of the Church of England, which was a defense of the Church of England and of the Elizabethan Settlement against the accusations of Roman Catholic critics. Jewell led the literary offensive against the Roman Church, and denounced transubstantiation, purgatory, celibacy of clergy, and the worship of saints and images as “trifles, follies, and baubles.” He defended the Church of England as the true church and insisted that the English Reformation was the restoration of the true church in England. He claimed that the practices of the Church of England were older and thus better than the Church of Rome. Jewell and Richard Hooker are recognized as the two great apologists of the Church of England and of sixteenth-century Anglicanism.