Jewel

Jewel (or Jewell), John, Bishop of Salisbury, was born near Ilfracombe, N. Devon, in 1522. He entered Merton College, Oxford, at the age of thirteen, and four years later became tutor at Corpus Christi. Having early embraced Protestant principles, he was expelled under Mary in 1553, when he made a weak recantation, which he afterwards. abjured on effecting his escape to Frankfort. Coming home again on the accession of Elizabeth, he was made bishop in 1560, the date of the publication of his famous Apologia Ecclesiae Anglicanae, a claim on behalf of the Reformed Churches to take part in the Council of Trent. The Queen ordered a copy of the book to be chained beside the Bible in every parish church of England. In 1567 he published his Defence of the Apology in reply to Thomas Harding. Jewel boldly assumes the position that the Church of England is based not upon the fathers and tradition, but upon the teaching of Christ and the gospels. He scouted the doctrines attributing supernatural efficacy to the sacraments, and maintained that a consensus of opinion was not a test of truth. He died suddenly at Monkton. Farleigh, Wilts, in 1571.