JEWELL, JOHN, one of the fathers of the English Protestant Church, was born in 1522 iu Devonshire, and educated iu grammar schoole in that county, till at the age of thirteen he was sent to Oxford, where he was entered at Merton College, under the tuition of John Parkhurst, who was afterwards the Protestant bishop of Norwich. When eighteen be was admitted B.A., and at that early age he became a college tutor. Henry VIII. was still upon the throne, and it was hazardous for any one to make himself conspicuous either as an opposer of the principles of the reformation or as an advocate of them. Jewell therefore kept himself quiet, contenting himself with inculcating reformation principles privately in hie lectures to his pupils ; but when King Henry was dead, and the ecclesiastical policy of the country became more decidedly Protestant under his successor, Jewell declared himself openly a zealous Protestant ; and when Peter Martyr, one of the foreign reformers, visited Oxford, and there held a public dispu tation (aa was the manner of those times) with certain learned Roman Catholic divines, Jewell acted as his notary. From this time ho became a zealous promoter of the reformation, both at the university and as a preacher and catechiser in the country about Abingdon, where he had a living.
Times however changed : King Edward died, and a new policy was adopted. It was sought to undo what had been done. Jewell, it seems, for a short time somewhat temporised ; but he very soon recovered himself, and sought shelter in a foreign land from the severity of the storm which fell upon those who in the preceding reign had been zealous for the reformation. He joined the English exiles at Frankfurt, and afterwards at Strasbourg, where he again met with Peter Martyr, whom he assisted in the composition of some of his works. The reign however of Mary was short, and with the accession of Elizabeth came brighter prospects to the friends of reform. Jewell returned home, and was almost immediately made Bishop of Salisbury. His zeal was not relaxed. He continued both by his
preaching and his writing to promote the doctrines of the reformation, and to endeavour to extinguish whatever attachment there might still remain, especially in any part of his own diocese, to the older system. He died in the course of one of his preaching tours at the little village of Mookton Farleigh, in an obscure corner of his diocese, in the fiftieth year of his age. Camden, whose testimony is worth more than that of any party writer on either side, bears to him this testimony, that he was a man of singular ingenuity, of vast erudition in theology, and of eminent piety.
The writings of Jewell are chiefly controversial, the most remarkable of them being his 'Apology for the Church of England,'and his various Defences of that Apology. These are together considered one of the ablest defences of the Protestant Church of England that appeared, and were translated into many languages for the purpose of circulation abroad. His writings were collected in a large folio volume in 1609. Copies of this volume were placed in many of the English churches for the common use of the parishioners, and may sometimes even now be found fastened by a chain to a reading-desk. This honour it has shared with Fox's 'Acts and Monuments of the Church,' and some of the theological writings of Erasmus.
The writings of Jewell are still greatly valued, and are mach used in two departments of ecclesiastical controversy, the question between the Church of England and the Church of Rome, and the question respecting the doctrinal sentiments of the fathers of the Protestant Church of England. Lists of his writings maybe seen in the 'Athenm Oxonienses ' of Anthony Wood, where is an outline of his life, the particulars of which have been written more in detail by many persons.
JOAM (or JOAO) I. to VI, Kings of Portugal. [PonTresi., in (Imo. Drv., vol. iv.)