Jewel, JOHN, one of the fathers of English Protestantism, was born at Berrynarbor, near Ilfracombe, in 1522, and was educated at Barnstaple school, and afterwards at Merton and Corpus Christi Colleges, Oxford. He was admitted B.A. in 1540, and must early have imbibed Reformed doctrines, as he was closely intimate with Peter Martyr during his visit to Oxford. Soon after the accession of Mary he went abroad for safety's sake, visiting Frankfurt and Strasburg, and returned on the accession of Elizabeth, by whom he was almost immediately appointed Bishop of Salisbury. His great controversial ability soon made him one of the foremost churchmen of his age, and indeed his famous Apologia Ecclesiae Anglicanae (1562) retains its value as a triumphant exposure of the pretensions of Rome. Bishop Jewel's unwearied devotedness at once to his episcopal duties and to the demands of a great controversy wore out his strength, and brought him to the rest of the grave in his fiftieth year, 22d September 1571.
A collected edition of his works was published in folio in 1609. More recent editions are those by the Rev. John Ayre in the Parker Society (4 vols. 1845-50), and by the Rev. Dr R. W. Jelf (Oxford, 8 vols. 1847-48). An early life is reprinted in Wordsworth's Ecclesiastical Biography. See also the Life by C. W. Le Bas (1835).