Transcript

of

Birthplace of Bishop Jewel

Trans. Devon Assoc., 1879, Vol XI, pp. 256-261.

by

Rev. Treasurer Hawker, M.A.

Prepared by Michael Steer

John Jewel, (born May 24, 1522, Buden, Devon, England - died September 23, 1571, Monkton Farleigh, Wiltshire), Anglican bishop of Salisbury and controversialist who defended Queen Elizabeth I’s religious policies opposing Roman Catholicism. The works Jewel produced during the 1560s defined and clarified points of difference between the churches of England and Rome, thus strengthening the ability of Anglicanism to survive as a permanent institution. The article, from a copy of a rare and much sought-after journal can be downloaded from the Internet Archive. Google has sponsored the digitisation of books from several libraries. These books, on which copyright has expired, are available for free educational and research use, both as individual books and as full collections to aid researchers.

It would be superfluous on my part, and therefore impertinent, to take up the time of the Devonshire Association by attempting even a sketch of John Jewel; for the learned Bishop of Salisbury, the writer of the far-famed Apology for the Church of England, has been fortunate in the number and quality of his biographers.

There was first Humphrey, his contemporary and friend; then Daniel Featly, whose Memoir is prefixed to the edition of Jewel's works published in 1609; and, thirdly, an anonymous "person of quality," whose life of Jewel was originally prefixed to a translation of the Bishop's Letter to Seignor Scipio.

Besides, there are various notices of him in biographical dictionaries, like Dr. Hook's Ecclesiastical Biography; and there is the very excellent and interesting life by Le Bas, in 1835, a distinguished Professor of the East India College, which I recommend everyone to read who wishes to know Jewel's history.

My object now is to give briefly an account of the dwelling in which he was born, and the country, "beautiful exceedingly," amidst which he was brought up.

How far climate and country influence men's characters, and dispose their minds to certain lines of thought, will ever be a vexed question; but no one, I suppose, will deny that we are all affected - some, it may be, more, and some less - by the circumstances of our early existence.

Mr. Robertson, of Brighton, in his Lectures on Literary and Social Topics, speaks of the Tyrolese chamois hunter being such a true gentleman, and he thus accounts for it: the Queen in her Journal quoting him, and applying this explanation of the fact to her favourite Highlanders. The reason, as it seemed to me,"says Mr. Robertson, was that his character had been moulded by the sublimities of the forms of the outward nature, amidst which he lived. It was impossible to see the clouds wreathing themselves in that strange, wild way of theirs round the mountain crests till the hills seemed to become awful things, instinct with life; it was impossible to walk, as we did sometimes, an hour or two before sunrise and see the morning's beams gilding with their pure light the grand old peaks on the opposite side of the valley, while we ourselves were still in deepest shade, and look on that man, his very exterior in harmony with all around him, and his calm eye resting on all that wondrous spectacle, without a feeling that these things had had their part in making him what he was, and that you were in a country, in which men were bound to be polished, bound to be more refined, almost bound to be better men than elsewhere."

Tennyson's Ode to Memory gives clear intimations of the impressions made on his mind and imagination by the scenery of his childhood. His "inner eye," he tells us, ever gazed "on the prime labour" of his early days, "the bushless pike," "the waste enormous marsh stretched wide and wild."

And those who have not been frightened by the occasionally difficult and didactic passages of the poem, will have found in Wordsworth's Prelude very interesting passages bearing on the subject. In the first and second books, where the Poet recalls his associations of childhood and school and collie, his reflections on the subtle influences of our surroundings in the beginnings of life are alike noble and philosophical. It is difficult to make an extract. There is one, which may illustrate the question, towards the end of the second book, where he says how ungrateful he should be if he failed to speak

“Of you. ye mountains and ye lakes
And Bounding cataracts, ye mists and winds
That dwell among the hills where I was bom.
If in my youth I have been pure in heart,
If, mingling with the world, I am content
With my own modest pleasures, and have lived
With God and Nature communing, removed
From little enmities and low desires,
The gift is yours."

And again he repeats his thankfulness of heart for the glorious scenery of the Lake Country in which he was reared up -

“The gift is yours. 
Ye winds and sounding cataracts; 'tis yours. 
Ye mountains; thine, Nature! Thou hast fed 
My lofty speculation; and in thee, 
For this uneasy heart of ours, I find 
A neyer-failing principle of joy 
And purest passion." 

Against this is to be set the fact that Dante lived unimpressed apparently by the noble scenery of Italy; and the tradition at any rate that St. Bernard, a man of noble culture and imagination, is said to have ridden along the shores of Lake Leman utterly unconscious that there was anything to look at or to admire in the lake and mountains.

It would be irrelevant to pursue this interesting question further now. When I have tried to describe the features of Jewel's birthplace and home I shall venture to draw a particular inference from them.

Those who have visited, or who will visit, the farmhouse of according to the old spelling, Buden, but now called Bowden, may confidently, so the late Mr. King, long to be lamented by this Association, told me, believe that it is the identical dwelling in which Jewel was born, and spent his early days.

Its elevation is, I should say, three hundred or four hundred feet above the level of the sea; distant, as the crow flies, one and a half, or two miles and a half by road.

The house itself is somewhat sad-looking, and cannot be called interesting, the site having been chosen no doubt, as with so many of our country dwellings in old times, mainly for shelter or, as we say in the West, to be "lew;" that is, I suppose, "lee," away from the full force of the wind. There is no view from the windows of the dark, low-roofed rooms, which however are large in area, and no doubt were comfortable enough for those who wished for warmth and shelter "from winter and rough weather."

If Jewel as a boy pored over his few small-printed books with the astonishing assiduity whereby he amassed in after life such piles of learning he must have tried his eyesight considerably. 

“Princes then 
At matins froze, and couched at curfew-time," 

So that we may assume that he went early to bed, and rose for study with the dawn, unless indeed he was like the "illustrious men" spoken of by Wordsworth -

Lovers of truth, by penury constrained, 
Bucer, Erasmus, or Melancthon, read 
Before the doors or windows of their cells 
By moonshine through mere lack of taper-light. 

The house, as I have said, has little attraction in itself or its immediate view; but a short distance above it gives a wide range of sight over the "Severn Sea," with its hues of many colours, across to the Welsh coast; the cone-shaped headland of the smaller Hangman standing up to the right at the entrance of Combemartin, not unlike in form (of course with a great difference of altitude) the Pic-du-Midi in the Pyrenees.

A few steps again below give a view of the lovely Sterridge valley running up from the village of Berry Narbor by the, to use the expressive term of the Pyrenean range, "port," that is, "gate," which has been cut through the rock under the rectory.

I can hardly conceive a more beautiful or interesting expedition for visitors at Ilfracombe than to turn up the Watermouth valley after seeing the caves; looking into the church where no doubt Jewel was baptized about twenty or thirty years before any registers were kept, so that there can be no positive record; then going on by the road I have spoken of, by the cottages on the site of the old rectory, and so along the rugged, often watery path up the narrow valley to the end; where the striking-looking hill called Cock Hill, or Cocked-hat Hill, or more poetically, perhaps more truly, Cuckoo Hill, being left on the right hand, a turn is made through a gate, and then with a little guidance and rough walking Jewel's birthplace will be reached.

It may also be more shortly reached by Chambercombe, near Ilfracombe, and crossing the Berry Narbor and Barnstaple Road, and so coming down upon it from the high ground - a very pretty walk also.

Such scenery, to return to my former point, must have had its influence upon Jewel, as I believe it must have upon everyone, even the dullest.

I was showing the surrounding beauties of a fair home I had for many years in South Devon to a prelate whom all respect and many admire for his vigorous understanding, and remarked how thankful I was that my children were growing up in the midst of such lovely views, the indirect effect on their characters must be so great. "Indirect ?" he rejoined promptly. "Direct, I should say."

A great deal of the high country of Devon is somewhat tame from the unbroken lines of the hills. Here, round about Bowden, the hills are peaked, and fold one into another with an infinite charm of disposition, and every now and then there is a green bit, an elevated plateau, of sweet short grass, similar to the mountain lawns sung of by the Poet Laureate on Ida, where 

“Beautiful Paris, evil-hearted Paris " 

came, leading his goat, in search of Œnone.

Jewel, who, if his portrait is faithful, was certainly not beautiful, and as certainly was not evil-hearted, no doubt often came up from the village or the Watermouth Caves, and probably helped in his youth to change the pasture for his father's flocks and herds. Whether in those days he had any ideal Œnone, any early love, there is no record. Most likely his first and only love was learning, although the Greek Lexicon of modem times mitigated the tedium of a long engagement; and it was said in my Oxford days that the head of one of the colleges there read through the Ethics of Aristotle thirteen times to console himself for unrequited attachment. In any case, Jewel lived and died single. Indeed, his industry must have been so uninterrupted, and his studies so absorbing from day to day, that it is hardly possible to imagine him at leisure to go through a siege of any fair maiden's heart. His operations would probably have been similar to the dashing exploits of that distinguished Peninsular soldier. Lord Seaton, who somewhat shortly ordered off an ex-military applicant for charity, and "he told me my manners were like my manoeuvres - very abrupt" said the gallant old colonel of the famous 52nd; or the same as Sydney Smith's idea of a bishop's courting, sending the verger after service to the young lady, and requesting to speak to her for a few minutes in the vestry.

That Jewel's heart, however, was a tender one we may gather from the circumstance of his always carrying the name of his mother - "Bellamy" - engraven on his private seal. Nor did he ever forget his master at the Barnstaple school, a man of singular goodness.

All these early influences from those under whose care he was placed in the beginning of his chequered life, and from the delightful scenery amidst which he was born - may I venture to add, the delicious, equable climate?  - helped to make Jewel what he was personally - kindly, cheerful, easily contented.

And I cannot but believe, if it be not too fanciful to say so, that they had their part in his great work, the Apology for the Church of England, Perhaps I should rather say the tone of that work; for, measured by the language of his opponents, it is distinguished by its moderation, dignity, and healthy firmness. To such abuse as the following, from his chief opponent, Harding, who, curiously enough, was born in the next parish, Combemartin, Jewel, having quoted specimens of it, makes a calm, equable, telling reply. Amongst other invectives Harding says :

"As I cannot well take a hair from your lying beard, so I wish that I could pluck malice from your blasphemous heart."

Jewel's answer to this and others of the same kind is simply, "Good Christian reader, -  I have set before thee certain principal flowers of Mr. Harding's modest speech. Taste no more than may well like thee, and judge thereof as thou shalt see cause."

I do not know whether I have set down too much to the influences of scenery and climate upon his character. As Bishop of Salisbury, and so, I suppose, frequently traversing the wide, bleak downs of that diocese, he may, if I am not running my theory too hard, have been braced up to the sterner work of his responsible position by the keen, sweeping blasts he encountered. He may possibly have for a moment sometimes turned back in regretful thought to the very diflerent scenery of his earlier years; but he was too good aud conscientious a man to let dreams of the past interfere with his present duties. We know that he discharged them most faithfully, and that his comparatively early death was a serious loss.

I shall not, I am sure, "vex his ghost" by putting into his mouth the words with which old John of Gaunt comforts his banished son in Richard II., 

"All places that the eye of heaven visits 
Are to a wise man ports and happy havens. 
Teach thy necessity to reason thus; 
There is no virtue like necessity.” 

And I think that the lines of the poet of the Church of England may fitly be applied to so true-hearted a son of hers - 

“Needs no show of mountain hoary, 
Winding shore or deepening glen. 
Where the landscape in its glory 
Teaches truth to wandering men; 
Give true hearts but earth and sky, 
And some flowers to bloom and die. 
Homely scenes and simple views 
Lowly thoughts may best infuse."