But the cloud of that persecution and fear ending with the life of Queen Mary, the affairs of the Church and State did then look more clear and comfortable; so that he, and with him many others of the same judgment, made a happy return into England about the first of Queen Elizabeth; in which year this John Jewel was sent a Commissioner or Visitor, of the Churches of the Western parts of this kingdom, and especially of those in Devonshire, in which County he was born; and then and there he contracted a friendship with John Hooker, the Uncle of our Richard.

[Sidenote:  At Oxford]

About the second or third year of her reign, this John Jewel was made Bishop of Salisbury; and there being always observed in him a willingness to do good, and to oblige his friends, and now a power added to his willingness; this John Hooker gave him a visit in Salisbury, and besought him for charity’s sake to look favourably upon a poor nephew of his, whom Nature had fitted for a scholar; but the estate of his parents was so narrow, that they were unable to give him the advantage of learning; and that the Bishop would therefore become his patron, and prevent him from being a tradesman, for he was a boy of remarkable hopes.  And though the Bishop knew men do not usually look with an indifferent eye upon their own children and relations, yet he assented so far to John Hooker, that he appointed the boy and his School-master should attend him, about Easter next following, at that place:  which was done accordingly; and then, after some questions and observations of the boy’s learning, and gravity, and behaviour, the Bishop gave his School-master a reward, and took order for an annual pension for the boy’s parents; promising also to take him into his care for a future preferment, which he performed:  for about the fifteenth year of his age, which was anno 1567, he was by the Bishop appointed to remove to Oxford, and there to attend Dr. Cole,[2] then President of Corpus Christi College.  Which he did; and Dr. Cole had—­according to a promise made to the Bishop—­provided for him both a Tutor—­which was said to be the learned Dr. John Reynolds,[3]—­and a Clerk’s place in that College:  which place, though it were not a full maintenance, yet, with the contribution of his Uncle, and the continued pension of his patron, the good Bishop, gave him a comfortable subsistence.  And in this condition he continued until the eighteenth year of his age, still increasing in learning and prudence, and so much in humility and piety, that he seemed to be filled with the Holy Ghost; and even like St. John Baptist, to be sanctified from his mother’s womb, who did often bless the day in which she bare him.

[Sidenote:  “A dangerous sickness”]

About this time of his age, he fell into a dangerous sickness, which lasted two months; all which time his Mother, having notice of it, did in her hourly prayers as earnestly beg his life of God, as Monica the mother of St. Augustine did, that he might become a true Christian; and their prayers were both so heard as to be granted.  Which Mr. Hooker would often mention with much joy, and as often pray that “he might never live to occasion any sorrow to so good a mother; of whom he would often say, he loved her so dearly, that he would endeavour to be good, even as much for her’s as for his own sake.”