rdly written after Cole accepted Jewel's
challenge. It was on the second Sunday before Easter (March 17), 1560,
that Jewel delivered at court the discourse in which he challenged
dispute on four points of church doctrine. On the next day Henry Cole
addressed him a letter in which he asked him why he "yesterday in the
Court and at all other times at Paul's Cross" offered rather to "dispute
in these four points than in the chief matters that lie in question
betwixt the Church of Rome and the Protestants." In replying to Cole on
the 20th of March Jewel wrote that he stood only upon the negative and
again mentioned his offer. On the 31st of March he repeated his
challenge upon the four points, and upon this occasion went very much
into detail in supporting them. Now, in the sermon which we are trying
to date, the sermon in which allusion is made to the prevalence of
witches, the four points are briefly named. It may be reasonably
conjectured that this sermon anticipated the elaboration of the four
points as well as the challenging sermon of March 17. It is as certain
that it was delivered after Jewel's return to London from his visitation
in the west country. On November 2, 1559, he wrote to Peter Martyr: "I
have at last returned to London, with a body worn out by a most
fatiguing journey." See _Zurich Letters_, I (Parker Soc., Cambridge,
1842), 44. It is interesting and significant that he adds: "We found in
all places votive relics of saints, nails with which the infatuated
people dreamed that Christ had been pierced, and I know not what small
fragments of the sacred cross. The number of witches and sorceresses had
everywhere become enormous." Jewel was consecrated Bishop of Salisbury
in the following January, having been nominated in the summer of 1559
just before his western visitation. The sermon in which he alluded to
witches may have been preached at any time after he returned from the
west, November 2, and before March 17. It would be entirely natural that
in a court sermon delivered by the newly appointed bishop of Salisbury
the prevalence of witchcraft should be mentioned. It does not seem a
rash guess that the sermon was preached soon after his return, perhaps
in December, when the impression of what he had seen in the west was
still fresh in his memory. But it is not necessary to make this
supposition. Though the discourse was delivered some time after March
15, 1559, when the first bill "against Conjurations, Pro