The Coming of the Friars

by Augustus Jessopp

The movement was becoming a nuisance by this time, and Reeve got a hint, and no obscure one, that a warrant would be issued against him, "either from General Cromwell, or the Council of State, or from the Parliament." So far from being deterred by the prospect--was there ever a prophet who was frightened into silence?--he declared that if Cromwell or the Parliament should despise him and his mission, "I would pronounce them damned as I do you!" Though no warrant came from the Council or Cromwell--a matter much to be regretted--yet a warrant was taken out by five of the opponents, and the prophets were brought before the Lord Mayor. As usual, a detailed account is given of the proceedings, which are valuable as illustrating the method pursued in those days in the examination of an accused person, and the procedure of the court--so very different from our modern practice. The prophets were committed for trial; they refused to give bail, and were thrown into Newgate. It was the 15th of September, 1653, one of the great festivals among the believers. The hideous picture of prison life in Newgate deserves to be read even by those who have some acquaintance with the horrors of our prisons at this time. The prophets were well supplied with money, and so were spared some of the worst sufferings of the place; but it was bad enough, in all conscience, and one night the two narrowly escaped being hanged in their own room, and were only saved by five condemned men, who came to the rescue. Muggleton says the highwaymen and _the boys_ were most set against him; one of the highwaymen, whenever he saw him in the Hall, "would come and deride at me, and say, 'You rogue, you damn'd folks.' And so it was with the boys that were prisoners; they would snatch off my hat, and pawn it for half-a-dozen of drink. So the boys did, and I gave them sixpence every time they did it, to please them." Highly gratifying to the boys!

While the two were in Newgate John Reeve wrote a letter to the Lord Mayor and another to the Recorder, mildly damning them both. If we are to believe Muggleton, the Recorder was somewhat disturbed and alarmed by the sentence. When the day of trial came, Reeve bade the Lord Mayor hold his peace and be silent, as became a damned man in the presence of the prophets, and we are told the Mayor obeyed and said nothing more. The two were condemned, nevertheless, and thrown into Bridewell for seven months. Under the horrors of that dreadful imprisonment Reeve's constitution broke down. He was never the same man again. He languished on, indeed, for four years more, but he was a dying man, and he spent his time in writing books, his followers kindly ministering to him in his broken health and feebleness. The end came to him while visiting some convents at Maidstone--good women, of course. "The one was Mrs. Frances, the eldest; the second, Mrs. Roberts; the third, Mrs. Boner. This Mrs. Frances closed up his eyes, for he said unto her, 'Frances, close up mine eyes, lest my enemies say I died a staring prophet.'"

While Reeve and Muggleton were lying in Newgate, another mystic--are we to call him a prophet too?--was lying in Carlisle gaol. George Fox, the Quaker, had fallen into the hands of Wilfrid Lawson, then High Sheriff for the county, who had not spared him. Just about the time that the London prophets were discharged, Fox arrived in London under the custody of Captain Drury, and had that memorable interview with Cromwell which readers of Fox's Journal are not likely to forget, though Carlyle has gone far to spoil the story by slurring it over.

It was a great event to the Quakers to have their leader in London. He had only once before been in the Metropolis--that was nine years ago--and then he had been "fearful," had done nothing, was tongue-tied, and had gladly escaped to itinerate among the _steeple houses_ in the north. This time he had gained acceptance with the Protector. No man would meddle with him from henceforth or let them look to it! The Quakers were, of course, elated; they were going to carry all before them; they met to organize a grand campaign for proselytizing all England. The two _commissionated prophets_ were by no means dismayed, by no means inclined to be outdone by the Quakers; they invited them to a disputation--a trial of the spirits, in fact. It came off, accordingly, in Eastcheap, and George Fox was there, and with him two or three of his "ministers whom the Lord raised up." It is not a little significant that Fox makes no mention of this meeting in his Journal-significant because he never omits to speak of his successes, and never tells us anything of his failures. Nay, he studiously omits all mention of Muggleton's name throughout the Journal, and in his books against him indulges in really violent language. Muggleton, on the other hand, speaks of this discussion at Eastcheap as if it had been a serious check to the Quakers, and from this time to his death he never ceased to assail them with a resolute aggressiveness which indicates no sort of misgiving in his power to deal with his antagonists. The discussion, however, ended in Fox and his supporters-five in all-receiving the sentence of damnation from the two prophets, and from this moment there was internecine war between the Quakers and the Muggletonians; each denouncing the other fiercely, and issuing books against the other by the score-works which have happily been long ago forgotten, to the great advantage of mankind. If, however, any one, curious in such lore, is desirous of finding out what cursing and swearing, regarded as one of the Fine Arts, may achieve when skilfully managed by adepts, let him by all means turn to the pamphlets of Pennington, Richard Farnsworth, and others of the Quaker body, while delivering their souls against Muggleton, and the counterblasts of Muggleton, Claxton, and their friends in reply. One of the choicest diatribes of these _esprits forts_, as we may well call them, was hurled at the prophet by William Penn.

Muggleton had some very zealous converts at Cork--for there were believers everywhere by this time--and as they were people of substance and much in favour, they were making some way. Of course they came into collision with the Quakers, and not without success. Penn had early fallen under the influence of Richard Farnsworth, whom Muggleton had damned in 1654, and Penn's father had sent him over to manage his Irish estates, in the hope of getting the new notions out of the young man's head. The experiment failed, and young Penn, now only twenty-four years old, had returned to England in 1668 as staunch a Quaker as ever. There was a leading man among the Quakers, Josiah Cole by name, whom Muggleton had solemnly damned; he was in failing health, and he died a few days after the sentence was pronounced. The Muggletonians were jubilant, and some of the Quakers were disturbed and alarmed. Penn's heart was moved within him, and with all the fervid indignation of youth he stepped forward to draw the sword of the Lord. He printed a letter to Muggleton which should reassure the waverers. It thundered out defiance. "Boast not," he says, "thou enemy of God, thou son of perdition and confederate with the unclean croaking spirits reserved under chains to eternal darkness.... I boldly challenge thee with thy six-foot God and all the host of Luciferian spirits, with all your commissions, curses, and sentences, to touch and hurt me. And this know, O Muggleton: on you I trample, and to the bottomless pit are you sentenced, from whence you came, and where the endless worm shall gnaw and torture your imaginary soul."

Muggleton replied with his usual coolness, and pronounced his sentence upon the young enthusiast. Neither was a man easily to be put down; but whereas the prophet's followers were wholly unmoved by all the attacks upon them, the Quakers found the Muggletonians extremely troublesome, and it is impossible to resist the conviction that large numbers of the Quakers were won over to join the opposite camp. Nay, it looks as if Muggleton had really some strange power over the weaker vessels among the Quakers, and had actually _frightened_ some of them. Writing in 1670, he says: "You are not like the people you were sixteen years ago; there were few Quakers then, but they had witchcraft fits, but now of late I do not hear of any Quaker that hath any fits, no, not so much as to buz and hum before the fit comes. But if you, Fox, doth know of any of you Quakers that have any of those witchcraft fits as formerly, bring them to me, and I shall cast out that devil which causeth those fits." The Quakers could hardly have been as angry as they were, nor their books have been so many and their writers so voluble during twenty years and longer, if Muggleton had not been a disputant to be dreaded, and a prophet with the faculty of drawing others after him.

In the whole course of his career, which extended over nearly half a century, Muggleton never found any difficulty in maintaining his authority over his followers. There were indeed two attempts at mutiny, but they were promptly suppressed, and they collapsed before they had made any head. The first was in 1660, shortly after the death of John Reeve. Lawrence Claxton, a "great writer" among the Muggletonians, had during Reeve's long illness come very much to the fore as an opponent of the Quakers, and his success had a little turned his head. In one passage of his writings he had taken rank as Reeve's equal and representative, and had put himself on a level with "the Commissionated." It was an awful act of impiety. "For," says Muggleton, "as John Reeve was like unto Elijah, so am I as Elisha, and his place was but as Gehazi, and could stand no longer than my will and pleasure was." Claxton had been formally blessed, therefore he could never be damned, but excommunicated he could be and was. He at once dropt out and we hear of him no more.

The second revolt was much more serious. "There were four conspirators in the rebellion... for which I damned two of them, and the other two I did excommunicate." This time the fomenter of discord was a busy Scotchman. Muggleton calls him Walter Bohenan, which appears to be only a _bhonetic_ representation of Walter _Buchanan_. That so sagacious a seer as Muggleton should have been betrayed into associating himself intimately with a canny Scot is truly wonderful, and illustrates the eternal verity that "we are all of us weak at times," even the prophets. _Bohenan's_ self-assertion led him on to dizzy heights of towering presumption, until at last "he acted the highest act of rebellion that ever was acted." It was all in vain; he was cut off for ever--perished from the congregation; utterly damned, and thereupon disappears, swallowed up of darkness and silence.

Muggleton lived twenty-six years after this last revolt, exercising unquestioned authority; an autocratic prophet to whom something like worship was offered even to the last. He was far advanced in his eighty-ninth year when he died. He was far on towards seventy when he was brought before Jeffreys, then Common Serjeant, and other justices, on a charge of blasphemy. Jeffreys was as yet a novice in those arts of which he became the acknowledged master a few years after, but already he quite equalled his future self in his savage brutality to the poor monomaniac. "He was a man," says Muggleton, "whose voice was very loud; but he is one of the worst devils in nature." The jury hesitated to bring in their verdict, knowing well enough what would follow, but Jeffrey's look and manner cowed them. The prophet was condemned to pay a fine of L 500, to stand in the pillory three times for two hours _without the usual protection to his head_, which those condemned to such a barbarous punishment were allowed. He was to have his books burned by the common hangman, and to remain in Newgate till his fine was paid. Only a man of an iron constitution could have come out of the ordeal with his life. Muggleton bore it all; remained in Newgate for a year, compounded for his fine in the sum of L 100, which his friends advanced, and was a free man on the 19th of July, 1677, a day which the Muggletonians observed as the prophet's Hegira.

As early as 1666 he had many followers on the Continent, and in that year the _Transcendant Spiritual Treatise_ was translated into German by a convert who came over to London to confer with the sage. Except on very rare occasions he never left London, nor indeed the parish in which he was born. He pursued the trade of a tailor till late in life, but his books had sold largely, and he managed to get together a competence, and was at one time worried by his neighbours and fined for refusing to serve in some parish offices. There was a fund of sagacity about the man which appears frequently in his later letters, but an utter absence of all sentiment and all sympathy. He had no _nerves_. Staid, stern, and curiously insensible to physical pain, he was absolutely fearless, with a constitution that could defy any hardships and bear any strain upon it.