This message was delivered by Elijah, in his fur cap, and his long-skirted blue coat, with a perfectly sober face, to the queen's servants at Windsor Castle. These received the extraordinary tidings with decorous politeness, promised faithfully to deliver the message, and the prophet, well satisfied, went his way. He now proceeded to London, and visited the several Jewish synagogues, announcing to the high priests his wonderful mission. The last we heard of him, he was preparing to make his way to Rome, in fulfilment of his insane project.
It would be easy to add numerous instances of similar delusion. In 1790, an Englishman, by the name of Richard Brothers, announced that he had a mission for the restoration of the Jews and to make Jerusalem the capital of the world. He said that he was commanded to notify the king, the lords and the commons of the same, which he did in a manner so obstreperous, that he was lodged in Newgate prison.
Roger North gives us an account of one John Kelsey, a Quaker, who, about the year 1680, "went on a sort of pilgrimage to Constantinople, for converting the Great Turk; and the first scene of his action was standing up in a corner of the street, and preaching to the people. They stared at him, and concluding him to be out of his wits, he was taken and carried to the madhouse; there he lay six months. At last, some of the keepers heard him speak the word English, and told of it so that it came to the ambassador, Lord Winchelsea's ear, that he had a subject in the madhouse.
"His lordship sent and had him at his house. The fellow stood before the ambassador, with a dirty, ragged hat on, and would not put it off, though he was so charged and admonished; thereupon the ambassador ordered him down, and had him drubbed upon the feet, after the Turkish manner. Then he was anything and would do anything, and afterwards did own that that drubbing had a great effect upon his spirit.
"Upon searching him, there was found in his pouch, among a few beans, a letter to the Grand Signior, very long and canting; but the substance was to let him know that he was the scourge in God's hand with which he chastised the wicked Christians; and now, their wickedness was so great, that God, by the spirit, had sent him, to let him know that he must come forthwith to scourge them.
"He was sent for England, but got off by the way, and came up a second time to Constantinople, from whence he was more surely conveyed; and some that knew John, told Sir Dudley North that they had seen him on the Exchange, where he recognised the admirable virtue of Turkish drubbing."
BAMFYLDE MOORE CAREW.