Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 3.djvu/594

580 to swear at all under any circumstances; he refused to say "thou" to a poor man, and "you" to a rich one, as was then the odious custom; he refused to take off his hat as a mark of homage to the wealthy and great, on the same principle that it was a custom of pride and invidious distinction; and he addressed prince or magistrate with the respectful boldness which became a man sensible that the only true dignity was the dignity of truth. The sufferings which were brought upon him and his followers by these novel doctrines and practices from all parties were terrible. Above three thousand of them were imprisoned, even under the more liberal rule of the commonwealth, and as many under Charles II. Their property was spoliated, their meeting-houses pulled down, and their families grossly insulted in their absence. Yet the doctrine spread rapidly, and many eminent men embraced it; amongst others, William Penn, the son of Admiral Penn, and the learned Robert Barclay, who wrote the celebrated vindication of their faith.

At the same time the violent agitation of the period, and the enthusiasm of this new doctrine, led some of Fox's followers into considerable extravagance—perhaps inseparable from such a state of things—which, however, could not affect the scriptural and eternal doctrine of direct divine influence itself, any more than clouds can affect the reality of the sun's rays, though they may intercept them for a moment.

The most prominent case was that of James Naylor, who for a time was undoubtedly led into insanity by the effervescence of his mind under his religious zeal; and allowed women to lead his horse into Exeter, crying "Holy! holy! holy!" and spreading their scarfs and handkerchiefs in the way before him, as if he had been the Saviour come again. Naylor professed that this homage was not offered to him personally, but to Christ within him. His case occupied the house of commons for nearly two months altogether. There were violent debates on it from morning till night; but at length, on the 17th of December, 1656, it was voted that he should be set in the pillory in Palace Yard for two hours; then be whipped from Westminster to the Old Exchange, London, twice, wearing a paper containing a description of his crimes; should have his tongue bored through with a hot iron by the hangman for his blasphemy; be branded on the forehead with the letter B; that he should be sent to Bristol, and there whipped through the city on a market-day; and paraded on a barebacked horse with his face backwards, and then sent back to Bridewell, in London, kept to hard labour, and debarred from the visits of his friends, and all access to pens, ink, and paper.

All this was rigidly inflicted upon him, and borne heroically. After two years' confinement in Bridewell he was dismissed, thoroughly cured of his hallucination, ready to admit it, but firm in his adhesion to the principles of quakerism as ever; and the society, pitying his fall, never withdrew from him their sympathy or the enjoyment of his membership. He died soon after his release.

In America, in New England, the quakers were more fiercely persecuted than in England, by the puritans, who had themselves fled from persecution. In Massachusetts and Connecticut they were ordered to have their ears cut off if men, to be publicly whipped if women and for a second offence to have their tongues bored through if they dared to come into these colonies; and this not deterring them, they hanged several men and women. Endicott, the governor of Connecticut, when one of them quoted the words of St. Paul, "for in him we live, and move, and have our being," irreverently replied, "And so does every cat and dog."

This intolerance of the puritans was equally exerted against one of their own members, the venerable Roger Williams, who was driven from Massachusetts for his boldly advocating the doctrine of perfect freedom of conscience. In fact, Roger Williams was one of the very first, if not the first man, who proclaimed this great doctrine; and therefore deserves to be held in eternal remembrance. The honour of being the earliest publisher of the right of spiritual freedom must, perhaps, be awarded to Leonard Busher, who published a work on the subject in 1614, and dedicated it to king James.

Roger Williams, expelled from Massachusetts, proceeded to Narragansett Bay, and became the founder of the colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, where the most perfect freedom of religious faith was allowed.

Besides the sects in England already enumerated, there were many minor ones. The "millenarians," or "fifth-monarchy men," whose views we have already explained. To this sect major-general Harrison belonged; and they created a riot under Venner, the wine-cooper. There was a sect called "the seekers," amongst whom Fox once fell, and many of them joined him, believing they had found what they sought. There were the "ranters," a body noted for their noise and vociferation; "Behmenists," or disciples of the German mystic, Jacob Böhme; "Vanists," followers of the religious views of Sir Harry Vane; and lastly, "Muggletonians," the disciples of one Ludovick Muggleton and John Reeve.

Muggleton was a journeyman tailor, who, with Reeve, pretended to be the two witnesses mentioned in the eleventh chapter of the Revelations. They were fanatics of the wildest and most furious character. They professed to have power to save or damn all that they pleased, and they "dealt damnation round the land" with the utmost freedom. The quakers and Behmenists were the objects of their most violent denunciations, probably because Fox and Penn protested against their wild and fanatic doctrines, which were the antipodes of those of Fox; for, instead of representing God as a pure spirit, they asserted that he had a corporeal body, and came down to earth in it as Christ, leaving the prophet Elias in heaven to keep order in his absence. They contended that man's soul is inseparably united to his body, dies and rises again with it. They professed to have an especial knowledge of "the place and nature of heaven, and the place and nature of hell;" with the persons and natures of devils and angels. The truculent ravings of these fanatics may be seen in the works and letters of Muggleton, still extant. In one letter he delivers sentence of damnation on six-and-twenty quakers at once. "Inasmuch," he says, "as God hath chosen me on earth to be the judge of blasphemy against the Holy Ghost, therefore, in obedience to my commission from the true God, I do pronounce all these twenty-six persons whose names are above written, cursed and damned in their souls and bodies from the