Page:Devonshire Characters and Strange Events.djvu/466

 JOANNA SOUTHCOTT

HE life of this impostor or self-deluded woman is not pleasant to write or to read, and it is only because in such a collection including Devonshire oddities and unworthies she could not be excluded that her story is here given.

Joanna was a native of Gittisham, the daughter of William and Hannah Southcott, respectable people, the father a very small farmer. She was baptized at Ottery St. Mary, on 6 June, 1750. There was nothing remarkable in her during the first forty years of her life. She was in domestic service, and then moved to Exeter, where she entered the household of an upholsterer, in 1790.

What turned her head was the visit of a revivalist Methodist preacher, who, combining the most fiery evangelic preaching with laxity of morals, lived in adultery with her mistress, and endeavoured to seduce the daughter. But his ministrations in the pulpit were acceptable. He shrieked and threatened till sometimes the whole congregation fell flat and rigid on the floor, when he would walk in and out among them and revive them by assuring them they had received pardon for all their sins, were elect vessels, and that their election was sealed in heaven. He would declare that there never was a man so highly favoured of God as himself, and that he would not thank God to make him other than what he was, unless he made him greater than 390