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'He rode on horseback, two women leading his horse, with the reins in their hands, one on each side. These came before him, singing holy, holy, holy, Lord God of Israel. Thus he rode to the High Cross of the City.' James Nayler, a Yorkshire-born Quaker agitator, had just been released from Exeter gaol, and he wanted to make a dramatic statement of his group's core belief that 'every one that is saved must be their own Jesus'. What better than to enact the beginning of the Easter story. He'd styled his hair and cut his beard to resemble what people at the time thought Jesus had looked like: he knew he'd get a hero's welcome in Bristol, and he knew he'd be arrested. What he wasn't to know was that his publicity stunt would produce a major political crisis. For the next two months Parliament discussed little else. Nayler had thrown down a gauntlet as to how far religious toleration would be allowed to go. Cromwell agonised; the landed classes in Parliament demanded exemplary action against a belief they thought threatened both church and state. Nayler was found guilty of 'horrid blasphemy' and of being 'a grand imposter and great seducer of the people'. When he was in the pillory at Westminster, it was reported, two female Quakers sat by him 'in imitation of Mary Magdalen and Mary the Mother of Jesus.' Thomas Carlyle was later to wrote of the affair: 'Four hundred Gentlemen of England assembled in solemn debate of this terrific phenomenon; a Mad Quaker. Shall we hang him, whip him, bore the tongue of him, shall we roast, boil or stew him?' |