350 years ago this month a small group of men and women approached the gates of Bristol, singing hosannas before a man on a horse. They appeared to be imitating Christ’s entrance into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday. The man was James Nayler (1617-1660), a leader of the upstart Quaker movement and onetime member of Cromwell’s New Model Army. The Puritan authorities were outraged. Nayler was seized and charged with blasphemy.
Sent to London where he was the subject of a full Parliamentary debate for ten days, and found guilty of “horrid blasphemy,” he received over three hundred lashes, a brand of the letter B on the forehead, and finally a red-hot iron through his tongue. He was placed in solitary confinement for three years in Bridewell until 1659. He died a year after this.
Why were the authorities of the time so frightened of this man that they had to demonise and publicly torture him as an example to the people of England?
Who was James Nayler?
Born at Ardsley near Wakefield in 1618 in the West Riding of Yorkshire, Nayler was a farmer until the outbreak of the First Civil War when he left his farm in the care of his wife and daughters and enlisted in the Parliamentarian army. He served under the Fairfaxes in Yorkshire and later became a quartermaster in John Lambert’s regiment of horse in the New Model Army. Nayler is known to have served at the battle of Dunbar in 1650 where he was noted as a gifted preacher.
He left the army in 1651 owing to ill health, returned to Yorkshire and resumed farming. According to his own account, however, a heavenly voice interrupted him whilst ploughing one day and commanded him to leave home and take to the road as an itinerant preacher. Nayler became associated with the Children of the Light, the sect popularly known as the Quakers. With his gift for preaching and strong personal charisma, Nayler became a leading figure in the establishment of the Quaker movement in northern England during 1652-4.
What did James Nayler believe?
- He said no man or King had a divine right to rule. He was a fighter for democracy.
- He refused to take his hat off to any man. He did not believe in deference to the rich and powerful saying… ‘He that respects persons commits sin’.
- He spoke out against the slave trade… ‘Where can the innocent go out and not a trap laid to bring him into bondage and slavery?’.
- He said that anyone who was a ‘self lover, proud, covetous or respects ‘gifts’ or rewards’ should not be a ruler.
- He criticised the wealthy for taking the common land from the people… ‘Getting great estates in the world, laying house to house and land to land, till there be no place for the poor. And when they are become poor through deceits then you despise them and exalt yourselves above them and forget that you are all made of one mould and of one blood, and must appear before one judge, who is no respecter of persons’… ‘God is against you, covetous and cruel oppressors who grind the needy and the poor’.
- He denied ‘original sin’ and said that God would not ‘conclude the condemnation of some persons before they come into the world’.
- He denied that the Bible was the word of God and said that people had the ‘spirit of Christ’ within them.
- He said that Christ had not risen to heaven and would ‘not come back at the last day as a man to judge all nations’ implying that Jesus was a man and not the son of God.
- He said that there would be no resurrection of the body suggesting that ‘heaven was on Earth’ and so rubbishing the central pillar of traditional Christianity.
Why were the Authorities so afraid of Nayler?
Nayler was no lone lunatic to be laughed at and dismissed; he was one of the leaders of an organised Quaker movement estimated to be 40,000 strong at that time. The ideas of these religious radicals had swept down from the north of England with shocking speed. Crowds gathered everywhere to hear them speak and demolish the arguments of the few priests who would dare to take them on in theological debate. Nayler was a brilliant speaker, a ‘common man’ and so related to the soldier, farmer or vagrant of any English village.
The movement that he led was both social and political, it was challenging the rule of the Church and State and attacked the very core values of Christianity. Some of the ideas came from a new people’s reading of the Bible, which had only been widely available in English for a few years. There was a feeling that ‘the meek should inherit the Earth’ but now and not by waiting for death and ascendance to heaven. A feeling that ‘the common man’ had goodness in him and Eden could be made on earth by the tillers of the soil; that ‘natural man’ should live ‘naturally’ which meant that food, drink and sex were as holy as going to Church. Finally there should be no ‘respecting of persons’ whether priest, rich man or King. This opened the way for all men and women to preach, put the religious gathering in the hands of the people and attacked the hierarchy of the established Church.
These religious radicals and their ideas had moved the people to join up to fight the Royalists and had ‘fuelled’ the New Model Army that had won the English Civil War and beheaded the King for the Parliamentarians. As far as the wealthy new Puritan rulers were concerned the war was over and things should just go back to normal. All this talk of ‘freedom’ and ‘levelling’ had to be stopped. The radical soldiers of the New Model Army had protected this revolutionary movement until a frightened Cromwell carried out a purge of the ranks in 1649. Now the time was right to deal with these troublemakers once and for all. Not only would Nayler be put in the dock but the policies of religious and political toleration as well.
Why should James Nayler be remembered?
James Nayler and his supporters rode into Bristol that October day in 1656 to enact a ‘sign’, a symbolic act which represented their belief that ordinary men and women could achieve the perfection of Christ and perform Christ’s works. This was a ‘levelling’ act in itself, bringing what was made untouchable by the whole structure of Christianity down to the everyday life of a common farmer. This is what he preached and for this brave act alone he should be remembered.
More about James Nayler
- The James Nayler Commemoration
- The James Nayler Disscussion
- A gallery of photographs and the script from the James Nayler Commemoration 2006
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Scott Perry
If all James Naylor did, as this article seems to imply, was to fully disenfranchise the priesthood, and to claim (as the Bible does in John 14:12) that the followers of Christ’s teachings shall do even greater things than Christ himself, then his torture and suppression must have been done by those who opposed te teachings of Christ as written in the Bible, no?
Scott Perry
After spending a number of hours trying to research exactly what happened with the case of James Nayler, I think I can now better understand it all. A number of seemingly confusing questions seem to surround Nayler. What exactly was going on between Fox and Nayler? Why did Fox, a believer in the fundamental equality of all, demand that Nayler kiss his foot? Why was Nayler so vehemently cast out of the Quakers after his ride into Bristol? Did Nayler really resurrect Dorcas Erbury from the dead? Here is what I believe may be the answers to these questions (in sequence): In order for anyone to head any organization such as the Quakers as Fox did, there must necessarily be certain “assumptions” of authority made, and if these assumptions are ever directly challenged, such a challenge must unfortunately be properly dealt with, otherwise such authority becomes meaningless. The sad truth of all organizations of man. Thus, Fox, a believer in the innate equality of all, in order to retain his leadership of the early Quakers, was forced by Nayler to have to force Nayler to “submit” to his authority, or else quite probably lose his leadership of the early Quakers.
Nayler, by his claims and his actions, was making a sort of a “power play” in the early movement. Nayler’s own beliefs were obviously not in equality. He seemed to tolerate, if not encourage his entitlement to ambiguous claims of Christ-hood, being the “upmost of the 40,000,” etc. etc. By his Palm-Sunday-Reinactment, and by his claim to have been able to resurrect the dead, he also obviously reinforced such claims. I would have to say that the claim that he resurrected Dorcas Erbury from the dead seems a bit fishy to me. I say this because there seems to have been no substantiating proof presented by Nayler himself. It simply seems a bit fishy that Erbury’s body was for some strange reason allowed to remain in the Goal for two days unburied, and more importantly, unexamined… cont’d….
Scott Perry
… continued from previous comment. …. more importantly, unexamined by any neutral third parties whom Nayler could have easily noted in his own defence. To the contrary, the explanation was given by Nayler’s accusers that she was “swooned.” Medical science now recognizes many such comatose states that one can enter before dying, which can easily last days. When one suddenly starts to see one’s self as a messiah of sorts, all sorts of other critical thinking abilities can quickly deteriorate.
In summary, I would have to say that Nayler probably forced Fox to have to exercise his authority, probably much to the distaste of even Fox himself, in order to prevent a sort of hysteria that Nayler and Simmonds were attempting to whip up amongst the Quakers, in their early slightly demented power play for control of the newly forming Quaker movement. Sad, but probably true.
Thank God Fox had the ability to stop Nayler in his tracks. How sad that all human organizations must ultimately resort to such lines of authority, in order to simply survive.
Scott Perry
An afterthought….
Even if Nayler “had” actually performed any “miracles,” the mere symbolism of possessing any supposed “right” to trample over the things of others, stepping them down into the mud, would seem to me to be entirely contrary to the meekness, humility, and peacefulness, that Fox and others had stood for, and to instead support the old “birthright of the privileged few” that they had so valiantly stood up against.
The only reason that Fox had just demanded an “old fashioned type of submission” to his authority, was because Nayler had already demanded of all, an even older type of submission to his own “supposed authority,” which he had mistakenly believed he possessed.
Roger
It seems a bit mealy-mouthed to say that Fox was “was forced by Nayler to have to force Nayler to “submit” to his authority”. I suppose Fox was also “forced” to condemn and expel lots of other radical elements within in order “to discipline” the movement.
Fox has been lauded by the Quakers for hundreds of years and Nayler belittled, ignored or even deemed mentally ill, along with lots of other fractions who were expelled because they were deemed too radical. Nayler represented the radical ‘ranter’ tendencies within the movement which were questioning the not only the authority, hierarchy and ritual of the established church but the whole nature of the relationship with God in relation to everyday life and the power relations of the unequal society they lived in.
It is true that the Quakers were under threat in the 1650s from a reactionary anti-leveller turn in the Republic and then the restoration of the Monarchy after 1660. Under Fox the Quaker leadership responded by purging the organisation of radical politics and radical elements who refused to “shut up”. However as Christopher Hill noted:
“It is as pointless to condemn this as a sellout as to praise its realism: it was simply the consequence of the organized survival of a group who had failed to turn the world upside down.”
We would argue that rather than trying to defend Fox and condemn Nayler, what is much more interesting is to investigate what these radical Quaker elements were actually saying and doing. This is what BRHG were getting at when they popularised Nayler in 2006.
So we would recommend starting with the brilliant chapter “Ranters and Quakers” in “The World Turned Upside Down” by Christopher Hill. It is time that current day Quakers uncovered their hidden radical history in the revolutionary period of the 1640s-50s.
Ellis Hein
“He said that Christ had not risen to heaven and would ‘not come back at the last day as a man to judge all nations’ implying that Jesus was a man and not the son of God.”
“He said that there would be no resurrection of the body suggesting that ‘heaven was on Earth’ and so rubbishing the central pillar of traditional Christianity.”
You should read Nayler’s own statements printed in the back of Works of Fox, Vol. III, 598. Two excerpts follow:
“First, concerning Jesus Christ, that he is the eternal word of God, ‘ by whom all things were made,’ and are upheld; which was before all time, but manifested to the world in time, for the recovery of lost man. Which word became flesh, and dwelt amongst’ the saints; who is the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever ;’ who did and doth dwell in the saints; who suffered, and rose again, and ascended into heaven, and is set at the right hand of God, to whom all power is given in heaven and in earth ;'”
and
“Concerning the resurrection. That all shall arise to give an account, and receive at the last day ‘ according to their works, whether good or evil.’ These bodies that are dust, shall turn to dust, but God shall give a body as pleaseth him ; that which is sown in corruption shall be raised in incorruption; it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body ; and as we have borne the image of the earthly, so we shall bear the image of the heavenly”