Yorkshire-born James Nayler, after experiencing what he…
December 1656 CE
Yorkshire-born James Nayler, after experiencing what he described as the voice of God calling him from work in his fields, had given up his possessions and began seeking a spiritual direction, which he had found in Quakerism in 1652 after meeting George Fox.
Nayler has become the most prominent of the traveling Quaker evangelists known as the "Valiant Sixty"; he has attracted many converts and is considered a skilled theological debater.
By all accounts an extremely charismatic man with a somewhat Christ-like appearance, he has also attracted a loyal personal following, which some other Quakers regard with suspicion.
Fox had on several occasions expressed concern that the ministry of Nayler and his associate Martha Simmonds is becoming overly enthusiastic and erratic.
Though the substance of the disagreements is unclear, by 1656 Fox and Nayler were hardly on speaking terms.
Fox had visited Nayler on September 23, 1656, in his prison at Exeter; when the prisoner refused to kiss his hand, Fox had pushed his foot toward him, saying, "It is my foot."
It was clearly not a gesture that looked toward reconciliation, Fox has never apologized, and the differences remain.
Nayler and his friends, including Simmonds, had in October 1656 staged a demonstration that proved disastrous: Nayler had reenacted the arrival of Christ in Jerusalem that is commemorated on Palm Sunday, riding on horseback into Bristol attended by followers who sing "Holy, holy, holy" and strewing the muddy path with garments.
Though Nayler had denied that he was impersonating Jesus and said rather that "Christ was in him" (consistent with the Quaker doctrine of the Inner light), he refuses to comment further on the meaning of the action, and the ecstatic devotion of his followers has persuaded many that he has messianic pretensions.
He is on December 16, 1656, convicted of blasphemy in a highly publicized trial before the Second Protectorate Parliament.
Narrowly escaping execution, he is whipped through the streets of Bristol before the branding of the letter B on his forehead, piercing of his tongue with a hot iron in the pillory, and two years' imprisonment at hard labor.
This is especially bad for the movement's respectability in the eyes of the Puritan rulers because some consider Nayler (and not Fox, who had been in jail at the time) to be the actual leader of the movement.
Fox is horrified by the Bristol event, recounting in his Journal that "James ran out into imaginations, and a company with him; and they raised up a great darkness in the nation", despite Nayler's account of his actions being consistent with Quaker theology, and despite similar lofty language used by Fox and the other Quakers themselves.
Nevertheless, Fox and the movement in general denounce Nayler publicly, though this does not stop anti-Quaker critics from using the incident to paint Quakers as heretics, or to equate them with Ranters.