God's fire part two

(This is a follow on from my recent God' Fire posting and represents a creative writing thread on this blog.)

Why and how had this happened? Well I blame James Nayler - not not the historic James Nayler (1618-1660) who was leading Quaker in the early days in aftermath of the English Civil War. This original Nayler came to grief in Bristol in 1656. Well he did imitate Christ's entry into Jerusalem by riding into Bristol on horseback on Palm Sunday with his followers singing 'Holy, holy, holy'. He was tried before Cromwell's parliament for blasphemy and was flogged, branded on the forehead with the letter B, had his tongue pierced with a hot iron (not anaesethics in those days) and sentence to two years' hard labour in prison.

No, it was the so-called modern James Nayler I blame. His real name was probably Ken Southwold (no one is quite sure) but he does seem to have had the original Nayler's way with words.'God's fire' was his catch phrase. And many Quakers, would you believe, were on fire with his words. Not all of them - for a sizable minority warned against him and his policy of 'radical direct action'. They didn't mind the relatively silent vigils outside cathedrals, prisons, town halls and parliament but the frequent nakedness was more problematic as was the reviving of the old Quaker tradition of heckling sermons in churches.

Many of the Naylerites, as they were known, were brought to Court for this heckling - still seen as disgraceful behaviour in (post) modern Britain - and their subsequent refusal, on being found guilty, to pay their fines, resulted in short term prison sentences. Will over 500 Quakers in prison for such heckling at any one time they were starting to clog up the criminal justice system not to mention their various impacts on the prisons.

No-one seems to remember how this modern day James Nayler got started but we do have an I-witness account given by a Provisional Government, spy of his early speaking at a Quaker Meeting one Sunday in York. At that time there were only a 100 people in the room that Sunday.

"It was quiet as usual for the first 15 minutes or so and the children had been led out as per usual. Then James stood up. He was not an especially striking figure to look at but his clothes were rather strange. They looked old fashioned rather like those worn by Victorian farm workers.

'Friends of the Truth,' he began - this was a typical use by him of an early Quaker phrase. 'Friends of the Truth we are called to witness God's light not just in the quiet of our hearts but alive in the world outside. We are called to repent and to burn away the dross in our souls. Let God's fire cleanse our souls, cleanse our society, cleanse our world so all men, women and children will know and obey God's Truth.'

There was what can only be described as a shocked silence soon followed by an exultant shout of 'Halleluia, halleliua' from a clearly mentally distressed young woman. The Quaker Elders present exchanged worried looks. However, the silence, if somewhat fraught, was maintained until the end of the Meeting. At that point John Rampton, Clerk of the Elders led James away to a side room and that was that for now."