THE MESSIAHS

Evening Star, Issue 22573, 15 February 1937, Page 14

THE MESSIAHS

MANY IMPOSTORS Considering the ample material, the literature of religious imposture in England is surprisingly meagre. In fact, as Mr Ronald Matthews tells us in tho introduction to his ‘ English Messiahs,’ it can hardly be said to exist. A good deal of ink has been expended on Joanna Southcott, but only in the way of short and for _ the most part ephemeral articles, while many other equally interesting figures have been completely ignored, writes Donald Carswell, in ‘ John o’ London.’ _ Mr Matthews’s own book is designed to make at least a beginning in supplying the defects and to show that this neglected subject is worth serious study for the sake of its social and psychological implications. It is not a comprehensive history of English religious imposture—a work that would fill several stout volumes. It is limited to critical studies of the six most significant pretenders to Mesgiahship —James Nayler (1618-1660), Joanna Southcott (1750-1841), Richard Brothers (175/1824), John Nicholas Tom (1799-1838), Henry James Prince (1811-1899), and John Hugh Smyth-Pigott (1852-1927). With the debatable exception of Nayler, who seems rather to have been a mystic manque than a madman, these people were commonplace lunatics, such as can- be numbered in our mental institutions by the thousand. They are interesting, not in themselves, but from the fact that they won disciples who made up in devotion what they lacked in numbers. The sects they founded were short-lived, though Joanna Southeott and her Sealed Box still_ have believers. One of the curiosities of the war was tho poster campaign demanding that the .bishops of the Church of England should open the box and save the people. Some years ago there appeared in the newspaper Press what purported to he an X-ray photograph of the box, which appeared to contain nothing but a few bits of “ old junk.” But, if Mr Matthews ‘is right, there must have been some mistake, because since 1889 “ the whereabouts of the box have not been revealed except to a strict inner circle of believers.” HELD IN TRUST. The secrecy is necessary, Southcottians assert, because so many attempts have been made by the curious or by over-enthusiastic followers to secure possession of it. All that is stated is that the box is now in the hands of .a believer, a churchman, who holds it in trust for his fellow faithful. One further detail there is: none of the spurious boxes so far opened could by any possibility be the genuine one. For once, in the course of its crosscountry wanderings, it was put on the scales at a Somerset railway station ; it was found to weigh'ls6lb. Joanna was “the Bride of the Lamb,” but her Messianic pretensions were disputed by “ God. Almighty’* Nephew.’ This was Richard Brothers, a half-pay

naval lieutenant whose insane career began, as many insane careers have begun, with a wrangle with a Government department. Refusing to swear the usual affidavit each time he went to draw his money, he was soon without means, and alternated between debtors’ prison and workhouse. His malady developed rapidly; he began to prophesy and believed ho could work miracles. In 1794 he published ‘ A Revealed Knowledge of the Prophecies and Times, Wrote under the Direction of tho Lord God and Published by His Sacred Command.’ It was a typical piece of crazy literature. First, by a mathematical interpretation of the Scriptures it is proved that the millennium and restoration of the Hebrews to Palestine is at band. The Hebrews who are to return aro not merely the inhabitants of Europe’s ghettoes, but the “ invisible- Jews,” the 10 tribes lost after the Captivity, of whom a great number now imagine themselves to he English. Secondly, Brothers himself is demonstrated to be tho Revealed Prince and Prophet who shall bo tho leader of tho new exodus. Thirdly, his power and pre-eminence are shown by tho claim that he lias twice previously, within the last three years, saved Britain, and indeed the world, from destruction by fire from heaven. Fourthly, all war is wrong, but the war against France particularly is the war mentioned by God in tho nineteenth chapter of Revelation, which He calls a war against Himself. Fifthly, if the hostilities are continued dreadful calamities to the crowned heads and people of England and all Europe will follow. SHUT UP AS A LUNATIC. .Now, in the year 1794 tho Engish public were in a state of agitation bordering on hysteria.. Events on the continent appeared to lend a terrible significance to the Book of Revelation, and if the Revelation of John, why not to the Revelation of Richard Brothers ? ‘ Revealed Knowledge ’ had an immediate and prodigious success. Thousands of copies were sold.. Nor were all those who accepted the nonsense ignorant or illiterate. Proselytes came in in such numbers that Pitt took alarm and had Brothers haled before the Privy Council, who promptly had him shut up as a criminal lunatic. But the mood of the public anxiety passed, and as not one of the prophecies of the Almighty’s nephew came to pass, his following soon faded away. One of his doctrines, however, survives to this day—the belief in tho identity of the people of these islands with the Lost Ten Tribes of Israel. Brothers’s ravings, however, are said to have influenced a more dangerous paranoiac in the next generation, John Nichols Tom. This was a Truro maltster. who early in 1832 disappeared from his own town to reappear six months later at Canterbury, wearing fantastic but rich raiment, apparently well supplied with money, and calling himself Count Moses R. Rothschild. Presently, however, he gave out that this was only his incognito, and that in fact he was Sir William Percy Honeywood Courtenay, Knight of Malta, and only son of the last Lord Courtenay. It was in this style that he had himself nominated as Tory

candidate, with an advanced Radical programme, for Canterbury, and though he failed to secure election, he polled alarmingly well. A crazy intervention in a criminal cause led to his prosecution for perjury. His condition then became apparent and bo was committed to a madhouse. Unfortunately, after two years he was released. The peasants and petty tradesmen who had been his supporters before rallied- to him with more fervour than ever; he proclaimed himself the Lord Jesus Christ and led a peasants’ revolt, assuring his dupes that they were invulnerable to steel and lead. A fatal encounter with the military followed, in which Tom. and many more' were killed. Mr Matthew’s explanation of such incidents is that they occur when the public are in a state of emotional stress analogous to the emotional stress which has started the paranoiac’s malady—that is to say, an emotional stress that welcomes any escape from cruel reality. The false prophet has found a “ psychotic retreat ” for himself, and in certain circumstances others are onlv too eager to share its serenity. Hence credulity flourishes in political disturbance. Naylei; lived amici, the upheaval of,the Commonwealth ; Joanna and Brothers amid the turmoil of the French revolution. It was the storm round the new Reform Act and the fury roused by the new Poor Law that did so much to make Tom’s double imposture successful. The middle-class world to which “ Brother ” Prince appealed would have been glad of any relief from the terrors of Cartism. For the unsettlement of a national crisis creates a greater need in the unstable disciple, as well as adding a more imposing stature to the pseudo-prophet. It seems as if another period of difficulties, external and internal, is lying ahead of this country. It would not be rash to forecast that the appearance of another Messiah is due. Possibly, but' will he be a religions one? Events on' the Continent indicate in these days that mass hysteria takes a political rather than a religious form, though, of course, the principle is the same.