Simon Webb writes about James Nayler and a time of fake news

James Nayler

Simon Webb writes about James Nayler and a time of fake news

by Simon Webb 8th September 2017

I am one of those people who needs to know the history of everything. Even when I had an eye operation, years ago, I was tempted to waste the surgeon’s time by asking him who invented that particular type of operation. Not only can I not understand Quakerism without understanding its history, I find it hard to understand how anyone else can make sense of it without having a knowledge of events in England in the middle of the seventeenth century.

The problem is that I didn’t do a History degree, or even A-Level History. I did an English Literature degree, and so I tend to see history in terms of stories, legends and myths. Reading up on the history when I first became interested in Quakerism, I couldn’t help classifying George Fox’s story as an epic; James Nayler’s, by contrast, seemed to me to be a drama.

A Quaker in London in, say, 1655, would be forgiven for thinking that James Nayler, the Yorkshire farmer turned Quaker preacher, was the leader of the Quaker movement. A convincing speaker, an effective and prolific writer, and a man who inspired loyalty and devotion in his followers, James Nayler, who was around forty at the time, was eight years older than George Fox, and was certainly more visible among the Quakers of the English capital.

But in October 1656 James Nayler and his inner group came into Bristol in a way that some took to be a blasphemous re-enactment of Christ’s entry into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday. The group was arrested, and their leader was subjected to a prolonged trial, not in a regular court of law, but at the hands of the House of Commons: a most unusual circumstance.

James Nayler’s story is a drama, rather than an epic like the story of the life of George Fox, because any Quaker researcher trying to come to terms with it can never be completely sure why the former did what he did, and exactly what it was that motivated both his supporters and his detractors. In 1656, those detractors included a large number of fellow-Quakers. Another dramatic element in Nayler’s story is the way that the most important action in the tale seems to take place inside the main protagonist’s head.

I thought I was getting close to understanding his thinking when I edited the Langley Press edition of his biography, written by his loyal friend George Whitehead, and hoped I would get even warmer when I was researching The Life and Times of James Nayler, the ‘Quaker Jesus’, which was published earlier this year. However, much of James Nayler’s thought and motivation remains mysterious: by taking a ‘life and times’ approach I hoped to reveal some of the context of thought and action in which he operated; but it is still up to the reader to answer many of the questions that continue to hang over the head of this fascinating character.

I felt lucky, researching the book, to be able to take advantage of recent research on him, of which there has been rather more than I can list here. One of the revelations, for me, was the grim fact that, in those days, long before the advent of social media or even tabloid newspapers, there was still plenty of room for fake news, emanating from pro- and anti-James Nayler Quakers, and from those who opposed Quakerism in all its forms. The researcher has to understand how ‘the media’ operated in the 1650s: it is necessary to deploy many grains of salt, detect the folly that arises from panic, and read between the lines of fake news.

The Life and Times of James Nayler, the ‘Quaker Jesus’ by Simon Webb is published by the Langley Press at £10.99. ISBN: 9781546473459


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