When they were brought up the next day before the alderman at Guildhall, they maintained that they were only obeying the commands of God in acting as they had done. Their spokesman, the trumpeter, who turned out to be one Sibley, a City watchman, who appeared to exercise great authority over the others, said that he had proclaimed the second coming of the Shiloh in the same manner and with the same authority as John the Baptist, who had announced the first coming; and his wife asserted that she had had the Shiloh in her arms four times. In the end they were all sent back to prison, to be detained till they could find security for their peaceful demeanour in future. A remnant of the sect, the Jezreelites, lingered on for long at Chatham, remarkable for the general singularity of their manners and appearance. The Joannites are now almost, if not wholly, extinct, leaving room for some newer outbreak of religious folly. If we did not live at a period when such charlatans as Dr. Dowie and Mrs. Eddy have appeared, drawn about them crowds of adherents, and conjured tens of thousands of pounds out of their pockets, we should have supposed that such irruptions of religious mania, such eagerness to believe in a lie, such credulous clinging to an impostor, were a thing of the remote past. But the fools, like the poor, are always with us, and-- Still Dunce the Second reigns like Dunce the First. [Illustration: SILVER PAP-BOAT PREPARED FOR THE COMING OF SHILOH, PRESENTED TO JOANNA SOUTHCOTT IN JUNE, 1814 _From the original in the collection of A. M. Broadley, Esq._] [Illustration: JOANNA SOUTHCOTT] [Illustration: CRIB PRESENTED TO JOANNA SOUTHCOTT IN ANTICIPATION OF THE BIRTH OF THE SHILOH BY BELIEVERS IN HER DIVINE MISSION AS “A GOODWILL OFFERING BY FAITH TO THE PROMISED SEED” _Reproduced from the original print in the collection of A. M. Broadley. Esq._] The question presents itself to the mind whether Joanna was a conscious impostor, or whether she was self-deluded. With her dying confession and her will before us, it would seem that she knew that she was imposing on the credulity of men and women. She had seen a debauched and dissolute Methodist preacher in her master’s house pose as an apostle and as inspired, and draw crowds and convince them that he was an oracle of God. She imitated him, and found that her imitation was successful, and also that it paid well. She was able to command thousands of pounds from her dupes, and it flattered her vanity to be appreciated as one half divine. She had occasional qualms of conscience, but her devotees had more faith in her than she had in herself, and they overbore every feeble attempt to retrace her steps. The authorities for her life are numerous. Southey has given a full account of her in _Letters from England by Dom M. A. Espriella_. London, 1806. A full account of the dissection of her body is given in _Notes and Gleanings_, VI, 15 December, 1891. Exeter, 1891.