History furnishes particulars of many men who have claimed to be the Messiah, and perhaps the most celebrated of the number is James Nayler, "the mad Quaker." He was born at East Ardsley, near Wakefield, in the year 1616. It is certain that his parents were in humble circumstances, and it is generally believed that his father occupied a house near the old church, and that he was a small farmer. James Nayler, for a person in his station in life, received a fairly good education. In his early manhood he was a husbandman, and resided in his native village. When about twenty-two years of age he married, as he puts it, "according to the world," and removed to Wakefield. Shortly after his marriage, the Civil War broke out in England, and Nayler took his share in the struggle between King and Parliament. He joined, in 1641, as a private, the Parliamentarian army, and his conduct and ability gaining him advancement, he rose to the position of quarter-master under General Lambert. While in Scotland ill-health obliged him to retire from active service, and he returned home. Nayler carefully studied the Scriptures, and was a zealous member of the Independents, worshipping at Horbury, but he left this body in disgrace. It transpired that he had been paying attentions to a married woman named Mrs. Roper, of Horbury, whose husband had been absent from her for a long period, and that she became a mother, and that Nayler was the father of the child. The Rev. Mr. Marshall, the minister of the Independents, exposed him, and took him severely to task, so that he was finally expelled from that body.