Great Britain -- History -- Medieval period, 1066-1485
While the two were in Newgate John Reeve wrote a letter to the Lord
Mayor and another to the Recorder, mildly damning them both. If we are
to believe Muggleton, the Recorder was somewhat disturbed and alarmed
by the sentence. When the day of trial came, Reeve bade the Lord Mayor
hold his peace and be silent, as became a damned man in the presence of
the prophets, and we are told the Mayor obeyed and said nothing more.
The two were condemned, nevertheless, and thrown into Bridewell for
seven months. Under the horrors of that dreadful imprisonment Reeve's
constitution broke down. He was never the same man again. He languished
on, indeed, for four years more, but he was a dying man, and he spent
his time in writing books, his followers kindly ministering to him in
his broken health and feebleness. The end came to him while visiting
some convents at Maidstone--good women, of course. "The one was Mrs.
Frances, the eldest; the second, Mrs. Roberts; the third, Mrs. Boner.
This Mrs. Frances closed up his eyes, for he said unto her, 'Frances,
close up mine eyes, lest my enemies say I died a staring prophet.'"
While Reeve and Muggleton were lying in Newgate, another mystic--are we
to call him a prophet too?--was lying in Carlisle gaol. George Fox, the
Quaker, had fallen into the hands of Wilfrid Lawson, then High Sheriff
for the county, who had not spared him. Just about the time that the
London prophets were discharged, Fox arrived in London under the
custody of Captain Drury, and had that memorable interview with
Cromwell which readers of Fox's Journal are not likely to forget,
though Carlyle has gone far to spoil the story by slurring it over.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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