Great Britain -- History -- Medieval period, 1066-1485
Muggleton lived twenty-six years after this last revolt, exercising
unquestioned authority; an autocratic prophet to whom something like
worship was offered even to the last. He was far advanced in his
eighty-ninth year when he died. He was far on towards seventy when he
was brought before Jeffreys, then Common Serjeant, and other justices,
on a charge of blasphemy. Jeffreys was as yet a novice in those arts of
which he became the acknowledged master a few years after, but already
he quite equalled his future self in his savage brutality to the poor
monomaniac. "He was a man," says Muggleton, "whose voice was very loud;
but he is one of the worst devils in nature." The jury hesitated to
bring in their verdict, knowing well enough what would follow, but
Jeffrey's look and manner cowed them. The prophet was condemned to pay
a fine of L 500, to stand in the pillory three times for two hours
_without the usual protection to his head_, which those condemned to
such a barbarous punishment were allowed. He was to have his books
burned by the common hangman, and to remain in Newgate till his fine
was paid. Only a man of an iron constitution could have come out of the
ordeal with his life. Muggleton bore it all; remained in Newgate for a
year, compounded for his fine in the sum of L 100, which his friends
advanced, and was a free man on the 19th of July, 1677, a day which the
Muggletonians observed as the prophet's Hegira.
As early as 1666 he had many followers on the Continent, and in that
year the _Transcendant Spiritual Treatise_ was translated into German
by a convert who came over to London to confer with the sage. Except on
very rare occasions he never left London, nor indeed the parish in
which he was born. He pursued the trade of a tailor till late in life,
but his books had sold largely, and he managed to get together a
competence, and was at one time worried by his neighbours and fined for
refusing to serve in some parish offices. There was a fund of sagacity
about the man which appears frequently in his later letters, but an
utter absence of all sentiment and all sympathy. He had no _nerves_.
Staid, stern, and curiously insensible to physical pain, he was
absolutely fearless, with a constitution that could defy any hardships
and bear any strain upon it.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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