Many inquisitive people nowadays visit Spaxton to view the exterior of the place where these notorious blasphemers live. None find entrance, for recent happenings have made the inmates extremely shy of strangers. It is notorious that a raid was made upon the place one night towards the close of 1908, and that Pigott, the successor of Brother Prince, narrowly escaped being tarred and feathered by some adventurous spirits, who came down from London and, chartering a motor-car, drove up from Bridgwater to the Abode. Climbing the walls, they “bonneted,” with a policeman’s helmet filled with tarred feathers, the first man they met. This, however, proved to be only an elderly disciple, and not Pigott himself; and the intruders found themselves presently in custody, and were next day brought before the magistrates at Bridgwater, and both fined and severely reprimanded. The magistrates were bound to observe the law and to punish an assault; but the attempted tarring and feathering aroused a great deal of enthusiasm at Bridgwater, where the only regret expressed was that it had not been successful. No one can complain that clerical opinion in that town is not freely ventilated. Here is an extract from a sermon preached by the vicar of St. Mary’s: “Near to our town for some years past, alas, has sprung up one of the most unhappy and miserable heresies that the world can show. Of course there have been heresies very brilliant and very beautiful. But here is a heresy foul, horrible, and bad, and a heresy with not one single redeeming point in it. A few years ago the head of this movement, now living in the little village under the shelter of the beautiful Quantocks, made public proclamation in London that he was the very Lord Jesus Christ, and that he should judge the world. This man escaped at the risk of his neck—for however lethargic some people might be, these Londoners were not—to the quiet of the country. Here the old heresy, with a new name and with new horrible details, came into prominence again. It had quietly settled down, and men hoped that it would have died out, but the events of the past six months have revived it all again. None can pretend to be ignorant of what has happened, and none could pretend to be ignorant of the awful and blasphemous claims that have been made in the name of a wretched child born into a wretched world.”