“The greatest meddler of religion in all the world:” Lodowicke Muggleton and Dissent in London during the English Civil War and Restoration - by David McCulloch

The English Civil War and the execution of King Charles I in 1649, and the widespread animosity between Presbyterian Protestants and Independents in the period of the Commonwealth in the 1650s, led to the emergence of many sectarian Protestant groups who were seeking religious answers within a highly chaotic political and social order. Lodowicke Muggleton (1609–1698), who gave his name to a Protestant sect (the Muggletonians) was one of these seekers after religious certainty. Much of our information for Muggleton’s life is found in his spiritual autobiography, The Acts of the Witnesses, first published just after his death in 1699, and in archives given to the British Library in the late 1960s by one of the last Muggletonians.

Muggleton was born in a house on Bishopsgate Street (now Bishopsgate) in the City of London. His father, John, was a farrier. Lodowicke’s mother, Mary, died in 1612, and Lodowicke and his sisters were brought up by nurses outside London. In 1624 he returned to the city and became an apprentice to a tailor, John Quick. As his apprenticeship drew to a close, Muggleton began to look for a different career. He was offered a stake in a pawnbroker's business by a Mrs Richardson, but he became worried that practising usury would cause his damnation, being forbidden in the Bible, so he continued as a tailor while living the practices of a staunch Puritan. London was one of the main centres of Puritanism in England in the early 17th century. Puritan Protestants put great emphasis on a rigidly moralistic standpoint, and were often anxious about their eternal salvation. Muggleton admitted he was troubled as a young man "for fear God had made me a reprobate before I was born." This statement suggests a strong tendency towards a belief in a type of Calvinist predestination.

By the late 1640s, Muggleton had fallen away from the Puritan faith. The episodes where he discusses his spiritual anxieties in The Acts of the Witnesses may be selected with the purpose of teaching his followers what to do in a similar situation. Muggleton describes in detail the moment of his spiritual reawakening. "It came to pass in the year 1650 I heard of several prophets and prophetesses that were about the streets and declared the Day of the Lord, and many other wonderful things." Notable among these preachers were John Robins and Thomas Tany. These were leaders of the sect called Ranters by those who disagreed with their teachings, and were among the best-known Dissenting preachers in London during the Civil War. Muggleton says of Robins that he regarded himself as God come to judge the living and the dead. The leaders of the Ranters also claimed power to curse to hell any that opposed their teaching.

Lodowicke makes it clear in his autobiography that for a while he agreed with the Ranters. However, he later believed that Robins in particular was guilty of self-deification and of claiming powers that were not of divine origin. By 1650 Muggleton had begun to feel that the Ranters’s teaching did not provide him with the answers that he was seeking. He began to experience revelations which interpreted certain passages of Scripture. The following January his cousin John Reeve underwent similar experiences. Both men thought such revelations were for their private peace of mind alone and they resolved to make nothing public. However, as Muggleton later commented "But contrary to the resolutions of us both, a little while after, we were made the greatest meddlers of religion in all the world.” On 3 February 1651 (1652 in the Gregorian calendar) John Reeve believed that he was addressed by the voice of God giving him the Third Commission i.e. to preach with equal authority to that of Christ. He said that Lodowicke was to be his mouthpiece, as Aaron was to Moses in the book of Exodus. They were in future to be those appointed by God in Revelation 11:3: “and I will appoint my two witnesses, and they will prophesy for 1,260 days.” As a result, Reeve and Muggleton began to travel around London and speak to small gatherings of listeners. Hardly anyone outside their circle was permitted at these gatherings and there was almost no attempt to preach to the general public. These gatherings began to be known to others, however, and the sect became known as the Muggletonians.

Sarah Muggleton, Lodowicke’s daughter and 14 years old at the time, was the first person to be blessed under the Third Commission. Reeve and Muggleton then declared a sentence of damnation on Thomas Tany for his rejection of their preaching, and the following day Reeve and Muggleton went to curse John Robins in Clerkenwell prison. His offence, in Reeve's view, was deceiving the people, stating that Robins had to accept that what "thou has measured to others must be measured again to thee." (About two months later, Robins wrote a letter to Oliver Cromwell recanting his beliefs).

It may seem incredible today that two ordinary tailors could walk around London considering themselves to be figures from the Book of Revelation. Christopher Hill explains this phenomenon by quoting another “prophet”, Arise Evans, who said in 1629: "I looked upon the Scripture as a history of things that passed in other countries, pertaining to other persons; but now I looked upon it as a mystery to be opened at this time." It was taken for granted by some Dissenters such as Muggleton that London was the Babylon described in the Book of Revelation and God had called them to condemn the evils of the “great city.”

Thomas Macaulay in his History of England (1849), describes Muggleton as "a mad tailor who wandered from pothouse to pothouse, tippling ale and denouncing eternal torments against all who refused to believe." Subsequent historians have treated this as slanderous, but it is not so different from Muggleton's own description of his early, lively adventures as a prophet. As John Reeve is reported to have said to Muggleton after one incident, "For God's sake, Lodowicke, let us be gone, else we shall be killed: so he paid for the drink and we departed out of the house and went to another a little distance off."

Until the death of John Reeve in 1658, Muggleton seems to have acted only as Reeve's mouthpiece. There is no record of him writing any works of his own nor of him acting independently of Reeve. The pair were accused of blasphemy by mainstream Puritans and were jailed for six months in 1653. Following the death of Reeve, however, a struggle for the leadership of the group arose between Lodowicke and Laurence Clarkson (or Claxton as Muggleton calls him), another prominent Ranter. It is unclear whether Muggleton understood that he was expected to take over leadership of the “movement”, so the conflict went on for three years. But Clarkson was not a commissioned prophet, and this was the key factor in Muggleton’s favour. By 1660 Lodowicke was acknowledged as the unopposed leader of the sect.

Muggleton seems only slowly to have grasped that if he wanted to be taken seriously, he had to write, publish and show himself outside London. In 1661, Lodowicke revised and re-published A Divine Looking Glass, written by John Reeve. It is understood by Muggletonians as holy writ on equal terms with the Old and New Testaments. Secondly, Muggleton in 1662 published his first book, The Interpretation of the Eleventh Chapter of the Revelation of St. John. Thirdly, he also began travelling to distant parts of England to meet believers who knew him previously only through correspondence. He did no public preaching, although he had some acrimonious private discussions with followers of the German Dissenter Jacob Bohme. After arguments with Quakers in Derby he spent nine days in jail.

Muggleton’s writings show a group of beliefs similar to other radical 17th century Dissenters, but with a few unique positions of his own. Some of these teachings include that conscience is God's watchman within every person; that every person experiences a conflict in their soul between an individual’s good and evil natures; and that the soul needs to banish the fear of being prey to external spirits. He also held a common Dissenting hostility to philosophical reason, a scriptural understanding of how the universe works and a belief that God appeared directly on Earth in the form of Jesus Christ. A consequential belief was that God will not generally intervene on earth until the final judgement and the world’s end. However, Muggletonians avoided all forms of public worship or preaching, and met essentially for discussion and socializing. Accounts of Muggletonian meetings suggest the movement was egalitarian, apolitical and pacifist. Muggleton’s notorious practice of cursing those who disagreed with him was eventually disregarded by his followers. One of the last to be cursed was the Victorian novelist Sir Walter Scott.

Muggleton spent much the rest of his life in a polemic against Quakerism, which became an extremely popular form of religious Dissent in the late 17th century. Lodowicke published an anti-Quaker book, The Neck of the Quakers Broken, and exchanged correspondence with leading Quakers. Lodowicke's opposition to the Quakers was uncharacteristically bitter. By and large, the charges Muggleton brought against the Quakers are the same as those the Quakers laid against him, suggesting that there were far fewer real differences between the two groups than both wanted to believe. Both groups promoted quietism, free thinking, and not propagating their faith in public. However Muggleton had a tendency to declare himself God’s unique instrument in a way that was unacceptable to Quakers.

In 1675, Muggleton became involved in a court action against a City of London Alderman named John James. James hit upon the idea of trying to get Lodowicke excommunicated in the Court of Arches (the ecclesiastical court), which would have forbidden him the right of defence in civil law. Lodowicke was required to answer charges arising from The Neck of the Quakers broken, specifically that he had cursed Dr Edward Bourne of Worcester. Lodowicke remarks in his autobiography that it was strange that a curse against a Dissenter (such as a Quaker) should be considered blasphemy by the Anglican established church. Despite little other evidence against him, on 17 January 1676 (1677 new style) Muggleton was convicted, and sentenced to three days at the London pillory and fined £500. A selection of books seized from Muggleton’s house were burnt by the common hangman. Fights broke out between Muggleton's supporters and members of the public at Temple Gate, and Lodowicke himself was badly injured. He was eventually held at Newgate jail until he could pay his fine. Finally, the Sheriff of London, Sir John Peak, was persuaded to release him in exchange for a payment of £100 cash.

After spending the rest of his life in quieter religious activity, Lodowicke Muggleton died on 14 March 1697 (1698 new style) aged 88, and was buried in the New Churchyard, Bethlem (or Bedlam), the main Noncomformist burial ground in north London. Archaeological remains of this burial ground have been recently unearthed working on the new Crossrail station at Liverpool Street.

Some connections between early Unitarian views and Muggletonian practices can be clearly discerned. A dislike of traditional forms of worship, a desire to avoid public evangelisation, and gatherings to be as much for mutual discussion as for the affirmation of beliefs, are all ideas held in common by the two traditions. The rejection of traditional belief in the Trinity is also held by both traditions. However, Richard Price and early Unitarians at Newington Green would not have agreed with Muggleton’s dislike of the use of human reason and rejection of the spirit of enquiry. And, naturally, Price and others would have found abhorrent Muggleton’s view that he was the voice of God on earth, chosen to save a small handful of believers. Despite the strangeness to us today of some of Muggleton’s teachings, the group named after him lasted well into the 20th century. It appears to be unique among English Dissenting traditions to have its origins in London.

This blog is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. It was made by New Unity and David McCulloch. Find out more: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.