James Nayler

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James Nayler

James Nayler (or Naylor) (1618–1660) was an English Quaker leader. He is among the members of the Valiant Sixty, a group of early Quaker preachers and missionaries.

He was born in the town of Ardsley in Yorkshire. In 1642 he joined the Parliamentarian army, and served as quartermaster under John Lambert until 1650.

After experiencing what he described as the voice of God calling him from work in his fields, Nayler gave up his possessions and began seeking a spiritual direction, which he found in Quakerism after meeting George Fox in 1652. Nayler became the most prominent of the traveling Quaker evangelists known as the "Valiant Sixty"; he attracted many converts and was considered a skilled theological debater. By all accounts an extremely charismatic man with a somewhat Christ-like appearance, he also attracted a loyal personal following, which some other Quakers regarded with suspicion. On several occasions, Fox expressed concern that the ministry of Nayler and his associate Martha Simmonds was becoming over-enthusiastic and erratic. Though the substance of the disagreements is unclear, by 1656 Fox and Nayler were hardly on speaking terms. On September 23, 1656, Fox visited Nayler in his prison at Exeter; when the prisoner refused to kiss his hand, Fox pushed his foot toward him, "It is my foot." It was clearly not a gesture that looked toward reconciliation, Fox never apologized, and the differences remained.

In October 1656, Nayler and his friends, including Simmonds, staged a demonstration which proved disastrous: Nayler reenacted the arrival of Christ in Jerusalem that is commemorated on Palm Sunday, riding on horseback into Bristol attended by followers who sang "Holy, holy, holy" and strewed the muddy path with garments. Though Nayler denied that he was impersonating Jesus and said rather that "Christ was in him" (consistent with the Quaker doctrine of the Inner light), he refused to comment further on the meaning of the action, and the ecstatic devotion of his followers convinced many that he had messianic pretensions. On December 16, 1656 he was convicted of blasphemy in a highly publicized trial before the Second Protectorate Parliament. Narrowly escaping execution, he was instead punished with two floggings, branding of the letter B on his forehead, piercing of his tongue with a hot iron, and two years' imprisonment at hard labour.

James Nayler in pillory

George Fox was horrified by the Bristol event, recounting in his Journal that "James ran out into imaginations, and a company with him; and they raised up a great darkness in the nation", despite Nayler's account of his actions being consistent with Quaker theology, and despite similar lofty language used by Fox and the other Quakers themselves. Nevertheless, Fox and the movement in general denounced Nayler publicly, though this did not stop anti-Quaker critics from using the incident to paint Quakers as heretics, or to equate them with Ranters. To modern eyes, Nayler's procession might not seem particularly outrageous compared to the acts of other early Quaker activists, who often disrupted church services and sometimes appeared nude (as a symbol of spiritual innocence); but at a time when Quakers were already being pressed to denounce the doctrine of the Inner Light because of its implication of equality with Christ, Nayler's ambiguous symbolism was seen as playing with fire. The Society's subsequent move, mostly driven by Fox, toward a somewhat more organized structure, including giving Meetings the ability to disavow a member, seemed to have been motivated by a desire to avoid similar problems.

Nayler left prison in 1659 a physically ruined man; he repented his actions and was formally (but reluctantly) forgiven by Fox, who apparently required his former associate to kneel before him and ask forgiveness. He did join Quaker critics of the collapsing regime and begin to write condemnations of the nation's rulers. In October 1660, while traveling to rejoin his family in Yorkshire, he was robbed and left near death in a field, then brought to the home of a Quaker doctor in Kings Ripton. A day later and two hours before he died on October 21, he made a moving statement ("There is a spirit which I feel....") that some Quakers still value.

A collected edition of the Tracts of Nayler appeared in 1716, edited by his friend (and important early Quaker) George Whitehead, though Whitehead omitted Nayler's more controversial works. See A Relation of the Life, Conversion, Examination, Confession, and Sentence of James Nayler (1657); a Memoir of the Life, Ministry, Trial, and Sufferings of James Nayler (1719); and a Refutation of some of the more Modern Misrepresentations of the Society of Friends commonly called Quakers, with a Life of James Nayler, by Joseph Gurney Bevan (1800).

There Is A Spirit: The Nayler Sonnets is a collection, first published in 1945, of 26 poems by Kenneth Boulding, each inspired by a four- to sixteen-word portion of Nayler's dying statement (and also includes the intact statement).