" JEZREEL " 137 



clerk ; and, as Ingoldsby observes, " there was not a 

 single maravedi." 



From Saint Bridget to a weird, but yet not altogether 

 unworldly, fanatic of recent years the transition would 

 not be easy, were it not for the fact that the said 

 fanatic's hideous temple still crowns Chatham Hill for 

 all men to see, as a monument of the unfathomed and 

 unfathomable credulity of mankind. The stranger who 

 walks or cycles his way to Dover is told that this 

 barrack-like building is " Jezreel's Temple," and that is 

 about the extent of the information forthcoming. 

 The unredeemed ugliness of the unfinished temple is at 

 once repellant and exciting to curiosity, and the 

 name of " Jezreel " wears such an Old Testament air 

 that most people who pass by want very much to 

 know who and what he was. 



He was, as a matter of fact, a private soldier of the 

 16th Regiment, named James White, who, having been 

 bought out of the Army by the members of a fanatical 

 sect before whom he posed as a prophet, took the 

 extraordinary names of " James Jershom Jezreel," 

 and, with seventeen followers, founded a new sect, 

 the New House of Israel, known by scoffers as the 

 " Joannas." They were, in fact, mad enthusiasts 

 like those whom Joanna Southcott had fooled, years 

 before, and it is supposed that White took the name of 

 " Jezreel " from the Book of Hosea, adding the other 

 names to make a trinity of initial " J's," allusive to the 

 Prophetess Joanna and her minor prophet, John Wroe. 



Not that " Jezreel " was mad. Not at all. To him 

 as Prophet and Patriarch of these New Israelites was 

 given up the whole property of those who entered the 

 House, to be held in common ; and he made a very 

 good thing of the infatuation of the hundreds of wealthy 

 middle-class converts who had a fancy for this singular 

 kind of communistic religion. It was an article of his 

 followers' creed that they were the first portion of 

 the 144,000, twice told, who will receive Christ when he 

 comes again to reign a thousaixl years on earth. 



