LODOWICK MUGGLETON - NATIVE OF CHIPPENHAM? 101 
In 1676 Muggleton was charged with writing ‘a 
blasphemous, heretical and seditious book’.'* The 
case was heard at the Old Bailey on 17 January 
1677, the main plank of his defence being that, as he 
had written nothing since 1673, the book in 
question was covered by the 1674 Act of 
Indemnity.’ Despite this the jury reluctantly 
obeyed the direction of the Lord Chief Justice, who 
described Muggleton as a ‘villain who is a murderer 
of souls’ and found him guilty.”” He was sentenced 
to the pillory for three days, to have the hangman 
burn his books before his face, and to pay a £500 
fine with surety for good behaviour for the rest of 
his life. He was incarcerated in Newgate Prison for 
non-payment of the fine. Thanks to the intervention 
of his ardent supporter Nathaniel Powell he was 
subsequently acquitted and discharged from 
Newgate on payment of £100 bail and surety for his 
future good behaviour. The arrest and _ trial 
encouraged both Muggleton’s detractors and 
supporters into print, producing the hostile 
pamphlet ‘A Modest Account of the Wicked Life of 
That Grand Impostor Lodowicke Muggleton’, as 
well as Mr Powell’s sympathetic account of his 
sufferings. Both accounts should be treated with 
caution because of their biased approaches to their 
subject. A revival of interest in the Muggletonians 
in the mid-eighteenth century prompted a reprint 
of the hostile article in the Harleian Miscellany of 
1744, and of the “Transcendental Spiritual Treatise 
upon Several Heavenly Doctrines’ in 1756. 
Canon Jackson provided a simplistic biography 
of the accredited founder of the sect, recounting 
that Muggleton, ‘began his religious career as a 
Church of England man; exchanged for Indepen- 
dent; slipped off to Anabaptist; tasted Quakerism; 
and finally, as might be expected, subsided into no 
religion at all’.2! This derogatory attitude towards 
his life has frequently been repeated by later com- 
mentators, which led William Lamont to complain 
that Muggleton had been subjected to a bad press 
over the years.” He has been variously described as 
‘a known mad-man’; ‘verging on insanity’; ‘a 
product of the religious culture of the London 
slums’; ‘a mad tailor’; and even as ‘an unstable and 
deeply troubled neurotic who sought release from 
his anxieties by acting the wild-eyed prophet’. 
The D.N.B., although now somewhat dated,” 
has provided a more rounded version of his life and 
family connections, and also contains an account of 
his co-religionist John Reeve. The compiler of both 
entries was Alexander Gordon, a nineteenth- 
century specialist on the Muggletonians, who had 
written papers about the sect for the Liverpool 
Literary and Philosophical Society.** Most of the 
entry on Muggleton was concerned with his adult 
life, information for which he found mainly in the 
man’s own written works and letters, together with 
a paper, “The Prophet of Walnut Tree Yard’, 
published by the Rev. Augustus Jessopp in 1884. He 
dismissed works on Muggleton and his sect by his 
[i.e. Gordon’s] contemporaries, Scott and Macaulay, 
as misleading. Gordon included in his account the 
information that Muggleton and Reeve were 
cousins, providing a family connection for their 
association. It is probable that the source of this 
claim was Muggleton’s own account, in The Acts of 
the Witnesses,”> of the satisfaction that John Reeve’s 
‘Revelation’ gave him: 
For, said he unto me at that time, Cousin Lodowick, 
now I am satisfied in my Mind, and know what 
Revelation is ...”° 
Such familial references as ‘cousin’ or ‘brother’ 
were commonplace in the seventeenth century to 
denote a close religious, political or social 
colleague,” and do not necessarily imply any actual 
blood relationship. Thus, in this case, the term 
could well have been used to indicate that the two 
were closely connected by their common religious 
experience. However, despite the fact that he did 
not cite any documentary proof in support of a 
family relationship, Gordon seems to have taken 
the term literally and recorded a closer affiliation 
than the evidence merits. Reeve was a year older 
than Muggleton and they appear to have been 
adults in London when they first met, as 
Muggleton noted of John Reeve: 
He was out of his Apprenticeship before I came 
acquainted with him, he was of an Honest, Just 
Nature, and Harmless.” 
Had they been related by blood they would 
probably have met, or at least been aware of each 
other, from an early age. In chapter III of The Acts of 
the Witnesses Muggleton provided some information 
‘of the Birth, Parentage, and Trade, of the two 
Witnesses’, listing his own parents and siblings 
(although, as noted above, this should be treated 
with caution), as well Reeve’s parentage. However, 
he made no mention of a family connection 
between them. As he had been employed by John’s 
brother William, and in light of the other family 
details provided, it seems unlikely that he would 
have omitted such an important piece of 
information — had it existed. 
