John Naylor

James Naylor (1618-1660) was an English Puritan, He was born at Andersloe or Ardsley, in Yorkshire In 1642 he joined the parliamentary army, and served as quartermaster[?] in John Lambert's cavalry. In 1651 he adopted Quakerism, and gradually arrived at the conviction that he was a new incarnation of Jesus Christ. He gathered round him a small band of disciples, who followed him from place to place. At Appleby[?] in 1653 and again at Exeter in 1655 he suffered terms of imprisonment. In October 1655, in imitation of Christ's procession into Jerusalem, he entered Bristol on horseback, riding single—" a rawboned nude figure, with lank hair reaching below his cheeks " —attended by seven followers, some on horseback, some on foot, he being in silence and they singing " Hosanna! Holy, holy! Lord God of Sabaoth!" At the High Cross he and his followers were arrested. He was brought to London for trial. His trial occupied the second parliament of Oliver Cromwell for several days, and on December 16, 1656 he was convicted of blasphemy and sentenced to be whipped from the Palace Yard to the Old Exchange, to be branded in the forehead with " B" (for blasphemer), to have his tongue bored with a red-hot iron, to be whipped through the streets of Bristol, and to suffer imprisonment with hard labour for two years. On his release he was readmitted into the communion of the Quakers, and spent some time in Westmorland with George Whitehead[?]. In October 1660 Naylor set out to visit his long-forsaken family in Yorkshire, but died on the journey in Huntingdonshire.

Updated from the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica