James Nayler

In 1656, Nayler achieved national notoriety when he re-enacted Christ's Palm Sunday entry into Jerusalem by entering Bristol on a horse.

[citation needed] After experiencing what he took to be 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 the leader of the movement, George Fox, in 1652.

Prominent Quaker author Rufus M. Jones provides a description of the strained encounter: [Fox] showed [Nayler] how dangerous was the path of pride and how awful it was to turn light into darkness, but the frank, well-meant words of warning fell on deaf ears.

Narrowly escaping execution, he was sentenced to be put in the pillory and on there to have a red-hot iron bored through his tongue, and also to be branded with the letter B for Blasphemer on his forehead, and other public humiliations.

After the verdict, Cromwell rejected representations on behalf of Nayler, but at the same time wanted to make sure the case did not provide a precedent for action against the people of God.

[10] To modern eyes, Nayler's Palm Sunday Re-enactment might not seem particularly outrageous, especially when compared with other acts of some of the other early Quaker activists, who would occasionally disrupt church services, or sometimes go out disrobed in public, being "naked as a sign", and as a supposed symbol of spiritual innocence.

At the time, Quakers were already being pressed to denounce the doctrine of the Inner Light for its implication of equality with Christ, and Nayler's ambiguous symbolism was seen as playing with fire.

Yet Fox and the movement in general denounced Nayler publicly, though this did not stop anti-Quakers from using the incident to paint Quakers as heretics or equate them with Ranters.

In October 1660, while travelling 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, Huntingdonshire.

Its crown is meekness, its life is everlasting love unfeigned; it takes its kingdom with entreaty and not with contention, and keeps it by lowliness of mind.