Jane Lead’s Prophetic Afterlife in the Nineteenth-Century English Atlantic

Lockley, Philip

doi:10.1057/978-1-137-39614-3_11

Philip Lockley⁴

Part of the book series: Christianities in the Trans-Atlantic World, 1500-1800 ((CTAW))

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Abstract

Jane Lead enjoyed a prophetic afterlife among several transatlantic traditions of millennial religion in the nineteenth century, most notably Shakers, Mormons and Southcottians (the followers of Joanna Southcott). This chapter shows Shaker and Mormon interest in Lead was later than previously assumed, while Southcottians were more consistently linked to the transatlantic influence of Jane Lead’s prophetic writings. Sifting printed records and scattered sources, this chapter traces how Lead’s prophecies were compared to Southcott’s writings before 1814, and later used by Southcottian followers of Zion Ward and James Jezreel. Southcottian links are also shown to lie behind notice of Jane Lead within Transcendentalist literary circles on either side of the Atlantic.

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Notes

1.
Periods of prophetic ‘silence’ are also liable to be recognised in the careers of individual prophets believed to have had, then lost, the gift of prophecy, the biblical model for whom is Ezekiel—whose tongue God made to ‘cleave to the roof of thy mouth, that thou shalt be dumb’ (Ezekiel 3:26).
2.
Peter Hoehnle, Amana People: History of a Religious Community (Iowa City: Penfield, 2003).
3.
The Philadelphians certainly survived Lead’s death, and persisted for a decade or more, including the period of the ‘French Prophets’ in England. This period was not a ‘reawakening’, however, only a society which continued until its demise. See especially, Lionel Laborie’s Chap. 10 in this volume, and his Religious Enthusiasm in Early Enlightenment England: Camisards, French and English Prophets (1685–1750) (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2015).
4.
British Library copies of Jane Lead’s A Message to the Philadelphian Society (1696), The Signs of the Times (1699) and A Fountain of Gardens (1696) bear the stamp of Philip de Loutherbourg, who, among other claims to fame, was a follower of the 1790s prophet Richard Brothers. Iain McCalman, ‘Spectres of Quackery: The Fragile Career of Philippe de Loutherbourg’, Cultural and Social History, 3:3 (September 2006), pp. 341–54. For an insightful study of related prophecy reading, see Ariel Hessayon, ‘Jacob Boehme, Emanuel Swedenborg and their readers’, in The Arms of Morpheus: Essays on Swedenborg and Mysticism, ed. S. McNeilly (London: The Swedenborg Society, 2007), pp. 17–56.
5.
J.F. Sachse, The German Pietists of Provincial Pennsylvania, 1694–1708 (Philadelphia, 1895), pp. 15, 48; Jeff Bach, Voices of the Turtledoves: the sacred world of Ephrata (University Park, PA: Penn State University Press, 2003), p. 43.
6.
For instance, <www.janelead.org> and <www.passtheword.org>.
7.
Clarke Garrett, Spirit Possession and Popular Religion (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987), pp. 141–47. See also Lionel Laborie’s Chap. 10 in this volume.
8.
Susan Juster, Doomsayers: Anglo-American Prophecy in the Age of Revolution (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003), p. 123.
9.
The Shaker collection of the Western Reserve Historical Society (WRHS); Manuscripts (Glen Rock, N.J.: Microfilming Corp. of America, 1976), reel 52, Book 6/B39, p. 149; reel 61, Book 7/B203. These copies were made by Rebecca Jackson (1795–1871) and Catherine Van Houten (1817–1896), respectively. A further Shaker transcript of Lead writings survives at University of Kansas, Kenneth Spencer Research Library, MS P182, labelled ‘Vision of Jane Lead, March 11, 1676’, though the date of transcription is unverified. I am grateful to Ariel Hessayon for drawing this additional source to my attention.
10.
This is the copy of Jane Lead, Divine Revelations and Prophecies. Part the first. First published in London in the year 1700 (Nottingham: H. Wild, 1830) held in the Western Reserve Historical Society Research Library.
11.
This produced the Archive of Restoration Culture https://byustudies.byu.edu/PDFLibrary/ArchiveRestorationCulture.pdf [Accessed 7 November 2013]. For the ‘cultural biography’ of Joseph Smith related to this project, see Richard Lyman Bushman, Joseph Smith: rough stone rolling (New York: Knopf, 2005).
12.
https://byustudies.byu.edu/PDFLibrary/ArchiveRestorationCulture.pdf, pp. 1327–31.
13.
The copy of Lead’s Divine revelations and prophecies (1830) held at the Harold B. Lee Library, Brigham Young University, Utah, was only purchased in 1988. I am grateful to Maggie Kopp for her insights into the provenance of this book.
14.
‘Extracts from the Revelations of Jane Leade,’ Millennial Star 20, no. 8 (20 February 1858), pp. 124–25. The original was: Jane Lead, Offenbarungen der Jane Leade, die letzten Zeiten betreffend: nebst Anmerkungen und einer Lebensberschreibung dieser Englaenderin (Strasburg: J.H. Silbermann, 1807).
15.
‘Extracts from the Revelations of Jane Leade,’ Millennial Star 20, no. 8 (20 February 1858), pp. 124–25.
16.
Between 1884 and 1903 Thomson reprinted at least seven Lead works: Revelation of Revelations (1884); The Heavenly Cloud Now Breaking (1885); The Wars of David and the Peaceable Reign of Solomon (1886); The Wonders of God’s Creation manifested (1887); The Signs of the Times (1891); The Enochian Walks with God (1891); The Laws of Paradise Given Forth by Wisdom to a Translated Spirit (1903). See also, J. Boehme, Epistles (Glasgow: J. Thomson, 1880); M. Guion, The Mystical Sense of the Sacred Scriptures, trans., Thomas Watson Duncan (Glasgow: J. Thomson, 1872). Thomson’s personal sympathies with these works remains unclear, even if it was an evident commercial specialism: Clegg’s Directory listed his business as ‘Second-hand, Mystic, Theological, and General’. See, James Clegg (ed.), The International Directory of Booksellers, sixth edition (Rochdale: James Clegg, 1903), p. 81.
17.
On Southcott’s career and theology, see Matthew Niblett, Prophecy and the Politics of Salvation in Late Georgian England: the Theology and Apocalyptic Vision of Joanna Southcott (London: I.B. Tauris, 2015).
18.
Gordon Allan, ‘Joanna Southcott: enacting the woman clothed with the sun’ in The Oxford Handbook of the Reception History of the Bible, eds. Michael Lieb, Emma Mason, and Jonathan Roberts (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), pp. 635–48. On anti-Calvinism, see especially, Sarah Apetrei, Women, Feminism and Religion in Early Enlightenment England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), pp. 172, 278–80; Julie Hirst, Jane Leade: Biography of a Seventeenth-Century Mystic (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005), pp. 115–18.
19.
James Hopkins, A Woman to Deliver Her People: Joanna Southcott and English Millenarianism in an Era of Revolution (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1982), p. 84.
20.
On calculating Southcottian numbers see, Philip Lockley, Visionary Religion and Radicalism in Early Industrial England: from Southcott to Socialism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), pp. 35–36.
21.
Philip Lockley, ‘Missionaries of the Millennium: Israelite Preachers in the English-speaking World, 1823–1863’, Journal of Religious History, 37:3 (September 2013), pp. 369–90.
22.
Sylvia Bowerbank, ‘Lead, Jane (1624–1704)’, ODNB; J.F.C. Harrison, The Second Coming: Popular Millenarianism 1780–1850 (London, 1979), pp. 23, 38.
23.
Revelation 12:1–6; Juster, Doomsayers, 216; Julie Hirst, ‘Dreaming of a New Jerusalem: Jane Lead’s Visions of Wisdom’, Feminist Theology, 14 (2006), p. 356.
24.
Bowerbank, ‘Lead’, ODNB; see also, Sylvia Bowerbank, ‘Southcott, Joanna (1750–1814)’, ODNB.
25.
There is notable new evidence that Southcott was familiar with Richard Brothers’ writings before 1801. See especially, Panacea Society Archive, Bedford, PN 222/55, ‘Communication given to Joanna Southcott shewing the reason why the Lord chose Richard Brothers’ (18 May 1798).
26.
On Brothers, see Deborah Madden, The Paddington Prophet: Richard Brothers’s Journey to Jerusalem (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2010).
27.
On the aftermath of Southcott’s death, see especially, Lockley, Visionary Religion.
28.
Revelation 12:1–5. Joanna Southcott, The Third Book of Wonders, Announcing the Coming of Shiloh (London, 1814).
29.
Jane Lead, A Fountain of Gardens (London, 1697), pp. 468–71.
30.
Allan, ‘Joanna Southcott’, pp. 635–48.
31.
‘Philadelphus’, The Holy of Holies Unveiled!!! Or a Full and Divine Explanation of the Deep Theosophic Figures and the Many Scriptural Emblems which adorn the Superb Bible for Shiloh (London: Dean and Munday, 1814).
32.
Towards the end of the work, the title is explicitly linked to Boehme, referring to ‘the proud knowledge of those who are let into the Holy of Holies, opened by the Spirit of God, in his chosen instrument, BEHMEN.’ Philadelphus, Holy of Holies Unveiled, p. 85.
33.
Philadelphus, Holy of Holies Unveiled, pp. 43–46.
34.
Both Genesis 3 and Revelation 12 had long traditions of messianic interpretation in Christian history, and had therefore been liable to linkage before. The distinctive connection made by Southcott—and acknowledged by Philadelphus—was in the identity of the woman, and the form of the messiah.
35.
Philadelphus, Holy of Holies Unveiled, p. 41.
36.
Philadelphus, Holy of Holies Unveiled, p. 59. Emphasis in the original.
37.
Philadelphus, Holy of Holies Unveiled, p. 59.
38.
‘Philadelphus’ was a relatively common pseudonym, especially in the two preceding centuries. It was notably the name signed by the author of The State of the Philadelphian Society, or, the grounds of their proceedings consider’d (London, 1697), which suggests an effort to imply continuity. The early nineteenth-century individual behind the pseudonym nonetheless remains unidentified.
39.
On Foley, see Hopkins, Woman to Deliver, pp. 88–93.
40.
BL, Add. MS 47,798/57.
41.
For original, see Lead, Fountain of Gardens, pp. 454–57.
42.
Jane Lead, The revelation of revelations: particularly as an essay towards the unsealing, opening, and discovering the seven seals, the seven thunders, and the new Jerusalem state … (London: J. Pratt, 1804).
43.
Jane Lead, The Wars of David and the peaceable reign of Solomon symbolizing the times of warfare and refreshment of the saints..: In two treatises … first published in the year 1700 … To which is now subjoined Several Extracts … from the “Fountain of Gardens,” by the same author (London: T. Wood, 1816).
44.
Lead, Wars of David, iii–iv. The work contains no reference to Southcott. The principal commendation of Lead’s work, in the 1816 edition at least, drew on the standing of the eighteenth-century devotional writer, William Law, and his particular endorsement of Lead and Boehme.
45.
University of Texas (UT), Harry Ransom Research Center (HRC), Joanna Southcott Collection (JSC), Box 11/1/18. Clark was almost certainly copying from the 1696 original, as his writing reproduces the capitals of the original, and not the 1816 reprint which includes this passage. Lead, Fountain of Gardens, pp. 468–71.
46.
UT, HRC, JSC, Box 11/1/18.
47.
Lockley, Visionary Religion, p. 31. In London almost all the traceable Southcottian chapels appear to have had their own local prophet.
48.
On Ward, his supporters, and his theology, see Lockley, Visionary Religion, pp. 125–42.
49.
Zion Ward, Zion’s Works, ed. C.B. Holinsworth, 16 vols (London, 1899–1904), vol. 14, pp. 66, 75.
50.
Zion Ward, The Vision of Judgment; or, the Return of Joanna from her trance (London, 1829), p. 4.
51.
Ward, Vision of Judgment, p. 4.
52.
E.P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class, rev. ed. (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1968), p. 879.
53.
ZW to John Brentnall, 17 June 1829, in Zion Ward, Letters, Epistles, and Revelations, of Jesus Christ, addressed to the Believers in the Glorious reign of Messiah (London, 1831), p. 9.
54.
PS PN 604, Zion Ward, ‘The Creed of the Shilohites’ [n.d.], p. 7.
55.
Zion Ward, The Judgment Seat of Christ (London: C.W. Twort, 1831), pp. 110, 150–53, 180, 201. At least 25 chapbook editions of Nixon’s Original Cheshire Prophecy or similar volumes were sold across England between 1790 and 1830. Ward would have had little difficulty encountering a copy.
56.
Ward, Judgment Seat of Christ, pp. 140–41.
57.
This poem was also reproduced in Lead, Wars of David, (1816), pp. 46–47.
58.
Zion Ward, The Living Oracle; or, the Star of Bethlehem: written in answer to a letter of the Rev. T.P Foley, addressed to Mr T. Pierce of Nottingham (Nottingham, 1830); Zion Ward, Zion’s Works, vol. 14, p. 80.
59.
Lead, Divine Revelations and Prophecies, p. 3.
60.
Lead, Divine Revelations and Prophecies, p. 30.
61.
Lead, Fountain of Gardens, vol. 1, p. 79.
62.
On Ward’s support from the atheist radical, Richard Carlile, see Lockley, Visionary Religion, pp. 185–208.
63.
J.E.M. Latham, Search for a New Eden: James Pierrepont Greaves (1777–1842) the Sacred Socialist and his Followers (London: Associated University Presses, 1999).
64.
Ward’s and Greaves’ respective theologies are briefly discussed in Latham, Search for a New Eden, pp. 75–76.
65.
Latham, Search for a New Eden, pp. 150–67.
66.
On the resulting community, see Richard Frances, Fruitlands: the Alcott family and their search for utopia (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010).
67.
‘Catalogue of Books’, The Dial, 3:4 (April 1843), p. 545.
68.
Harvard University, Houghton Library, B MS Am 1280.235 ‘Books of Charles Lane’. Emerson also held volumes of The Shepherd journal edited by one-time Southcottian and Wroeite, James Smith—to which Lane contributed.
69.
Harvard University, Houghton Library, [*AC85.Al191.Zz] Books from the library of Amos Bronson Alcott.
70.
Priscilla J. Brewer, ‘Emerson, Lane and the Shakers: A Case of Converging Ideologies’, The New England Quarterly, 55:2 (June 1982), pp. 270–72.
71.
I must acknowledge that Bridget Jacobs has previously speculated on Lane being the conduit for the introduction of Lead’s writings to Shakers. I am grateful to the Houghton Library for awarding me the Ralph Waldo Emerson Fellowship in 2013, which enabled me to test this theory thoroughly—if not conclusively.
72.
The letter is reproduced in a biography of Smith: W.A. Smith, ‘Shepherd Smith’: the story of a mind (London, 1892), p. 421. On Brook Farm see, Sterling F. Delano, Brook Farm: the dark side of utopia (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 2004).
73.
On Smith, see Lockley, Visionary Religion.
74.
Smith, ‘Shepherd Smith’, p. 421.
75.
Smith, ‘Shepherd Smith’, p. 420.
76.
Lockley, ‘Missionaries of the Millennium’, pp. 384–85.
77.
John Wroe, Private Communications (Wakefield, 1853), III.
78.
See WRHS MSS Microfilm, reel 52, Book 6/B39, p. 149; reel 61, Book 7/B203.
79.
Lockley, ‘Missionaries of the Millennium’, p. 388.
80.
These ideas are discussed further in Philip Lockley, ‘Millenarians in the Pennines, 1800–1830:
Building and Believing Jerusalem’, Northern History, 47 (2010), pp. 297–317.
81.
John Wroe, Private Communications (Wakefield, 1846), vol. II, pp. 1136, 1231, 1248.
82.
Galatians 4:26; Wroe, Private Communications, II, pp. 1300, 1390.
83.
John Wroe, Private Communications given to John Wroe (Gravesend, 1853), vol. III, p. 30.
84.
On Jezreel see Ruth Windscheffel, The Jezreelites (London: I.B. Tauris, forthcoming).
85.
James Jershom Jezreel, Extracts from the Flying Roll (Chatham, 1878), pp. 4–5.
86.
Jezreel, Flying Roll, pp. 14–15.
87.
Jezreel, Flying Roll, p. 24.
88.
Jezreel, Flying Roll, p. 25.
89.
Jezreel, Flying Roll, p. 65.
90.
Jezreel, Flying Roll, p. 84.
91.
W.D. Forsyth ‘Introduction’ in Jane Lead, Ascent to the mount of vision, ed. W.D. Forsyth (Littleborough, 1906), p. 3. The ‘Sixty Propositions’ were originally published within Jane Lead, A message to the Philadelphian Society whithersoever dispersed over the whole earth. Together with, a call to the several gathered churches among Protestants in this nation of England (1696).
92.
Medway Archives, 06a_DE_SERIES_1001_1200/DE1173 Roll of new members 1882, directory of English members and extracts from Sixty Propositions to the Philade[l]phia Society c.1882. Propositions had previously been republished in both The Wars of David (1816) and Ward’s edition of Divine Revelations and Prophecies (1830).
93.
Proposition 43 in Lead, Wars of David (1816 edition), p. 51.
94.
Propositions 44, 45 and 47 in Lead, Wars of David (1816 edition), pp. 51–52.
95.
Propositions 54, 55 and 58 in Lead, Wars of David (1816 edition), p. 53.
96.
Sarah Apetrei has recently noted the connection between Jane Lead and the Jezreelites, principally in Forsyth’s post-Jezreel tradition, drawing particular attention to the ‘feminist’ dimension to their interacting theology through Forsyth’s 1906 edition. Apetrei, Women, Feminism and Religion, pp. 244–8.
97.
Forsyth ‘Introduction’ in Lead, Ascent, p. 3.
98.
Forsyth ‘Introduction’ in Lead, Ascent, p. 3.
99.
Forsyth ‘Introduction’ in Lead, Ascent, pp. 4–5.
100.
Forsyth ‘Introduction’ in Lead, Ascent, p. 5.

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Philip Lockley

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Department of History, Goldsmiths College, University of London, London, United Kingdom
Ariel Hessayon

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Lockley, P. (2016). Jane Lead’s Prophetic Afterlife in the Nineteenth-Century English Atlantic. In: Hessayon, A. (eds) Jane Lead and her Transnational Legacy. Christianities in the Trans-Atlantic World, 1500-1800. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-39614-3_11

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-39614-3_11
Published: 26 June 2016
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