A Very British Cult (eBook)

Rogue Priests and the Abode of Love

Stuart Flinders (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2024 | 1. Auflage
288 Seiten
Icon Books Ltd (Verlag)
978-1-83773-148-0 (ISBN)

Infos

A secluded country house. A rogue Anglican Priest. Ceremonial sex and mislaid fortunes. This is the almost-forgotten story of Victorian Britain's strangest religious sect and its wealthy, mostly female, followers who believed they could ascend directly to heaven. Henry James Prince was a rogue Anglican Priest with a flare for the dramatic, and the founder of the Agapemone, or 'Abode of Love'. He also claimed to be the immortal conduit of The Holy Spirit and purportedly engaged in free love and ceremonial sex with his mostly female followers. But Prince's eventual death didn't mark the end of this strange set... he was promptly replaced by another. John Hugh Smyth-Pigott - otherwise known as the Clapton Messiah. The Abode transformed a sleepy, rural corner of Somerset into one of England's most notorious locations. While the followers shut themselves away and waited patiently for the end of the world, outrage grew - the word 'Agapemone' because a byword for licentiousness or idleness, used by Charles Dickens and Ford Maddox Ford. The reclusive Clapton Messiah became a fixture in the nation's papers, with frenzied efforts to discredit the organisation and undermine its leader. And still the cult grew. Expertly drawing on primary sources to tell the story of the Agapemonites in details for the first time, Stuart Flinders shines a light on the people drawn to the cult - the forced marriages; the swindled fortunes; the women condemned to asylums; and those who managed to escape from the Abode. It is also the story of two extraordinary men, whose claims of divinity were at the heart of this very British cult.

Stuart Flinders was a journalist for nearly four decades, working for BBC News and North West Tonight. He fronted Radio 4's You and Yours and presented live concerts on Radio 3. Now writing full-time, he is also the author of Cult of a Dark Hero: Nicholson of Delhi.

Autor

Stuart Flinders has been a journalist for nearly four decades, with his work involving BBC News, fronting Radio 4's You and Yours for many years, and presenting live concerts on Radio 3. He also writes, and is the author of Cult of a Dark Hero: Nicholson of Delhi.

Textauszug

‘THE GLORY OF THE INSTITUTION’: THE EMERGENCE OF BROTHER PRINCE

1

Why was Louisa Nottidge so drawn to Henry James Prince and his strange commune, so determined to follow him that she rejected her own family? When they first met, four years before the kidnapping, he was the young curate at her parish church, still a minister of the Church of England. He arrived at St John the Baptist’s at Stoke by Clare in 1842.1 Stoke is a village deep in the Suffolk countryside, and Louisa lived not far from the church at one of the area’s grander houses, Rose Hill, with her father and mother, Josias and Emily, and four of her sisters. Josias Nottidge had earned a good living as a merchant and was now retired.2 He and Emily had had fourteen children, and a bracelet given as a gift by Josias to his wife contains miniature portraits of the eleven survivors. It sold for £20,000 in 2019.3 Although unmarried, Louisa and her sisters were by no means young. Louisa was the eldest at 39 when Prince arrived at their local church; Agnes the youngest at 24.4

Theirs was a devout family. Edmund Nottidge was ordained as a Church of England priest in 1830,5 but his sisters were looking for more from their faith than the gentle traditions offered by an English country church. ‘The minds of myself and sisters were highly susceptible of religious enthusiasm’, recalled Agnes later.6 ‘Enthusiasm’, ‘revival’, ‘reformation’ were encouraged by a new breed of preacher, urging a radical evangelical message on their parishioners. The words of the Bible had to be felt profoundly as well as understood. Prince was one such preacher. So great was the impression he made on the Nottidge sisters that not only did they attend services at his church, but they also visited him at home every day. Agnes explained:

Henry James Prince, by a great affectation of piety, and by declaring in his sermon and conversations to the effect that eternal misery would befal [sic] those who did not obey his exhortations, obtained much influence and ascendancy over me and my said sisters …7

Agnes’ reflections are about the only evidence of what made Prince so persuasive during his time at Stoke. But his record in his previous posting gives us some idea of how he went about his work.

Two years earlier, he had taken up a curacy at a church in one of the most beautiful settings in the country. High on a hill in Somerset, St Mary’s, Charlinch, would become, to Prince’s mind, a beacon for miles around.8 The rector there – effectively Prince’s boss – was Rev. Samuel Starky, who was born into the landed gentry. He was connected through his mother to the ancient Bayntun family, which had established itself in the reign of Henry II in the twelfth century. It embedded itself further into the aristocracy by grabbing confiscated monastic lands in Wiltshire under Henry VIII. Samuel’s older brother became Lord of the Manor of Bromham, but, as a younger son, Samuel himself entered the church.9 He wasn’t at Charlinch to greet Prince when he arrived, because he was ill and convalescing on the Isle of Wight, leaving Prince to run the parish as he saw fit.10 Prince did not want simply to lead parishioners in ancient and reassuring rituals. As far as he was concerned, they did not know God; his mission was to convert them. So pleased was he with the fruits of his labours that he would later sing his own praises in a book, The Charlinch Revival, published in 1842.

Evidence of a revival was slow to emerge. The parishioners did not take to him and the congregation shrank; by the end of his first year he had, by his own reckoning, saved no more than five souls.11 His first major convert was none other than the Rector of Charlinch himself. Starky claimed he was seriously ill and preparing for death when a copy of one of Prince’s sermons was delivered to his sick bed. It made such an impression on him that he recovered immediately and returned to Somerset.12

The Charlinch Revival began in earnest in November 1841, five months after Prince had been ordained priest.13 By this time, he seems to have given up hope of success, ‘the power of the Spirit appeared quite gone’. But one Sunday he suddenly underwent a transformation while standing in the pulpit. Initially, he was lost for words, but soon he began to speak, or as he later claimed, the Holy Spirit began to speak through him. His description of what happened next is written in the third person, as if he had observed it rather than taken part. The sermon was, he claimed, ‘searching as fire, heavy as a hammer, and sharper than a two-edged sword’. He continued:

As the spirit proceeded to dictate, and the minister to deliver the most awful appeals to the consciences of sinners, an extraordinary stillness of spirit stole over the people: even the children in the gallery, usually a turbulent and noisy set, seemed awe-struck, and sat looking in each other’s faces in silent astonishment. During the frequent pauses made in the discourse a death-like stillness pervaded the whole church, so very solemn that one almost seemed afraid to breathe lest something should be disturbed by it. Several men and women sobbed aloud; the heads of most dropped on their breast; the hearts of all were awe-struck.

In a footnote, he admits that not everyone was awe-struck: ‘One boy excepted.’14

Indeed, it was the children, the ‘hardened little sinners’, as he called them, that refused to succumb to his message, until one evening when he had them to himself at Sunday school. Prince’s account of what happened there, again written as if he were observing the Holy Spirit possessing his body, is disturbing:

… on this evening, the Holy Ghost came on the minister with the most tremendous power, so that the word of the Lord was really like fire. About twenty of the children were pierced to the heart by it [his sermon], and appeared to be in great distress; but the bigger boys still continued unmoved, and some of them even seemed disposed to laugh. In a short time, however, the word reached them, too, and they were smitten to the heart with the most dreadful conviction of their sin and danger: it appeared as if the arrows of the Almighty had pierced their very veins; indeed, the Lord really seemed to have made the mouth of the minister like a sharp sword; so tremendous was the power of the word then spoken. In about ten minutes the spectacle presented by the school-room was truly awful: out of 50 children present there were not so many as ten that could stand upright: boys and girls, great and small together, were either leaning against the wall quite overcome by their feelings of distress, or else bowed down with their faces hidden in their hands, and sobbing in the severest agony: it appeared positively as if the Spirit of God was breaking their hearts into pieces like a potter’s vessel. The most heart-felt anguish was written on almost every countenance that could be seen; whilst some of them looked as though they were inwardly wrung with the extent of the agony they endured. During the prayer that followed, the impression made by the Spirit became still deeper, till the walls of the schoolroom quite resounded with the sobs and cries of the children kneeling on the floor; and for some time after the minister had ceased to pray, they continued where they were, not weeping, but literally deeply wailing. When he left the room they followed him to the rectory, expressing their desire henceforth to forsake their sins and pleasures, and to seek the Lord. There were more than forty thus smitten with conviction; and most of them were so affected that for some time afterwards, they could scarcely speak for sobbing … Who can possibly resist the conviction that the ‘hand of the Lord hath done this …?’

It was as if Prince had cast a spell. A week later, he took stock. ‘The convictions of some of the children are becoming deeper’, he wrote. ‘In others they are wearing off.’ After three months the damage done by the emotional abuse he had inflicted on the younger members of his parish was clear:

About twenty children came to converse with us after the lecture to-day, in great concern: of these about fifteen are now stripped of hope in themselves, and are in a state of self-despair: twelve of them are boys from twelve to twenty years old … they are inwardly broken, stripped and emptied, so that not one single ray of hope from self dawns on them.

Prince was not alarmed; he was encouraged by this. Now, he thought, they would be ready to accept that their salvation lay not in their own hands, but through faith in God: ‘they see plainly that neither their tears, prayers, repentance, or amendment can avail them without faith’.15

The effect of Prince’s work was to divide the small community, as he himself observed:

Husbands threatened to murder their wives, and wives threatened to forsake their husbands, if they would not give up going to Charlinch. Nor did the converted children escape: some were coaxed, others frightened by their parents; whilst their unconverted brothers and sisters seemed to take a savage delight in turning them into ridicule, and in trying to provoke them that they might lose their temper.16

Reports of Prince’s behaviour reached his superiors, and when he divided his parishioners into the ‘saved’ and the ‘unsaved’, telling the latter to...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 7.11.2024
• Verlagsort: London
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Geschichte ► Teilgebiete der Geschichte ► Kulturgeschichte
• Themenwelt: Geisteswissenschaften ► Religion / Theologie ► Weitere Religionen
• Schlagworte: Amanda Montell • Charles Manson • cultish • Cults • Don't Call it a Cult • jeff guinn • Jim Jones • louis theroux • Max Cutler • Peoples Temple • Road to Jonestown • Sarah Berman • vincent bugliosi • Waco
• ISBN-10: 1-83773-148-9 / 1837731489
• ISBN-13: 978-1-83773-148-0 / 9781837731480