Prophet John Wroe E-Book

Edward Green

• Herausgeber: The History Press
• Kategorie: Sachliteratur, Reportagen, Biografien
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 424

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2005

Beschreibung

Prophet John Wroe (1782-1863), found fame through his many predictions, his preaching and the establishment of the Christian Israelite Church in the early 1820s. Edward Green places Wroe's life and career in the context of an industrialised society struggling to find values and needing to believe in themselves as the Chosen People.

Leseprobe

PROPHET

JOHN WROE

VIRGINS, SCANDALS AND VISIONS EDWARD GREEN

First published in 2005

The History Press The Mill, Brimscombe Port Stroud, Gloucestershire, GL5 2QGwww.thehistorypress.co.uk

This ebook edition first published in 2013

All rights reserved © Edward Green, 2005, 2013

The right of Edward Green to be identified as the Author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyrights, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

EPUB ISBN 978 0 7524 9575 0

Original typesetting by The History Press

Contents

Acknowledgements

Preface

Introduction

One

A Prophet is Born

Two

The Southcottians

Three

The Rise to Leadership

Four

Baptism of Blood

Five

Building the New Jerusalem

Six

Scandals and Banishment

Seven

Return of the Native

Eight

Preaching to All Nations

Nine

Prophet Wroe’s Mansion

Ten

Death and its Aftermath

Eleven

The Demise of the Christian Israelites in England

Twelve

The Last of the Wroes

Genealogical Table

Appendix 1:

Allegations from

The Voice of the People

Appendix 2:

John Wroe in Literature

Appendix 3:

Saving the Odd Whim

Select Bibliography

Notes

Acknowledgements

The depth of information in this book would not have been possible without the encouragement and contributions of several people. As no biography of Wroe has been written before, I am indebted to the staff and archivists at the following libraries, records offices and archives: Wakefield Library Headquarters; Tameside Local Studies and Archives Centre; Bradford Central Library; Leeds Central Library; Manchester Public Library; Gravesend Public Library; Portsmouth Public Library; Frewen Library at Portsmouth University; West Yorkshire Archives, Wakefield; Bradford Local Records Office; the British Library; the Family History Centre, London; the National Archive, Kew.

Special thanks to Sandra Hargreaves for all her help and interest in this project and for locating most of the primary source material in Australia. Also to Gay-Jeanne Oliver of Stalybridge, Cheshire, whose extensive family history research has proved invaluable in unravelling the relationships of Wroe’s wealthy supporters at Ashton-under-Lyne in the 1820s and ’30s.

I am also particularly grateful to Dr Brad Beaven for his assistance and perseverance as my history dissertation tutor and to the late Professor Robbie Gray, whose interest in this subject area encouraged me to research aspects of it as part of my MA at Portsmouth University.

Finally I would like to thank Christopher Feeney, Senior Commissioning Editor at Sutton Publishing for his interest and useful advice on reading the first draft.

Preface

Few motorists driving to Wakefield from junction 41 of the M1 could begin to imagine the colourful life story of the character whose mansion stands just an apt stone’s throw (or mud pelt) away. The property, briefly glimpsed through the trees, now part of an office complex, was originally built as the stately residence of the founder of the Christian Israelite Church, the strange and charismatic ‘Prophet’ John Wroe. The prophecies and outrageous behaviour of this much-travelled Yorkshireman first brought him to public attention in the 1820s. Aspects of his life have made him a firm part of local folklore, but the real John Wroe, the millennial leader, has been virtually forgotten by history.

My interest in Wroe’s life story dates back to childhood, as I was brought up in Wrenthorpe, the West Yorkshire village where Wroe built his mansion, Melbourne House. The building was a most incongruous-looking place – which we would pass on our crosscountry runs from the nearby comprehensive school – situated in part of the region’s famous ‘rhubarb triangle’, which locally was rapidly being eroded by the burgeoning Wakefield 41 Business Park.

The stories relating to Wroe were fascinating, and I was most intrigued at how even then, in the 1980s, some elderly residents in the area found it an uneasy topic of conversation. My appetite for this subject was whetted still further while in the sixth form. Doing some community work at a senior citizens’ lunch club I met Mrs Edith Hemingway, who had lived in one of the mansion’s lodges for twenty-six years from the 1920s onwards. She told me descendants of Wroe who had still lived in the mansion during her time there, and of visits from Christian Israelite delegates from all over the world.

When I tried to find out more about our village’s most famous former resident I was frustrated to discover that there was something of a dearth of easily accessible information about the Prophet. No biography existed, and what information on Wroe there was had to be gleaned from various local history books, which repeated the same stories, many of which as it turned out were merely copied from Wroe’s own publications without acknowledging the fact. This dearth of information on Wroe was in stark contrast to Wakefield’s other major nineteenth century eccentric, the pioneer naturalist Squire Charles Waterton of Walton Hall. Waterton was an exact contemporary of Wroe, both men having been born in 1782, and several books have been devoted to the first conservationist.

After ploughing through all the secondary sources I could find on Wroe in the early 1990s, when I included a chapter on him in a history book of Wrenthorpe, I knew that when time allowed I would have to come back to this fascinating subject and give it the thorough research it deserved. In the intervening years I slowly accumulated three files of notes and several books relating to both the Prophet and millennial religion. As I tracked down the primary source material I soon realised that many of the local historians had hopelessly mixed up the chronology of stories involving Wroe.

This book will, for the first time, pull together the many facets of Wroe’s long and controversial life – information that has previously been hidden in obscure primary source material and confined to the pages of antiquarian local history books, reports in contemporary local newspapers and the briefest of footnotes in commentaries on nineteenth-century religion. It will reveal the truth behind several of the many myths surrounding this character. It will also attempt to explain why this strange phenomenon occurred at this period of English history, and why, despite the death of Joanna Southcott, existing socio-economic conditions and the state of the Church of England contributed to Wroe’s success. These aspects of millenarianism were investigated in my history MA dissertation, which was titled ‘Factors Accounting for the Popularity of the Christian Israelites from the 1820s’.

In a letter to the Ashton-under-Lyne Reporter in January 1955, Harold Wood, one of the then few remaining Christian Israelite adherents in England, wrote that ‘it would be quite impossible for anyone to write the whole truth relating to the history of this Church from outside sources alone’. At times during the arduous research for this book, I have almost been inclined to agree with him.

Introduction

On 29 February 1824, 30,000 spectators lined the banks of the River Aire to watch Yorkshire’s self-styled ‘Prophet’ John Wroe perform a miracle by dividing the waters and walking on the dry riverbed. When no such feat took place he was pelted with mud and stones and forced to make a hasty retreat with his followers. On Christmas Day the following year Wroe opened the extravagant Christian Israelite Sanctuary in the South Lancashire industrial town of Ashton-under-Lyne. It was here that his sect, the Society of Christian Israelites, believed the New Jerusalem would be established on Earth. This was to be the Holy City where the 144,000 elect would gather at the Apocalypse. The Sanctuary cost in excess of £9,000 to construct, over twice as much as Ashton Town Hall, which was built some twenty-five years later.

Such an ambitious construction scheme is, of course redolent of William Blake’s poem ‘Jerusalem’, as Ashton, a centre of the cotton-weaving industry, possessed many ‘dark satanic mills’. The analogy is entirely appropriate, as Blake, writing in the 1790s, was looking across the English Channel at recent events in France’s violent transition from monarchy to republic. The Revolution had brought about new millennial anticipation in Britain, where it was feared by some that what had happened in France signified the end of the world was close at hand. In the midst of this political turbulence, a nervous population consulted the Bible in an attempt to make sense of what was happening. Had these events somehow been prophesied?

The anticipated millennium was (and in some quarters still is) based on the belief that, after a struggle between good and evil, Christ will reign on Earth for 1,000 years. During this period Satan would be imprisoned and the Earth exist in peace, ruled by Christ and his saints. At the end of the 1,000 years would come the Day of Judgement and the end of the world. Such beliefs stemmed from Revelation 20, yet contemporary critics argued that millenarians such as the Southcottians interpreted too literally the Biblical definition of a thousand-year interregnum.

A profound interest in the fate of the Jews opened this bizarre episode in English social history, which would briefly bring to fame Richard Brothers, Joanna Southcott and John Wroe. Brothers believed that as many as ten of the twelve lost tribes of Israel could be found in Britain. He meticulously planned their return to Jerusalem, an undertaking in which he himself would lead them. Like Blake, Brothers was a radical, and the authorities, fearful of his republican tendencies, managed to silence him by committing him to an asylum.

Brothers’s mantle was taken up by a Devon farmer’s daughter, Joanna Southcott, the second in an eccentric chain of millennial leaders. (Brothers and Southcott were regarded by their followers as the first two of the seven angelic messengers of Revelation 10:7.) Southcott was the Exeter prophetess, a former servant girl, who at the age of 42 said that she heard a voice she believed to be of divine origin, and recorded prophecies in doggerel verse. She is now best known for her famous box of predictions, which will only be opened by the Panacea Society in the presence of twenty-four Church of England bishops.

In 1814, in her 65th year, Joanna announced that she would give birth to Shiloh, a messianic figure who she and her followers believed was alluded to in Genesis 49: 10. Southcott’s announcement caught the attention of the press and the hostility of non-believers. The very idea that the 64-year-old virgin would give birth seemed quite absurd. To Joanna’s deep disappointment no physical birth took place, and she died in December of that year. Her followers quickly claimed that Shiloh had been born as a spirit and taken up to heaven, thus fulfilling Revelation 12: 5.

Although Joanna Southcott had died, her promise unfulfilled, her followers and certain struggling sections of the population still looked to millennial religion for an explanation of the unprecedented turmoil they were experiencing in their lives. Ordered society in France had unravelled in the 1790s at the time that Brothers and Southcott had shot to prominence. Now, in the mid-1810s, in England industrialisation was gathering pace, and traditional ways of life were being disrupted beyond recognition. Rural labourers migrated to jobs in the rapidly expanding towns where new mechanised manufacturing processes led to the painful demise of various cottage or domestic industries. The Church of England found it hard to address the spiritual concerns of these displaced workers, who in their despair turned to millenarianism.

Following the death of Joanna Southcott, a large proportion of her supporters, particularly in the North of England, recognised George Turner, a merchant from Leeds as their new leader. Turner’s failed predictions, extravagant lifestyle and bouts in an asylum weakened his authority. His death in 1821 paved the way for another Yorkshireman, John Wroe, to lead a substantial portion of the sect. The Moses of the West Riding, Wroe literally wielded a rod of iron and with fresh vigour, was clearly keen to take up the initiative of Brothers’s lost tribes in calling his sect the Society of Christian Israelites.

John Wroe’s doctrine was markedly different from that being preached by the contemporary Established Church. Most notably, he made use of prophecies, many of which targeted the anxieties of those who had worked in the declining domestic industries of the time, such as the handloom weavers, stocking makers and wool-combers. A distinctive facet of millennial religion, these prophecies also frequently echo concerns of the broarder masses in the 1820s.

Wroe’s popularity was due in part to his gift for showmanship and a clever use of publicity. At the height of his religious career, the ‘Prophet’ had several thousand followers and demonstrated the uncanny ability to attract support from influential industrialists. This profitable relationship was badly damaged following his alleged depraved activities, which directly contributed to the spectacular demise of his authority. Although this precipitated a decline in membership of the sect in England, Wroe was nonetheless able to reach out to new congregations in America and Australia. Whether true prophet or charlatan, his abilities were obviously considerable and his life story is thus still a hugely entertaining one, encompassing as it does an era of intense social change and political unrest.

1

A Prophet is Born

A small, ugly, hunchbacked man with shaggy hair and a haggard face, who spoke with the broadest of Yorkshire accents, seems the most unlikely person to have headed a religious sect in the early nineteenth century. Yet this native of Bradford was not only to wrest leadership, but would give his schism from the Southcottians media coverage the older sect had not received since the death of Joanna Southcott, their founder. Wroe’s prophecies, speeches and various antics brought him much notoriety during his long life, though it was not until he was in his late 30s that he started on the road to fame with dramatic fits and trances lasting for many hours, in which he encountered the strangest of visions. All this seemed unlikely in the winter of 1819, when Wroe lay ill, his unremarkable life seemingly about to end, his name just one of many Wroes recorded in the pages of the Bradford parish registers.

John Wroe (or Roe) was born on 19 September 1782 at the family farmhouse in Rooley Lane, West Bowling, Bradford. Today this ‘lane’ is a busy three-lane dual carriageway taking traffic from the M606 to Bradford city centre. Then it would have been nothing more than a country road in a rural hamlet close to the Yorkshire mill town. John was the eldest surviving son of Joseph Wroe, a farmer who also had financial interests in local coal mines and the Bradford worsted woollen industry. Despite his comfortable family background, he received little education. A near neighbour at Bowling, Samuel Muff, recalled that Wroe’s teacher ‘never could teach him to spell or read, or even to speak plainly’.1 Despite attending a school at Bretton, near Wakefield for a year, he progressed slowly, and, as he himself admitted, his reading barely improved, his master commenting that he would learn nothing no matter how long he stayed.2

The farmhouse at Rooley Lane, Bradford c. 1888, where Wroe was born more than a century before. (Bradford Central Library)

There is very little information about the first thirty-six years of Wroe’s life, and what there is comes from one primary source, Divine Communications, which is ostensibly his autobiography, published by the Society of Christian Israelites in three volumes.3 These books are analysed closely in Chapter 7, and when compared with other available primary sources relating to events in Wroe’s life, their accounts seem accurate. Certain important incidents, however, are missing from the pages of Divine Communications. The first eighteen pages of volume 1 give an account of the Prophet’s life prior to 1818. His existence was far from remarkable, but the narrative does give some important indications as to Wroe’s future character. A number of important themes emerge, fitting into the ‘signs and portents’ tradition, according to which people with great spiritual gifts have often been the runt of the litter.

Firstly, Wroe talks about being victimised by his father, and also his father’s apparent favouritism towards his younger brother Joseph, in a strange parallel with the way the biblical Jacob favoured his own Joseph above his other children.4 As a child, Wroe was ‘put to all kinds of drudgery and kicked and cuffed about’ by his father. Mr Wroe taunted his son, calling him Tom Bland after ‘an idiot’ in the nearby Bowling Workhouse. While carrying out repairs on some houses that his father had bought, Wroe was nearly bent double from carrying a window lintel to the second floor. This, according to Wroe, accounted for his characteristic hunched back. He was further taunted for his deafness, which had come about after he was thrown into an ice-covered pond. This condition was cured in young adulthood by the Whitworth doctors, one of whom syringed his ears.

Secondly, we learn of the family’s Church of England background; they were staunch Anglicans, reflecting their comfortable status. Wroe was baptised in Bradford Parish Church on 8 December 1782. More importantly, we also discover the family’s belief in prophecies. Wroe’s grandfather had once announced that the ‘Lord would raise up a priest from the fruits of his loin’.5 Mr and Mrs Wroe took this announcement seriously and named their youngest son Thomas after his grandfather. He was trained to go into the Church, but was advised against the ministry by the vicar of Bradford and the Archbishop of York because of his stammer.

Wroe’s critics, including the well-known Victorian Anglican vicar the Revd Sabine Baring-Gould, regard his account of the early years of his life as deeply self-piteous.6 They attempt to explain Wroe’s treatment by his father as being a consequence of Wroe’s own stupidity, claiming that he was aimless, work-shy and unable to apply himself at school. This seems at odds with the shrewd person they later describe as devious and cunning. Wroe’s supposed near illiteracy is also highly questionable. There is evidence that he could write. Was Wroe’s lack of education overstressed by both his supporters and critics to show on the one hand what a remarkable person they thought him to be, and on the other to portray him as a stupid and worthless individual?

As for the rest of the family, we know that Wroe had a sister, although he does not mention her name. Neither, perhaps significantly, does Wroe make a direct mention of his mother in the pages of Divine Communications. She was Susanna, the daughter of Thomas Fearnley. Susanna married Joseph Wroe on 8 June 1778 at Bradford.

At first the young Wroe worked for his father but his brother Joseph was put in charge of him and the brothers often quarrelled and fought. When Wroe was about 15, his uncle John tried to intervene regarding his father’s treatment of him. Wroe’s uncle tried to persuade his brother to let Wroe become an apprentice in his own trade. Joseph would not give his permission, but Wroe left anyway, to live with his cousin and to become an apprentice wool-comber. Wool-combing is the process of carding the tangled fibres of raw wool into roughly parallel strands and the removal of the short stable wool. The finished product is wool of sufficiently high quality to be used in the manufacture of worsted cloth. The worsted woollen trade was centred in and around Bradford, which hugely expanded in the early 1800s, the town’s population rocketing from 13,264 in 1801 to 43,527 by 1831.

Joseph Wroe, however, persuaded his eldest son to terminate his apprenticeship and return home. He drew up a partnership agreement which was never signed. It was not until John Wroe had reached the age of 24 that he set up in business for himself as a wool-comber, at first staying with his cousin before taking up the tenancy of a small farm at Street House, Tong Street, south of Bradford.7 This was to be his main home until 1831. When Wroe first took out the tenancy his father again tried to interfere in his affairs, sending Wroe on an errand to Liverpool. Wroe claimed that his father had taken advantage of him and cheated him out of the tenancy, taking ownership of the farm behind his back.

Within three years Wroe had possession of the farm. He took on a number of apprentices in his wool-combing business, but the conduct of one of the young men caused him severe losses of several hundred pounds. The apprentice, Benjamin Lockwood, had built up large debts with many local traders, in particular James Rusher, a wool merchant from Wakefield. The young man had wanted to save the money to go to America but instead almost ruined Wroe’s business, as Wroe and his wife’s family ended up paying bills plus legal expenses that together amounted to a sum in excess of £500.

To add to his woes, one night, at the time of Bradford’s winter fair, the hapless young Wroe was attacked by two men at Adwalton who robbed him of 18 guineas. Although the men were convicted and found guilty of the robbery Wroe never recovered the money, and the circumstances of the crime caused him a great amount of trouble and expense.

Wroe’s brother Joseph had married Mary Firth, and at about this time John let his brother and his brother-in-law Peter have goods and money to the value of £70 on loan. This was never returned, and such was Wroe’s anger towards his brother that in the winter of 1817 he procured a pistol, determined to kill Joseph.8 Wroe set off for his brother’s house, carrying a piece of paper with words he had transcribed from Psalm 55 written on it:

For it was not an enemy that reproached me, then I could have borne it; neither was it he that hated me that did magnify himself against me, then I would have hid myself from him. But it was thou, a man, mine equal, my guide, and mine acquaintance. The words of his mouth were smoother than butter, but war was in his heart; his words were softer than oil, yet were they drawn swords.

The intention was to push the piece of paper under Joseph’s front door, give him time to read it and then shoot at him through the window. On the way to his brother’s house, however, Wroe relented and decided not to carry out his plan.

Bradford parish registers show that John Wroe married Mary Appleby at the parish church on 22 April 1816. She was the daughter of Benjamin Appleby of Farnley Mills, Leeds. Farnley is the next village to Tong in an easterly direction. The couple remained married until Mrs Wroe’s death over thirty-seven years later. They had at least seven children although three died in infancy. Of the other four, Joseph, Susanna and Sarai survived their father.

So far there was little, if anything, in this somewhat mundane life to suggest that Wroe was destined for a strange career of fame and notoriety, but everything would change, dramatically so, following Wroe’s long illness. In the autumn of 1819 Wroe became sick with fever, which over a few weeks had ‘reduced him to a mere skeleton’. Wroe was visited by two doctors, Dr Blake of Bradford and Dr Field of Tong Street. Death was surely close at hand, a grim prognosis confirmed when Dr Blake advised Mrs Wroe to make the necessary final arrangements. Wroe’s thoughts turned to his spiritual requirements. Interestingly, he requested that his wife should call for Methodist ministers to come and pray with him at his deathbed, but they refused. Mrs Wroe suggested calling for the local vicar, but Wroe thought by that time that it was too late and asked his wife to read him a couple of chapters from the Bible as a means of comfort.

To everyone’s surprise Wroe actually recovered from his grave illness. While he convalesced he was often to be found by the roadside between Tong Street and Tong, a Bible in his hand, sitting under hedges, asking passers-by to help him read out certain passages. Soon, however, illness returned, and John Wroe started to encounter visions he believed were of heavenly origin. The first occurred when he was wandering in the fields near his home. As he later wrote in Divine Communications, ‘I saw a vision with my eyes open; a woman came unto me who tossed me up and down in the field.’ He realised it was a vision, as he ‘strove to get hold of her, but got hold of nothing’. He therefore knew she was a spirit.9 Later editions of Divine Communications include a bizarre footnote at this point, which states that ‘Some part of this history has been published before in pamphlets wherein it is said he got hold of the woman by the breast, which is a misrepresentation of the writers.’ Wroe took to his bed once more and was shortly afterwards struck blind and lost the power of speech, at the same time falling into a trance. He encountered many visions, the first of which took place at about 2 a.m. on 12 November 1819.10 On regaining consciousness Wroe wrote an account of his vision on a blackboard, which was later transcribed:

The sun and the moon appeared to me, after which there appeared a very large piece of glass, and looking through it I saw a very beautiful place, which I entered into; and I saw numbers of persons who were bearing the cross of Christ; and I saw angels ascending and descending; and there came an angel who was my guide. There then appeared a great altar, and I looked up and beheld, as it were, the Son of God; and looking down, I saw both the Father and the Son, and angels standing on both sides and playing music; and my guide said to me, ‘Now thou seest the Father and the Son, and the glory thereof’.

Looking round me, I saw a large number of people, which no man could number; after that the angel, or my guide, said to me, ‘Thy prayers have been heard, but not accepted; for thou wert not like Abraham when he offered up his son Isaac for a sacrifice; thou hast withholden thine heart back from the Lord thy God, but now thou art cleansed – Spirit, return to thy rest.’ And as sudden as lightning these words struck forcibly upon me: ‘Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil, as long as thy rod and thy staff abideth with me.’

Throughout the twelve-hour duration of the vision, Wroe was conscious of those around him in the room, around his sickbed. Many shook his hand, fearing he was about to die.

Two days later, at 10 o’clock in the morning he was again struck blind and experienced another vision, lasting this time for seven hours. On this occasion he recalled that he walked down a lane where there were huge numbers of oxen. He was met by his angel guide, who explained that he would tell him the meaning of the beasts. The angel took Wroe into a large place, where he saw a great quantity of books placed on their edges. The books had gilt letters on them which he was not able to read. There then appeared a huge altar full of gilt letters. Wroe begged that he might be able to read the writing and understand what he had seen. There then appeared another book with the word ‘Jeremiah’ on the top of it, and the letter ‘L’. As Wroe was experiencing this vision he wrote the word ‘Jeremiah’ on the wall with his finger. He attempted to speak, but his tongue was still stuck fast in his mouth, so he was handed a piece of chalk, with which he wrote ‘Jeremiah 50th chapter’. In the vision the guide told Wroe that he would explain the meaning of the chapter to him. ‘I had never read this chapter, or heard it read, or seen it before, to my recollection; but when I came to myself I could, without looking at it, repeat every word in it, which indeed I did.’11

Further visions encountered by Wroe over these two days were surely the most remarkable of his entire religious career, as they point to some of the paraphernalia with which Wroe became obsessed. As well as showing Wroe Christ on the Cross, Moses, Aaron and the twelve Patriarchs, Wroe’s angel guide also showed him ‘thousands more things’ in the vision. These included the throne of God, which appeared in a place ‘arched with precious stones, which shone with such lustre that my eyes could scarcely behold it’. Wroe continues, ‘my guide showed me the Father and the Son in the midst of it: there then was the sweetest music I ever heard.’ Architecture and music were to feature strongly in Wroe’s Christian Israelite religion.

Further fits and visions were to follow. About two weeks later, on 29 November, Wroe had another fit, accompanied by visions, which lasted twelve hours. A further, particularly severe episode followed another two weeks later, on 14 December. Wroe was again struck blind, but this time ‘remained more like a corpse than a living man for twenty-four hours, when by degrees I came to myself’, although he was to remain blind for a further five days, slipping in and out of visionary trances. During these six days Wroe’s wife read out the words of a hymn.12 Once she had finished, he asked her to repeat it, but before she could begin he fainted again, experiencing the following remarkable vision:

I saw the elements part, and there appeared a large open square, and I saw our Saviour nailed upon the cross, and the tears trickling down his face; and at that time I thought he was weeping for the wicked people upon the earth; there then appeared an angel holding a man by a single hair of his head, and he had a very large sword in his hand, and he waved it backwards and forwards; I then saw large scales let down to the earth, and I saw a large bundle put into one end of the scales, I thought that bundle was the sins of the people; and I saw a very large quantity of weights put into the other end, and they put the beam to a balance, and the bundle was so much heavier that the weights bounced out; the scales were then drawn up into heaven. I then saw the man which was holden by the hair of his head by the angel, and he brandished his sword six or seven times as before, then they disappeared. I afterwards saw Moses and Aaron, and a large number of people with them, accompanied by a number of angels; and I heard such delightful music which is impossible for me to relate.

Wroe’s mammoth six days of blindness ended somewhat abruptly when, to the astonishment of those present, his father arrived at the house and placed his right thumb on his son’s right eye and the fourth finger of his left hand on his left eye. As soon as Wroe received his sight back, those present wanted to know if he really could see. He took the Bible and read out a chapter to prove that he could. The sight in one eye was fully restored, but the sight in the other was poor, owing, he thought, to someone having tried to force that eye open three days before. The visit of Mr Wroe had not been unexpected by his son, as during his vision an angel spoke to him saying that his father would come to him and restore his sight. This was to remind Wroe Senior of his ‘former sins and wickedness’ against his son. Some thought this was miraculous, the result of a prophecy. Others were more sceptical, including Baring-Gould, who cites Wroe’s cousin Joseph, saying that Mr Wroe was carrying out his son’s wishes.13 Was this Wroe’s attempt at getting his own back on his tyrannical father, by forcing him to perform this strange action at his son’s bidding? Was his hatred of his father a major motivating influence behind his religious career?

Local spectators of the six days of blindness included Samuel Muff and the aforementioned Joseph Wroe. Muff, from White Lane, Wibsey-Bankfoot, was later a follower of Wroe. His account of the visions is as follows:14

In the course of the time that John Wroe was in this trance, reports of it came several times to my house, and that he was not unlikely to die; I went to see him and he came to himself while I was in the house, but could see nothing; hearing me speak, he made known to me several things which I cannot at present recollect, but I recollect him saying that he was blind, but that he should see afterwards. It was made known to him that he should be six days blind, so should the nation be six years blind; but as his eyes were opened at the end of the six days, so should the eyes of the nation be opened at the end of six years. In the course of his six days’ blindness he wrote me a few lines, desiring me to come at the time his eyes were to be opened – at the end of the six days, and sent it by one of my neighbours, who said he saw him write it; and blind as he was, it was the best piece of writing of his that I ever saw in my life.

Baring-Gould believed that several of the trance incidents involving Wroe were fakes. In his Yorkshire Oddities, which was published over a decade after Wroe’s death, he relates an account of a trance which supposedly lasted ten or twelve days. Wroe lay at home on his bed, and his wife received visitors into the room, provided they placed some money in a basket at the foot of the bed. Neighbours grew suspicious, and one young man had an opportunity to look inside the house unhindered when Mrs Wroe went out and foolishly forgot to lock the door behind her. To the neighbour’s surprise, Wroe was not in a trance at all, but sitting up eating beefsteak, pickled cabbage and oatcake. Baring-Gould was keen to point out this man’s name, J. Holt, and to say he was still living in Bradford when the first edition of Yorkshire Oddities was published.15 The following day Wroe was to be found again on his bed, deep in his trance. One visitor wanted to press a needle under Wroe’s fingernail, to see whether he really was unconscious, but Mrs Wroe would not allow it.

The early years of Wroe’s marriage and the start of Wroe’s vivid religious experiences coincided with the aftermath of the Napoleonic Wars and a wave of uncertainty and unrest in England. The peace had brought uncertainty to farming and a decline in the local domestic wool-combing industry. Wroe’s business skills had proved somewhat precarious before the economic downturn, so his gradual move to prophecy from more conventional means of earning a living proved lucrative. Not only did it at least offer the opportunity for him to escape harsh economic conditions, it also at last enabled him to free himself from the overbearing influence of his autocratic father.

Doubtless the prophecies spread rapidly around Bradford, and Wroe’s notoriety was soon carried further afield. The coverage of these early days of religious conversion in Divine Communications implies that his rise to prominence was almost spontaneous, happening purely according to chance circumstances. Yet there is evidence that it was very cleverly manufactured by Wroe, even at this early stage. As well as a charge to visitors, Wroe had his early visions published in pamphlets, from as early as 1820, with the title of Vision of an Angel. By the mid-1820s such published prophecies, and also the sale of books, would have seemed profitable when set against the collapse of the local wool-combing industry.

Wroe’s cousin Joseph spoke about the commencement of Wroe’s religious career, recalling a conversation he had had with him in the street in Bradford. ‘I hear thou hast begun preaching,’ said Joseph. ‘Well, I do not know much about preaching, but I have begun talking, and people may call it what they please,’ was Wroe’s reply. On the following Sunday Joseph went to Wroe’s house and accompanied him to the home of a near neighbour, Abraham Holmes, the first of Wroe’s scribes, who recorded his early visions.16

On 26 December 1819, Wroe gave an explanation of the ‘six years’ revealed to him when he had been struck blind for six days. Each year represented a thousand years, denoting the glorious time that was to come. The six days of blindness alluded to three years of plenty followed by three years of scarcity. He said, ‘the first three years from that date would be plenty, but particularly the third year, for in Bradford, and at all other places, the best beef would be sold for 4d per pound; and all other things would be equally cheap.’17 A footnote points out the more prosperous years of the early 1820s and the cruel years of 1823–5, the latter period being particularly harsh for the wool-combers of Bradford.

On the same day as Wroe’s explanation of the ‘six years’, William Muff of Little Horton wrote a letter to Joseph Wroe of Bowling and John Tillotson of Great Horton, which in effect was Wroe’s first prophecy.18 It spoke of massive advancements in transportation, including ships without sails travelling against the wind, carriages in the high road without horses and horseless ploughs.

On the night of 27 December Wroe prayed for guidance towards a church or religious sect which he should support. He awoke in the early hours of the following morning to see a board at the foot of his bed, on which the words ‘A.A. Rabbi, Rabbi, Rabbi’ appeared in gilt letters.19 At first he thought that Rabbi was the name of a place, but eventually concluded that it was a sign to go and testify to the Jews. Still later he decided to testify to the Jews in England for three years and after that time to join the Jews.

Wroe was next struck blind on 1 February 1820. The bout lasted for seven hours, but this time Mrs Wroe must have been sceptical of her husband’s illness, as she sent for one of the neighbours, George Hill, to cut his hair and shave his head, though to no avail. Again Wroe was in a trance as if dead, having ‘no more use of my limbs at that time than a dead man’. He encountered many visions during the seven-hour period and again the same angel acted as his guide. Among the things he was shown were three trees which grew blossoms that ripened into all manner of fruits. Three new trees sprung up and grew beside them. These blossomed too, but the blossoms withered, the bark of the trees peeled off and they were plucked up by the roots. Wroe’s angel guide explained the meaning of this vision, in that the trees that died represented the wicked who shall be taken from the face of the earth, whereas the three that bore fruit represented the righteous ‘which shall remain and inherit the earth’.20

Acting on his decision to testify to the Jews, Wroe left home on 20 June 1820 to travel to Liverpool via Huddersfield. This was the first leg of his many travels. He particularly wanted to visit the synagogue at Liverpool because he had seen it transfigured before him in a vision ‘both inside and out’. The synagogue at Seal Street was a well-known landmark and Tobias Goodman was the first Jewish preacher to preach in English.21 Wroe may well have seen this building when he visited Liverpool on business at the request of his father.

Wroe left Bradford on his journey with no money and ‘without anything but what covered my nakedness’.22 He walked to Huddersfield, where he was given money by three Methodist preachers, before walking on to Manchester, where he lodged in a house. His reputation had gone before him, as when the landlord, a Mr Morrison, heard he came from Bradford he asked if he knew John Wroe. ‘What sort of man is he?’ asked Morrison. ‘Some men give him a very indifferent character, but time proveth all things’, Wroe replied cautiously. Morrison looked at Wroe and asked him if he was the man they had been talking about. When Wroe confirmed his suspicions, Morrison let him stay at the house free of charge and told him visions he had himself encountered.

In the evening Wroe visited a watchmaker’s shop at Shude Hill, where he met two Jewish men. He informed them that the God of Israel had told him to travel for three years and to tell the Jewish people that ‘He [God] would set his hand the second time to the covenant which He made with Abraham, and He would cause those which were joined amongst the Gentiles to come and join them’. The men scoffed at what Wroe had to say, adding that they could arrange for Wroe to be circumcised. He told them of seeing the Liverpool Synagogue transfigured before him and stressed that he had never seen the place before.

One of the Jews gave Wroe a shilling and Mr Morrison gave him five shillings before Wroe left Manchester by boat for Runcorn on his way to Liverpool. On the journey Wroe stood up in the middle of the boat and declared the words which the Lord had given him, ‘and many of the people marvelled’. At Liverpool Wroe stayed with the Jews for four days, but on the Saturday night he argued with the rabbi in the synagogue, claiming that the man had deceived him. Wroe returned home.

Just two months later Wroe received another vision at home. This time it came in the form of a great rushing of wind with a voice which called out, ‘Go thou to the Jews at London, and declare my words which I shall give thee.’23 A few days later Wroe leaped off a fence and fell into a beck near his home, where he encountered another vision. The House of Lords appeared before him and he saw Queen Caroline (the wife of George IV), who was being tried. People were going backwards and forwards carrying letters and reading them out.

Wroe left for London via Manchester, where the Jews paid his coach fare to the capital. He arrived at the famous old coaching inn The Swan with Two Necks in Lad Lane. He alighted and told some men he met there that he was going to meet the Queen. They laughed at him, saying he was being ridiculous. The next day, however, Wroe went to parliament and on hearing that the Queen was in the Lords, being tried for adultery, he waited outside for most of the day in heavy rain for her to leave. The Queen left parliament at about 4 o’clock in the afternoon and went to her residence, the house of Lady Anne Hamilton.24 Wroe described what happened next:

On each side of the steps leading into Lady Anne Hamilton’s house were Bow Street officers, and the people pressed hard, and the officers struck at them with their staves: the Queen put her head out of the window of her carriage, and reproved the officers several times, then they let the people do as they would, and they made way for her. When she got up the steps she turned herself about to make obeisance to the persons who had attended her, and the people gave a great shout.

It was a further two days before Wroe was able to deliver his message to the Queen. On 30 August 1820, the daring Wroe followed the Queen up the steps into Lady Hamilton’s house. ‘I have a message unto thee, O Queen.’ ‘Unto me?’ replied the Queen, clearly startled as she threw back her veil. Wroe merely said ‘Aye,’ and handed her his message and a copy of each of his books of visions. As Wroe handed her the books, the Queen ‘turned as pale as a whited wall, and trembled like an aspen leaf’. On his way out one of the guards tried to seize Wroe, but missed, and he slipped away into the crowd.

At this time, Wroe’s fame was spreading rapidly because of some of the predictions he had made. One such prophecy, dating from the spring of 1820, was the hasty demise of his own brother-in-law, Joseph Appleby of Farnley Mills. Wroe was ‘commanded’ to tell his wife Mary to tell her brother about it. She went to his home, where she found him ill in bed. Her mother was there and when she heard why Mary had come she would not let her see Joseph, as it would be sure to frighten him. Joseph recovered, but some time later (Divine Communications does not give a specific date), when he was at the Bramley feast, Joseph was mocked about his brother-in-law and his prediction, his taunters calling Wroe a false prophet. That evening Joseph was taken ill at dinner and rushed home, but he died the same night. It is impossible to determine the accuracy of this story from the first quarter of the nineteenth century. Farnley burial records within the parish of Leeds record the burial of a Joseph Appleby on 27 July 1820, aged 45.25 He seems to be the likely candidate.

A similar incident occurred in the winter of the following year. At the time Wroe was working as a wool-comber for his cousin, another John Wroe of Bradford. Wroe got into an argument with his nephew William, who had kept him waiting and refused to accept any more of his work, saying that he was ‘fitter to preach for his living than to work for it’. William refused to pay Wroe his wages until he had gone home to collect his combs. Wroe returned on the Monday and the two continued to argue. During the altercation Wroe had a fit and fell against a bale of wool. He encountered an instant vision, which he imparted to the people in the warehouse: ‘Take notice of this young man, he will never either take any more work in, or pay any more wages.’ According to Divine Communications, the man became ill shortly afterwards and was dead within nine months.26 The foreman, who had also insulted Wroe, also died within a year.

Even if Wroe received some form of satisfaction from the fulfilment of these macabre prophecies, the harsh economic realities of the declining domestic system of wool-combing were clearly beginning to bite. He had therefore increasingly to turn to his other means of conventional income, namely his farm. If Divine Communications is to be believed, he was assisted by a minor miracle. In 1821 his corn crop was destroyed by strong winds, but during the following year each stalk of his corn produced three ears – a threefold crop from the same kind of seed that had been sown by Wroe and his father for years. This episode is reminiscent of Pharaoh’s dream in Genesis 41: 22–23, interpreted by Joseph, in which there were a more generous seven ears of corn per stalk. Several people took ears of Wroe’s corn and planted the grain, curious as to whether it would produce such high yields again, but it only came up with one ear per stalk. Such were the profits arising from Wroe’s crop of corn that he was able to pay off all his debts, allowing him to devote more time to his strange spiritual gifts.

In June 1820, on the day that he had originally intended to set off for Liverpool, Wroe was taken ill, struck blind yet again, encountering a vision in which it was made known to him that the followers of Joanna Southcott, who believed her to be the woman spoken of in Revelation 12, were correct. He saw an image of ‘the woman transfigured before me with the child in her left arm, in the open firmament in the day time’, he explained, ‘and I saw this sight as plainly as ever I saw anything in my life’.27 Wroe did not approach the Southcottians, however, as he still thought it was the Jews whom he was supposed to join.

George Turner, the Leeds businessman who had taken on the leadership of a large proportion of the Southcottians after Southcott’s death, visited Bradford on 8 August 1820. Wroe had an interview with Turner, informing him that, whereas Turner had been sent exclusively to the elect of the Southcottians, Wroe’s visions were not for the believers but for the world. Divine Communications recounts how George Turner left the room, but ‘afterwards returned and shook hands with John in a friendly manner’. Turner had predicted the date of the appearance of Shiloh on Earth on 14 October of that year. The announcement was too great an invitation to Wroe, who shrewdly decided to turn it to his advancement, in the knowledge that some of Turner’s wild prophecies had previously proved to be dismal flops.

2

The Southcottians

Before Wroe’s audacious rise to the leadership of many of the Southcottians is outlined, and his subsequent founding of the Society of Christian Israelites, it is worth explaining why this form of millennial religion was popular during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, and how the farmer’s son from Bowling, Bradford fits into this unusual chronicle, which is now little more than a footnote in the history of Christianity in England. The shock waves emanating from the loss of the American colonies and especially the French Revolution were the main reason for the revival of popular millennial religion.1