THE PROPHET
Cheshire. May Day, 1753. Tabitha De Vallory has all the comforts she has ever desired, and is expecting her first child with doting husband Nat. But Tabitha's happiness is shaken when a girl is slaughtered beneath the Mondrem Oak on the family's forest estate.
Nearby, enigmatic Baptist Gunn and his followers are convinced that a second messiah will be born, amid blood and strife on Midsummer's Day. Do his wild claims of a second saviour spell danger for Tabitha and her unborn child?
Nearby, enigmatic Baptist Gunn and his followers are convinced that a second messiah will be born, amid blood and strife on Midsummer's Day. Do his wild claims of a second saviour spell danger for Tabitha and her unborn child?
History is often stranger than fiction. I recalled this when I began writing The Prophet and wondered if the arrival of a utopian prophet camping on Tabitha and Nat’s forest land might be too far-fetched. The evidence of history reassured me it wasn’t. From the 1750s onwards in England, huge crowds gathered in the open air to hear 'hedge preachers' such as John Wesley and other less famous and forgotten mystics. Particularly fascinating to me was the phenomenon of Sleeping Prophets, who had started up in France and spread across Europe, gathering vast audiences to witness spirit possession. Foremost of these new sects were a religious sect from Manchester who took their ecstatic dances – and spare modernist furniture - to America, where they gained the familiar nickname of the Shakers.
In creating Baptist Gunn I enjoyed putting a pinch of the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge into his character. Young Coleridge wrote at length of his project to set up a utopian group in America called Pantisocracy, though the scheme was later abandoned. After considering cult leaders down the ages, I also placed the monstrous instigator of mass suicide, Jim Jones, in the mix, along with cult leaders such as David Koresh and hypnotic holy men like Rasputin. It is sad that any list of religious charismatics does include a parade of madmen, confidence tricksters and psychopaths.
In creating Baptist Gunn I enjoyed putting a pinch of the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge into his character. Young Coleridge wrote at length of his project to set up a utopian group in America called Pantisocracy, though the scheme was later abandoned. After considering cult leaders down the ages, I also placed the monstrous instigator of mass suicide, Jim Jones, in the mix, along with cult leaders such as David Koresh and hypnotic holy men like Rasputin. It is sad that any list of religious charismatics does include a parade of madmen, confidence tricksters and psychopaths.
.In researching the book I learned that an 'average' mother like Tabitha, might face the ordeal of childbirth six or seven times in her lifetime with little hope of pain relief or competent medical assistance. At each confinement her own and the child's life would hang in the balance as she entered her 'travail'. If superstition is a belief or custom based on fear of the unknown, it is unsurprising that childbirth attracted a wide range of strange notions and beliefs.
Before the Reformation the Church had offered expectant mothers religious comforts, from saintly relics, girdles, and amulets, to fragments of the consecrated host. An amulet was generally worn close to the body to prevent evil, mischief, disease, or witchcraft. These practices continued informally, so we see Tabitha borrowing an eagle-stone amulet. These types of bloodstone were expensive to buy, so along with other amulets, people lent them out to friends and family. An example of belief in the eaglestone's efficacy can be found when Henry VIII ensured that Anne Boleyn had an eaglestone to wear on her left wrist to ensure the safe delivery of a healthy child.
Before the Reformation the Church had offered expectant mothers religious comforts, from saintly relics, girdles, and amulets, to fragments of the consecrated host. An amulet was generally worn close to the body to prevent evil, mischief, disease, or witchcraft. These practices continued informally, so we see Tabitha borrowing an eagle-stone amulet. These types of bloodstone were expensive to buy, so along with other amulets, people lent them out to friends and family. An example of belief in the eaglestone's efficacy can be found when Henry VIII ensured that Anne Boleyn had an eaglestone to wear on her left wrist to ensure the safe delivery of a healthy child.
An accessory often looped into the baby's clothes was some form of coral, first recorded by Pliny in AD77 as keeping witches at bay. A silver and coral rattle like that at Bold Hall was kept by many noble families, combining a charm, plaything and a soother to ease teething.
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