reckoning) he was preaching with George Whitehead [q. v.] in Westmoreland. Somewhat later he lodged with Whitehead in Watling Street, London.
In the autumn of 1660 he left London in ill-health, intending to return on foot to his family in Yorkshire. A friend who saw him sitting by the wayside near Hertford offered him hospitality, but he pressed on. A few miles north of Huntingdon he sank exhausted, and was robbed by footpads. A rustic, finding him in a field, took him to the house of a quaker at Holme, near King's Ripton, Huntingdonshire. Here he was visited by Thomas Parnel, a quaker physician. He died in October 1660, aged about 43, and was buried on 21 Oct. in Parnel's grave in the Friends' burying-ground (now an orchard) at King's Ripton. He left a widow and children. The Wakefield parish register records the baptisms of Mary (28 March 1640), Jane (8 May 1641), and Sarah (25 March 1643), children of James Naylor. A Joseph Naylor of Ardsley was a prominent local quaker in 1689–94. A small contemporary print of him, with the B on his forehead, is reproduced in Ephraim Pagitt's ‘Heresiography,’ ed. 1661. From this his portrait was painted and engraved by Francis Place (d. 1728). Later engravings are by T. Preston and Grave. A small engraving was published (1823) by W. Dalton.
Richard Baxter [q. v.], in his account of the quakers (Reliquiæ Baxterianæ, 1696, i. 77), does not mention Fox, and specifies Nayler as ‘their chief leader’ prior to Penn. It seems probable that the authorities shared Baxter's mistake, and supposed that in crushing Nayler they were suppressing quakerism. The emotional mysticism of Nayler's devotees was one of the untrained forces, active in the religious field, and anterior to quakerism proper. To Fox, in his early career, was addressed language as exalted as any that was offered to Nayler (see Leslie, Snake in the Grass, 1698, pp. 369 seq.; Bugg, Pilgrim's Progress, 1700, pp. 45 seq.). With very little encouragement Margaret Fell (see her letter in Wilkinson, Quakerism Examined, 1836, and cf. Newcome, Autobiog. 1852, i. 126) would have gone as far as Hannah Stranger. But Fox brought this tendency under control and subdued it, while Nayler was its dupe. He exhibits nothing of it in his own writings, which for depth of thought and beauty of expression deserve a place in the first rank of quaker literature. His controversial pamphlets compare favourably, in their restraint of tone, with those of many of his coadjutors. Some of his other pieces bear the stamp of spiritual genius of a high order. For a defence of his special mysticism, see his ‘Satans Design Discovered,’ 1655, 4to.
A full bibliography of his publications is given in Smith's ‘Catalogue of Friends' Books,’ 1867, ii. 216 seq. His writings fell into neglect, but an admirable ‘Collection’ of them (omitting his controversial pieces of 1655–6) was edited, 1716, 4to, by Whitehead, with an ‘Impartial Account’ of his career. His ‘How Sin is Strengthened, and how it is Overcome,’ &c., 1657, 4to, one of the many tracts written during his long imprisonment, has been very frequently reprinted; the last edition, 1860, is edited by W. B. Sissison, who reprinted another of his tracts in the same year. His ‘Last Testimony,’ beginning ‘There is a Spirit which I feel,’ has often been cited for the purity of its pathos. Bernard Barton [q. v.] paraphrased it (1824) in stanzas which are not so poetic as the original prose.
[A Brief Account of James Nayler, the Quaker, 1656 (published with the authority of parliament); Deacon's Grand Impostor Examined, 1656 (reprinted in Harleian Miscellany, 1810, vol. vi.); Deacon's Exact History, 1657; A True Narrative of the … Tryall, &c. 1657 (by Fox, Rich, and William Tomlinson); A True Relation of the Life, &c., 1657 (frontispiece); Grigge's The Quaker's Jesus, 1658 (answered in Rabshakeh's Outrage Reproved, 1658); Blome's Fanatick History, 1660 (answered by Richard Hubberthorn [q. v.] and Nayler in A Short Answer, 1660); Wharton's Gesta Britannorum, 1667; George Fox's Journal, 1694, pp. 54, 70, 167, 220*; Denham's Poems, 1684, pp. 110–13; Croese's Historia Quakeriana, 1696, pp. 159 seq.; Whitehead's Impartial Account, 1716; Memoirs of the Life, &c. 1719 (by an admirer, but apparently not a quaker); Sewel's History of the Quakers, 1725, pp. 134 seq.; Salmon's Chronological Historian, 1733, p. 130; Bevan's Life, &c., 1800; State Trials (Cobbett), 1810, v. 801 seq. (from the Commons' Journals; gives the argument of Bulstrode Whitelocke against the capital penalty); Hughson's (i.e. Edward Pugh's) Life, &c., 1814, also in M. Aikin's (i.e. Edward Pugh's) Memoirs of Religious Imposters (sic), 1821; Tuke's Life, &c., 1815; Chalmers's General Biog. Dict. 1815, xxiii. 37 seq.; Neal's Hist. of the Puritans (Toulmin), 1822, iv. 139 seq.; Burton's Diary, 1828 i. 10 seq., ii. 131 seq.; Scatcherd's Hist. of Morley, 1830, pp. 205 seq.; Webb's Fells of Swarthmoor Hall, 1867, pp. 37 seq.; Miall's Congregationalism in Yorkshire, 1868, p. 382 (cf. Calamy's Account, 1713, p. 801); Bickley's George Fox, 1884, p. 144; Beck, Wells and Chalkley's Biog. Cat. 1888, pp. 459 seq.; Turner's Quakers, 1889, pp. 113 seq.; Fell Smith's Steven Crisp and his Correspondents, 1892, pp. 50 seq. (portrait); information from D. Travers Burges, esq., town clerk, Bristol, and the Rev. E. Greene, rector of King's Ripton; extracts from the parish register, Wakefield Cathedral.]
