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Lodowicke Muggleton (1609–1698) was an English plebeian religious thinker, who gave his name to Muggletonianism. He spent his working life as a journeyman tailor in the City of London and was imprisoned twice for his beliefs. He held opinions hostile to all forms of philosophical reason. He encouraged quietism and free-thought amongst his followers whose beliefs were predestinarian in a manner that was distinct from Calvinism. Near the close of his long life, Muggleton wrote his spiritual autobiography which was published posthumously.〔''The Acts of the Witnesses'' was edited by Thomas Tomkinson, first published in 1699 and further reprinted in 1764. The text is reproduced in T. L. Underwood ''The Acts of the Witnesses'' New York: Oxford University Press (1999). The autobiography is self-consciously styled after The Acts of the Apostles to be found in the Christian New Testament. It may be wise to bear a doctrinal purpose in mind and not to treat the work as the chatty reminiscences of an old man.〕 ==Childhood and Apprenticeship== Lodowicke Muggleton〔William Lamont ''Last Witnesses: The Muggletonian History 1652–1979'' Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing (2006) ISBN 978-0-7546-5532-9 plates 1 & 2 reproduce the christening entry of 30 July 1609 in the parish register of St Botolph, Bishopsgate where his name is recorded "Lodowicke". The present day church is later: built 1729〕 was born at a house called Walnut Tree Yard〔Braun & Hogenberg's map of 1572 (Museum of London) shows the east side of Bishopsgate as having a ribbon of houses with fields behind. Following researches into the Cheapside Hoard (also Museum of London) relating to roughly the same date as Muggleton's birth, such houses were where many families lived and worked but, unlike modern flats or tenements, one family's rooms were often scattered throughout the building. Martin Holmes ''Elizabethan London'' London: Cassell (1969) p. 1 to 13 for map. In 1884 Augustus Jessopp published a popular article entitled ''The Prophet of Walnut Tree Yard'' the tone of which caused great offence amongst the faith〕 on Bishopsgate Street (now Bishopsgate) in the City of London.〔The site was cleared in the 1790s to make way for New Street and the enlargement of the Old Bengal Warehouse of the East India Company. 5 to 7 New Street were merchants' houses built at that time. N. Pevsner & B. Cherry ''The Buildings of England London vol 1'' Harmondswoth: Penguin (1972 3rd edition) p. 273. 7 New Street was leased as the Muggletonian Reading rooms between 1869 – 1918 because it was believed to be on the site of Muggleton's birthplace. The house, as it was, is illustrated in George Williamson's ''Lodowick Muggleton'' London: Chiswick Press (1919) The photos by Hallett Hyatt are reproduced, uncredited, in Lamont ''Last Witnesses''.〕 His father, John, was a farrier and a post office contractor. Lodowicke was the youngest of three children when his mother, Mary, died in 1612. On his father's remarriage, Lodowicke was put out to nurse in the country, the common practice in such family restructuring at the time.〔Despite the social acceptability of the practice, he seems to have felt the estrangement very keenly. "I was a stranger to my father's house after my mother was dead," he writes. He repeated the practice with his own daughters when their mother died leaving him a young widower. He does not say when his daughters returned to his household, which they clearly did.〕 In 1624 he returned to Walnut Tree Yard as an apprentice to a tailor, John Quick. Quick seems to have been well-connected, making ceremonial gowns for Liverymen and Common Councilmen. Muggleton describes him as "a quiet peaceable man, not cruel to servants, which liked me very well". In 1625 Muggleton contracted the plague but, he says, "it was not extreme tedious to me. I recovered quickly, and hath not had half a day's sickness since."〔Keith Thomas, ''Religion and the Decline of Magic'' London: Weidenfeld & Nicholson (1971) p. 9 says that one sixth of Londoners died of the plague in that year〕 As his apprenticeship drew to a close he began to disdain tailoring as poorly paid. He was offered a stake in a pawnbroker's business by a Mrs Richardson if he would marry her daughter which he seemed keen to do. But he became worried that usury would damn his soul so he remained unmarried, working as a tailor for William Reeve who was John Reeve's elder brother and, at that time, a staunch Puritan. Yet his soul was still troubled "for fear God had made me a reprobate before I was born, because He did not answer my prayers." His first marriage, 1635, was to Sarah and they had two surviving daughters, Sarah and Elizabeth. After his wife's death he married again but both wife and the children that she bore soon died. Muggleton fell away from the Puritan faith, "for all the zeal we formerly had was quite worn out,"〔T. L. Underwood ''Acts of the Witnesses'' p. 37.〕 and this cost his business dearly in terms of lost customers from that congregation. It may be possible to recognise some subsequent Muggletonian beliefs as being solutions to the perplexities he felt whilst still a Puritan. Then again, the episodes he chooses to tell in his autobiography may be selected with such a didactic purpose in mind. The idea that conscience is God's watchman within every person, that the conflict between two natures is at work within everyone, and the need to banish the fear of being prey to external spirits all seem to stem from personal exigencies of this period in his life. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Lodowicke Muggleton」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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