ABIEZER COPPE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 26 September 1940, Page 8

ABIEZER COPPE

FANATIC OF WORST TYPE. Clearly he was mad. ■ Abiezer Coppe was born at Warwick in 1619. He was a servitor at Oxford. Leaving the university at the outbreak of the Civil War he became a Presbyterian. Soon afterwards he was an anabaptist, preaching with tremendous zeal, and boasting that he baptised 7000 people in the Midlands. But he tired of his mission, and set off with renewed vigour as a ranter. He is said to have been imprisoned for 14 weeks at Warwick for preaching with no clothes on. A fanatic of the worst type, he went raging round England. For a time he became what was known as a leveller, and in 1650 he published his Fiery Flying Roll which was the cause of his being sent to prison at Coventry. He was afterwards removed to Newgate, and it was hoped he might calm down and live with his wife and young family of whom he thought much, but he could not be still. He felt he had a mission, and he continued to disturb everyone.

One day he met a beggar, and gave him every penny he had, declaring that he was a king and had no need for wealth. His house was burnt to the ground. On February 1. 1650, Parliament issued an order that one of his many books was to be burnt by the common hangman. He seems to have been frightened by this, tor he made a sudden and grovelling recantation. After his term of imprisonment he went forth like a blazing brand to preach the opposite of everything he had preached before. He became something of a mystic, and seems to have regarded himself as a second John the Baptist. At the Restoration he changed his name to Higham. and practised as a doctor at Barnes in Surrey; and there j he died in 1672. j