ABSTRACT
French fascination with the Quakers can be traced back long before the publication of Voltaire’s Lettres Philosophiques (1734) which began with four essays on the Quakers based largely on the philosopher’s own experiences in England.2 In 1664, Samuel Sorbière, the friend and translator of Hobbes, wrote about them in his Relation d’un voyage en Angleterre. But the true origin of French curiosity is to be found in the sensational news of James Nayler’s triumphal entry into Bristol on 24 October 1656 in imitation of Christ’s entry into Jerusalem. News of his trial and condemnation for blasphemy arrived in Paris via Cromwell’s official gazette, Les Nouvelles Ordinaires, which carried the story in November and December 1656. From this source the story was picked up by Jean Loret’s weekly gazette of news in doggerel verse, La Muse Historique, which was followed in the new year by Le Véritable portrait et l’histoire de Jacques Naylor, chef des Trembleurs, prétendu Messie d’Angleterre, avec les poincts de son arrest de condamnation, a 12-page pamphlet published in Paris by Antoine Lesselin. On 9 June Loret provided his readers with a comic account of the arrival of two ‘Anglois Trembleurs’ in the city.3
