ABSTRACT
On 28 August 1697 Narcissus Luttrell’s diary recorded that the previous week ‘Mr Beverley, an independant [sic] preacher, who wrote a book to prove that Christs coming to judge the world would be the 23d instant, made publick recantation in a meeting house’ in London ‘before diverse teachers and a full congregation; he said he was mistaken in the time’.1 This entry refers to Thomas Beverley’s frequent declarations that the fulfilment of the biblical prophecies of the fall of the beast, the resurrection of the two witnesses, and the advent of Christ’s millennial kingdom on earth would all begin in 1697. Beverley was the most prolific English apocalyptic writer of the late seventeenth century, publishing over forty works expounding the prophecies of the Book of Revelation. The public renunciation of the cornerstone of his apocalyptic predictions must have been humiliating setback (though it was by no means a final admission of defeat).
