ABSTRACT
The Anarchia Anglicana (1649) includes an incident remarkable for its subversion of ritual by the invocation of ritual itself. A Parliamentary soldier entered a village church in Surrey at the close of evening services and insisted that he had a message from God for the congregation. Having been denied the pulpit, he proceeded to provide God’s message in the churchyard. Holding a lantern in one hand and four candles in the other, he elaborately and ceremoniously enacted what he described as an injunction from God to reject five points of conventional ecclesiastical behaviour: Sabbath, tithes, ministers, magistrates and the Bible itself. The four candles which were first lit from the lantern represented four of the five points to be eradicated; each candle was then symbolically extinguished and the speaker proceeded to declare that God’s injunctions had thus been successfully carried out. The Bible itself was then ceremoniously burnt as an illustration of the destruction of the fifth point (Simpson 1955 pp.44–45).
