I bought the least essential thing you could imagine this week, though without risk of viral transmission. It was a little drop-back box in which to keep a volume I’d acquired called Divine Songs, published in 1829 by the Muggletonians.
No one has ever read this paper-covered volume, for its pages are still uncut, and that’s the way I mean to keep it. That is regarded as normal behaviour in the deranged word of collecting. In any case, the text is available online. It reveals a fair bit about this sect, founded in 1652 by Lodowick Muggleton and John Reeve, who were, they said, the Two Witnesses mentioned in the Apocalypse.
I sometimes encounter on Twitter the daughter of the last Muggletonian, who died in 1979. She lives in the country and has a spaniel and plays the serpent and seems a thoroughly good sort.
21 January 2021, The Tablet
The Muggletonians had convivial habits. They would meet in taverns, and sing their songs
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