NAYLER, or NAILER, JAMES, an unfortunate fanatic, was the son of a farmer, and was born at Ardsley in Yorkshire about 1616. When the civil war broke out in 1641, he was living with his wife and family in the parish of Wakefield, and was probably engaged in agriculture. He took up arms for the Parliament, and during eight or nine years fought successively under Fairfax and Lambert. It seems to have been about this period that he first began to be seized with sudden religious impulses. He was converted from Presbyterianism to Independency. Then in 1651, two years after he had quitted the army and returned to the plough, the preaching of George Fox drew him into the community of the Quakers. An apostolic zeal immediately fired the new convert, and he abandoned his family and his occupation to become an itinerant preacher. His fevered imagination, untempered by a cool judgment, began to vent itself in the most fanatical opinions. The Quakers, as a body, disowned him; but a few silly men and women accepted his fluent ravings as inspired prophecies; recognised in his constant use of scriptural phraseology a sign of divine sanctity; and at length inferred from his habit of talking about "Christ being in him," that he was the very Son of God. It was no uncommon practice with these devoted disciples to leave their homes in different parts of the country, and to attend their prophet in his wanderings from city to city. Such enthusiastic worship quite overcame the previously tottering judgment of Naylor; so that he appears to have believed himself to be possessed of every supernatural attribute that was ascribed to him. His worshippers, encouraged by his acquiescence, soon brought their fanaticism to a crisis. They knelt before him and kissed his feet as he lay in Exeter jail in 1656, a sufferer for his extravagant zeal. On his release they celebrated his approach to Bristol by singing hymns and by spreading their garments before his horse's path, in irreverent imitation of our Saviour's entrance into Jerusalem. At this point the government interfered, and apprehended Naylor, with six of his votaries, on the charge of blasphemy. His trial occupied the Parliament for several days. A few days afterwards their sentence was inflicted upon him. His head was fixed in the pillory for two hours, he was whipped at the cart-tail from the Palace-yard to the Old Exchange, his tongue was bored with a red-hot iron, and the stigma of a blasphemer was branded on his forehead. After a short respite, he was conveyed to Bristol, and whipped through the streets of that town. He was then brought back to bridewell, and doomed to an imprisonment of two years. These severe chastisements tamed the delirium and the spiritual pride of the fanatic. He recanted his heinous errors in several small books, and was re-admitted into the communion of the Quakers. In 1660, two years after his release, Naylor set out northward, to visit his long-forsaken family, but died by the way, in Huntingdonshire. A collection of his books, epistles, and papers was printed in 8vo, 1716. Memoirs of the Life, Ministry, Trial, and Sufferings of James Naylor appeared in 8vo, London, 1719.