Methodism and Mummery: The Case of George Lukins

Abstract

In the second edition of his Provincial Glossary, published in 1790, Francis Grose updated the section on ‘Popular Superstitions’. Since the first edition of 1787, a ‘farce somewhat similar’ to an early-seventeenth-century ‘popish exorcism’ had been ‘performed in the vestry room of the Temple church in the city of Bristol’ on George Lukins of Yatton (Somerset). ‘This impostor pretended to have been possessed by the Devil for eighteen years’, but what Grose found ‘most extraordinary’ was that ‘seven clergymen were found (one to each devil) so extremely weak and credulous as to be imposed on by this nonsense and seriously to join in expelling these evil spirits by prayer, and one of them carried it still further by returning public thanks in Yatton church for the success of their endeavours and the happy delivery of the patient’. Grose’s comment was echoed by John Ferriar of Manchester, to whom the Lukins case also appeared an anomalous throwback to an earlier age.¹