Roger Crab

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Roger Crab (1621 - September 11, 1680) was a political writer and ethical vegetarian.

Contents

[edit] Life

He served in Oliver Cromwell's army for seven years, during which time he spent two years in prison. Crab began life after soldiering as a haberdasher, making hats at Chesham in his native Buckinghamshire, from 1649 to about 1652. He then disposed of almost all his possessions, and settled as a hermit on a plot of landed rented at Ickenham. He built up a practice as a herbal doctor.[1].

He moved to Bethnal Green in 1657. There he joined the Philadelphians, a group founded by John Pordage[2].

Having restricted his diet, he lived on three farthings a week for food, with a diet of "bran, herbs, roots, dock-leaves, mallows, and grass".

Crab was imprisoned four times for "being a wizard".

[edit] Views

He was an anti-sabbatarian. He did not observe Sunday as a non-working day, and was put in the stocks for it[3] He was a pacifist, and had radical views on the evils of property, the Church and universities[4].

[edit] Works

He published The English Hermite (1655)[5], and Dagons-Downfall (1657), in which he declared that the Sabbath had been turned into an idol[6].[7] Also in 1659 Gentle Correction for the High-flown Backslider, and A Tender Salutation.

[edit] Epitaph

His tombstone has the following epitaph:

Tread gently, reader, near the dust
Committed to this tomb-stone's trust:
For while 'twas flesh, it held a guest
With universal love possest:
A soul that stemmed opinion's tide,
Did over sects in triumph ride;
Yet separate from the giddy crowd,
And paths tradition had allowed.
Through good and ill reports he past,
Oft censured, yet approved at last.
Wouldst thou his religion know?
In brief 'twas this: to all to do
Just as he would be done unto.
So in kind Nature's law he stood,
A temple, undefiled with blood,
A friend to everything that 's good.
The rest angels alone can fitly tell;
Haste then to them and him; and so farewell!'[8]

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ Christopher Hill, Puritanism and Revolution, p.304.
  2. ^ Hill, Puritanism, p. 305.
  3. ^ Hill, Society and Puritanism, p. 206.
  4. ^ Hill, Puritanism, p. 307.
  5. ^ [1], page with image of title page.
  6. ^ Hill, The English Bible and the Seventeenth-Century Revolution (1993), p. 262.
  7. ^ Reprinted 1990, ISBN-13: 9780948518607, ISBN 094851860X.
  8. ^ Hill, Puritanism, p. 310.

[edit] External links

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