Headnote
George Trosse (1631–1713) was a Dissenting minister in Exeter, whose father was a lawyer and whose mother was the daughter of a merchant who served twice as mayor of Exeter (see Oxford Dictionary of National Biography article by Stephen Wright for further details). The Dissenters (also known as Nonconformists) were English Protestants who refused to conform to the established Church of England and who suffered sporadic persecution from the Restoration of the monarchy in 1660 to the Act of Toleration in 1689. Exeter had a large population of Dissenters, of whom the Presbyterians were the largest group (see Brockett). Trosse was ordained as a Presbyterian minister in 1666, and preached semi-secretly to private gatherings in Exeter until after the passing of the Act of Toleration. From 1689 until his death in 1713, Trosse was the minister of James’s Meeting, the largest of the three Presbyterian congregations in Exeter.
The Life of the Reverend Mr. Geo. Trosse contains a first-person memoir by Trosse dated February 1693, but was only published in print in 1714 following Trosse’s death. It was prepared for publication by Joseph Hallett II (1656–1722), Trosse’s assistant minister and successor as senior minister at James’s Meeting on Trosse’s death, with Hallett adding a preface before Trosse’s memoir and the funeral sermon he preached for Trosse after it. The following year (1715), another Devon Presbyterian minister named Isaac Gilling (bap. 1663, d. 1725), published an adapted version of Trosse’s memoir, with a condensed third-person narrative that continued the story of Trosse’s life into the years of his fruitful Dissenting ministry.
Trosse’s own memoir, however, focuses largely on his profligate youth prior to his conversion and ministry. As Stephen Wright notes, ‘Its chief interest lies in the outstandingly explicit narrative of youthful sins and folly, of his madness, of failed attempts to live a godly life, and of his relapses into alcoholic excess’ (Wright, ODNB). The extracts selected below are from this earlier part of Trosse’s memoir, recounting Trosse’s childhood in Exeter, his travels and transgressions as a young merchant apprentice, and the period of mental and spiritual crisis in which Trosse underwent treatment for madness.
Trosse’s Life has attracted a modest body of secondary scholarship. A 1969 article by A.W. Brink suggests that Trosse’s Life was a possible source for Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe (1719). Brink argues that the vivid details of people and events in Trosse’s narrative move away from the primarily inward focus of earlier spiritual autobiographies, such as John Bunyan’s Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners (1666), towards a kind of realism that anticipates the eighteenth-century novel. Brink notes that both Trosse’s Life and Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe echo the biblical parable of the Prodigal Son, in which the son’s travels away from home parallel his moral and spiritual wanderings, arguing that ‘both Trosse and Crusoe […] alike suffer exile from self and place’ but that ‘The real quest begins when wanderlust gives way to deep suffering’ (Brink 436).
Trosse’s Life has featured in later scholarship largely as a source to be dipped into to illustrate wider histories. For instance, Theodore de Welles’s 1988 article on attitudes to sex in puritan writing notes that retrospective spiritual autobiographies such as Trosse’s are more frank regarding sexual transgressions such as masturbation and fornication than puritan diaries from the period. Bernard Capp’s chapter on Exeter in his 2012 book on the Interregnum period (1649–1660) uses Trosse’s memoir as a source that gives corroborating evidence of the moral reforms attempted by the ‘godly rule’ of the puritan city council in the period, noting how, although the young Trosse despised the puritan ministers and magistrates prior to his later conversion, he was ‘careful to keep his “debauchery” within bounds and well out of sight’ to avoid getting into trouble (Capp 255–56).
Trosse’s Life has also been used as a case study in the histories of psychiatry and of mental ill health. For instance, Chris Frith and Eve Johnstone discuss Trosse’s reported symptoms as suggestive of schizophrenia, though noting that it is not certain that Trosse ‘would have been considered to be suffering from schizophrenia by current diagnostic standards’ (Frith and Johnstone 3), while Prof Rab Houston’s podcast series on the history of psychiatry features an episode on Trosse (Houston). Perhaps the most sustained treatment of Trosse in recent scholarship is Katharine Hodgkin’s 2006 Madness in Seventeenth-Century Autobiography, which uses Trosse’s Life as one of three key case studies of the blurred boundary between intense religious experience and mental instability in seventeenth-century spiritual autobiographies. Though Hodgkin notes that Trosse’s psychological breakdown is only an episode within a larger conversion narrative, she argues that ‘the narrative structure is skewed and unbalanced by the imaginative power of the time of his madness, which dominates the book’ (Hodgkin 29). However, arguably none of the particular aspects of Trosse’s Life highlighted by these secondary studies dominate the book as a whole, which remains a vivid, varied and compelling account well worth being read on its own terms.
Extract 1: Childhood in Exeter [pp. 1–2]
I WAS born in EXON,[1] Octob. 25th, in the Year 1631 of Wealthy Parents, honourable Citizens.[2] My Father was, by Profession, a Counsellor, and my Mother the Daughter of one who had twice been Chief Magistrate of that City.[3] They gave me the usual Education of those Days amongst such as were no Friends to Puritans:[4] They were averse to the Placing me with such, either to be bred up[5] in Religion or Learning. I was taught the Principles of Religion, call’d upon to read the Scriptures, forbidden to sport or play upon the Lord’s-Day,[6] made to frequent the Publick Assemblies for Worship[7] on that Day, and to sit demurely[8] there; and should be reprov’d and corrected,[9] if in these Respects I transgress’d. Yet, too often I thus offended: I sported and play’d with others upon the Lord’s-Day; [which, in those Times, was publickly permitted, and allow’d.][10] I never car’d to understand, or to retain, what I heard in Publick; never, as I can remember, being call’d to an account by my Parents, after the Sermon and Service was over; and so profited nothing by all that I heard.[11]
Extract 2: A Roving Fancy: Leaving school in Exeter for merchant adventures [pp. 3–4]
BUT this Course of Life did not so well please me, nor the Devil, as I may well suppose: For, having a Roving Fancy, a Desire to get Riches, and to live luxuriously in the World, I was bent upon Merchandize and Travelling into Foreign Parts. But then in this I had no other Motive, but the Satisfying the Great Lords and Commanders of the unregenerate World,[12] the Lusts of the Flesh, the Lusts of the Eyes, and the Pride of Life.[13] For these would I forsake my Master’s School, where I was commendably and successfully imploy’d,[14] and might, in Time, by a farther Proficiency in Learning, have been fitted for Serviceableness[15] in my Generation. For these would I desert my Mother’s Family, where I was under a careful Inspection, to prevent all gross Immoralities and Debaucheries. For these would I abandon, for a Time, the Church and Ordinances[16] of Christ, in and by which I might have gotten the Knowledge of the best Things, and, for ought I know, have been brought to love them, and to have been effectually influenc’d by them. But I ran wandering I knew not whither, and so expos’d my self to dangerous Temptations.
MY tender Mother comply’d with my Inclinations, as knowing the Profitableness of Trading, by having been the Daughter of a Merchant, who got many Thousands;[17]tho’ my Father, who died several Years before, design’d me for a more Ingenious Education, and a Calling altogether as profitable, as appears by his Bequeathing to me all his Law-Books, with his Collections relating to that Study.
HENCE I may date the Beginning and Occasion of my after-Sins and Calamities: For, going abroad into a tempting World, with a blind Mind, a foolish Fancy, and a graceless[18] Heart, without any considerable Experience of Humane[19] Affairs, I was easily led into great Sins and dangerous Snares, and so laid my self open to very great Evils of several Kinds; as you will more fully understand by what follows, which I the rather chuse[20] to relate, that I may warn others from venturing upon the like Temptations, and to caution Parents against indulging their Childrens unreasonable Inclinations.
Extract 3: Trosse’s time in Portugal (Oporto) – Idolatry and Immorality [pp. 18–19]
HERE then I still continu’d my Profaneness, and neglected the Duties of Religion; never bow’d my Knees in Prayer to GOD above once or twice, and that I did ignorantly, and without any real Devotion; tho’ I sometimes did it to Idols, sympathizing with Idolaters in their Gesture, that I might avoid their Anger.[21] I also gave up my self to the wicked Practices of the Place and Family; to Drunkenness, to divers Impurities and base Obscenities. A lewd Fellow-Servant led me to practise a Sin, which too many Young Men are guilty of, and look upon it as harmles; tho’ GOD struck Onan dead in the Place for it.[22]
WE had in the Family an Old Nurse, the Housekeeper, who had had two Bastards;[23] and, tho’ Old in Age, yet Young in Lewdness: She would often lie Dead Drunk, and so expose herself to all imaginable Indecencies. Beside, there was in the Family a Young Comely, but Wanton, Wench;[24] so that there was Fire enough to kindle my Tinder,[25] to beget impure Flames within, and to induce me to practise the most abominable Uncleannesses: But tho’ I was continually haunted with lascivious[26] Speeches, Gestures and Actions without, and with impure Fancies within, yet, by the good Providence of GOD,[27] I was restrained from all gross, compleat Acts of Fornication; tho’ I sometimes did what directly led to it. The greatest Part of Time, in this City, was spent in our House idly, seldom or never looking so much as into a Book of History, or any other; but play’d at Tables,[28] attended upon our Master whil’st he play’d, filling him Flagons of Wine and Pipes of Tobacco, for many Hours together by Day, and very late in the Night: Thus was He imploy’d, and thus We gave Attendance; many Times upon the Lord’s-Day.[29] We sometimes contriv’d Ways to steal away Flagons of Wine for our selves, when we had no need of it; for we had a handsome Allowance, but we abus’d it to Excess, and made the Old Woman extreamly drunk with it, and then horribly abus’d her.
UPON the Lord’s-Day, I did Nothing better than upon other Days;it may be, I did what was worse. I then went to the Taverns, and play’d at Shuffle-Board[30] and Billiards; would go either over or up the River for Sport and Recreation, &c.
Extract 4: Drinking the Devil – Trosse’s Mental and Spiritual Crisis [pp. 54–55]
THUS, like a miserable, wretched, and Condemn’d Malefactor,[31] was I carry’d out of that Place and Country where I had committed so many great Sins against my GOD. As I rode along, I fancy’d[32] many Devils flying in the Air just over me, and by my Side as so many Firy Flying-Dragons, expressing their Rage against me.
UPON the Way, the Men stay’d a little to refresh themselves, (for I was very troublesome to them by my continual Struggling) and they offer’d me some Meat;[33] and altho’ I had not eaten nor drunk for a long time, yet then I was perswaded to it. And when they put a Glass into my Hand to drink of it, methought[34] I saw in the Glass a Black Thing, about the Bigness of a great black Fly, or Beetle; and this I suppos’d to have been the Devil; but yet would drink it; and, methought, the Devil went down my Throat with the Liquour,[35] and so took possession of me. At which desperate Madness of mine, it seem’d to me that all were astonish’d; and I fancy’d, that every Step I stepp’d afterwards, I was making a Progress into the Depths of HELL. When I heard the Bell ring, I thought it to have been my Doom[36] out of Heaven; and the Sound of every Double Stroke seem’d to me to be, Lower down; lower down; lower down; (viz.) into the Bottomless Pit.[37] This to me then was a dismal dejecting[38] Sound. Whatever Noises I heard as I past by, my Fancy gave them Hellish Interpretations: For I was now perswaded that I was no longer upon Earth, but in the Regions of HELL. When we came to the Town, I thought I was in the midst of HELL: Every House that we pass’d by was as it were a Mansion in Hell; and it seem’d to me that all of them had their several Degrees of Torment; & as we went forward, methought, their Torments encreas’d; and I fancy’d I heard some say, as they stood at their Doors with great Wonder, and somewhat of Pity,[39] What, must he go yet farther into Hell? O fearful! O dreadful! and the like.
AT last, by GOD’s good Providence,[40] we were brought safely to the Physician’s[41] House. Methought all about me were Devils, and he was Beelzebub.[42] I was taken off my Horse, and expected immediately to be cast into intolerable Flames and Burnings,[43] which seem’d to be before mine Eyes. The Carrying me into the House, and into an Inner and an Under Room appointed for my Lodgings,[44] I thought to be a Casting me into Utter Darkness.[45]
Works Cited
Brink, Andrew W. “Robinson Crusoe and The Life of the Reverend Mr. George Trosse.” Philological Quarterly, vol. 48, no. 4, October 1969, pp. 433–51.
Brockett, Allan. Nonconformity in Exeter, 1650–1875. Manchester UP, 1962.
Capp, Bernard. England’s Culture Wars: Puritan Reformation and its Enemies in the Interregnum, 1649–1660. Oxford UP, 2012.
De Welles, Theodore. “Sex and Sexual Attitudes in Seventeenth-Century England: The Evidence from Puritan Diaries.” Renaissance and Reformation / Renaissance et Réforme, vol. 12, no. 1, Winter 1988, pp. 45–64.
Frith, Chris, and Eve C. Johnstone. Schizophrenia: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford UP, 2003.
Gilling, Isaac. The Life of the Reverend Mr. George Trosse, Late Minister of the Gospel in Exon. London, 1715.
Hodgkin, Katharine. Madness in Seventeenth-Century Autobiography. Palgrave Macmillan, 2007.
Houston, Rab. “Becoming Insane – George Trosse.” History of Psychiatry in Britain since 1500, series 2, episode 2, 2016, https://soundcloud.com/user-516743905/2-george-trosse. For series as a whole, see https://arts.st-andrews.ac.uk/psychhist/index.php/about-the-podcast-series/ . Accessed 3 June 2024.
Trosse, George. The Life of the Reverend Mr. Geo. Trosse, Late Minister of the Gospel in The City of Exon, who died January 11th, 1712/13. Exeter, 1714.
Wright, Stephen. “Trosse, George (1631–1713), nonconformist minister.” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, general editor David Cannadine, Oxford UP, 2004, rev. 2011, https://www.oxforddnb.com/view/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-27758. Accessed 4 June 2024.
Endnotes
[1] I.e. Exeter (a short form of Exonia, the Latin name for Exeter).
[2] The 1714 first print edition of Trosse’s Life includes a footnote here (perhaps added by Joseph Hallett II when preparing Trosse’s memoir for publication), ‘The Grandfather of the Revd. Mr. George Trosse was an Esquire by Birth, and bred a Counsellour at Law [i.e. a lawyer who gives legal counsel to clients]. He had Nine Sons; the Eldest of whom was the Father of Mr. George Trosse, who was also bred at the Inns of Court [the training institutions for English lawyers based in London], and was likewise a Counsellour at Law. The Two Youngest were educated for the Ministry, and the rest design’d for the Law[.] They had but One Sister, who was married to Sir John Specket of Thornbury.’
[3] ‘Chief Magistrate of that City’= the mayor of Exeter. The 1714 edition adds this footnote (possibly by Joseph Hallett II): ‘Mr. Trosse’s Mother was Daughter of Alderman Burrow, who was twice Mayor of the City, and also a considerable Benefactor to it. Many of his Relations marry’d into Great and Honourable Families: So that he was related to many Persons of very considerable Quality.’
[4] Puritanism was a religious movement made up of English Protestants who felt that the established Church of England was not sufficiently reformed in line with their understanding of the Bible. Puritans had strong emphases on the importance of preaching, the need for individual conversion, and moral rigour, and were suspicious of much of the ceremony and hierarchy of the established Church. While puritanism originated within the established Church (and this remained largely the case during Trosse’s early life), many puritans became Dissenters outside the Church of England in the years following the Restoration of the monarchy in 1660.
[5] ‘bred up’ = raised or educated.
[6] I.e. Sunday as the day dedicated to Christian worship.
[7] Publick Assemblies for Worship – church services. In context of Trosse’s Life this refers particularly to the services of the established Church of England as distinct from Nonconformist/Dissenting services or gatherings.
[8] I.e. quietly and seriously.
[9] ‘corrected’ – disciplined or punished.
[10] Many puritans disapproved of secular forms of recreation such as sport on Sundays, often a point of difference from their conformist neighbours. The so-called Book of Sports was a declaration issued by James I in 1618 and reissued by Charles I in 1633 to affirm the permissibility of such pastimes in opposition to puritan strictness.
[11] Repeating and discussing sermons in order to consolidate the learning and spiritual benefit gained through them was a key religious practice encouraged by puritans and Dissenters.
[12] ‘unregenerate World’ – that part of the world/human race that is not spiritually reborn (regenerate).
[13] Reference to 1 John 2:16: ‘For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world.’ (King James Version). One modern Bible translation paraphrases ‘the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life’ as ‘a craving for physical pleasure, a craving for everything we see, and pride in our achievements and possessions’ (New Living Translation).
[14] In a passage not included here, Trosse writes about how he was a star pupil at the grammar school in Exeter, particularly in his learning of Latin, and how his schoolmaster grieved his leaving school at around 14 or 15 as a waste of scholarly potential.
[15] ‘Serviceableness’ – ‘Capability of being of service or of use; usability, usefulness’ (OED, ‘servicableness’, sense 2).
[16] ‘Ordinances’ was used by puritans and Dissenters to refer to religious practices commanded or ‘ordained’ by God such as Bible reading, prayer, listening to sermons, and sacraments such as baptism and communion.
[17] I.e. earned many thousands of pounds.
[18] I.e. lacking the saving grace of God.
[19] I.e. human.
[20] ‘chuse’ – choose.
[21] Many early modern Protestants would have seen the devotion of Catholics to the Virgin Mary and the saints (particularly when represented in paintings or statues), the Eucharist and physical objects such as crucifixes as a form of idolatry, giving worship to created beings that is due to God alone. Trosse may be speaking of carrying out physical gestures such as bowing before an image of the Virgin Mary or crossing himself to blend in with the Portuguese Catholics around him, gestures that many Protestants would have found idolatrous.
[22] This is most likely a reference to the act of masturbation: in Genesis 38, Onan spills his ‘seed’ upon the ground to avoid impregnating his wife (his brother’s widow) and is killed by God for thus refusing to continue his brother’s family line. While Onan’s act in this story is more accurately characterised as coitus interruptus, ‘onanism’ or ‘the sin of Onan’ came in common usage to refer to the non-procreative spilling of seed in masturbation.
[23] I.e. illegitimate children.
[24] I.e. an attractive but promiscuous young woman.
[25] Theologians metaphorically described concupiscence, the inclination to sin that all humans derive from Adam and Eve, as the ‘tinder for sin’ (fomes peccati)
[26] I.e. lustful.
[27] Providence = God’s ruling and guiding of events.
[28] Tables = backgammon.
[29] I.e. Sunday.
[30] Shuffleboard – ‘A game in which a coin or other disk is driven by a blow with the hand along a highly polished board, floor, or table (sometimes ten yards or more long) marked with transverse lines’ (OED, sense 1a)
[31] Malefactor – evildoer, criminal.
[32] Fancy’d – imagined.
[33] Meat – can refer to food of any kind.
[34] Methought – it seemed to me.
[35] Liquour – drink (not necessarily alcoholic).
[36] Doom – judgement, condemnation. (Day of Doom = the Day of Judgement at the end of the world.)
[37] Bottomless Pit – a biblical description of hell in the book of Revelation (e.g. Revelation 9:1, 2, 11; 11:7; 17:8; 20:1, 3).
[38] Dejecting – depressing, disheartening.
[39] I.e. out of pity.
[40] Providence = God’s ruling and guiding of events.
[41] Physician’s = doctor’s.
[42] Derived from the name of a pagan god in the Old Testament (2 Kings 1:2), the New Testament identifies Beelzebub as the ‘prince’ or ‘chief of the devils’ (Matthew 12:24; Mark 3:22; Luke 11:15 KJV), generally taken by Christian interpreters to be another name for Satan (though some writers such as John Milton in Paradise Lost represent Beelzebub as another powerful demon distinct from Satan himself – see Paradise Lost Book 1, lines 77–282 for a dialogue between Satan and Beelzebub).
[43] Compare Isaiah 33:14: ‘The sinners in Zion are afraid; fearfulness hath surprised the hypocrites. Who among us shall dwell with the devouring fire? who among us shall dwell with everlasting burnings?’ (KJV).
[44] Dwelling place, accommodation.
[45] The New Testament speaks of being cast out into ‘outer darkness’ where ‘there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth’ (Matthew 8:12, 22:13, 25:30), generally taken to be a description of hell.