WEIRD religious cults today are treated with suspicion but are not modern phenomena.

In the 19th century the activities of one fanatical sect caused scandal in Dorset, Somerset and beyond.

They were the Agapemonites and their movement proved attractive, particularly, to gullible, wealthy women.

The movement was founded by Henry Prince, ordained into the curacy of Charlinch, near Bridgewater in Somerset, who convinced himself, and others, that he was the embodiment of the Holy Ghost.

The priest was soon dismissed from the established Church.

Based on theories of the spiritualisation of the matrimonial state and giving up worldly possessions, rumours quickly spread that the controversial sect involved free love practices and women worshiping naked.

Followers were expected to live chaste lives with husbands and wives sleeping apart... but Prince saw no reason why his strictures should apply to him.

One of Prince's closest followers was William Cobbe, who features in a chapter in a new book about his Irish landowning father by Peadar Bates called The Life of Charles Cobbe 1781-1857.

William Cobbe was born in 1816 and worked on building railways in the West Country.

He came into contact with Prince's sect in 1837 and within two years his letters to his Irish family suggested a religious drift, causing concern.

By 1842, not only had the fanatical evangelical movement established support in Weymouth, but William Cobbe had become "deeply involved".

The sect built its own chapel at Charlinch, paid for, partly, by Cobbe's money which, with additional buildings, became known as the Agapemone, Greek for "Abode of Love".

It opened in 1845. Prince and his favoured women lived in the attached 16-bedroom mansion.

The Agapemonites had attracted three heiress spinster sisters to its cause, all of whom soon after married, by arrangement, followers of Prince.

One, Clara, married William, having met just a month before.

When a concerned brother tried to meet William, he was turned down because William was "too involved in his ministerial duties" at Dorchester.

Meanwhile, wider concerns about the sect were being voiced and one magistrate wrote a report to the Home Secretary regarding local rumour, quoted by Peadar Bates.

"The Rev Prince, I understand, personates the Almighty, receiving his worshippers naked in body, but veiled," the JP wrote, adding: "The women are received naked and those who do not comply with this (infamy) are pronounced to be in such a state of sin as to be excluded from heaven."

William's brother Thomas visited Bridgewater and heard rumours there that "some of the practices of the sect were immoral and gross in the extreme" and also that Clara was not then of sound mind.

In 1846 William and Clara had been sent to Weymouth while doctors made depositions claiming there was enough evidence of derangement to justify the family removing William from the sect.

William's cautious father decided against such action.

The years passed, with Charles Cobbe, William's father, dying in 1857.

William continued his life with the sect - once writing to deny that it was the "habitation of harlots" - before passing away in 1911.

During the 20th century the sect, that also had a church in Clapton, London, gradually declined until its last member passed away in 1956.

  • The Life of Charles Cobbe 1781-1857 is by Peadar Bates who can be contacted at peadarb1@yahoo.ie.