Some of his friends and the other women in the prison were foolish and silly. Instead of helping Nayler to serve God in lowliness and humility, they flattered his vanity, and encouraged him to become yet more vain and presumptuous. They even knelt before him in the prison, bowing and singing, 'Holy, holy, holy.' Some one wrote him a wicked letter saying, 'Thy name shall be no more James Nayler, but Jesus'!
Nayler confessed afterwards that 'a fear struck him' when he received that letter. He put it in his pocket, meaning that no one should see it. But though Nayler did not himself encourage his friends in their wicked folly, still he did not check them as he should have done. He thought that he was meant to be a 'sign of Christ' for the world. He was weak in health at the time, and had suffered much from imprisonment and long fasting; so it can be said in excuse that his mind may have been clouded, and that perhaps he did not altogether understand what was being done.
The real sadness of this story is that we cannot excuse him altogether. Some of the blame for the silly and foolish and wicked things that were done around him does, and must, belong to him too. He ought to have known and to have forbidden it all from the beginning. George Fox and the other steady Friends of course did not approve of these wild doings of James Nayler and his friends. George Fox came to see James Nayler in prison at Exeter, and reproved him for his errors. James Nayler was proud and would not listen to rebukes, though he offered to kiss George Fox at parting. But Fox, who was 'stiff as a tree and pure as a bell,' would not kiss any man, however much he loved him, who persisted in such wrong notions. The two friends parted very sorrowfully, and with a sad heart Fox returned to the inn on Exeter Bridge. Not all the 'Seven Stars' on its signboard could shine through this cloud.
After this, things grew worse. Nayler persisted in his idea that he was meant, in his own life, and in his own body, to imitate Jesus Christ outwardly, and the women persisted in their wild acting round him. When Nayler and his admirers came to Bristol, in October 1656, they arranged a sort of play scene, to make it like the entry of Jesus into Jerusalem. One man, bareheaded, led Nayler's horse, and the women spread scarves and handkerchiefs in the way before him, as they had no palms. They even shouted 'Hosanna!' and other songs and hymns that they had no business to sing except in the worship of God.