Wikipedia:Today's featured article/April 1, 2024

The Order of Brothelyngham was a gang of men who, in mid-14th-century England, formed themselves into a fake religious order in Exeter, Devon. Styling themselves as theatrical players, they terrorised, kidnapped and extorted the locals. They may well have been satirising the church, which was commonly perceived as corrupt. The group appears to have named itself after a non-existent place, "Brothelyngham". The name was probably meant as an allusion to the Order of Sempringham, which was known to enclose both monks and nuns on the same premises. Members of the Order of Brothelyngham dressed as monks. They supposedly elected a madman to rule them as their abbot, possibly from a theatrical stage, and bore their ruler aloft before them in a mockery of a bishop's throne. As one of the few such gangs known to modern historians, the order is considered significant for what it suggests of anticlerical activities and attitudes in England during the period.