Solomon Eccles also known as Solomon Eagle, was an English

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

 composer

Composer

A composer is a person who creates music, either by musical notation or oral tradition, for interpretation and performance, or through direct manipulation of sonic material through electronic media...

.

Life

Solomon Eagle was mentioned in Daniel Defoe

Daniel Defoe

Daniel Defoe , born Daniel Foe, was an English trader, writer, journalist, and pamphleteer, who gained fame for his novel Robinson Crusoe. Defoe is notable for being one of the earliest proponents of the novel, as he helped to popularise the form in Britain and along with others such as Richardson,...

's semi-fictional account of the plague of 1665 titled A Journal of the Plague Year

A Journal of the Plague Year

A Journal of the Plague Year is a novel by Daniel Defoe, first published in March 1722.The novel is a fictionalised account of one man's experiences of the year 1665, in which the Great Plague struck the city of London...

. Defoe wrote:

'I suppose the world has heard of the famous Solomon Eagle, an enthusiast. He, though not infected at all but in his head, went about denouncing of judgment upon the city in a frightful manner, sometimes quite naked, and with a pan of burning charcoal on his head. What he said, or pretended, indeed I could not learn.'

Eccles was a Quaker, a man prosecuted numerous times during the Restoration for civil disobedience. He would worship with other Quakers. The law that was passed in the early 1660s said that, if more than three people got together in a room for religious worship, this was a seditious, wicked activity. In May 1665, Eccles was arrested in Southwark

Southwark

Southwark is a district of south London, England, and the administrative headquarters of the London Borough of Southwark. Situated east of Charing Cross, it forms one of the oldest parts of London and fronts the River Thames to the north...

, even though he probably lived in the middle of the City of London, and was put away in prison – probably in the Clink on the South Bank

South Bank

South Bank is an area of London, England located immediately adjacent to the south side of the River Thames. It forms a long and narrow section of riverside development that is within the London Borough of Lambeth to the border with the London Borough of Southwark and was formerly simply known as...

 – for about two to three months.

Works

Few if any of his works are extant since, when he became a Quaker, he burned all his books and compositions so as to distance himself from church music

Church music

Church music may be defined as music written for performance in church, or any musical setting of ecclestiacal liturgy, or music set to words expressing propositions of a sacred nature, such as a hymn. This article covers music in the Judaeo-Christian tradition. For sacred music outside this...

. His repugnance for the organised church showed in his name for them: "steeple-houses".

Family

Eccles had at least two musical grandchildren, John and Henry

Henry Eccles (composer)

Henry Eccles was an English composer.-Early life:He was the son of John Eccles and Sally Eccles and the grandson of Solomon Eccles.-Accomplishments:...

. (The Wikipedia pages for both John Eccles and Henry Eccles refer to Solomon as their father, rather than grandfather. Their birth dates, however, suggest that the attribution on this page is correct.)