Jonathan Martin was inspired throughout his life by prophetic dreams and visions, and came to believe that God had charged him with the task of saving the country from destruction. After his conversion to Methodism, his religious fervour brought him into conflict with the magistrates and he was confined for a time in a private asylum at Gateshead, but he continued with his personal mission to expose the corrupt state of the established church. In particular he believed that the bishops, with their addiction to bottles of wine, and roast beef and plum pudding, would bring about the destruction of England unless they could be persuaded to repent. Setting fire to York Minster was just one, albeit rather extreme, means of putting this message across. Many of these preoccupations feature in his drawings and their accompanying texts, not least in London’s Overthrow, one of his most complex pictures. Although he recounts on the back that the subject came to him in a dream, it is unusual among his work in being directly based on one of his brother John’s paintings, The Fall of Nineveh. It shows London burning in the background while the corrupt bishops, ‘the cause of this calamity’, carouse in the foreground. Much else happens in between, including a battle in which the forces of Nineveh mingle with those of Bonaparte, while the one-legged Lion of England balances precariously aloft amidst exploding bombs and an inferno of flames and billowing smoke. The picture itself is not dated, but there are references on the back to events occurring in 1830, the earliest being June, and it was probably drawn earlier in the same year. The design of this drawing is based on John Martin's famous painting The Fall of Nineveh, which was exhibited in 1828. Jonathan's version follows the structure of the original so closely, that he must surely have had a copy of the mezzotint engraving in Bethlem to work from. He has written on the back of the picture:- If I had sought the whole creation round A better subject than my brother's downfall (of Nineveh) I could not have found; to help me to paint sad London's overthrow... The style and content, however, are wholly his own. It is a marvellously inventive interpretation of his brother's great Romantic painting, filled with Jonathan's own visionary enthusiasm and highly personal symbolism, transforming Nineveh effortlessly into London, and setting loose some unmistakably 19th century soldiery to mingle with the more Biblical forces which rampage across the South Bank. Some of the action and imagery are explained in the text at the bottom of the picture (though much remains to the imagination):- The Union Jack capsiz'd upside down A sign that England shall be over thrown As it is hoisted to the right and left England shall be like a Ship at Sea in great distress ......... The Lion is an Emblem too That England stands but on one Foot And that has lost one Toe Therefore long it cannot stand For Foreign Troops shall invade our Land ... Westminster Abbey and St Paul's Cathedral are clearly seen blazing in the background. Also identifiable is Wren's monument to an earlier conflagration, the Great Fire of London. Napoleon (or possibly his son) rides high on a cliff to the left of the picture, overlooking the savage battles raging below in which lions (on the righthand side) as well as elephants participate. In the foreground is a favourite subject, the bishops of the Established Church alias the Priests of Baal, playing at cards and drinking themselves into a stupor while they are upbraided by the King as the drunking sots... [who] have ben the cause of this Calmity [sic]. The two central passages of the text are devoted to this subject. Much of the rest relates to the destruction of the Benjamites, rather confusingly linked with the death of Martin's own wife:- Oh England pray Old England pray For one mans wife many were cast away When Benjamin kill'd the Levites wife As those wicked Priests did mine [in fact she had died of cancer] They brought a curse upon the Land ........... [last section of text] ...Think you not Oh England then that my wifes blood As dear to me as the Levites concubine Yea her blood cries vengeance to the Throne And will not let my God a lone Till he arice the wicket to consume Yon cloudy pillar speaks the works [remainder illegible] On the back of the picture, which is entirely covered with text, Martin describes several of his dreams. Two took place on the night of 20 October 1830, the first a touching leave-taking from his wife and son Richard. …2ndly I dreamt towards the morning that I saw 12 Rainbows in the heavens, they crossed each other, and I stood under the yard-shed [in the Bethlem exercise yard], and the patients all around me observed it, and one said I count eleven rainbows. I thought…the rainbows moved from the heavens, and became like an army of soldiers engaging and intermixing with each other, they came direct from heaven towards me, and I felt the hot reflection of the fire and the patients made sport of it. I reclined upon one knee and prayed that God would have mercy upon their ignorance; and I thought the rainbows would have overthrown the Hospital: and I awoke out of my sleep. The overwhelming urge to communicate his apocalyptic dreams and visions is vividly reflected in Martin’s art and its accompanying texts. Elsewhere he has referred to himself ironically as Jonathan Martin the madman, acknowledging the world's uncomprehending view of him: but all the intensely felt experience of his own tumultuous inner world was that of Jonathan Martin the prophet and visionary, and it is this Martin who survives so powerfully in his drawings and writings.