"I suppose the world has heard of the famous Solomon Eagle..."

Jamie T has.

 As it happens, I hadn't. The "enthusiast" makes a brief appearance in today's episode of Defoe, walking naked through the streets "with a pan of burning charcoal on his head." Further research (this) reveals his real name was Solomon Eccles, and that he was a former musician who publicly burnt all his compositions upon becoming a Quaker. Renouncing "Musick" he learnt how earn a living instead by making shoes, and would be repeatedly thrown out of churches for disruptive cobbling in the pulpit. Being "expelled" seems to have made up a late part of the the Great Eccles' CV.

(source)

 It should be noted however that nobody at the time considered Solomon a maniac. I've Gemma Brockis to thank, again, for observing that when Oliver Cromwell closed all the theatres many people in the 1650's turned instead to prophets for their theatre, crowding into the homes of witches and the like, and there's certainly a crossover between Eagle's "signs" and performance art, but the man himself insisted that walking the streets naked while balancing burning coals on his head was done only under strict instruction from God, whom he had apparently asked repeatedly to be given any other instruction instead. Anyway here's today's Defoe, in which a lot of people seem to have gunpowder just generally lying around the house: