the woods of the Blean, and it is said one may still see their names
cut upon the trees. Mad Tom, who, besides proclaiming himself to be
the Messiah, claimed also to be the heir to the earldom of Devon, and
called himself Sir William Percy Honeywood Courtenay, the Hon. Sydney
Percy, Count Moses Rothschild and Squire Thompson, to say nothing of
Knight of Malta and King of Jerusalem, was a madman, with a method in
his madness and a certain reasonable truth behind his absurdities. His
mission was, he said, to restore the land to the people, to take it
away, that is to say, from the great rascal families of the sixteenth
century, the Russells, Cavendishes and so forth, who had appeared like
vermin to feed upon the dead body of the Church, to gorge themselves
upon her lands and to lord it in her Abbeys and Priories. In the minds
of these people Tom was not only mad but dangerous. Mad he certainly
was, for all his dreams. Nevertheless he stood for Canterbury in the
year of the Reform Bill and polled 275 votes, and in the following
year he started a paper called the _Lion_ which ran to eighteen
numbers. Five years later, however, he had become such a nuisance
that a warrant was safely issued against him "on the charge of
enticing away the labourers of a farmer." Tom shot one of the
constables who served the warrant, and on the afternoon of the last
morning of May in 1838, two companies of the 45th regiment were
marched out of Canterbury to take him. They found him here in Blean
Wood, surrounded by his followers. He, however, was a man of action,
and he promptly shot the officer in command. The soldiers then began
to fire, and next minute were charging with fixed bayonets. Tom and
eight of his followers were killed, and three more died a few days
later.

One may well ask what can have induced the stolid Kentish folk to
follow so wild a Celt as this. We shall probably find the answer in