The Mad Mystic and the Last Battle on English Soil - with Ian Breckon

Summary

Podcast Summary: Cautionary Tales with Tim Harford

Episode: The Mad Mystic and the Last Battle on English Soil (with Ian Breckon)

Date: April 3, 2026
Guest: Ian Breckon, author of Mad Tom’s Rising: The Revolutionary Mystic Sir William Courtenay and the Last Battle Fought on English Soil
Duration: [01:27]–[44:54]

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Overview

This episode of Cautionary Tales explores the strange and riveting story of Sir William Courtenay—whose real name was John Nicholls Tom—and his rise as a charismatic imposter, political agitator, and religious mystic in early 19th-century rural England. Host Tim Harford and historian Ian Breckon delve into Tom’s transformation, his following among Kentish laborers, the religious and social turbulence of the 1830s, and the tragic, violent ending known as the last battle fought on English soil. Their conversation reflects on historical credulity, the dangers of populist demagogues, and the eerie modern resonances of Tom’s tale.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Setting the Scene: England in the 1830s

• Social ferment: The 1830s in England were marked by the Great Reform Act, the new Poor Law, widespread rural and urban unrest (e.g., the Swing Riots), and drastic changes to traditional rural life ([06:18]).

  “They were primed for uproar. Even though each successive revolt had been beaten down...there was still a lot of resentment and a lot of fear about the way things were changing.” – Ian Breckon ([07:50])

2. Arrival and Invention

• Tom’s emergence in Canterbury: Assuming the identity Count Moses Rosoptchin Rothschild, dressed in vibrant, exotic attire ([08:22]).
• Adopts new identity: After purchasing aristocratic trappings, he claims to be Sir William Courtenay, Earl of Devon, pursuing elaborate stories of conspiracy and lost inheritance ([09:41]).

  “He revealed himself to be...Sir William Percy Honeywood Courtenay, Earl of Devon, Knight of Malta, King of Jerusalem, King of the Gypsies.” – Ian Breckon ([10:06])

3. Political Antics and “Populist” Promises

• Stands in Parliament election: Runs as a maverick, not affiliated with established parties, mixing radical ideas (land reform, taxing the wealthy) with rabid patriotism. Uses spectacle and generosity to draw crowds but appeals mainly to non-voting poor ([12:27]–[13:59]).

  “His platform was...a strange combination of intense utopian socialism...combined with this intense kind of ultra patriotism.” – Ian Breckon ([12:27])

4. Downfall: Swindles and Perjury

• Legal troubles: Tom is arrested for ‘swindling’—essentially borrowing under false pretenses—and later for perjury after lying as a witness in a smuggling trial. Sentenced to three months jail and transportation to Australia ([14:56]–[16:50]).

5. Unmasking the Impostor

• True identity revealed: A pamphlet and witness testimony expose him as John Nicholls Tom, a wine merchant from Cornwall who had suffered a mental crisis in his early thirties ([18:47]–[19:33]).

  “He seems to have become a different person... He’s become this incredible, bombastic, charismatic orator.” – Ian Breckon ([19:33])

6. Commitment to the Role – Madness or Method?

• Insists on his identity: Even after family intervention and being moved from prison to asylum, Tom clings to his persona. He is eventually released, under family pressure, into the care of a believer who expects rewards when Tom reclaims his ‘inheritance’ ([21:07]–[23:14]).

7. Cult Follower Formation

• Emergence as religious leader: Defies promise to “avoid mobs,” rapidly resumes barnstorming, gathers a following among the rural poor and small farmers of Kent, blending economic grievances with biblical rhetoric ([23:38]–[24:26]).
• Charisma and millenarianism: People see him as a prophet or even Messiah amid widespread religious millenarianism of the era ([24:43]–[27:04]).

  “He says that he can shoot the stars down from the sky, that he can be in several different places at once, that he can change shape…” – Ian Breckon ([27:04])

8. The Bosenden Wood Uprising

• Mass gatherings: Preaches to 100–200 people, draws about 40–60 “recruits” for a march, makes apocalyptic promises ([27:47]–[28:20]).
• Messianic climax: Exhausted, camping in Bosenden Wood, Tom declares himself Jesus, displays “crucifixion scars,” receives worship, and warns of hellfire for doubters ([30:41]–[32:27]).

  “He sits up and suddenly starts declaring…he is the resurrected body of Christ. And he shows them the marks on his hands…” – Ian Breckon ([31:35])

9. Violence and the Battle

• Murder of constable: When authorities attempt to arrest him, Tom shoots and stabs a constable, then declares himself “the saviour of the world” ([33:06]–[33:43]).
• Military response: Soldiers are summoned, and a brief, bloody clash ensues. Tom is killed, as are several followers and a soldier; Tom’s death is dramatic and defies his earlier claim to be bulletproof ([36:02]–[37:57]).

  “He was hit...by a single musket ball. He fell to the ground and allegedly died...saying, ‘I have Jesus in my heart.’” – Ian Breckon ([37:33])

10. Aftermath and Legacy

• Morbid curiosity: Corpses are displayed for the public amid rumors Tom will resurrect ([39:08]–[39:15]).
• Justice and sympathy: Most followers seen as “deluded victims;” some transported, others imprisoned briefly, the mood shifts to sympathy for the impoverished, desperate crowd ([40:33]).

  “They were following him because they had real grievances...He was offering them something that no one else was offering...a sense of hope and change.” – Ian Breckon ([41:38])

11. The Psychology of Transformation

• Madness or Messiah: Ian Breckon argues Tom was genuinely “mad,” but his delusion—and the infectious power of the persona he invented—reflects the risks of unchecked charismatic authority ([41:52]–[43:34]).

  “This character...was so much more powerful than the real [him]...so almost intoxicated by being this person that he refused to give it up.” – Ian Breckon ([43:15])

12. Modern Resonance

• Lessons for today: Ian Breckon sees disturbing parallels between Tom’s story and “charismatic populists” of the modern era, drawing on conspiracy, alternative reality, and a willingness to feed on popular grievances ([43:46]).

  “His weird charisma...seems oddly contemporary. It seems to echo so many other charismatic populists of our own time...” – Ian Breckon ([44:24])

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Notable Quotes and Memorable Moments

• On the performative spectacle:

  “He took to standing on the balcony of his hotel shouting speeches to the crowd below and throwing coins down to them…” – Ian Breckon ([12:27])

• On the role of religion in everyday life:

  “Religion was the highest authority for them. So when this man appeared...able to recite great tracts from the Bible...they were going to be impressed by him.” – Ian Breckon ([24:43])

• On the collective psychology of the movement:

  “He was offering them some sense of hope and change which they didn’t see around them otherwise.” – Ian Breckon ([41:38])

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Segment Timestamps

• Opening reenactment & backdrop: [01:27]–[06:06]
• Social ferment of the 1830s: [06:06]–[08:04]
• Birth of the impostor persona: [08:04]–[11:18]
• Election antics and radical platform: [11:18]–[14:18]
• Crimes, unmasking, and exile: [14:18]–[18:47]
• Revelation of underlying madness: [18:47]–[23:14]
• Resumption and religion of rebellion: [23:14]–[27:47]
• March and apocalyptic promises: [27:47]–[30:41]
• Declaration of divinity & worship: [30:41]–[32:27]
• Murder and escalation: [33:06]–[36:18]
• Battle, aftermath, and legacy: [36:18]–[41:38]
• Motivation and modern caution: [41:38]–[44:50]

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Conclusion

With extraordinary narrative and psychological insight, Tim Harford and Ian Breckon dissect the story of John Nicholls Tom/Sir William Courtenay as more than a bizarre historical footnote—it is a cautionary tale of the power of charismatic delusion, populist grievance, and credulous desperation. It is, Breckon warns, a warning as timely now as it was in 1838.

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Further Reading

• Ian Breckon, Mad Tom’s Rising: The Revolutionary Mystic Sir William Courtenay and the Last Battle Fought on English Soil

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Transcript

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[Tim Harford]

Pushkin. As the sun sinks, the trees cast long shadows across the countryside of Kent. At the southeast tip of England. Blackbirds, Robinson song thrush and wood pigeons join the dusk chorus. But they're not the only ones gathering on the Evening of Sunday, 27th May 1838. Over a hundred people, all from nearby hamlets, are standing in the lane on the edge of a little village named Dunkirk. Some climb onto fences and carts to get a better view. The air is electric with anticipation. Earlier today, most of them stood at the rear of the church for the Sunday service, too poor and lowly to have a seat. For two hours they stood, men in clean white smocks or Sunday jackets, women wearing their best shawls and bonnets. How their backs and feet ached as the Reverend Handley, vicar of Herne Hill, gave his uninspiring sermon. And yet here they are, waiting to hear from another man of God. Health to the poor, toasts Sir William Courtney as the crowd raises glasses of beer in return. Dressed in sombre black, Sir William removes his wide rimmed hat, ready to preach. He's clutching a pocket Bible in his hand. Not that he needs it to quote The Epistle of St. James. Go to. Now, ye rich men weep and howl for your miseries that shall come upon you Caught. And his followers hang on every word as he goes on to recite job chapter 20 from memory. Because he hath oppressed and hath forsaken the poor, because he hath violently taken away an house which he builded not God shall cast the fury of his wrath upon him. The heavens shall reveal his iniquity and the earth shall rise up against him. The audience of poor labourers like the sound of that. They scrape a living from the earth while the gentry own it. In the fading light of that cool Sabbath evening, Sir William Courtenay tells the crowd to carry on as normal tomorrow, but to join him again on Tuesday to prepare for what lay ahead. Sir William's most devoted disciples believe him to be the Messiah and will willingly follow him into the last battle fought on English soil. I'm Tim Harford and you're listening to Cautionary Tales. Sir William Percy Honeywood Courtenay was the 9th Earl of Devon. He caused a scandal in his teens for a homosexual affair with a Gothic novelist and left England in 1811 to escape creditors. But William Courtenay was not the man who had addressed the crowd of peasants on Sunday 27th May, 1838. The man claiming to be William Courtenay, the rightful Earl of Devon and heir to Powderham Castle, was in fact a former wine merchant who'd spent time in prison and an asylum and stood for Parliament along the way. Here to tell us all about him is Ian Brecon, author of Mad Tom's Rising, the revolutionary mystic Sir William Courtney and the last battle fought on English soil. Ian, welcome to Cautionary Tales.

[Ian Brecon]

Hello.

[Tim Harford]

Before we get too far into this incredible story, I just wanted you to paint us a picture of England at the time, the late 1830s. It was a time of social ferment, really.

[Ian Brecon]

It certainly was, yeah. I think we'd need to go back a little bit earlier than that, though, right back to the beginning of that decade, the beginning of the 1830s, because this was a tremendously turbulent time in the history of England. It was the time of the Great Reform act, it was the time of the new Poor Law. It was a time of rioting and uproar across the country. There were huge uprisings in Bristol and Derby, many other towns and cities, mainly connected to the demands for political reform initially and a widening of the electorate. But as the decade went on, that initial uproar continued into other Fields. There were the Swing Riots, which began in Kent and were focused on opposition to the mechanization in the countryside. They were very violent, swept across the country. There was arson, people being threatened in their homes, machines being broken. But. But that violence continued then throughout the decade, particularly in the rural areas which were very depressed. They were very run down. Parish relief in particular, which many families relied on for a living during the winter months outside of the harvest season, was being overhauled by the new Whig government that came in after the Great Reform act and that led to further rioting, particularly again in Kent. These same districts, this was in 1835. So really these areas, these rural areas were. Were primed for uproar. They were primed for revolt. And even though each successive revolt had been beaten down by a mixture of legal temporizing and military action, there was still a lot of resentment and a lot of fear about the way things were changing, the way that this traditional rural way of life was coming to an end.

[Tim Harford]

And into this powder keg was the spark. Calling himself Sir William Courtney. In your book, you call this gentleman the Impostor. You need to give him that nickname because he keeps changing his name. What was his alias when he first arrived in Canterbury?

[Ian Brecon]

Well, when he first appeared in Canterbury in around September 1832, he claimed that his name was Count Moses Rosoptchin Rothschild. Well, this was the name that he spread around Canterbury in any case. And he appeared to be probably a foreigner, perhaps Jewish, maybe from some eastern land. He had a very exotic appearance, in any case. He wore extraordinary clothes of red velvet and gold and a big hat. He had this big beard and long hair. He seemed to have what onlookers described as a dusky complexion and an exotic foreign accent. So he definitely seemed to be a strange character from far away. He was also rumoured to be very rich.

[Tim Harford]

Yes. Cor. He claimed to be very rich, yes. But then he hears that Sir John Courtenay Honywood, the 5th Baronet of Evington and the former Sheriff of Kent, had died, and that gives him a kind of opening.

[Ian Brecon]

It does, yeah. I think what had happened was that this local nobleman died somewhere close to Canterbury and. And his valet, a man called Collard, somehow came into possession of his wardrobe, or certain items of his wardrobe, and travelled to Canterbury and put them up for sale.

[Tim Harford]

So he then buys these trinkets, these clothes and a sword and so on.

[Ian Brecon]

Yeah, he bought a pair of court epaulets, a sword, various medals and bits and pieces. But he also bought a new identity, because after this, having assembled this new wardrobe and also briefly taken on the services of the valet Collod. He revealed himself to be, in fact, Sir William Percy Honeywood Courtenay, Earl of Devon, Knight of Malta, King of Jerusalem, King of the Gypsies.

[Tim Harford]

Wow. Okay, that escalated quickly. So. And how did he account for the fact that he had previously called himself Count Moses Rostopshein Rothschild?

[Ian Brecon]

He seems to have made out that this was just an alias that he'd had to adopt, because he came with an extraordinary backstory, which he slowly revealed, revealed to his fascinated audience, that he'd had to conceal his identity because various members of his family, including members of the upper aristocracy and the royalty, were plotting against him. They were plotting to defraud him in some way. And he had been forced to return to England undercover from exotic distant lands to reclaim his birthright. And it was a bit of a kind of a romantic story that appealed to a lot of people, because people in those days were just as excited as they are now by stories of conspiracy in the upper echelons of society.

[Tim Harford]

Yeah. I mean, people seem to love the story. They seem to like him. He got invited to all the parties. Everyone enjoyed his company. When you're that popular, then, of course, the next thing you might want to do is stand in an election. So he stands in the election of 1832 as Sir William. What was he promising?

[Ian Brecon]

He was promising the earth, basically. In those days, electoral culture was still very bombastic, very rambunctious. Everyone was a populist, essentially, wasn't a sort of professional politician.

[Tim Harford]

You did have parties, though. You had the Whigs and the Tories.

[Ian Brecon]

Yeah.

[Tim Harford]

So which one was he standing for?

[Ian Brecon]

Well, he wasn't standing for either. The two sitting candidates in Canterbury, because there were two candidates for each seat, were both Whigs. This was the Liberal Reformist Party, who had pushed through the Great Reform act. And so popular had they become that they'd won the previous election uncontested, and the Tories weren't really up to putting up a candidate against them. So when this mysterious maverick stranger popped up saying that he wanted to stand for Parliament as well, the local Tory party were very pleased. They got behind him quite a lot. And actually, I think a lot of the votes that he attracted were said to have been Tory voters who didn't have anyone else to vote for.

[Tim Harford]

Well, he promised, I read, a return to the good old days of roast beef and mutton and plenty of prime nut brown ale, which I think is calculated to appeal to any Tory voter or indeed many voters. Yeah. So what was his campaigning strategy? What did he look like on. On the stump?

[Ian Brecon]

Well, I mean, he looked extraordinary on the stump because he was still wearing this amazing costume that he'd put together, this velvet and gold costume with big chunky epaulettes and a scimitar that he carried around with him and his big beard and his long hair. And he took to standing on the balcony of his hotel shouting speeches to the crowd below and throwing coins down to them. And basically his platform was what might seem to us a strange combination of intense utopian socialism, really collectivizing everything, taking all the tax from the poor and putting it on the shoulders of the rich. He would often talk about the patrimony of the poor and say it's an abomination in the eyes of God that the poor are denied their rights. But then he would combine that with this intense kind of ultra patriotism, this kind of flag waving and, you know, the British lion must arise and all this sort of thing, which sounds to us quite right wing, quote. So it's a strange combination, but I think in the political culture of the times, it would have seemed quite recognisable.

[Tim Harford]

So how did he do in the election?

[Ian Brecon]

Well, initially he seemed to be doing quite well because he was able to attract a very large crowd who followed him around the streets of Canterbury, hanging on his every word. Unfortunately, most of this crowd were relatively poor people who didn't have the vote, because even though the Great Reform act had gone through, the vote was still restricted to about 10% of the population, just under 20% of the male population. So his vote share was actually comparatively small. He got between 300 and 400 votes, compared to the 800 or so gained by each of the two Whig candidates.

[Tim Harford]

Okay, so respectable, but not really close to winning.

[Ian Brecon]

Yeah, and his followers treated him as if he had won. They pulled him about the streets of Canterbury in his carriage singing Rule Britannia and fting him to the skies.

[Tim Harford]

And he then follows this up by setting up his own newspaper, the Lion. Tell us about that.

[Ian Brecon]

It was a kind of pamphlet, really, a compilation of his political and social and religious ideas. These copies of the lion, they're very densely printed, quite hard to read at times, but they do sound fairly sensible. They don't necessarily sound like the ravings of a madman. It's a combination of what at the time was fairly standard political radicalism about taking away tithes, reforming Parliament, that kind of thing, combined with a growing religiosity. But it was rather a sporadic public, because in the middle of his print Run. He was suddenly arrested and thrown in jail.

[Tim Harford]

Ah, okay. How did that happen?

[Ian Brecon]

Well, initially it was for swindling one of the waiters in swindling?

[Tim Harford]

We don't get enough swindling these days.

[Ian Brecon]

Yeah, no, quite. No, he was actually charged with swindling.

[Tim Harford]

I realize. I have no idea what swindling actually is. It's just a generic term for some kind of mischief. What is Swindling.

[Ian Brecon]

He had been staying in a hotel called the Rose in Canterbury. When he was going around saying that he was Count Rothschild and so forth, he made out that he was very rich, or would shortly be very rich, as soon as he got hold of his inheritance and in the process borrowed an awful lot of money off various people. After he'd moved out of the Rose and lost the election, of course, one of these people decided to come forward and say, hang on a minute, where's my money? This was a waiter at the hotel and he was actually followed by a number of other people, including, funnily enough, Collard, the former valet who'd sold him the various costume items.

[Tim Harford]

So swindling is borrowing money under false pretenses and not paying it back?

[Ian Brecon]

Pretty much. Okay, good.

[Tim Harford]

Good to know. And on top of the swindling charge, he gets involved in another court case involving smuggling. But he wasn't smuggling.

[Ian Brecon]

No. He'd given evidence in the trial of some smugglers in Rochester. This was around the time that he was trying to broaden his base, really, to include anyone who might be considered oppressed. And he was very impressed himself with smugglers who he regarded as heroes because they were opponents of taxation, noble, conscientious objectives.

[Tim Harford]

Taxation. Absolutely. Love it.

[Ian Brecon]

Yes. So he'd rushed over to Rochester to give slightly farcical evidence in this trial of these smugglers, claiming that he had been at sea himself at the time and had seen them not doing any smuggling. But this was thrown out by the court and sometime later he was revealed to have perjured himself in court. A local clergyman revealed that he had been in church at the time he claimed to have been at sea.

[Tim Harford]

Is perjury worse than swindling?

[Ian Brecon]

It is, yes. Giving false evidence in court was considered a very serious crime indeed.

[Tim Harford]

Right, and so what was the sentence?

[Ian Brecon]

Well, after he was found guilty of perjury, he was sentenced to three months in Maidstone jail, followed by seven years transportation to Australia.

[Tim Harford]

Just after the perjury trial, the editor of a local newspaper published a hand printed bill which declared Sir William Courtenay's real character discovered his lady and brother in law have positively identified him. And after the break, Ian is going to tell me who Sir William really was.

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[Tim Harford]

We are back. I'm Tim Harford and I'm speaking to Ian Brecken, the author of Mad Tom's Rising. So, Ian, we have charted the checkered career of the impostor. He adopted one identity, then he adopted another, the identity of Sir William Courtney. And now this pamphlet is circulating saying that his true identity has been revealed. So what was his identity and how did it come to be discovered?

[Ian Brecon]

Well, his true identity was John Nicholls, Tom, a man from Cornwall who had lived most of his life in Truro as a wine merchant and maltster.

[Tim Harford]

And for those who are not familiar with the geography of England, basically Cornwall's the opposite end from Kent. It's the far southwest rather than the southeast.

[Ian Brecon]

Yeah. So he'd grown up down there, he had a family there, he had a wife down there. And around the age of 30 or 31, he had had a mental health episode, which remains a little bit cloudy. In our sources, it's described as either monomania or congestion of the brain, these extraordinary Victorian terms. Or pre Victorian slightly. He was treated by a couple of local doctors who weren't able to do very much other than shave his head, which seemed to be.

[Tim Harford]

That'll do it.

[Ian Brecon]

Yeah. It was a sort of common treatment at the time and his family believed that he'd actually got better after that. But what actually happened to him is one of the great mysteries of this story. He actually goes up to Liverpool with a cargo of malt. This is in, I think about March 1832, turns up again several months later in Canterbury, September 1832, and he's turned into somebody completely different. He's not only adopted this other Persona, but he seems to have become a different person. He's become this incredible, bombastic, charismatic orator. And after this trial in Maidstone, after he had been imprisoned and sentenced to transportation, his family actually caught up with him.

[Tim Harford]

So what? Then there's this guy who has been sentenced to transportation to Australia who calls himself Sir William Courtney. This woman, Catherine Tom of Truro shows up and says, actually, this is my husband. What do the authorities make of all that?

[Ian Brecon]

Well, initially, they seem to be rather unwilling to let this Mrs. Catherine Tom see this prisoner who they believe is called Sir William Courtney. But eventually she and her brother in law, I believe, are allowed to visit him. And they confront him essentially and say, look, you are John Nichols Tom, you are my husband. You're not this Sir William Courtney character. Why don't you confess who you really are? He refuses to. To concede that he is in fact John Nichols Tom. He insists on his identity.

[Tim Harford]

So he says he's Sir William Courtney.

[Ian Brecon]

Absolutely.

[Tim Harford]

Sticking to the story.

[Ian Brecon]

Absolutely.

[Tim Harford]

So then what, do they send him to Australia or not?

[Ian Brecon]

No, what their family do is manage to persuade the prison doctors that he is actually insane. Because there was a law of the time that if anyone should be found to be insane, they can be transferred from a prison to a mental asylum.

[Tim Harford]

Right.

[Ian Brecon]

And he's transferred to Kent County Lunatic Asylum at Barming Heath.

[Tim Harford]

The good news for Sir William, AKA John Nicholls Tom, is that he doesn't languish there forever. He is pardoned by Queen Victoria herself and released. So was he cured at that point?

[Ian Brecon]

Well, not really, no. He had been in this lunatic asylum for three years. Really. And over the course of these three years, he had been pretty much unchanged. Still maintained his identity as Sir William Courtney.

[Tim Harford]

Still a Knight of Malta.

[Ian Brecon]

Exactly.

[Tim Harford]

Still the heir to Powderham Castle.

[Ian Brecon]

Absolutely, yes. Yes. But he was released on the request of his family, actually Queen Victoria just come to the throne. And they wrote to the Home Secretary and said, can you let my. My husband, my son in law, various family members wrote out of this asylum because he is. He's better now. We'll look after him and, you know, everything will be great. And they decided to go for this, which seems strange to us because the asylum superintendent actually still believed that he was insane.

[Tim Harford]

Yes. Well, whether or not he's insane, he's released. And then a friend of his basically says, I'll take care of him.

[Ian Brecon]

This was a man called George Francis, who was a local yeoman farmer who John Tom had already greatly impressed during the period between his Election campaigns and his imprisonment. He'd been touring around the countryside of northeast Kent, speaking to an awful lot of people and impressing them with his religiosity, his great learning, his extraordinary exotic foreign travels. And this man, George Francis, was one of them. He owned a farm called Fairbrook, close to Herne Hill. And this man, George Francis, was the one who took him in when he was released from the asylum. He shouldn't have been, actually. He was supposed to have been delivered into the care of his family, but because he refused to accept that he was John Nicholls, Tom, and insisted that he was instead Sir William Courtney, still.

[Tim Harford]

Still working on getting his land and money back.

[Ian Brecon]

Absolutely. Absolutely. And this was. This was one of the reasons why George Francis was eager to take him in, because he was promising him extraordinary rewards once he got his riches back.

[Tim Harford]

And I understand he also promised that he was going to keep out of politics. Yeah.

[Ian Brecon]

Well, George Francis subsequently said that he had made Sir William, as he still called him, promise that he would not involve himself with politics and would not address mobs.

[Tim Harford]

How did that go?

[Ian Brecon]

It didn't go very well at all. Very, very rapidly. This new house guest of his was touring the surrounding area, talking to local labouring people in their cottages and indeed addressing mobs.

[Tim Harford]

Right, so who's in these mobs? Who is finding him interesting as he's roaming around, he's giving these barnstorming sermons or speeches. Who's in the audience?

[Ian Brecon]

They all came from a very small area of North Kent, these two parishes, Hernehill and Bourton, and this neighbouring extra parochial district, as it was called, of Dunkirk. Most of them were related to each other. These were mainly labouring families. Some of his supporters were actually slightly more prosperous. They were landowners, small farmers, but all of them were from what were called at the time, the laboring classes.

[Tim Harford]

We heard him at the beginning of our conversation quoting biblical passages that had a kind of a political and economic resonance. But I'm curious, the people who are listening to him, are they thinking, this guy's a political leader I can follow, or are they thinking this is a religious great man?

[Ian Brecon]

I think it's a mixture of both. What we'd probably need to think about, first of all, is how deeply saturated everything was by religion, by Christianity at this point. So even families who were illiterate, they still had prayer books, books of psalms, they had quite cheaply copied pictures of biblical scenes stuck to the walls of their cottages. They went to church every Sunday and religion was the highest authority for them. So when this man appeared Amongst them, this extraordinary charismatic stranger who was able to recite great tracts from the Bible from memory. Apparently, he was able to speak to them about things that they were concerned about, things that involved their lives and their livelihoods, but framing it in this religious biblical language that they instantly recognized as having authority, of course, they were going to be impressed by him. He had a small body of what we might call disciples, his closest followers, and it was them who were kind of disseminating this idea of his divine status amongst all of their neighbors.

[Tim Harford]

Tell me about the, you know, the millenarians, the post millenarians, the pre millenarians. What is the religious backdrop again?

[Ian Brecon]

As I was saying, the 1830s were a very politically febrile era. They were also quite religiously turbulent as well. And there were many people, even quite mainstream people, who held ideas which we might consider to be pretty fringe, which at the time were not considered that way at all. And one of them was the idea of the approaching millennium, which was a biblical term meaning essentially the end of the world. It was the beginning of the reign of Christ and his saints, which would last for a thousand years. It was heralded by the millennium itself, also known as the Day of Judgment, and would end with the apocalypse. And many people, including members of parliament, ministers of state, members of the aristocracy, believed firmly that this was about to happen any moment now, within their lifetime.

[Tim Harford]

Yeah, and it's extraordinary because some of this sounds almost medieval, but at this very moment, there are steam trains running between Manchester and Liverpool. The Industrial revolution has been in full swing for half a century or more. Modernity is coming, and yet you've got this guy wandering around the Kent countryside, and some of his followers genuinely think this is the second coming. Extraordinary.

[Ian Brecon]

Yeah, they think that he can work miracles, or rather, he has told them that he can work miracles, and they're prepared to believe it. He says that he can shoot the stars down from the sky, that he can be in several different places at once, that he can hear conversations over a mile away, that he can change shape, that he can kill a thousand people simply by striking one hand against the bicep of his other arm. This kind of thing. He also says he came from the sky on a cloud.

[Tim Harford]

The other thing he tells them on this Sunday evening in 1838 is, I'll see you Tuesday. Prepare for what lies ahead. So this Tuesday 29th of May, 1838, they have been told to gather because something important is going to happen. What does happen?

[Ian Brecon]

Well, essentially, he leads them on a kind of recruitment march, leading them around the edges of these various parishes trying to drum up support. There's a fairly sizable band of people that follow him, traipsing around the countryside here and there. But he doesn't cause this widespread uprising which he might have hoped for.

[Tim Harford]

Roughly how many people are there?

[Ian Brecon]

When he did his big sermon on the Sunday night, there was a local constable there who said that there were between 100 and 200 people there. His recruitment march around the countryside varies between about 30 and 60.

[Tim Harford]

It's not exactly an army, is it? And are they armed? Is he armed?

[Ian Brecon]

Well, he has a pair of pistols and a sword. At least one sword. He also seems to have some kind of little dagger thing as well. They're only carrying clubs, or at least at this point they're open handed. There seems to be a certain amount of uncertainty amongst them about what he's going to call on them to do.

[Tim Harford]

But he says that if anybody takes them on, I shall cut them down like grass. So that sounds fairly warlike.

[Ian Brecon]

Yeah, I mean, it's pretty bellicose some of the things he comes out with.

[Tim Harford]

So these marchers have been wandering around for a couple of days. On the second day, they cover 30 miles, but their numbers have stopped growing. Some people are ready to go home. So do they forsake their messiah? We will find out after the break.

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[Tim Harford]

We're back and I'm speaking to Ian Brecken, the author of Mad Toms Rising. So, Ian Brecken Sir William Courtenay, let's call him Sir William Courtenay. We might as well. He is struggling to entice more people to join his crusade. He is worried about others drifting home. So how does he entice people to stay with him?

[Ian Brecon]

He essentially ups his messianic appeal. This is an extraordinary scene that happens at the end of his second day of leading his supporters around the countryside of Kent.

[Tim Harford]

And they must all be exhausted.

[Ian Brecon]

Absolutely. They'd been on this extraordinary long march and they find themselves in this wood, Bosenden Wood, which by that point had become the sort of headquarters of Sir William and his band. And there's this scene which is described by a woodcutter who happened upon it, where Sir William lying on the ground surrounded by all of his followers. And he sits up and suddenly starts declaring various extraordinary facts about himself again, reiterating that he's come from the sky upon a cloud and he can kill all of these people simply by speaking a single word, but then declaring he is in fact Jesus Christ himself, that he is the resurrected body of Christ. And he shows them the marks on his hands of the crucifixion.

[Tim Harford]

Wow.

[Ian Brecon]

He's saying, I am Jesus, I was crucified. Here are the old scars, you can see them right here. And these people who are surrounding him, at least the hardcore of his supporters, his disciples are absolutely ecstatic at this. And we have descriptions of them falling on the ground and worshiping him, women kissing his feet, kissing his hands, praising him to the skies as the Messiah.

[Tim Harford]

So some of his followers are very impressed by this declaration. Are some of them scared of him?

[Ian Brecon]

Yeah, certainly. I think he was also capable of inspiring considerable amounts of dread, partly because of the things he claimed would happen if people didn't follow him. He said that fire and brimstone would rain down from the sky, they would burn people in their beds, that people would be dragged down to hell if they refused to follow him. And in fact he would chase them down into hell.

[Tim Harford]

So he has now this hardcore of incredibly loyal followers who are in raptures. Jesus himself is leading them. What does he do next?

[Ian Brecon]

Well, by this point, word of his activities has got through to the local authorities. Law enforcement in the countryside of England at this time was in a fairly sort of ad hoc state, really. You had these magistrates who were local landowners usually or clergymen, and they had various parish constables who were working for them. But these are all part time roles.

[Tim Harford]

Yeah. And if he's got 50 or 100 people with cudgels with him, that's Not a straightforward thing to deal with.

[Ian Brecon]

Exactly. Yeah.

[Tim Harford]

So what do they do?

[Ian Brecon]

So, on the morning of 31 May, Parish Constable John Mears is sent off with his brother and a friend of his, who he's empowered as special constables to serve this arrest warrant on Sir William Courtney, who at this point is living at Bozentan Farm in the center of this woodland.

[Tim Harford]

Right, so there's just three of them? Yeah, dozens and dozens, maybe a hundred followers of Courtenay. So what happened?

[Ian Brecon]

As soon as they approached the farmhouse, John Nichols, Tom, Sir William Courtney appeared with a pistol in one hand, sword in the other, killed the constable's brother, Nicholas Meares, shot him through the body with a pistol, stabbed him several times, and then declared that he was the saviour of the world.

[Tim Harford]

Right, so that escalated very quickly.

[Ian Brecon]

Very quickly.

[Tim Harford]

So what did John Meares do? And his friend, the other two, they

[Ian Brecon]

took to their heels as quickly as they could.

[Tim Harford]

So they got away?

[Ian Brecon]

Yes, being pursued by John Nicholls. Tom, with his other pistol, which he'd gone back into the house to get.

[Tim Harford]

Must have been terrifying. The news of the murder then reaches the magistrates, so presumably at that point they need to escalate. But Sir William now goes on the march again. How do they try and track him down and stop him?

[Ian Brecon]

Well, yeah, he goes on the march around this local area with his gang of hardcore disciples. There seems to be about 30 of them or so. He, first of all heads over to Fairbrook Farm, where George Francis lives, his former friend who he's now turned against, and threatens to kill them, although he's met at the fence by Francis himself and his various women folk, who instead ply them with beer and gin.

[Tim Harford]

That's smart. If you've got 30 people with cudgels and someone's got a gun, you. Yeah, exactly. Play nice.

[Ian Brecon]

Okay. At this point, luckily, a group of magistrates and special constables turn up on horseback, and Tom and his followers retreat to a small willow plantation where they plan on making a stand.

[Tim Harford]

Right, a stand against whom?

[Ian Brecon]

Well, this was a stand against the group of magistrates who were led by a young man called Norton Knatchbull, who was the son of the local mp, Sir Edward Knatchbull. He had about a dozen local gentry and yeoman farmers and so forth on horseback. A few special constables that he'd enrolled in Faversham, but they were pretty much outnumbered. In order to summon soldiers in support of the civil power, as they put it, you would need to have a magistrate testifying that a crime had been committed and to do that, he needed a witness. So what you have at this moment are these people rushing back and forward across the countryside trying to find witnesses, trying to bring the witnesses to the magistrates, get the magistrates to write an order for troops. I mean, the nearest military garrison was in Canterbury, which was an hour or so's ride, but in order to get them, they actually needed to ride back and forth several times, trying to get the right kind of authorisation.

[Tim Harford]

But they do, in the end, succeed. Major Armstrong shows up with about 100 men from the 45th Foot, Nottinghamshire Regiment. So what happens then?

[Ian Brecon]

They form up in the road near these woods, Bosenden woods, where by this point, John Tom and his band have kind of gone to ground. And the military detachment under Major Armstrong divide into two parts and essentially do a kind of pincer movement to try and trap these people in the clearing.

[Tim Harford]

I can't imagine it's going to go that well for Sir William and his followers.

[Ian Brecon]

Yeah, I mean, this is a military detachment of around 100 men, fully armed with muskets and bayonets against between 30 and 40 men armed with cudgels. And only John Tom has a pistol.

[Tim Harford]

These forces meet and. Are we talking about a peaceful surrender or something else?

[Ian Brecon]

No, certainly not. As soon as John Tom sights the approaching soldiers, he stands up, calls upon his men to follow him. He has a flag by this point with a rampant lion on it, and they charge at one of these military detachments, which is led by a young officer called Henry Bennett. Bennett apparently shouts that Tom should surrender, but the two of them rush at each other and Tom shoots him dead with a pistol.

[Tim Harford]

Wow.

[Ian Brecon]

Yeah. And at this, the sound of this shot, suddenly pandemonium breaks out. The other military detachment, who by this point have been lined up into a kind of firing line on the other side of the clearing, panic and let loose a volley of musketry into the clearing, shooting down quite a few of Tom's followers dead on the spot.

[Tim Harford]

Did Tom, Sir William, was he hit in that early volley or did he survive?

[Ian Brecon]

We don't know exactly when he died, because the following confrontation lasted for about three minutes of very fierce and very confused fighting. Three minutes. Tom was probably shot dead in the first volley. He was hit sort of just below the collarbone by a single musket ball. Went right through his body. He fell to the ground and allegedly died with his head against a white thorn tree, saying, I have Jesus in my heart.

[Tim Harford]

But he told his followers that he was bulletproof.

[Ian Brecon]

Yeah. And that all of his followers were also bulletproof, which must have been a great shock to them when they suddenly realized that they weren't. Eight of them were shot dead or killed with bayonets in this very frenzied three minute battle which followed.

[Tim Harford]

Yeah.

[Ian Brecon]

And at the end of that, we have various people lying on the ground, Various dead bodies, injured people. One of the military officers dead. One of the constables dead. Another military office beaten unconscious, Blood all over the place. This clearing was an absolute scene of slaughter.

[Tim Harford]

After all this, he still has his loyal followers, and they still believe that he is Jesus. And Jesus came back from the dead.

[Ian Brecon]

Yeah.

[Tim Harford]

And he gave instructions as to how to resurrect him.

[Ian Brecon]

Yeah. Well, amongst his followers, there was an extraordinary woman called Sarah culver. And he told her, apparently, that if he was dead or appeared to have been killed, she was to wet his mouth with water. And that either at that point or three days later, he would rise from the dead. And she was actually captured at the scene of the battle, Running towards him with a bucket of water, which she brought from the well in order to follow his instructions and wet his lips.

[Tim Harford]

Well, one thing we do know is that he did not come back to life three days later, but his body was put on display.

[Ian Brecon]

It was, yeah. I think partly because of this claim that he was going to rise from the dead, the authorities decided that the bodies of John Nichols, Tom and several of his dead followers Would be displayed in a stable beside a pub called the red lion. And they became objects of extraordinary grisly curiosity for thousands of people. Because by this point, the news of these events had spread across the country. Everybody had heard about it. Queen Victoria had heard about it. Thousands of people came down from London on stagecoaches. They came on steamers down the Thames Just to throng into this stable to look at these dead bodies, which were slowly mouldering in the rather damp, hot weather.

[Tim Harford]

What happened to his surviving followers?

[Ian Brecon]

A few of them escaped, but most of them were arrested. They were held captive. They were put on trial. Due to a strange legal technicality of the time, Even if you were a bystander, when an officer of the law was killed, you could still be charged with murder. A large group of his followers were tried for murder. Around 10 of them were actually found guilty. In the end, Although most of those were given sentences of a year or so in prison with hard labour, Three of them were sentenced to transportation to Australia. They included John Tom's most committed disciples, and they never returned.

[Tim Harford]

But 32 people were initially arrested. What happened to the rest?

[Ian Brecon]

Most of them were actually let off by the time the trials actually happened, the mood in the country had changed considerably as more and more people found out about what had happened and read all of these very detailed accounts of the events that led up to this great tragedy. There was a feeling in the country that the people that had been arrested were more victims than perpetrators. They had been deluded, as people put it at the time, by this charismatic madman who'd gone around promising extraordinary things. They were not necessarily held to be guilty of the crimes of which they had been accused. No matter how mad he may have seemed himself, the people who followed him were not mad. They were following him because they had real grievances, because he was speaking to them about their real lives and about the hardships that they were suffering. They were following him because he was offering them something that no one else was offering them. He was offering them some sense of hope and change which they didn't see around them otherwise.

[Tim Harford]

So your book is called Mad Tom's Rising. Was John Nicholstom mad when he declared himself to be Sir William Courtney and then declared himself to be Jesus, or was he motivated by something else? What was going on inside his head?

[Ian Brecon]

The name Mad Tom was given to him after his death in various news reports. I think it's incontestable that he was mentally ill. He was mad, as people would have put it at the time. It's impossible to diagnose what that madness might have been because we don't have him available for study. All we have is the accounts of the period which are kind of shot through with the prejudices of the day. The way that I tend to think of it is that he became possessed by a fictional character that he had invented.

[Tim Harford]

He achieved extraordinary things. I mean, it all ended in tears, of course, but he totally reinvented himself. He convinced a lot of people he stood for Parliament, made a good account of himself, was a compelling preacher, led this popular uprising. It's an extraordinary transformation for a wine merchant who is struck down by some episode of ill health.

[Ian Brecon]

Yeah, I mean, the transformation is. It almost defies belief. How did this man transform himself in this way? How did he become this fictional character? And then, having been accused of various crimes, put on trial, sent to prison, why did he continue to play this role when he could at any point, have just stepped back from it? He could have disappeared again, he could have changed his identity again, but he refused to do so. And I think it's because this character, Sir William Courtenay, that he'd invented and that he'd become was so much more powerful than he was himself. So much more powerful than the real John Nicholstom, wine merchant of dro, that there was no way he was going to go back to his real self. He'd become so almost intoxicated by being this person that he refused to give it up.

[Tim Harford]

And on Cautionary Tales, we are always trying to learn lessons from history. You end your book with the line, mad Tom's ghost is rising again. What do you mean?

[Ian Brecon]

This character, John Nichols Tom, is not greatly known in history. He was very quickly forgotten, turned into a character of folklore or mythology almost. He didn't fit with his times in any way that's useful to the usual narrative of history. But looking back on it today, because of that, he seems almost beyond history. He seems to have exceeded his historical context. And there's something about that role that he played, the mutation of his identity, his weird charisma that he was able to exert this magnetic effect that he had on those around him that seems oddly contemporary. It seems to echo so many other charismatic populists of our own time, with their appeals to alternative sources of news, their appeals to conspiracy theories or magical thinking, and their claims that reality is what they say it is, rather than what people might perceive it as being.

[Tim Harford]

Ian, thank you so much for talking to us.

[Ian Brecon]

Thank you.

[Tim Harford]

Ian's book is Mad Tom's. The revolutionary mystic Sir William Courtney and the last battle fought on English soil. It is, of course, available wherever you get your books. Cautionary Tales is written by me, Tim Harford. It's produced by Georgia Mills and Marilyn Rust. The sound design and original music are the work of Pascal Wise. The show also wouldn't have been possible without the work of Jacob Weisberg, Greta Cohn, Eric Sandler, Carrie Brodie, Christina Sullivan, Keira Posey and Owen Miller. Cautionary Tales is a production of Pushkin Industries. If you like the show, please remember to share, rate and review. It really does make a difference to us. And and if you want to hear it ad free and receive a bonus audio episode, video episode and members only newsletter every month, why not join the Cautionary Club? To sign up, head to patreon.com cautionaryclub that's Patreon. P-A-T-R-E-O-N.com cautionaryclub

[Ian Brecon]

Sam.

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