Part 74

A misunderstanding with Mr. Francis compelled his retirement from that gentleman's house, and he took up his abode at the residence of one of his most devoted followers named Wills, from whence subsequently he again removed to the farm-house of a person named Culver, at Boughton. During these changes he was constant in his exertions among the poorer classes; and the influence which he obtained over them was extraordinary. The women excited their husbands and sons to join him, "because he was Christ, and unless they followed him, fire would come from Heaven and burn them." They asserted, as he had declared, that "he had come to earth upon a cloud, and would go away from it on a cloud;" and instances were not unfrequent in which the misguided people, the subjects of his imposture, had actually worshipped him as a God.

At length this excitement was destined to be brought to a conclusion; but not without the occurrence of events which are deeply to be lamented.

On Monday, the 28th of May, Courtenay, with about ten or fifteen followers, sallied forth from the village of Boughton, without having any very distinct or apparent object in view, and proceeded at once to the cottage of Wills. Here they formed themselves into a species of column; and a loaf having been procured, it was broken in halves, and one half of it was placed on the top of a pole, which bore a flag of blue and white, upon which a lion rampant was drawn. Wills having joined them, they all proceeded to Goodnestone, near Faversham; Courtenay, as they went along, haranguing them and the country people whom they met, and producing a great deal of excitement and astonishment at his proceedings. From thence they went to a farm at Herne Hill, where they received food, and then to Dargate Common. By Courtenay's desire they all went to prayers here; and after that they returned to Bossenden Farm, where they retired to rest in a barn. At three o'clock on Tuesday morning, they went to Sittingbourne, and Courtenay provided them with breakfast, for which he paid twenty-seven shillings; and then they went to Newnham, where, at the George Inn, they had a similar treat. After visiting Eastling, Throwley, Seldwich, Lees, and Selling, where, as at Sittingbourne and Newnham, speeches were made, and new followers obtained, the party again returned to Bossenden farm.

During these progresses, it appears that Mr. Curling, a respectable farmer, lost some of his labourers, who were enticed away from their work by the crowd; and disinclined to permit them to join the riotous proceedings of Courtenay and his party, he went before a magistrate of the district, by whom, at his desire, a warrant was issued for their apprehension. Nicholas Mears, a constable, and his brother, were entrusted with the warrant for execution; and on Thursday morning at about six o'clock they went to Culver's farm-house to secure the men. Upon their presenting themselves, Courtenay and several of his followers appeared; and almost before the unfortunate Mears could state his object, Courtenay drew a pistol from his breast and shot him dead. He returned into the house, exclaiming to the men who were there, "Now, am I not your Saviour?" and then going out again, he discharged a second pistol at the body of Mears, and mutilated his body with his sword.

This diabolical murder was communicated to the magistrates directly afterwards, and they proceeded to take steps for the apprehension of Courtenay. But the latter immediately called out his men, and marched them to Bossenden Wood, and there he administered the sacrament to them in bread and water. This over, a man named Alexander Foad, knelt down in the presence of the rest and worshipped him; and while on his knees, he demanded to know whether he should follow him in the body or whether he should go home, and follow him in the spirit? Courtenay answered, "In the body;" upon which Foad jumped up with great exultation, exclaiming "Oh! be joyful, be joyful; the Saviour has accepted me. Now go on; I will follow you till I drop." Another man, named Blanchard, also worshipped him; and Courtenay then, in answer to a question which was put to him, said that he had shot the constable, and had eaten a good breakfast afterwards; and added, "I was only executing the justice of heaven in consequence of the power God has given me." At twelve o'clock Sir William and his followers had shifted their position to the Osier-bed, and here he harangued them, informing them that he was invulnerable, and that they also could not be hurt by reason of the faith they put in him. He defied the attack of the magistrates, which he declared would do neither him nor them any harm; but then he proposed that they should take up a position in ambush in the wood. This was agreed to; and on their way thither, seeing the Rev. Mr. Handley, of Herne Hill, observing their motions, Courtenay fired at him, but happily missed his aim.

In the mean time the magistrates had been taking such steps as they deemed advisable, for the maintenance of the public peace; and in order to secure the person of the leader of these extraordinary proceedings, with his followers. Acquainted with the desperate violence of Courtenay, by his act of the morning, they deemed it unfit that an unarmed force should be brought in opposition to him and his party, and they in consequence despatched a messenger to Canterbury, requiring the aid of the military. A detachment of one hundred men of the 45th Foot, under the command of Major Armstrong, was at once placed at their disposal, and marched to Boughton. The rioters were known to be posted in Bossenden Wood, from the information of out-scouts; and in that direction the troops, accompanied by the magistrates and special constables, were marched. The position of Courtenay was ascertained to be about a mile from the road in Bossenden Wood. The wood was of very considerable extent, but was intersected by two roads; and it was found that the insurgent party were placed so that their front and rear were covered by the roads right and left. The military were in consequence divided; and while one party of fifty took the road nearest Canterbury, under the command of Captain Reed, the other was conducted by Major Armstrong, assisted by Lieutenant Bennett, and Lieutenant Prendergast, along the road next Boulton-under-Blea. Thus the insurgents were placed between the two bodies of troops, and their only chance of escape was to take a straight line through the woods. For this, however, the madman who was their leader, was in nowise disposed, and he soon presented himself to Major Armstrong's troop. He was required to surrender; but without waiting to give any answer, he called upon his followers, (now only between thirty and forty in number), as if to prepare for the approaching conflict, and rushed at Lieutenant Bennett, who was rather in advance of the soldiers. Lieutenant Bennett observing this movement, rushed forward also, sword in hand; but almost before he had reached his assailant, Courtenay presented a pistol, fired, and the ball entered the right side, and passed completely through the body of the young officer, killing him instantaneously. At this moment Courtenay was felled to the ground by a constable named Millwood, but he jumped up again, and at the instant of his regaining his feet, he was shot by the troops. The order to "fire," was then given by Major Armstrong, and being mounted, he dashed in among the peasantry. By the discharge eight men were killed on the spot, and several others were wounded; but the wretched peasantry fought desperately, until at length, perceiving the dreadful consequences which must result from persevering in their resistance, they at once dispersed, and scattered themselves through the woods. In the course of the afternoon twenty-seven prisoners were made by the military and constables, and of these seven were wounded, two of them mortally. Of the party who were employed in maintaining the law, George Catt, a constable, who acted with much determination, was shot under the mistaken impression that he was one of the rioters; and Lieutenant Prendergast received a contused wound on the head from the bludgeon of an insurgent.

During the remainder of the week the coroner of the county was engaged in conducting the necessary inquiries into the cause of death of the deceased persons. Evidence, the general effect of which was that which we have stated, was produced, and the result of the investigation fully bore out the course which had been adopted by the magistracy. Verdicts of "Wilful Murder" were returned in the cases of the constable Mears, and of Lieutenant Bennett, against Courtenay and his adherents; while in the case of Catt, the jury found "That he had been killed upon an erroneous belief that he was a rioter." In the cases of death which had occurred amongst the insurgents, the jury found a verdict of "Justifiable Homicide." The scene which presented itself, during the sitting of the jury, was distressing in the extreme. The Red Lion, at Boughton, was the place at which the coroner conducted the investigation; and there also all those prisoners who were suffering from the wounds which they had received were detained; while in the stable attached to the house, the bodies of the slain were extended. In the yard were the wives, widows, and children, of these deluded men, lamenting bitterly the position of danger into which the fanaticism

[Illustration: _Courtenay shooting Lieut. Bennett._

_P. 454._]

of their relations had drawn them. During the sitting of the jury, two of the wounded men died, and upon their decease being communicated to the crowd outside, they gave vent to new expressions of grief. The body of Lieutenant Bennett lay in an upper chamber of the inn, and was a melancholy spectacle. The unfortunate gentleman was about twenty-five years of age, and had just obtained leave of absence, when the news of the riots reaching the barracks, he applied for and obtained permission to join the party.

At the conclusion of the proceedings before the coroner and the magistrates, the following prisoners were committed for trial, viz.:--Thomas Mears, _alias_ Tyler, (the cousin of the murdered constable); Alexander Foad; William Nutting; William Price; James Goodwin; William Wills; William Spratt; John Spratt; John Silk; Edward Curling; Samuel Edwards; Sarah Culver; Thomas Myers, _alias_ Edward Wraight; Charles Hills; Thomas Ovenden; William Couchworth; Thomas Griggs; William Foad; and Richard Foreman.

The names of those rioters who were killed, were, William Courtenay; William Burford; George Griggs; George Blanchard; William Foster; Phineas Harvey; Edward Wraight (the elder); William Rye; George Bonchett; and Stephen Baker.

The prisoners Mears, Alexander Foad, and Couchworth, were wounded. Foad was a respectable farmer, cultivating a farm of about sixty acres; and it was a matter of some surprise that he should have been implicated in so extraordinary a proceeding. The prisoner Sarah Culver was a woman about forty years of age, of respectable connexions, and possessing considerable property. She had been a devoted follower of Courtenay; but it was presumed that she, like him, was insane. The other prisoners were all persons of inferior station.

On Tuesday the 5th of June, the greater number of those who had been killed at the riot were interred in the churchyard of Herne Hill. Amongst these was Courtenay; and the funeral attracted a vast assemblage to the place. Considerable apprehensions were entertained lest the mob should use any violence to prevent the burial of their late fanatical leader, for many had been heard to declare their firm belief that he would "rise again;" but the whole affair passed off quietly, and no new outrage was committed. The bodies of the other deceased persons were buried by their friends.

At the Maidstone assizes, on Thursday the 9th of August, 1838, the trial of the prisoners commenced before Lord Denman.

The first persons who were tried were Mears and Price, and after a long investigation they were found guilty of being parties to the murder of Mears the constable, but recommended to mercy, on the ground of their having been led astray by their infatuation in favour of Courtenay.

Sentence of death was at once passed upon the prisoners, but they were informed that their lives would be spared.

On the next day, William Wills, Thomas Myers, _alias_ Edward Wraight, Alex. Foad, Edward Curling, Thomas Griggs, Richard Foreman, Charles Hills, and William Foad, were indicted for the murder of Lieutenant Bennett; but upon their being arraigned they pleaded guilty, upon the same understanding as that which existed in the former case, namely, that their lives should be spared. The prosecutions in the cases of the other prisoners were not proceeded with, and they were discharged from custody.

On Friday the 17th of August, the extent of the commutation of the punishment of the convicts was made known to them. Mears and Wills were ordered to be transported for life; Price was ordered to be transported for ten years; and Wraight, the two Foads, Curling, Griggs, Foreman, and Hills, were directed to undergo one year's imprisonment and hard labour in the House of Correction, during which, each of them was to pass one month in solitary confinement. A pension of 40_l._ per annum was granted to the widow of Mears the constable, in consideration of the death of her husband.

The unfortunate Courtenay appears to have been a man by no means devoid of ability, and who had turned what little education he possessed to the very best account. His speeches were energetic and well put together, and he possessed an ample flow of language. He was abundantly supplied with scriptural quotations, and appeared to be fully and intimately acquainted with the Old and New Testaments.

Shortly before the dreadful affray in which he lost his life, he left off the picturesque attire in which he had hitherto been in the habit of dressing, and assumed one of a more homely character. This was a blouse or frock of brown holland with a black belt, in which he carried a brace of pistols; and a round bat. He was usually also armed with a sword and dagger; but his miserable followers possessed no other weapons than those which the hedges or woods through which they passed afforded them. It is remarkable that none of them were of so low a station as to render it at all probable that want had induced them to listen to the insane promises of their leader. The precise object which was held in view appears to have been unknown even to the misguided men themselves; but the general impression was, that Courtenay, by his power, would take possession of all the private estates of the county, which he would bestow upon his trusty followers. The Sunday after the riot, according to the statements and promises which he made, was to have been "a glorious but a bloody day," and some persons did not scruple to assert that it was his intention on that day to fire Canterbury. The distressing events, therefore, of the 31st of May, it is probable, served to prevent the occurrence of scenes even more terrible. The belief which existed among the lower orders that Courtenay would rise again from the dead was one which could scarcely be driven from their minds, even after they had seen that the process of decomposition had commenced in his remains. He had told one of his disciples, a woman, that if a little water were placed between his lips after his apparent death, he should rise again in a month; and so firm was the belief in his assertion of his and his followers being invulnerable, that the wretched men at the conflict in Bossenden-wood fought for a time with the most reckless carelessness of the consequences.

The visual proof of the existence of a degree of superstition so gross as that which is shown here to have been exhibited is almost necessary to induce its belief; but there can be no doubt that the lamentable ignorance and fanaticism of the peasantry was even more striking than we have described it to be. The general happy contentedness of the inhabitants of the county of Kent--the agricultural, and, therefore, simple nature of their employment--the proximity of their position to the metropolis, and the high state of cultivation to which the soil of that county has been brought, one would have thought would have tended to forbid the possibility of such occurrences among them. These remarkable details, however, only serve to afford an additional proof of the facility with which the human mind is moved, and how open it is to the operations of the allurements of fanaticism.

WILLIAM FRANCIS ADAMS.

TRANSPORTED FOR LARCENY.

This wretched convict there is too much reason to believe was guilty of the horrible crime of parricide, as well as that of larceny, of which he was convicted, although the evidence to show his participation in the more serious offence was deemed too inconclusive by the jury to warrant his conviction upon that charge.

At the time of his first trial, on the 16th of March, 1838, Adams had only recently reached his eighteenth year, and the charge which was then preferred against him was that of the wilful murder of his father. Upon this indictment he was acquitted; but within a few days of his liberation from custody he was again committed to gaol, upon a charge of threatening an old shepherd who had given evidence against him. Some new evidence of his guilt was obtained during this imprisonment of the unhappy youth, and on Thursday the 26th of July he was again indicted at the assizes held for the county of Buckingham, at Aylesbury. His acquittal upon the charge of murder rendered it impossible that he should be tried a second time for that offence; and the allegation in the indictment now preferred was, that he had stolen a pocket-book containing notes and cash, the property of his father.

The circumstances which appeared in evidence were these:--Old Adams was a man of some property, both personal and real, and lived at Burcot, near Wing, in Buckinghamshire. On the 28th of December, 1837, both he and his son (the prisoner) were seen by the workmen employed about the farm to go by different directions towards a place called the Fox-hill cow-house, which they entered about the hour of half-past two. From that time the old man was never more seen alive; but his son was shown to have ridden home at four o'clock on a mare on which his father had been seen at the hour first mentioned. In consequence of his non-appearance at nightfall, a strict search was instituted, which eventually resulted in the discovery of the body, cold and extended under some hay in the cow-house, with rifled pockets, and marks of injury produced by gunshot wounds in his head, which were quite sufficient to have caused instant death. At the time no suspicion was aroused against the prisoner, but on the following day he was taken up, and at the spring assizes tried for the murder of his father. Of this charge, however, after a trial of nearly fourteen hours' duration, he was acquitted, and, being set at large, returned to his home, but shortly after his liberation, in consequence of the further statements of a fellow-prisoner (who had given at the former trial the most material testimony of an ample confession by the prisoner, but who had been discredited, we presume, for want of corroboration by other witnesses), the young man was again arrested, and after an examination before the magistrates, finally committed to take his trial at the present assizes for the offence of stealing the pocket-book and its contents as above stated. To support this charge, the former witness, James Fuel, was now again called, who deposed to the fact of "Young Adams" having asked him, during the time they were in prison together, before the first trial, if he could get anybody to get him some money if he told him where it was to be found? Upon which, his brother Richard being sent for, Adams wrote two notes, which were given to Richard with directions to "go by them." These notes Richard now stated that he showed to three persons who read their contents to him, and who all now deposed that to the best of their memory (the notes having been burned and destroyed) they were to the following tenor:--"This is to inform you where to get the money. Go to Wing, at Burcot, and inquire for Adams's farm, and then look round and see where the privy is. On the right-hand side, over the door, in a hole betwixt the tilings and the loft, in the day-time, you will find a pocket-book; you will take the money out of the pocket-book, and let the papers remain in, and drop it down against the Cock Inn, Wing." The second note was as follows:--"The man you have got in hold is innocent. Them as done the deed find it out." Having possessed himself of this information, Richard Fuel quitted his residence on Pinner-common, for the purpose of going to Burcot and taking the money, in conjunction with two others. They, however, got alarmed, as they said, when they heard that Mr. Adams had been murdered, and desisted from their intentions; but afterwards, some other men, with more nerve, to whom they had disclosed their secret, started on the same errand, and sleeping together at an inn at Tring, chanced to be overheard by the landlord while they discussed the whole affair. This person immediately set out himself, and, going to the house, asked for the prisoner's brother-in-law, to whom he revealed all he knew of the matter. He, from a very pardonable motive no doubt, and a wish to keep secret so important a fact, for the trial of his relative had not then taken place, invited the landlord to dine, and sending for his lawyer, went in the mean time alone to the privy, where he found, just as he had been told, the pocket-book of his father-in-law. This was now produced, and its contents identified, by a long chain of evidence which we need not

## particularize, further than by saying that it was most conclusive.--Such

is the outline of this extraordinary case, as detailed by the witnesses for the prosecution.

On the other hand, Mr. Andrews addressed the jury, in a speech of great acuteness and power, stigmatising the whole as a base fraud and conspiracy between the Fuels and their friends, who had got up this evidence, improbable and absurd as it was, against the unfortunate youth at the bar, with a view to secure the pardon of James Fuel, who having been convicted of felony since the last assizes, could only become a witness by the pardon of her Majesty. To obtain this wicked end this plot had been concocted, and to show its falsity witnesses would be called who would prove from Fuel's own mouth, that he had over and over again said that he had got a convict, named Mead, to write the notes, in order that he might say Adams had given them to him, and to induce the magistrates to take up the affair again and clear him from the penalty of his own offence.