Tom’s followers remembered

Stephen Baker

Stephen Baker was baptised at Hernhill in October 1815, but must have been born several months earlier, as he was listed as being 23 years old at the time of his death. Reports at the time describe him as ‘an inoffensive young man, in constant employment’, while another source notes that he ‘bore an excellent character’. He could read and write, regularly attended church, and supported his elderly parents Thomas and Mary by his labouring work. He married his wife Sarah at Chilham in April 1837, but the couple had no children. Stephen was shot in the groin during the battle, dying after two days due to the mortification of the wound. Eight mourners, including his wife and his father, attended his funeral at Hernhill.

George Branchett

George Branchett was listed as being 40 years old at the time of his death, but he was baptised in June 1789 in Boughton under Blean, and seems in fact to have been 48 or 49. As a young man he served in the East Kent Militia, and later moved to Dunkirk, where records describe him as an industrious labourer, albeit totally uneducated and illiterate. In December 1818 he married Sarah Gowers at Seasalter, and the couple went on to have eight children. By late 1837 George was out of work, and the family fell into poverty and distress. His wife Sarah and one of his daughters died in November, and over the very cold winter of 1837-38 George and his remaining family were forced to enter the new Union Workhouse at Faversham. Two more of his children died there, and a further two shortly afterwards. By the beginning of summer 1838 George and his surviving children Benjamin, Elizabeth and Mary were living in Dunkirk once more. He became a convert to the cause of John Nicholls Tom, aka Sir William Courtenay, and gripped by an ‘enthusiastic fervour’, he joined others in worshipping ‘Sir William’ as the Saviour. During the fighting in Bossenden Wood he was shot twice through the body and stabbed with a bayonet, dying where he fell. George’s body was laid in the stable of the Red Lion pub, alongside John Tom and several more of his followers. He was perhaps one of those described by a visiting reporter as being almost toothless, and ‘shocking to behold’. While his body was initially taken for burial at Hernhill, and a grave dug for him there, the church authorities later decided that he should be interred at Boughton instead. The day after the other funerals, his body was taken on a cart to the churchyard of Saints Peter and Paul, Boughton under Blean, and buried there instead. Two of his children were sent back to the workhouse, while his oldest daughter Mary, aged 17, was described by a local journalist as ‘an unfortunate girl on the town of Canterbury’.

William Burford

William Burford was born in Boughton under Blean in 1805, and was the only one of Sir William Courtenay’s close followers to have a reputation for criminality and violence. ‘Known as a decidedly bad character’, he was arrested in January 1830 for stealing rabbits and spent six months in jail in Canterbury. He and his accomplice John Packman were released early as the magistrates considered them ‘likely to conduct themselves honestly.’ Shortly afterwards William married 18-year-old Emily Jane Packman, also of Boughton and possibly a relative of his former partner in crime. They moved to Westwell, where their son Edward was born, but by 1835 they were living in Dunkirk. In February of that year William was charged with having assaulted his wife. He repeated the assault a year later, and Emily went before the magistrate to report his violence. William was bound over to keep the peace, but he at that year’s Michaelmas Quarter Sessions he was not prosecuted for the offence. A record compiled in 1838 states that William Burford could ‘read imperfectly’, while a similar list classes him as ‘supposedly illiterate.’ An investigating lawyer noted that his cottage contained ‘a Testament, and one or two other books of a religious nature.’ In May 1838, at the age of 32, William Burford joined the followers of John Nicholls Tom, aka Sir William Courtenay. A warrant for his arrest was issued prior to the battle in Bossenden Wood, but he remained with John Tom and his gang. Moments before the fighting commenced, his wife Emily pleaded with William to leave them, but she was threatened with death by Tom himself. William was killed in the battle, falling close to the stream, probably while attacking the military detachment under Major Elliot. He was struck by a musket bullet behind the left ear, which exited through the back of his skull, and was also wounded in the left eye by a bayonet. William’s body was displayed in the stable of the Red Lion pub along with Tom and several other slain men. A visiting reporter described one of the bodies, likely William’s, as still showing the signs of violent trauma, with wide open eyes, dilated nostrils, and hair clotted with blood. William’s wife Emily was also captured by the soldiers at the scene of the fighting, and was held prisoner until the inquest in Faversham, where she collapsed in a fit of grief and was escorted from the courtroom, later being released without charge. She attended William’s funeral at Hernhill, and a year later moved to Faversham with her son Edward, where she married an oyster dredger named Joseph Clark.

William Foster

William Foster, aged 32, was a labourer on Dargate Farm, which was owned by Mr Snoulton of Canterbury. He was described after his death as a good workman, in constant employment at a wage of two shillings and sixpence a day, and a regular church-goer. During the fighting in Bossenden Wood he was shot through the chest with a musket ball, dying at the scene. His body was laid in the stable of the Red Lion alongside John Tom and others, and he was later buried at Hernhill. He left a wife, Hannah, and five children. Hannah would later marry his neighbour William Couchworth, who had also been at Bossenden.

Phineas Harvey

Phineas Harvey, also known as Finnis, was baptised at St Michael’s, Hernhill in September 1809. By 1838 he was 28 years old and living near Dargate Common. Described as ‘a sober, industrious labourer, in constant employ’, he was able to read and write, and despite having been fined for assault in 1835, he was generally thought to be ‘a quiet, well-conducted man who usually attended church.’ He was killed in the battle in Bossenden Wood, shot through the body, and his corpse was displayed in the stable of the Red Lion. A sketch artist for the Globe wrongly labelled him as ‘Peter Harvey’. He was buried at Hernhill, after a service in the same church where he had been baptised; his father attended ‘in an agony of grief’, and a visiting journalist noted that Phineas’s coffin was distinguished with a silver plate and ornaments.

William Rye

William Rye had worked for 22 years on Dargate Farm on a wage of 15 shillings a week. His wife was named Sarah, and the couple had four children. A note taken at the time of his death states that he was 40 years old, but he had been baptised at Hernhill in February 1792, and was apparently 46 when he was killed. William was described as an ‘industrious labourer’, although illiterate. In May of 1838 he became one of the close followers of John Nicholls Tom, aka Sir William Courtenay, and for a time served as his standard bearer, carrying the rampant lion flag now preserved at Mount Ephraim. Quite possibly William was still carrying the flag at the final battle in Bossenden Wood, where he was shot dead with a single bullet through the hip and lower abdomen. His body was laid in the stable of the Red Lion, and he was later buried in Hernhill churchyard. Hs mourners included five young women, two of them his children and one his sister, ‘whose grief,’ according to an attending reporter, ‘was excessive’.

Edward Wraight

Edward Wraight was the oldest man to die in Bossenden Wood. He was a yeoman farmer of 62 years of age, who owned 20 acres of land in Dargate and rented further land and property. He also owned three horses, and was an educated man who could read and write, though he was said not to be in the habit of reading much. As a freeholder he had the vote, which he had cast for the Tory candidates in the elections of 1832 and 1837. Wraight was described by investigators after his death as being a sullen and uncommunicative man, piously religious although not a church-goer, as he did not care to ‘listen to a man who robbed him of tithes.’ Another account describes him as ‘a man of reserved gloomy temper.’ Wraight was ‘reckoned a shrewd character,’ yet he fell victim to a ‘strange infatuation’ for John Nicholls Tom, aka Sir William Courtenay. He was seen ‘acting with great violence during the affray’ in Bossenden Wood, and sustained two bullet wounds and a bayonet wound beneath his arm. His dead body was exhibited in the Red Lion stable after his death, before being taken for burial at Hernhill. His was possibly one of those bodies described by a visiting reporter as being almost toothless, and ‘shocking to behold’. Wraight’s widow Mary attended his funeral at the church of St Michael in Hernhill, being escorted by local farmer and Poor Law guardian Edward Curling, who had been among the greatest adversaries of ‘Sir William Courtenay’. With her husband dead and her son in prison, she was greeted with ‘general commiseration for her wretched condition.’ Wraight’s son, also named Edward Wraight, had joined John Tom’s followers too, fighting and being wounded in the battle in Bossenden Wood; he was captured at the scene, tried, and served one year in prison with hard labour.

John Nicholls Tom

John Nicholls Tom was born in St Columb Major in Cornwall, in November 1799. The son of an innkeeper and farmer, he worked for several years as a wine merchant and malt dealer in Truro. He was a popular man, known from his enormous strength and his skill as a cricketer. Early in 1832, following a period of mental illness, he deserted his wife and business and travelled to London, where he lived for some time under a number of different aliases. In the autumn of that year he arrived in Canterbury, first using the identity Count Moses Rothschild, and later claiming to be Sir William Percy Honeywood Courtenay, heir to Powderham Castle and the Earldom of Devon, Knight of Malta, King of the Gypsies and King of Jerusalem. In this guise, and dressed in an extraordinary gaudy costume, he stood for parliament in the general election of December 1832, first for the Borough of Canterbury and then for East Kent. Defeated in both attempts he then moved to Fairbrook Farm in Boughton and started his own newspaper, the Lion. Always drawn to religion, he now reinvented himself as a spiritual advisor to the local people, and briefly as a stage orator in the seaside towns of eastern Kent. In 1833 he was arrested for fraud in Canterbury, and later tried for perjury in Maidstone after giving false testimony during the trial of some smugglers earlier that year. Committed to jail in Maidstone, pending transportation to Australia, he was ruled insane and sent to the new asylum at Barming Heath. His family in Cornwall had by this time tracked him down, but he refused to recognise them and still claimed to be Sir William Courtenay. In October 1837, John Tom was released from Barming by order of the Home Secretary, and committed to the care of his friend and supporter, George Francis of Fairbrook. Using Fairbrook as his base, Tom subsequently gathered a wide following among the labouring people of Boughton, Hernhill and Dunkirk. According the Charles Handley, vicar of Hernhill, Tom ‘represented the rich as the tyrants & oppressors of the poor, the two houses of Parliament worse than useless, the clergy of the Church as well as the ministers of dissenting congregations, as the false prophets who led the people astray.’ But John Tom also claimed spiritual, magical and even divine powers, claiming that he could work miracles, make himself immune to gunfire, and appear in several places at once. In May of 1838 he told his followers that he was the incarnation of Jesus Christ, returned to earth to announce the Millennium and the impending Apocalypse, and they should follow him or die in a shower of fire from the sky. On the morning of May 31^st 1838, at Bossenden Farm, John Tom murdered Nicholas Mears, who was assisting his brother, the parish constable, in serving an arrest warrant upon him. He then led his followers on a tour of Hernhill and Boughton parishes, before returning to Bossenden Wood. In a clearing of the wood he and his men were surrounded by a detachment of the 45^th Foot, summoned from Canterbury by the local magistrates. Tom shot dead the leader of the soldiers, Lieutenant Henry Boswell Bennett, and in the ensuing action was himself killed, along with eight of his followers. Another subsequently died of his wounds, and scores were wounded or captured by the troops. John Tom’s corpse was exhibited to the public in the stable of the Red Lion pub, and the place of his death soon became a site for relic hunters. He was dissected in an upper room of the Red Lion, his heart and brain removed, and his body returned to the stable. Several days later he was taken for burial at Hernhill, in a shallow grave in an unmarked plot. He was 38 years old at the time of his death.

Ian Breckon, December 2025