"I'd give," quoth he, "my rank and state,
My wealth that poor men call so great,
Could I but have that fisherman's joys,
His happy home and his girls and boys,
By the wild waves plashing cheerily.

OLD STORIES RE-TOLD.

JOHN THOM, ALIAS SIR WILLIAM COURTENAY,
KNIGHT OF MALTA, AND KING OF JERUSALEM.

IN 1833 a person who represented himself
as Sir William Courtenay, a Knight of Malta,
came to Canterbury and put up at the Rose
Inn. This eccentric person was to be seen
daily in the cathedral and in the public
garden called the Dane John. He asserted
himself as one of the "lions" of the fine
old city. He could be seen this hour
listening to the verger's narrative of Blue
Dick's enormities, of, how he rattled down
Becket's "glassy bones" from the cathedral
windows; the next, examining, with wild eye,
Beowulf's cup of twisted glass in the museum
in Guildhall-street. The wildest rumours were
current concerning him. Sir William Courtenay
was, in fact, a half-crazed fanatic from Truro,
whom some accidental vagary led to sow mischief
and misery in Kent. People of all ranks liked
to converse with him; he seemed at home in
the barber's shop or in the rich man's parlour.
Some thought him mad, and tapped their fore-
heads sarcastically when they spoke of him.
Others considered him winning, persuasive,
and very eloquent, especially upon religious
subjects or the wrongs and sufferings of the
poor. He was often met on the road to
Bossenden, or seen looking down from Boughton
Hill at the green sea of hop-fields dotted
with " oast " houses, the blue line of the
ocean, Pegwell way, speckled white with
sails, or the little grey cathedral, that from
there seemed no bigger than a lady's casket. The
wild district towards Faversham, called "the
Blean," once a forest, in which wild boars
abounded as late as the Reformation, seemed also
to have a special charm for this strange being.
Its chesnut woods and its then rough ignorant
debased population seemed to have a magnetic
influence that day after day drew him from the
old cathedral town. Men stopped their ploughs
in mid-furrow, the hop-pickers laughing over
their canvas troughs paused as the stranger with
the long grave face, like the Italian type of our
Saviour, passed by or harangued the half-savage
people about their grievances. He was always
amongst them. The turnip-hoers. the stone-
pickers, as they rose from their task for a
moment's rest, would often start (we are told) and
find this man standing beside them as if he had
suddenly risen out of the earth. All along the
Stour valley, in many a gable-ended farm-house
hidden up among clustering hops and wooded
hills, this man from Canterbury, with the supernatural
sort of face, was looked upon with reverence
and awe as a prophet sent by God to make
bread cheaper and to redress poor men's
wrongs.*

* Mr. Ainsworth, in a note to Rookwood (1834),.
quotes largely from a contemporaneous pamphlet
written on "Sir William Percy Honeywood Courtenay,
of Hales and Evrington-place, Kent, and of Powderham
Castle, Devon." It appears he entered Canterbury
wearing a purple cloak, and girt with a sword,
and attended by two pages in scarlet uniform. He
was remarkable for flowing black hair and a black
beard; his swarthy complexion was attributed to
his travels in Egypt and Syria. He sometimes wore
Italian and sometimes Oriental costume. He called
himself Lord Viscount Courtenay, or Count Rothschild;
in London he had been merely known as Mr.
Thompson. Though said to be very rich, he was
frugal, and at first seldom went outside the inn except
to chapel. During the election he wrote many
rhapsodies, and ended by challenging to mortal combat,
in defence of " the truth,'' Sir Thomas Tylden,
Sir Brook Brydges, Sir Edward Knatchbull, and Sir
William Cosway, as " four cowards unfit to represent
the brave men of Kent." He appeared on the
hustings in Oriental dress, and hired the theatre to
inveigh against tithes, taxation, and the new poor-law.

One Saturday morning the burgesses of
Canterbury discovered, as they supposed, a solution
of the secret of the mysterious stranger's visit.
The county paper contained an advertisement
from Sir William Courtenay, Knight of Malta,
offering himself as candidate for the city at the
coming election. The majority pronounced Sir
William to be a mystery, probably rich,
evidently religious, and ardent about popular
grievances. His canvassing went on with
extraordinary success; and the rival candidate grew
alarmed, in spite of the encouragement freely
given him by his own agents. The walls of
Canterbury were gay with election addresses,
when the tide suddenly turned, Sir William
was indicted for perjury: which it was alleged
he had committed in his over-zeal for a
party of smugglers on the Kentish coast,
whom he had thought to get off. He was
tried at Maidstone—under his real name
of Thom—for this offence, before amiable
Mr. Justice Parke, on the 25th of July,
1833, found guilty of deliberate false testimony,
and sentenced to imprisonment and transportation;
being proved, however, to be insane, his
sentence was commuted, and he was confined in
the lunatic asylum at Barning Heath. Confinement,
if it do not cure a madman, often
intensifies his disease. A monomaniac especially
feels the sudden loss of his liberty and the
violent proclamation of the fact of his aberration.
Moping, gibing, crazy faces surround
him and claim him as one of them. His dream
of an ideal heaven on earth, of revenge, love,
invention, or wealth, is now barred from him, it
seems, for ever. The mad world outside has
leagued against him in their rage and despair
at his true—intensely true—theories. It is hell
on earth,, to be thrown among mad people,
as Daniel was among lions. All is darkness
and blood around him—a darkness palpable,
terrible, and teeming with life: as water under