He constantly promises bread, meat, and
beer to all who will follow him.

One of the men seeing the pole, says
exultingly:

"Here's bread before us."

Courtenay: "Yes, there is."

Another one cries: "We'll follow that."

Courtenay: " Yes, follow that, and I'll ensure
you more bread. I'll give you more." He then
cried: "This is the 29th of May; I will have
a jubilee; and any of you men who have no
work to do, and like to go with me, I'll fill your
bellies, and ensure you that nothing shall go
wrong. This is the glorious 29th of May,
and people shall have better cause to remember
it than they ever had of remembering King
Charles. The poor have been imposed on long
enough."

Then, turning to Alfred Payne, a harness-
maker who had come from Canterbury urged
by curiosity, he broke into full insanity, not
caring any longer to conceal it. At this time
he had a bugle slung at his waist, and three of
his men carried three suspicious-looking bags,
probably containing arms.

"I am not a mere earthly man," he
shouted. " I fell from the clouds, and nobody
knows where I come from. I tell you, I can
place my left hand on the muscle of my right
arm, slay ten thousand men, then vanish and
no one know whither I am gone."

A gentleman named Francis, dressed in black,
being just then seen passing over a field in the
distance, Courtenay said: " There goes one
who wants stopping; he wants to know what
we are about, out he is ashamed to come and
show his face. He wants to know who wrote
certain papers; he will know some day, but lie
won't live to tell." After this he told the men
to fall in threes, and having sounded a trumpet,
he said: " That voice was heard at Jerusalem,
where there are ten thousand men ready to
start at my command."

On reaching the Horse-shoe public-house, the
madman said to his lieutenant, Tyler:

"Tommy, you go up to Gravening Church,
and tell the people to stop there for their
shepherd, till I come."

Courtenay and his four chief converts then
left the band; on their return, Courteuay
produced a pistol and fired it in the road; then
reloaded it. The next march was to Watcham,
where they entered the house of a man named
Hadlow.

While Tyler said, " Sir William, I heard a
man say the other night that you were a fool
and a madman, and that he should not mind
help taking you;" Courtenay said, " If any
one comes to take me now, I am at leisure;
but if they do come, I will try my arm. I
have done nothing wrong, nor mean to. I
came out for a day's pleasure to give these
men bread. If they do come, I'll cut them
down like grass. I'm sure that I could blow
out the snuff of that candle as long as the pistol
would allow." He had previously cried out
incoherently:

"Now I am going to strike the bloody blow;
the streets shall flow with blood as they have
hitherto done with water, and the rich and poor
who do not follow me shall share the fate of it."
(Of what?)

After this, the revolutionary army of the
Kentish Mahomet marched on Goodneston,
where a charge from two or three of Sir Brook
Brydges's grooms could have dispersed them.
The excitement was spreading towards
Faversham. There were already rumours that the
rioters had threatened to fire the stacks at Herne
Hill. Courtenay demanded food for his friends,
and it was given them at once: rather from fear
than good will. At Dargate Common, the fanatic,
getting every moment more assured of his own
supernatural power, took off his shoes, and
said:

"I now stand on my own bottom."

The party then went to prayers at Sir
William's request, and then returned to Bossenden
Farm, to sup there and to sleep in the barn.
Gorham, watchful constable, prowling that
night about Bossenden Farm, saw Courtenay
about one o'clock come up from Calvert's house
carrying a drawn sword, and wander restlessly
about the meadows. At about two o'clock he
came out of the yard, dressed in a hat and
shepherd's frock, with a gaberdine on and a
belt round his waist. Thirty or forty men
followed him across the London road to Broughton-
lane. They stopped at Branchett's house,
knocked on the shutter, and cried:

"Halloa! Branchett, do you see it smoke?"

They then went to Sittingbourne (the old
halting-place for pilgrims to Canterbury) and
towards Sheerness; Sir William spent twenty-
five shillings on a breakfast for his men, about
whose food he took a jealous care. He fed them
again at the George, at Newnham. At Eastling,
Throwley, Lees, and Selling, he addressed
the people, and held out to them hopes of
some mysterious change, fatal to all who should
dare to oppose it. They halted once in a chalk-
pit to rest, and at night returned again to Calvert's
farm, at Bossenden, to sleep.

In the mean time, Mr. Curtis, a perfectly
practical and prosaic farmer who liad never
tried to see angels in the sun, and had never
been shut up in lunatic asylums by perfectly
mad keepers, having had his sowing and ploughing
stopped by Sir William's leading away his
men, had formally gone and applied for a warrant
for their apprehension. Two constables named
Mears, and a man named Edwards, having got a
warrant from Doctor Poore, went to Bossenden
House about half-past four on Thursday morning.
The constables thought to trap the rioters
asleep. But the fanatics were expecting the
constables. At twenty yards from the house,
Price and several other men, armed with clubs,
shouted out that the constables were coming
to alarm their leader. A voice replied from the
house:

"Is that them?"

A moment afterwards Courtenay came up
and asked if they were the constables? The
men replied they were. Courtenay instantly
fired and shot one of the Mears, who fell