“SIR WILLIAM COURTENAY.”
From an old print.
Matters came to a crisis toward the end of May. Courtenay had marched the country round with agricultural labourers and others who had left their work in the fields to follow the Lord, and the farmers who thus saw their fields remaining untilled grew anxious. One, bolder than the rest, applied to the magistrate for the detention of his men who had thus left their employment; and, with a local constable named Mears and two others, he came up with Courtenay’s band on the morning of May 31st.
BATTLE OF BOSSENDEN
Ever since the 28th of that month, Courtenay had been tramping the roads and lanes with a band of about one hundred rustics. Starting from Boughton on that day, they had bought bread, and, placing half a loaf on a pole, above a blue-and-white flag bearing a lion rampant, had marched through Goodnestone, Hernhill, and Dargate Common, where they all fell down on their knees while Courtenay prayed. Then they proceeded to Bossenden Farm, where they supped and slept in a barn. Leaving Bossenden at three o’clock the next morning, their leader took them to Sittingbourne, where he procured breakfast for the whole party at a cost of 25s. The rest of the day was spent in parading the country round Boughton, and the next evening was spent again at Bossenden Farm. The following morning, Mears the constable, with his party of three, came up with them in a meadow, and demanded the surrender of the farmers’ men. The men refused to leave, and Courtenay shot the constable dead on the spot. Alarmed at this, the others rode off hastily to Canterbury for military assistance, while Courtenay administered the sacrament to his men in bread-and-water. All knelt down and worshipped him, and a farmer, one Alexander Foad, kneeling, asked “should he follow him in body or in heart?” “In the body,” replied Courtenay; whereupon Foad sprang up, exclaiming, “Oh! be joyful, be joyful! The Saviour has accepted me. Go on, go on, I’ll follow thee till I drop!”
“COURTENAY.”
From an old print.
When the terrified three reached Canterbury, they secured the aid of a company of the Forty-fifth Regiment. A young officer, Lieutenant Bennett, staying with friends in the city, volunteered to go with them. Coming to Bossenden, they found Courtenay and his hundred followers strongly posted amid alder-bushes in a deep and sequestered part of Bossenden Wood. Courtenay exhorted his people to behave like men. “God,” he said, “would protect him and them. Should he fall, he would infallibly rise again in greater glory than now; and wounds for his sake would be accounted for righteousness.”
DEATH OF “COURTENAY”