Lieutenant Bennett advanced and called upon them to surrender, but Courtenay, raising his pistol, shot him dead, and his men leapt out from the woods furiously, armed only with cudgels and fanaticism, to attack the soldiers. One volley, however, stretched many dying, or bleeding from severe wounds, upon the ground, and Courtenay himself fell mortally wounded, exclaiming, “I have Jesus in my heart.”
Thirteen people in all were killed in this affray: Mears the constable, Lieutenant Bennett, and Courtenay; eight “rioters” dying on the spot, and two others afterwards succumbing to their wounds. Many more were crippled for life. Twenty-three were committed to gaol: some transported across the seas, and others sentenced to short terms of imprisonment at home. Some of the men were buried in Boughton Churchyard, others at Hernhill, three miles away, overlooking the rich land that slopes towards the sea. Here Courtenay was buried, but the graves of himself and his men are unmarked by stone or mound. The fanaticism of the peasantry was not altogether extinguished by this dreadful ending, and the tale is told, on excellent authority, of a woman drawing water from a well and walking half a mile with it to moisten the lips of the dead leader, who had said that, should he fall, a drop of water applied to his mouth would restore him from death to life. The barbarous expedients of keeping his body in a shed of the “Red Lion” at Dunkirk until corruption had set in, and of omitting the resurrection clause from the Burial Service were resorted to, lest the country folk should persist in their belief of his divinity.
Thus ended the so-called “Courtenay Rebellion” of 1838. When he was dead, it became generally known that “Sir William Courtenay” was really but John Nichols Thom, the son of a Cornish innkeeper and farmer. Always a clever and handsome lad, he had grown up still more handsome, but with a religious enthusiasm and a romantic imagination inherited from his mother. He was for a time employed at Truro, but disappeared for some years until his strange descent upon Canterbury in 1832.
The “Red Lion,” where the bodies of the dead were laid out, stands by the roadside at Dunkirk, and a cart-road on the hither side of it, to the left hand, made long after this extraordinary affair, and called “Courtenay Road,” leads down to the still wild and thickly grown woods of hazel, alder, and miscellaneous scrub in which Bossenden Woods are situated. A gate—“Courtenay Gate”—stands by the scene of the struggle, but the trees marked at the time by the rustics in memory of Courtenay and his men, are not now to be discovered. The villagers still bear him in memory, and truly he deserves to be kept in mind, for though as “Sir William Courtenay” he was an impostor, yet he truly loved the people, and his naturally highly-strung mental organization, completely unstrung by an unnecessary imprisonment, was responsible for his religious pretensions and his blasphemous impersonation towards the end. Worse men than he are honoured in history and in public monuments, and it seems a pity that a childish spite should have hidden his grave and the graves of the poor fellows who fell that day. The pilgrim who takes an interest in these strange events, happening in this century, and in the reign of Queen Victoria, and who happens to visit the secluded village of Hernhill, may look for the site of “Sir William Courtenay’s” resting-place beside the path where a yew-tree spreads a shade over the west entrance to the village church.
His death did good. The Government ordered a Commission to sit and inquire into the state of things that produced these events, and it appeared that the district was Godless and ignorant, a fit ground for fanaticism to spring up in and flourish. Schools were built, and the church of Dunkirk owes its existence to Courtenay’s Rebellion. The superstitious countrymen who say the foundations of the building gave way several times before the walls could be commenced properly, declare that his ghost haunted the place. But, whatever else these doings teach, they teach us that a spirit of selfishness, of neglect, both on the part of Church and State, brings its inevitable retribution. The punishment fell then on these ignorant hinds; what should be the punishment in the hereafter of those who were morally responsible for the shedding of their blood?
XXXIII
DUNKIRK
Dunkirk was anciently a common in the Forest of Blean, and was a veritable Alsatia, the resort of lawless men who squatted here because it was not within any known jurisdiction. Hasted, in his History of Kent, says houses were built here and “inhabited by low persons of suspicious character, this being a place exempt from the jurisdiction of either hundred or parish, as in a free port, which receives all who enter it, without distinction. The whole district from hence gained the name of ‘Dunkirk.’” This part of the road, being in neither hundred or parish, was neglected and left in a ruinous state until nearly the close of the eighteenth century.
At Dunkirk, on passing the “Gate” inn, with its sign of a five-barred field-gate hanging over the road, the traveller obtains his first glimpse of Canterbury Cathedral, the Bell Harry tower rising grey above the green valley of the Stour. Now the road goes downwards towards Harbledown in a succession of switchback ups and downs that, noticeable enough for remark even at this lapse of time, must have been much more marked in Chaucer’s day. Here the pilgrims would see the Cathedral faintly from the crest of a hillock, losing it for a few minutes as they rode or tramped down the succeeding declivity, and regaining it on the next hill; until, coming to Harbledown, its majesty burst upon them in an uninterrupted view. The striking characteristics of the road here were noted by Chaucer himself, who, indeed, does not mention Harbledown by name; the description is alone sufficient to identify the place:—