convince them, pointed to certain punctures in his hands, as those
inflicted by the nails of the cross, and to a scar on his side, as the
wound which had discharged blood and water. By these representations
he succeeded in attaching nearly a hundred people to himself.

On the 28th of May he set out at the head of his tatterdemalion band
from the village of Boughton, and proceeded to Fairbrook. Here a pole
was procured, and a flag of white and blue, representing a rampant
lion, was raised as the banner which was to lead them to victory.
From Fairbrook they marched in a kind of triumphal procession round
the neighbouring district, until a farmer of Bossenden, provoked by
having his men seduced from their employment by Thom's oratory, made
an application for his apprehension. A local constable named Mears,
assisted by two others, proceeded to arrest the crazy impostor. After
a brief parley, Thom asked which was the constable; and on being
informed by Mears that he held that position, produced a pistol, and
shot the unoffending representative of the law, afterwards stabbing
him with a dagger. The wounds were almost immediately fatal, and the
body was tossed into a ditch. The remaining constables fled to the
magistrates who had authorised them to make the capture, and reported
the state of affairs. When the intelligence of Mears's death spread
abroad, the general indignation and excitement was very great, and a
messenger was despatched to fetch some soldiers from Canterbury. A
military party soon arrived, but their approach had been heralded to
Thom and his strolling vagrants, who had betaken themselves to the
recesses of Bossenden wood, where the _soi-disant_ Sir William, by his
wild gesticulations and harangues, roused his adherents to a pitch of
desperate fury. To show his own valour, as soon as the soldiers, who
were intended rather to overawe than injure the mob appeared, he
strode out from among his ignorant attendants, and deliberately shot