Mad Tom's Rising: The Revolutionary Mystic Sir William Courtenay and the Last Battle Fought on English Soil

A story of faith, fanaticism, and the uncanny power of the imagination.


The dawn of the Victorian era: the world is changing rapidly. Poverty and the workhouse cast long shadows across rural England, and a traditional way of life is coming to an end.


In the villages and fields of Kent, the discontented find an unlikely champion in John Nicholls Tom. Calling himself 'Sir William Courtenay', he appears to the local magistrates and gentry as a madman, a charlatan, or a dangerous radical. But f...