Mad Tom's Rising

A talk traces the strange rise of a Kent labourer who declared himself the reincarnation of Christ, leading an uprising that ended in toil and blood at Bossenden Wood, in what is still reckoned the last pitched battle fought on English soil. It is a peculiar corner of history that deserves far more attention than it gets, proof that millenarian delusion once turned quiet Kentish woodland into a real battlefield rather than a footnote.