When was the last battle fought on English soil? The traditional answer, still sanctioned by Wikipedia, is Sedgemoor, in 1685, when the Duke of Monmouth’s rebellion was defeated and more than 1,000 combatants were killed. But there are other candidates, such as the Jacobite encounters at Preston and Clifton Moor in 1715 and 1745, reminders that English history didn’t end in everlasting peaceful compromise with the Glorious Revolution of 1688. The subject of Ian Breckon’s book was killed at yet another last battle, at Bossenden Wood in Kent, in 1838.

It wasn’t a pitched battle like Sedgemoor, and only 11 people died, nine on the day and two later of their wounds. But both sides were armed, and one at least was a regular force, a detachment of the 45th Foot (Nottinghamshire Regiment), only recently returned from Burma and India, though the latest recruits had joined from Ireland, having travelled to Kent for seasonal work.

The group these soldiers confronted, however, were homegrown insurgents, not colonial ones. They were led by a Cornishman, John Nicholls Tom, but that was not the name he went under. Tom claimed to be Sir William Courtenay, the rightful heir to the Earldom of Devon. (There was a real Sir William, but he was overseas.) In the previous weeks, he had also claimed to be the Messiah.

The story Breckon tells begins in carnival spirit as Tom arrives in Canterbury in 1832, where he initially adopts yet another persona, that of Count Moses Rothschild, attracting attention by his flamboyant dress........

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