Page:The Laboring Classes of England.djvu/52

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46
IGNORANCE AND SUPERSTITION IN KENT.

height about six feet, his features were regular and beautiful, a broad, fair forehead, aquiline nose, small mouth, and full, round chin. The only defect was a somewhat short neck. He possessed uncommon personal strength.

Some curious significations of the enthusiam he had excited were afterwards observed in the shape of scribblings on the walls of a barn, which I copy verbatim. "If you new he was on earth, your harts Wod turn." "But don't Wate too late." On the side of a barn door was the following:—"O that great day of judgment is close at hand." "It now peps in the door every man according to his works;" "our rites and liberties We Will have."

On Monday, the 28th of May, the frenzy of Thorns and his followers seems to have reached its height. With twenty to thirty persons, in a kind of military order, he went about for three days among the farm houses and villages in the vicinity of Canterbury, receiving and paying for refreshments. One woman sent her son to him, with a "mother's blessing," as to join in some great and laudable work. He proclaimed a great meeting for the ensuing Sunday, which he said was to be "a glorious but bloody day."

At one of the places where he ordered provisions for his followers, it was in these words, "feed my sheep." On another occasion he went away from his followers with a man of the name of Wills, and two other of the rioters, saying to them, "Do you stay here, whilst I go yonder," pointing to a bean stack, "and strike the blow."

When they arrived at the stack, to which they marched with a flag, the flag bearer laid his flag on the ground, and knelt down to pray. The other then put in a lighted match, which Thorns seized and forbade it to burn. This