Welcome back to the home of the oxymoron. Evil genius. He asked the newspaper to print his obituary early so he'd enjoy it. That's like hiding at your own funeral. Yeah, it's a big, great gig. I'm Russell Kane. Join me to weigh in on whether the biggest players in history are more evil or genius. Becoming that rich, I'd say that at some level of genius. It also helps that it's a long time ago, right?

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Hello, everyone.

On January the 13th, 1567, a man was brought to trial at the London City Courts.

His name was Nicholas Blunt, but he was also known as Nicholas Jennings. Tall, handsome, well-spoken,

Blunt was accused of being a counterfeet crank.

In other words, a conman who went around pretending to be an epileptic beggar.

He would wander around the damp, cold streets of London in a tattered leather jerkin, crusty

with dirt. He topped up the mud and dirt regularly, probably not a very difficult

thing to do in Elizabeth in London. At night, however, he would return to the comfortable

suburban home he kept with his wife, change into perfectly good clothes, and sit down for dinner

like any other respectable man of the middling classes. The court records

accuse Blunt that apparently in one day in 1566, he collected 13 shillings and three and

half pence. Now that doesn't sound like much, but in today's currency, that's about 115 pounds,

about 20 times the daily wage of an Elizabethan labourer.

From the court records of the trial, we know that Blunt was ordered to be tied naked to a cart

and whipped through all the marketplaces of London. And a picture of him in his disguise as the counterfeet crank was displayed upon a long pole.

He was then put to hard labour at Bridewell.

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