The story idea came from legendary coastal smuggling in the 18th century around well-known Romney Marsh,[5] where brandy and tobacco were brought in at night by boat from France to avoid the tax.
Christopher Syn, born 1729, is portrayed as a brilliant scholar from Queen's College, Oxford, possessing swashbuckling skills such as riding, fencing, and seamanship.
Christopher Syn set out on a quest for revenge, always managing to reach the eloped pair's destinations ahead of them just in time to terrify them against landing and facing him in a deliberate campaign of terror.
Mipps then joined Syn in his quest for revenge, pursuing Tappitt and Imogene throughout the thirteen American colonies of British America (supposedly preaching the gospel to the Indians) and around the world (as part of a whaling voyage) afterwards.
Afterwards, realizing that Clegg had become too notorious, Syn decided to abandon his quest and return to England, and Mipps set up a second "accidental" explosion to destroy the Imogene and her crew.
Syn accepted and settled down to a more respectable life as the vicar of Dymchurch and Dean of Peculiars in Romney Marsh, Kent, resuming his original name.
Shortly after the first appearances of the Scarecrow, Nicholas Tappitt (using the name "Colonel Delacourt") and the ailing Imogene returned to England, ending up in Dymchurch.
[8] The Scarecrow of Romney Marsh (1963) was produced for the Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color weekly TV series on Sunday evenings on the National Broadcasting Company (NBC-TV network).
It stars British actor Patrick McGoohan in the title role of the meek, mild, intellectual country priest / vicar of "Doctor Syn", with George Cole as Mipps and Australian actor Sean Scully, as young John Banks, the younger son of nearby country estate nobleman, Squire Thomas Banks (Michael Hordern).
Dr Syn's fictional Dymchurch parish church in the production, and the Disney studio funded the additional repair of the building to use it as a filming location.
[9] Part One dealt with the arrival of General Pugh (Geoffrey Keen), who had been ordered by the British Royal government's War Office in London, to smash the smuggling ring along that part of the marshy coast of the North Sea and English Channel, of Kent and Sussex in southeastern England, and prevent the Scarecrow from rescuing a Dymchurch man captured by a Royal Navy press gang (drafting / shanghaiing unlucky merchant ships seamen out on the town as forced recruits/sailors on British warships in port), as bait to trap the infamous smuggler gang leader Scarecrow.
Part Three showed how the Scarecrow rescued Harry Banks (David Buck) and American colonialist Simon Bates (Tony Britton) from British Army General Pugh's (Geoffrey Keen), clutches in Dover Castle.
Retitled as Dr Syn, Alias the Scarecrow, the British theatrical version was released on a double bill with the animated The Sword in the Stone a children's historical film about legendary young King Arthur.
In the following decade of the 1970s, the Scarecrow of Romney Marsh production was re-edited again for its first American theatrical release by the Disney studios, on double bills with both the four-decade old classic of 1937 of the color animated Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs old feature film and also Treasure Island (1950, starring Robert Newton, of author Robert Louis Stevenson's classic sea-faring treasure hunt saga to a distant island, in the original novel published 1883.
The VHS format of video cassette tape release of the 1980s, sharing the removal of the emeScarecrow's laugh from Terry Gilkyson's memorable title theme song, was expanded to include the story material from all three original broadcast NBC television episodes, while retaining the feature film structure and credits; it was available for a relatively short amount of time.
Shortly after the theatrical run in the United States, it was re-edited once more for a two-part presentation and rebroadcast on Disney's television series a decade later in the 1970s, simply omitting the middle episode.
The original three-part series was first shown as part of Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color on three successive Sunday evenings on 9, 16 and 23 February 1964.
On 11 November 2008 The Walt Disney Company released a limited pressing of 39,500 copies of The Scarecrow of Romney Marsh on the DVD format of video disc for the first time, in a collector's metal tin case.
In October 2019, the recently established Disney Movie Club released it on the superior Blu-ray format, this time entitling it as The Scarecrow of Romney Marsh.
The cast featured Daniel Thorndike (the author's son), Michael Fields, Steven Povey and Ben Barton, along with various amateurs from the area.
BBC Radio 7 broadcast the six-part series, an abridged reading by Rufus Sewell of the original Doctor Syn novel, from 4–11 January 2010.
A three-issue adaptation of the Disney production was published by Gold Key Comics under the Scarecrow of Romney Marsh title, spanning April 1964 through October 1965.
Disney Adventures would also produce a crossover story with the Pirates of the Caribbean film franchise, where coincidentally the meek, mild intellectual country priest / vicar "Dr. Syn" (secretly infamous English smuggler gang leader and rebel in the Scarecrow of Romney Marsh), meets up with Captain Jack Sparrow.