The Audacious Crimes of Colonel Blood

by Robert Hutchinson

  As a result of this strategy meeting, two rebel agents were dispatched to Scotland ‘to revive their party there’. Moore also travelled to Ireland, ‘and having shaven his head, now wears a great bushy periwig66 and is gone into the borders of Munster. From thence, [he] is to go . . . to the Scots of Ulster to incite them into new rebellions’, Orrery reported to Arlington:

  I have sent some trusty spies after him, who, I hope, may apprehend him. They have had lately numerous meetings in [Dublin] at the house of Capt. Sands and at the house of one Mr Price where they rail bitterly against his majesty’s authority and particularly against my lord lieutenant and myself by name.

  They promise their party great things after Christmas.67

  In February 1666, another of Orrery’s spies reported that Blood could be found at the home of his old associate, Colonel Gibby Carr, ‘in the north of Ireland or at his wife’s, near Dublin’. They planned to seize the city of Limerick in the province of Munster. Now came news that the Liverpool meeting of the ‘fanatics’ had delayed any general uprising until the Royal Navy were busy fighting the Dutch (in the Second Anglo-Dutch War) and the government was distracted by this foreign threat.68 They claimed to have 10,000 cavalrymen on call but would march to Scotland ‘in small numbers’.69 Orrery informed Ormond that Blood and a man called George Aires were living under assumed names and ‘may be caught, if care is used, going out of the house of one Cock or Cooke, a brewer at the Coombe in [south] Dublin’.70 He suggested watching the brewer’s house ‘by some who know their faces well. Otherwise they may escape the search.’71

  He enclosed an extraordinary two-and-a-half-page letter which seems to have been written by Dame Dorcas Lane, wife of the Irish Secretary Sir George Lane, to her husband about an admission made to her by a conspirator regarding ‘a damnable plot which has been hatching this year or two against his majesty and all the nobility of the three nations’. All the castles and fortresses in Ireland would be surprised and all those who resisted ‘would be put to the sword’. It had been postponed from New Year’s Day but ‘is very soon to be put into execution’. Her informant had ‘laid out a sum of money to the promoting of this devilish design’ and they ‘had corrupted the most part of all the soldiers that are in any strongholds’ – including Dublin Castle, which had cost them ‘many a piece of gold’. He made Dame Dorcas swear a sacred oath to keep secret what she had heard.

  When this man told me first of the business, truly I thought he was mad or drunk . . . that he should tell a silly woman a business of that great weight and therefore I thought little of it.

  But a day or two after . . . he came here again . . . [and] implored me with fresh protestations to keep his counsel.

  I [appeared] to like his design on purpose to sift him as well as I could, but I could not get from him the names of any of the plotters.

  For all my oath, my conscience tells me I ought not to keep secret so damnable a design that threatened the death of so many innocent souls and knowing that the Great God of Heaven forced him to discover this business to me, [I ought] not to conceal it.

  Dame Dorcas was only too well aware that she held her informant’s life in her hands: ‘it is not fit that I should, by the discovery of the plot, be the cause of his death’. After all, she had only been told of its existence so that she could ‘provide for the safety of me and mine’. She told her husband:

  I beg that my name may not be mentioned but that you will pretend that he heard this from some other source.

  I forget to tell you that their pretences are for liberty and religion but I am sure [that] murder and treason never came from God.

  They do believe that God has [had] a hand in it since they have not been discovered all this while.72

  Perhaps finding counter-intelligence operations in Ireland too efficient, Blood returned to England. He had other important business to transact, seemingly to further the nonconformist cause. Under the alias of Morton,73 Blood landed in the United Provinces of the Netherlands in March 1666, accompanied by the Fifth Monarchist John Lockyer, en route for a meeting with the old parliamentary cavalry commander Edmund Ludlow, who was innocently engaged in writing his memoirs, safely exiled among the sympathetic Swiss in Lausanne under the name ‘Edward Phillips’ – a pseudonym based on a variation of his mother’s maiden name.74

  The aim was to escort Ludlow to Paris, together with the fugitive regicide Algernon Sidney, to negotiate substantial funding from the French and their Dutch allies for yet another uprising in England. Unfortunately, Blood and Lockyer were arrested as suspected English spies by the Dutch in Zeeland, as they possessed no passports or other means of identity.75 However, they managed to talk their way out of detention, assisted by another exiled regicide John Phelps, who was making one of his periodic visits to the Netherlands from his home in Switzerland.76

  Therein lies a mystery. Joseph Williamson’s address book, covering the period 1663–7 and containing more than 150 names, includes a frustratingly vague entry concerning correspondence with a ‘Mr T.B.’ in Zeeland77 who was writing letters from Holland to a ‘Thomas Harris’ in London – one of the cover names then used for the secretary of state’s office in Whitehall. Was this spy Thomas Blood? Had he become a double agent working for the government? Was he now involved in a covert operation to persuade Ludlow to move from the safety of Switzerland so he could be assassinated, or at least kidnapped and brought to trial in England? Some kind of subterfuge was patently under way, else why did Blood feel the need to use an alias when he was ostensibly amongst friends? There are more questions than answers – not surprising, given the elusive, enigmatic figure of Thomas Blood. The evidence is not wholly conclusive, but it may go some way to explaining why he so miraculously escaped capture so often and his later generous treatment by Charles II and his government after the most outrageous of his adventures.78

  Yet, at the same time, matters very damaging to Blood were being decided in Dublin. On 2 April 1666, Ormond sent a draft grant of lands to London ‘in favour of Captain Toby Barnes who served King Charles I and the present king in Ireland and abroad’.79 Those lands were Blood’s remaining property, which had been forfeited to the crown since he was declared a traitor. Nine days later Charles II wrote back to Dublin, signifying his assent:

  In remembrance of Sir Toby’s service . . . we direct you to take steps for granting him, under the Great Seal, a lease at such rent and or a term as you think fit of the town and lands of Sarney, Braystown and Foylestown in the barony of Dunboyne, Co. Meath and five hundred acres of unprofitable mountain at Glenmalure, alias The Glinns, Co. Wicklow, formerly belonging to Thomas Blood of Sarney, lately attainted of high treason.80

  This was hardly a sensible action to preserve the loyalty of a double agent. Or was it a case of purely bad timing and bureaucratic ineptitude – or, indeed, a method to preserve and enhance Blood’s reputation within insurgent circles?

  Certainly Blood, or Morton, failed in his mission to escort Ludlow to Paris. The parliamentary general was not impressed by Blood when he and John Phelps talked to him in Lausanne and anyway he was wary of travelling as he had heard of ‘several persons sent out of England to destroy the friends wheresoever they may be met with’, according to his intercepted letter.81 Doubtless the assassination of the regicide John Lisle by three Royalist agents in a churchyard at Lausanne almost two years before was also still fresh in his memory. Nor did Ludlow trust the Dutch, pointing to the arrest of the three regicides Miles Corbet, John Barkstead and John Okey in the Netherlands by Sir George Downing, the English ambassador there, in 1661.82 This, said Ludlow, was ‘an act of treachery and bloodguilt’ for which the Dutch should repent ‘before God’s servants could join with them’.

  After much ‘heart-searching’, Ludlow refused to budge from the anonymous safety of Switzerland. Blood was equally unimpressed by the republican hero, believing him ‘very unable for such an employment’ and much more interested in ‘writing a history as he called it’.83
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  Meanwhile Arlington, focusing on the problems of the naval war against the Dutch, was slow off the mark to appreciate the dangers of new unrest in Ireland. He warned Ormond the following August that Blood ‘and other notorious conspirators would resort’ to Ireland, with the aim of spreading sedition throughout the ranks of the militia. ‘Some of my informers have offered to go to Ireland’, he added, but, perhaps believing that local knowledge paid the best dividends, declined to send them, unless Ormond specifically asked for assistance.84

  Williamson had received intelligence from one of his spies, Captain John Grice, a former parliamentary agent, who also reported that Blood and Captain Roger Jones (the infamous ‘Mene Teke’) had ‘gone to Ireland . . . to do mischief’.85 Grice had generously offered his services to arrest them, suggesting that a good man to detain would be the innkeeper of the Black Boy at Oxmantown, ‘who will know [of] any plot in Ireland’.86

  Although the adventurer had returned to London from Europe in the early summer of 1666,87 Orrery, attending the lord lieutenant on a progress through the province of Munster that September, was convinced of Blood’s permanent presence in Ireland. Accordingly, he had ‘put all the province on their guard in case of disturbance. Those who are in arms here are of one mind in their loyalty’, he assured Arlington.88

  One spy told Sir George Lane that ‘John Breten in Bride’s Alley [Dublin] a tobacco man [and] one Johnson, a shoemaker in St Patrick’s Street’ would know where the fugitives were.

  The man that keeps the Black Boy [tavern] in Oxmantown in [north] Dublin . . . [this] was the place where Blood lay. It had his horses or [he] caused them to be brought [to] him that morning that he made his escape from Dublin.

  The man’s name I have forgotten but you may find him out for his wife is blind.89

  Like the ‘Scarlet Pimpernel’ of another era, Blood was seemingly here, there and everywhere. He was accused of starting the Great Fire of London, which began about one o’clock in the morning of 2 September 1666 in the bakery of Thomas Farriner in Pudding Lane and went on to consume most of the medieval city before it burned out three days later.90 ‘Divers strangers, Dutch and French were during the fire apprehended upon suspicion that they contributed mischievously to it who are all imprisoned’, reported the London Gazette at the time.91 Much later, Israel Tonge, the unhinged confederate of the rabid anti-papist Titus Oates, suggested that Blood had a ‘share’ in starting the fire and claimed it was a ‘Popish-French Louvestin [Republican] plot, Blood being the agent for the latter’.92 Another culprit, named in a letter to Charles II, was Captain John Mason. These all proved to be idle allegations. Williamson published a memorandum which concluded that ‘after many examinations by . . . his majesty’s ministers, nothing has been found to argue [that] the fire in London [was] caused by other than the hand of God, a great wind and a very dry season’.93

  Amid the chaos and destruction caused by the Great Fire, Arlington reported to Sir George Lane on 6 September that Blood had been reported in Lancashire but had travelled to London and came near to arrest after the fire had broken out.94

  Five weeks later, Arlington had changed his mind about strengthening the intelligence network in Ireland, dispatching his own agents (Leving and later his fellow spy William Freer, or Fryer) to Dublin. Leving was armed with another letter of protection to show to the lord lieutenant: ‘The bearer of this letter is sent into Ireland to endeavour to take Blood and his conspirators. His true name is Ward but he goes by the name of Williams.’95 The spymaster was being cautious about the identity of his agent, using two separate aliases for Leving.

  It is particularly difficult for an agent to operate in the strange environment of a different country. Who you know, after all, is more important than what you know. Leving, however, managed to infiltrate the Presbyterian community in Ulster, delivering ‘information concerning Blood and other conspirators who are fled from Ireland’ to Ormond on 16 November.96 He and Freer spent ten weeks in Ireland before returning to England in December. Lev-ing’s last message from Ireland regretted that he had not detained Blood or ‘Mene Teke’ in Ireland. He had, however, met several of their acquaintances and had passed on the intelligence he had gained from them to Ormond.97

  Meanwhile, in Scotland, one Presbyterian rebellion had actually come to pass. Although seemingly unpremeditated – it was triggered on 13 November 1666 by soldiers bullying an old man in Dalry, Kirkcudbrightshire, about his unpaid fines for not attending authorised church services – there had been signs that an insurrection was already being planned. Four townsmen rescued the victim, shooting a corporal in the stomach and disarming four other soldiers. As feelings rose, 200 men rode to Dumfries and kidnapped Sir James Turner, the local military commander (still wearing his nightgown and feeling ‘indisposed’) and shamefully disarmed his two infantry companies, before throwing them into prison.98 From there, the rebellion escalated rapidly, with the rebel force growing to about 2000-strong. The rebels maintained steadfastly their loyalty to Charles II, yet demanded the end of episcopal rule in the Church in Scotland, a restoration of Presbyterianism and that deprived ministers should be returned their livings.99

  Three days later, the Scottish Privy Council mobilised its forces under Lieutenant General Thomas Dalziel. It was wary of support for the rebels from a ‘fifth column’ of collaborators, so in the Scottish capital of Edinburgh security was tightened at the gates, the night watch reinforced and the militia ordered to swear an oath of allegiance to the government in London.100 On the morning of 28 November, the rebels, depleted by desertion to just over 1,000, fought Dalziel’s troops at Rullion Green, seven miles (11.3 km) from Edinburgh. They defended a snow-covered hilltop position, and despite fighting desperately were defeated at sunset after three charges by government troops. About fifty rebels were killed and 120 captured in the night pursuit that followed.101 One of those killed was the minister Andrew McCormack, Blood’s fellow conspirator in the Dublin Castle plot.102

  Evidence for Blood’s involvement in the Pentland uprising is scant. Viscount Conway was told of his role there by Charles II himself soon after its defeat and Orrery also informed Ormond of Blood’s participation, based on information received from Arlington.103 An almost contemporary report from Sir Philip Musgrave, custos rotulorum of Westmorland, in April 1667 mentioned ‘one Blood, who was among the Scotch rebels last winter and in last year’s insurrection in Ireland’. He had been spotted in Westmoreland ‘at a rigid Anabaptist’s [house] with whom he corresponds’. More recent authorities maintain that he was present when the Presbyterian forces were routed but escaped unharmed.104 Strange then that Blood’s name does not appear on the government list naming the Scottish rebels’ leaders.

  Warrants for his arrest were issued in London on 19 January 1667105 and on 2 March – the latter granted to Leving, permitting him to seize Blood, Timothy Butler, Captain Lockyer and others together with ‘any instruments of war that may be in the places where they are seized’. The prisoners had to be brought to Arlington for interrogation if arrested in London or Westminster, ‘or in the country, before the nearest deputy lieutenant or justice of the peace’.106 But the bird had apparently flown from the capital. On 21 January, Grice reported Blood in his old stomping ground of Lancashire, living ‘about Warrington or Manchester’ under the name of ‘Allen’ or ‘Groves’. He planned to remain in the area until the end of February.107

  Blood had had enough. He decided to withdraw from the dangerous world of espionage. Casting around for a more ‘safe and quiet way to get a livelihood’ he made the bizarre decision to become a doctor, practising at Romford, Essex, under the assumed name of ‘Ayliff’. Without any medical qualifications, one wonders what became of his patients. His wife Mary and his eldest son, Thomas, were sent to live in an apothecary’s shop in Shoreditch, north of London, where they changed their name to Weston.108

  Aside from his own charlatan medical practice, Blood had suddenly become a law-abiding citizen.

&n
bsp; But his apothecary’s hat and gown were merely another cover to mask his true activities. His greatest adventures were yet before him.

  4

  A Friend in Need

  Two of the soldiers . . . singled [Blood] out and drove him into a courtyard where he made a stand, his sword in one hand and his pistol in the other.

  Remarks on the Life and Death of the fam’d Mr Blood1

  The government’s secret service was slowly but surely closing in on the devout conspirators. One of its spies, Captain William Leving, alias Leonard Williams, requested another warrant from Williamson on 28 February 1667 for the arrest of fifteen ringleaders of a new plot against the government. These included Colonel Henry Danvers, Captain John Lockyer, Timothy Butler, Ralph Alexander and Majors Blood and Lee. Our adventurer had promoted himself again.2 Every attempt to capture the revolutionaries failed, however.

  Espionage was never a very lucrative trade in the late seventeenth century. Though the work was, by definition, highly dangerous, the recompense was frequently less than generous. Moreover, the embryo intelligence service was sometimes slipshod in making the regular payments promised to its agents. Leving therefore always seemed painfully short of money.3 To bolster his uncertain income, he was compelled to become a part-time highwayman, initially in Leicestershire and then in the green hills and dales around Leeds, Yorkshire, partnered by his fellow informer, the equally impecunious William Freer.