Blood ‘rode all that night and lost his way’, his body and clothes ‘covered with blood and gore from top to toe’. He managed to find an unidentified friend’s house (presumably within thirty miles of Darrington and still in Yorkshire) where his gunshot wounds were treated by a local surgeon, who was undoubtedly well paid for his silence.25 There he ‘lay close’ to recuperate.26 Afterwards, Blood, true to form, disappeared from sight.
In London, John Betson, another government informer – and a crony of Leving – believed he could organise the arrests of ‘some of Mason’s friends’. He had lined up a potential traitor within the Presbyterian dissident community, but warned that ‘he wants money’.
Betson had blotted his copybook with Arlington when he complained, a few weeks earlier, about the ungenerous £10 of secret service cash he had received as a reward for the role he played in Mason’s earlier detention. ‘I will be satisfied with £40 and your lordship’s favour’, he had told the spymaster smugly.27 Now the informer sought an urgent meeting with Arlington. ‘I will wait upon your lordship this morning and desire that you will not be in a passion against me’, though he added meekly, ‘I justly deserve it. I would rather die than offend again.’28 He also sought the king’s pardon for past crimes and misdemeanours.
The government published another proclamation for the arrest of Blood on 8 August, offering £100 for his capture, that of his accomplices, and of Mason.
Whereas we have been informed that John Lockyer, Timothy Butler and Thomas Blood (commonly called Captain Blood) with several other persons did lately in a most riotous and rebellious manner, at Darrington, near Wentbridge in the county of York, violently set upon and assault the guard entrusted with the care of conducting one John Mason, a prisoner for treason, from Our Tower of London to Our City of York in order to [stand] his trial there.
[They] having killed [sic] and desperately wounded several of the guard and others, did rescue and carry away the said Mason and do lurk in secret places and not submit themselves to justice.
The lord lieutenants of the English counties, justices of the peace, mayors, bailiffs and subjects were ‘straightly charged’ to be diligent and ‘use their best endeavours to search for and apprehend’ these fugitives ‘in all places whatsoever’. Those who concealed or harboured them would be ‘proceeded against with all severity’.29
Meanwhile, Leving at least had received a blanket reprieve on 31 July, ‘if found guilty only of felony’.30 He was back in York Castle, still scared about his day in court as a witness. As a last resort, he wrote to Robert Benson, the clerk of York assizes, asking to be ‘excused [from] witnessing anything against Jones, Atkinson or Joplin [as] they are men I have nothing to say against, having been very little concerned with them’. Leving used his good service as one of the government’s informers to justify his request, emphasising: ‘During my compliance [association] with the fanatics, I was always faithful to them and after my eyes were opened, I knew better and his majesty was graciously pleased to pardon and employ me.’31
It was the last letter written by a man who was always terrified that one day those whom he had betrayed to Charles II’s secret service would find him and wreak their bloody vengeance.
That day of retribution had finally arrived. Scribbled on the front of Leving’s one-page letter was a note declaring it was found on the dead body of the writer on 5 August. Leving had been tracked down and poisoned within the supposed security of York Castle. He was quickly and quietly buried in one of the city’s cemeteries.
Who was his murderer?32 Superficially, Thomas Blood appears the prime suspect. He had recognised Leving during the skirmish at Darrington and must have guessed that he was on his way to bear witness against his fellow would-be rebels at York. He must also have grasped that Leving had identified him and his accomplices Lockyer and Butler during Mason’s rescue and would pass on this information to the authorities in an attempt to ingratiate himself. Blood therefore had ample reason to be motivated by revenge and, because he was still in Yorkshire (within reach of York Castle), he might have had the opportunity to administer the poison, using one of his many disguises. His experience as a sham apothecary might also have provided the knowledge about which poison to employ, if not the means.
Revenge, as we will see, was always a powerful, insistent driver in Blood’s actions, goading him into committing ever more audacious crimes and outrages. Yet somehow, his direct involvement in Leving’s death seems unlikely.
To him, the means was always part of the intended message to the wider world in all his exploits. The use of poison never featured in Blood’s modus operandi, as he preferred to employ spectacular, if not flamboyant, methodology in his escapades, rather than using such a silent and ambiguous technique in lethal retribution.
Blood was also seriously wounded, and just eleven days after the Darrington affray was probably in no fit state to travel far, no matter how compelling the reason. He may, however, have been able to smuggle an easily concealed small bottle of poison into York Castle and to arrange for it to be put into Leving’s food or drink, either by a sympathiser to his cause, or someone easily corrupted by a generous bribe.
Another potential suspect is John Atkinson, who had fled to London after the collapse of the projected rebellion in Yorkshire and had been betrayed by Leving in the spring of 1665. As one of those Leving was going to testify against in the forthcoming trial, he also had a strong and immediate personal motive and was held in York Castle at the time of the murder, although, presumably, his movements within the prison were constrained.33
Finally there is the august personage of George Villiers, Second Duke of Buckingham. Leving had fallen foul of this powerful nobleman by providing evidence against him after allegations had been made that he had plans to assist those plotting against the crown. Buckingham had recently been freed from the Tower of London after trumped-up charges of treason against him were withdrawn34 and he may have found it prudent to neatly remove one of the witnesses against him. Others who had crossed him were also to die in mysterious circumstances.
Tellingly perhaps, Buckingham later deemed it necessary to fend off, rather ambiguously as it turned out, accusations of poisoning made against him. He wrote: ‘Let any man show that [he was] really poisoned and he will do me the greatest kindness imaginable. Let the matter of fact be proved and I’ll undertake to tell for what reason it was done.’35 So Buckingham had the motive and certainly the means to order Leving’s murder.
Meanwhile, William Freer, Leving’s friend and fellow informer, had the misfortune to come up before a stern and testy magistrate called White at Wakefield, Yorkshire, accused of highway robbery. Like Leving before him, Freer offered up a document to spring him from jail – this time a pardon from the king for his crimes. Again, it failed to work, as White judged it invalid because it lacked the royal seal.
Freer begged Arlington to write ‘two or three lines’ within nine days to the magistrate to arrange his freedom, otherwise he was to be sent to York Castle. The prospect terrified him because of the ‘danger of being poisoned by the same that did it to Mr Leving’.
He had not been wasting his time before his arrest. Freer ‘had caused one man to be taken who was able to give account of several that are contributors to hiding persons who were with Blood and Butler in Yorkshire’. They posed no danger to the state ‘as they dared not trust one another’.36
His desperate pleas and his industrious collection of intelligence all came to nothing. On 28 September, Freer was in York Castle, still appealing to Arlington to write to Justice White ‘who committed me, and another justice, to procure my liberty, the king having promised me my life’. Probably from contacts among the prisoners, he had received stunning news:
Blood is dead and the rest of them are in London. I hope when at liberty to give an account of [Timothy] Butler.
If one who came from London and was lately in the Tower were promised his life, he could inform of all persons concerned.37<
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The news about Blood was completely untrue. Whether this was disinformation, planted by friends of Blood to cover his tracks, can only amount to conjecture. Perhaps it was just wishful thinking on Freer’s part. Certainly, the manhunt continued for the fugitives with no diminution in effort or intent on the part of the authorities.
Others were swept up by the search for the fugitives. In late September, Sir Philip Musgrave, custos rotulorum of Westmorland, reported on the ‘safe keeping’ by the garrison in Carlisle Caste, Cumbria, of one Elton, a lieutenant serving Mason in the former parliamentary army. The prisoner was an Anabaptist, ‘a stubborn, ill-principled man, with nothing to maintain himself. I therefore wish him a quick remove’ from Carlisle.38
Despite the name of ‘John Mason’ appearing in a list of prisoners held in Windsor Castle that September,39 he remained happily at large. Three years later, we find him keeping a tavern in London and utterly undaunted. He was still conspiring to overthrow the government.40
After his wounds healed, Blood once again decided to stay away from conspiracies and returned to his old quack practice at Romford in Essex41 where he resumed his alias of Doctor Ayliff or Allen. His wife Mary and her family remained in the apothecary’s shop in Shoreditch, just north of the city of London, still using the cover name of Weston.
His son Thomas was apprenticed in 1667 to a Scottish apothecary in Southwark, the former parliamentary army surgeon Samuel Holmes.42 His servant noted that he was ‘very poor in clothes while he lived [there]’ but afterwards ‘dressed very fine’.43 However Thomas quit after six months to work in Romford, firstly to sell drugs to its gullible citizens alongside his father, then to try his hand independently as a grocer. He may also have worked as a mercer – dealing in textiles, fabrics, especially silks, velvets and other costly materials. The former tailor-turned-grocer Samuel Weyer was employed by the two Bloods at Romford but was sacked by them.44
Then young Thomas fell into a ‘debauched life’ and his father wrote ruefully about his son’s growing ‘wickedness’.45 Finding himself falling heavily into debt, he became a highwayman in Surrey, preying on the affluent passing trade to raise cash, operating under the alias of ‘Thomas Hunt’. Clearly he enjoyed some success, as Holmes’s sister, Mrs Elizabeth Price, believed him to be worth £500, and as a twenty-one-year-old ‘lusty’ highwayman he may also have made some progress in the affairs of the heart as she recalled him being a servant ‘to a young gentlewoman’.46
Crime never pays and it was not long before ‘Thomas Hunt’ fell into the clutches of the law. He appeared before Chief Justice Keeling and Judge Morton at the Surrey county assizes at Guildford on 4 July 1670, accused of assaulting, with intent to rob, John Constable near Croydon the previous May. He was fined 100 marks, or £67, and thrown into the Marshalsea prison in Southwark.47
His father moved to Southwark to be close to his son and lodged with Barnaby Bloxton, tailor, at Winchester House, using the pseudonym ‘Dr Alec’. Blood asked his landlord to stand surety for his son, but Bloxton refused. Instead he helpfully introduced him to the brewer William Mumford.48 Mumford agreed, as did William Gant of Wapping in Essex, and both men put up the requisite money. ‘Thomas Hunt’ was freed after a month on their bond guaranteeing his good behaviour for seven years.49 On 17 October, the failed highwayman recovered his sword, belt and pistol from the Lambeth constable Thomas Drayton, signing a receipt, witnessed by his brother Edmund.50
Blood senior returned to Romford with other things on his mind.
The origin of the well-known phrase ‘revenge is a dish best served cold’ is highly debatable.51 Certainly it describes very aptly Thomas Blood’s beliefs or personal creed. Specifically, he had waited patiently for more than seven years to inflict a terrible revenge on one particular enemy.
Now he saw his chance for vengeance.
5
An Incident in St James’s
The execrable design to assassinate the duke of Ormond has alarmed all the country . . . It has opened all men’s mouths and thoughts to speak their liking for him as well as their detestation of the attempt.
Robert Benson to Williamson 24 December 1670.1
In the late seventeenth century, built-up London petered out at the western end of Piccadilly.2 Clean air and the bucolic fields and lanes of the flat Middlesex countryside began at Tyburn Lane, which led north to the city’s traditional place of execution for felons, very near today’s Marble Arch.3 In 1660 a windmill stood at the other end of Piccadilly, at the start of the highway to Reading in Berkshire and onwards to Bristol, known as the ‘Great West Road’. Along the north side of this unpaved street stood half a dozen grand mansions, including the newly completed Clarendon House, the short-lived residence of Lord Chancellor Clarendon, which cost him between £40,000 and £50,000 to build.4
After Clarendon’s fall from power in August 1667, the house was rented by the Duke of Ormond for a few months in 1670.5 It was an impressive London home for the former lord lieutenant of Ireland6 – a huge three-storeyed E-shaped building, with two wings and a central cupola behind a courtyard, set back from the street at the T-junction of Piccadilly with St James’s Street. There were two imposing wrought-iron gates barring its entrance, flanked by porters’ lodges, each one embellished with blind columns on the street façade. The grounds extended to thirty acres (12.14 hectares) of former agricultural land, including the twenty-four once owned by ‘the widow Austin of the “Eagle and Child” [tavern] in the [nearby] Strand’.7 Ormond had served as lord steward of the royal household since the Restoration and was appointed lord high steward of England in March 1661; the mansion was a convenient base for his ceremonial duties at court.
St James’s Street, which began to be built up at the beginning of the century, ran south from Piccadilly, down a gentle slope to Henry VIII’s red-brick palace of St James, erected in 1531–6 on the site of a medieval hospital for leprous women.8 The impressive tall twin-towered gatehouse fronting Pall Mall still bears the old ogre’s royal cipher. This wide street, earlier described as a ‘quagmire’ by the diarist John Evelyn, was paved over in 1661 and was later celebrated across London for the fashionable coffee and chocolate houses scattered among the twenty-four dwellings that lined the road.9
It was at the top end of this street, after seven o’clock on the evening of Tuesday, 6 December, 1670 that Blood staged another outrage that rocked the royal court, triggered a feverish House of Lords investigation and became a sensation throughout all of Charles II’s realms. Blood, together with four or five desperadoes, including his eldest son Thomas, dragged Ormond from his coach in a violent attempt either to kidnap or assassinate the former Irish viceroy.
His crime bore all the hallmarks of a carefully planned operation. Reliable intelligence must have been obtained from a well-wisher (or someone within Ormond’s household who was corruptible) indicating that the lord high steward would attend a state function in the City of London that day. Blood was also provided with the precise time of the duke’s return and his route homewards.
Ostensibly, it was an act of pure revenge. Blood and his fellow assailant, Lieutenant Colonel William Moore, who now lived in Gray’s Inn Lane, London, had irretrievably lost their Irish estates when they were attainted as traitors in the aftermath of the bungled Dublin Castle plot of seven years before. Both held Ormond personally responsible for their continuing impoverishment, as did the younger Blood, who similarly had lost any hope of his inheritance. Their hatred of the duke burned still bright despite the passing of the years.
If our adventurer – by dint of yet another self-promotion now enjoying the exalted rank of colonel – relished a certain vicarious notoriety before, his exploits now became infamous. After such an audacious crime, committed on the very doorstep of a royal palace, Charles II’s government left no stone unturned to find and arrest Blood and his outlaw accomplices.
Yet the blue-blooded aristocrat quite possibly at the heart of the conspiracy was left unquestioned and un
touched by the forces of law and order as he strutted vaingloriously within an arm’s breadth of the monarch himself.
It was a propitious time for such an attack, as London was distracted and enthralled by the pomp and splendour of a grand state visit. The Second Anglo-Dutch War had ended three years earlier after de Ruyter’s flotilla broke the chain booms defending the River Medway in Kent, burned some English warships moored at Chatham and jubilantly towed away the Unity and the flagship Royal Charles as prizes. After this national disgrace, the treaty signed on 31 July 1667 at Breda Castle restored peaceful relations between the two rival naval powers.10
William, Prince of Orange arrived in England on a five-month visit, primarily to collect an embarrassingly large debt of 2,797,859 guilders (about £280,000) owed to the Dutch House of Orange by the Stuarts. Of course, the perpetually cash-strapped Charles II could not repay the loan and William eventually agreed magnanimously to reduce it by £100,000. No wonder he was royally entertained, even though the king’s continuing indebtedness, coupled with the lingering shame of the successful Dutch naval attack on the Medway, must have made Charles, for all his gamecock bravura, an uncomfortable and uneasy host.
But the English monarch had other, more sanguine, reasons to lavish his hospitality on the twenty-year-old princely guest in his household. His Portuguese wife, the Catholic Catherine of Braganza, whom he had married in May 1662, had failed in the first duty of any royal consort down the ages: to produce the all-important healthy heir to the throne. She had endured four tedious pregnancies but, sadly, all resulted in miscarriages and stillbirths, the last in June 1669.11 James, Duke of York, Charles’s younger brother and the heir presumptive to the throne, was also a Catholic and this posed almost insurmountable problems, in many eyes, to his peaceful succession. To dampen down or divert parliamentary and popular disquiet, Charles conceived the idea of marrying off Mary, James’s eldest surviving daughter, to the staunchly Protestant William, even though she was eleven years his junior and still played with her dolls in the royal nursery.12
The Audacious Crimes of Colonel Blood Page 11