Thomas Blood junior escaped all this turmoil and jumped into the saddle of one of the horses still patiently held by William Smith further along the Tower wharf at the Irongate. He, with Halliwell and Smith, succeeded in clearing the precincts of the fortress. Edwards urged a Lieutenant Rainsford to mount some of his troops on those of Blood’s horses that were left behind, but the subaltern refused, as he considered the mounts now forfeited to him as his property. They were led back into the fortress.47
The harum-scarum of the escape continued. Within two hours of leaving the Tower, Blood junior had not got far in the congested London streets when he collided with an empty cart slowly turning around in Gravel Lane, in the north-east corner of St Botolph’s parish.48 He was hit on the head by a round pole lying across the cart and knocked off his mount. There’s no honour among thieves and Halliwell spurred on his horse in his haste to escape, as did Smith.
Recovering quickly, Blood placed one foot in his stirrups just as a cobbler ran up and exclaimed: ‘This is Tom Hunt who was in the bloody attempt upon the person of the Duke of Ormond. Let us secure him.’ Quite a mouthful for an excited man in a moment of crisis, but he probably sensed a handsome reward coming his way, as well as securing his own place in history.
A passing constable seized the younger Blood and dragged him before a local magistrate called Smith, who listened to ‘confident denials’ that he was not Tom Hunt, highwayman and would-be kidnapper, and was minded to release him. Then they heard the hue and cry rushing up the street outside, shouting that ‘the crown is taken out of the Tower’. Wisely, the magistrate had Blood committed into custody.49
The two Bloods were returned to the Tower of London as prisoners of its lieutenant, Sir John Robinson.50
Among the evidence recovered were two thin-bladed stilettos, known as ‘ballock’ or ‘dudgeon daggers’, with their sheaths. Both are dated 1620 and appear to have been made in Scotland as they bear the marks of the Edinburgh cutlers Alexander Bruce (known to be active after 1593) and Alexander Thomson (who operated from 1588). Both are traditionally associated with Colonel Blood, who may have acquired them second-hand during his reported time in Scotland during the Pentland rebellion in 1666. The larger knife has a blade 11.4 inches (29 cm) long and the smaller weapon’s blade is 9.2 inches (28.7 cm) in length. The latter is linked specifically with Robert Perrot. Both retain needle points. They are fearsome weapons, designed to be tucked into the top of a boot or in a belt and drawn quickly for lethal use. No wonder Talbot Edwards was terrified.51
That night the Bloods, father and son, found themselves in the unaccustomed squalor of cells in his majesty’s Tower, with stinking straw for their beds.
Across London, in Whitehall, Williamson and Arlington, the guardians of the king’s safety and security, were jubilant that at long last they had extracted two very painful thorns from their sides.
Williamson wrote to a friend, a Mr Braithwaite: ‘The attempt of this morning to steal the crown is one of the strangest any story can tell. But considering God is pleased to make us masters of Blood, it is of ten times the value to his majesty, even of the crown itself, so desperate . . . a traitor that fellow is. God’s goodness be praised for it!’52
But given Blood’s record for escaping the rigours of justice, could everyone be entirely sure that he would meet his Maker on the executioner’s scaffold on Tower Hill?
7
A Royal Pardon
Blood, the same villain, attempted to steal the crown and was taken with it, yet he was pardoned . . . and a pension given him which is a mystery that few can decipher.
Sir Robert Southwell (1635–1702) Privy Council clerk1
Robert Leigh in Dublin wrote to his master Williamson in Whitehall on 16 May 1671, scarcely believing the glad tidings that Blood was at last safely locked up in the Tower of London. The arrest of this ‘notorious villain’ after his extraordinary attempt to steal the Crown Jewels ‘makes all honest men rejoice that he is at last taken’, he declared jubilantly. There was also much optimism abroad that the secretary of state and his secret service could exploit this unique opportunity to round up more of Blood’s fellow traitors ‘and those who attempted to murder the duke of Ormond’. Leigh passionately hoped that the old renegade would now ‘receive the reward of his many wicked attempts both here and in England’.2
If Thomas Blood had set out to ‘make such a noise in the world’, he had clearly succeeded far more than he could ever have dreamt of – even given his own inflated ego and the fact that he had carelessly gambled his life and that of his son to win universal public attention.
News about his attempted theft of the royal regalia circulated in a report published in the London Gazette and numerous private handwritten newsletters dispatched to the provinces from individuals living in London. A remarkably comprehensive account of the botched robbery was sent to a Mr Kirke in Cambridge3 and another to the nonconformist lawyer Robert Aldworth, the town clerk of Bristol.4 Both referred to the outlaw as ‘Old Blood’ and connected him and his son to the earlier assault on Ormond. The account sent to Bristol included a catalogue of his past exploits, beginning with the abortive rebellion in Ireland; his alleged involvement in the northern uprising, through to his rescue of Mason on the road to York. But it emphasised a belief that this latest escapade had nothing to do with politics or religious dissent. ‘Their design’ in attempting the theft was ‘by their own confession . . . only to make their own advantage by the jewels’.
Of course, conspiracy theories about the crime abounded in countless excited conversations in the capital’s coffee houses and taverns. One newsletter confirmed that the would-be robbers were English, although the Venetian ambassador Girolamo Alberti reported in a dispatch to the Doge and Senate of the Serenissima Republica that many Londoners had immediately ‘accused the French of this treacherous act and even baser suspicions circulated . . .’. He added a trifle smugly: ‘I congratulate myself on not having forwarded the various rumours on the subject which was said to be replete with important consequences, since it now seems that the sole object was to obtain a considerable sum of money.’ In the end, ‘I need only to say that among the gang they discovered one of the arch-rebels of Ireland who was concerned with the attack on the Duke of Ormond, mentioned by me on 19 December last.’5
Andrew Marvell, the Presbyterian metaphysical poet who frequently wrote satires attacking Catholics and the scandalous excesses of the royal court, penned these vituperative couplets:
When daring Blood his rent to have regained
Upon the Royal Diadem distrained
He choose the cassock, surcingle6 and gown
The fittest mask for those who rob the Crown
But his lay pity7 underneath prevailed,
And while he sav’d the Keeper’s life, he failed
With the Priest’s vestments had he but put
Bishop’s cruelty, the Crown was gone.8
Despite its sly, scathing dig at the clergy of the Anglican Church, the poem was widely circulated and caused more than a few wry smiles.9
After their capture on Tower Wharf and Gravel Lane, Blood and his son were committed to the custody of Sir John Robinson, the lieutenant of the Tower of London. With a soldier’s appreciation of the importance of reporting up the chain of command, Wythe Edwards immediately conveyed what had happened to his father’s superior, Sir Gilbert Talbot, master of the Jewel House. A shaken and shocked Talbot ‘instantly’ waited on the king at Whitehall and passed on Edwards’ account of the outrageous events at the Martin Tower. Charles instructed Talbot to visit the fortress that evening to question the prisoners.10
He found the two Bloods and Perrot in the White Tower, manacled and under armed guard. Their superficial cuts and bruises, suffered in the fighting during their attempted escape, had already been dressed by a surgeon. Colonel Blood ‘lay in a corner, dogged and lowering and would not give a word of answer to any question’.11
The colonel had adamantly refused to
be interrogated by two eager and excited local justices who had arrived to investigate his latest cause célèbre. With remarkable impudence (or was it discretion?) he insisted repeatedly that he should see only Charles II himself to answer the grave charges against him. Perhaps he understood too well that this very long shot was his one chance of avoiding an appointment with the public executioner.
To the amazement of all, the king readily agreed to question him – he reportedly roared with laughter when he heard of the request, so a ‘Merry Monarch’ after all12 – and on 12 May, the two Bloods were escorted across London in chains to the Palace of Whitehall for the royal interrogation.13
Charles’s motives in agreeing to see the colonel and his son remain wholly obscure. Was it just a regal whim, an irresistible curiosity to meet this ‘notorious traitor and incendiary’ who had attracted so much infamy in England and Ireland over the last seven years and now had the effrontery to demand to meet his sovereign?
Although the king was well known for his panache and easy accessibility, this seems improbable. His critics saw Charles II as a wily, astute and sometimes unscrupulous manipulator of public opinion and an inveterate schemer within the turbulent cockpit of domestic politics. Others, still less generous in their opinions, believed him to be a monarch whose inept handling of government business meant that he simply lurched from one crisis to another and only occasionally succeeded in his aims and objectives, more by luck than by any planning or aptitude. Certainly, the king had personally questioned rebels and informers before – and would do so again, as plot after plot against his sacred royal person was diligently uncovered by Arlington and Williamson and their agents.14
But there may have been other, darker forces at work behind this strange meeting between monarch and traitor, held while Charles was busy entertaining some French noblemen who were visiting the royal court.15
As we saw earlier, Blood’s role in the Ormond episode probably obscured the malign interests of leading figures at the royal court who had set their own agenda in their relentless pursuit of power and influence.
The colonel now apparently possessed friends (or, more pertinently, employers) at court. He also knew too many embarrassing secrets that would point a damning finger of guilt at the great and gilded.
The Duke of Buckingham – perhaps in concert with his voluptuous and voracious cousin, the auburn-haired Barbara Palmer, First Duchess of Cleveland and Countess of Castlemaine – had compelling motives in supporting Blood’s demands for the royal interview. Both would prefer that any shocking disclosures should be restricted to a private meeting to avoid the risk of revelations at Blood’s trial that could incriminate or embarrass them. Charles would also have been both mortified and sorely damaged by public admissions that his single-minded and politically ruthless mistress – whom the diarist John Evelyn cruelly dubbed ‘the curse of our nation’16 – was intimately involved in the Ormond affair for her own tainted personal ends.17
Furthermore, Arlington, who probably employed Blood as a government agent in the Netherlands in 1666 and in the subsequent attempt to lure the regicide Ludlow to Paris, would also have given much to prevent details of his clandestine espionage operations being described in evidence given under oath. There may also have been a more devious motivation: Williamson had described how Blood’s capture was worth ‘ten times the value [of the] crown’.18 His usefulness to the government, if not the continued safety of the realm, might be greater with him alive rather than dead, as yet another martyr in the nonconformist cause.
Therefore, those close to Charles had a range of powerful reasons, both personal and political, to argue that Blood’s attempts to defend himself should be heard by a very august company behind closed doors. The king’s agreement to meet him probably followed some persuasive lobbying from those around him, both courtiers and ministers.
The Duke of Ormond, an old hand (and victim) in court politics, understood full well what was going on. ‘The man need not despair,’ he confided to his fellow privy counsellor Sir Robert Southwell, ‘for surely, no king would wish to see a malefactor but [only] with [the] intention to pardon him.’19
The interview, in one of the privy apartments of the palace, was also attended by James, Duke of York, Prince Rupert and a number of senior officers of the royal household, doubtless including Arlington and Williamson. The drama and surrealism of the occasion seemingly had no effect on Blood, who appeared not in the least intimidated by being in the company of the reigning House of Stuart. Because of his involvement in a long list of conspiracies to cut short the life of Charles II, he probably remained fettered, standing between several armed King’s Guards.
In reply to the king’s first question, Blood immediately and readily confessed that he was involved in the attack on Ormond six months before. He was then questioned about what had provoked ‘so bold an assault’. Brazenly, he maintained forcibly that the duke ‘had taken away his estate and executed some of his friends and that he and many others had engaged themselves by solemn oath to revenge it’.
Who were his accomplices? Blood steadfastly refused to name them, as he ‘would never betray a friend’s life nor deny guilt in defence of his own’.20
The colonel tried vainly to justify his theft of the Crown Jewels by recounting the ‘wrongs, injuries and losses he had sustained . . . and the disgraces and disappointments he had met with in Ireland’.21 These he sought to remedy by robbing the king, as the representative figurehead of the state that had inflicted such injustices upon him.
The old outlaw was nonplussed to hear of the true monetary value of the coronation regalia. He had initially believed ‘the crown was worth £100,000’, but was horrified to learn that ‘the crown, sceptre and Prince Edward’s staff [had] cost the king but £6,000’. It is a mark of the scale of Blood’s considerable chutzpah that when confronted by imminent public execution for treason, this was probably not the time to feel cheated about the value of your would-be ill-gotten gains. His overactive self-esteem and ego also drove him to lie about his age.
But by admitting his involvement in the Ormond assault and the attempt on the Crown Jewels, Blood recognised that he ‘had sufficiently laid himself open to the law and [that] he might reasonably expect the utter rigour of it for which he was, without much concern of his own, prepared’.22
There were some unexpectedly generous statements made about his character. Prince Rupert testified to Blood’s loyal service for the Royalist cause during the Civil War and acknowledged that ‘he was a very stout, bold fellow’ in his military exploits committed in defence of the king’s unhappy father and his crown. Fortunately for the colonel, there was no mention of his switching sides later in the conflict.23
Then Blood made a dramatic statement. Looking directly at his seated sovereign, he Voluntarily confessed’ his role in another assassination attempt against him – this time by shooting the king ‘with a carbine, from out of the reeds by the Thames side above Battersea where he often went to swim . . . ’. He confessed
that the cause of this resolution, in himself and others, were his majesty’s severity over the consciences of the godly in suppressing the freedom of their religious assemblies.
[But] when he had taken his stand in the reeds for that purpose, his heart was checked with an awe of majesty and he did not only relent but diverted the rest of his associates from the design.24
So the sight of Charles skinny-dipping in the river at Vauxhall caused a dramatic change of heart, as well it might.25 Blood said he suddenly realised that the monarch’s ‘life was better for them than his death, lest a worst succeed him’ and put down his gun.
But was this an admission of another dangerous plot against Charles’s life – or just a figment of Blood’s feverish imagination, timely conjured up with the gift of an Irishman’s gab, to portray himself in a reformed and thus more positive light to his monarch?
If this was something more than a fantasy, the aborted attempt must have been staged either bef
ore the Ormond incident in December 1670 or just prior to mid-April 1671, when Blood made his first moves in the plot to steal the Crown Jewels – if only because the bitterly cold temperature of the Thames in winter would deter even the most hardy of kings from swimming in the river.26
What Blood did not bother to mention – and he later acknowledged rather lamely that he had conveniently ‘forgotten’ to confess to it to the king – was his entanglement in another plot to murder Charles, this time in the House of Lords during an attack on Parliament by 300 men. These, he claimed, had already been recruited and were only awaiting his call to arms. ‘It never came into my mind till the k[ing]’s absence’, he ingenuously admitted to Williamson later.
The following September the spymaster noted information supplied to him by Blood and other informers that Captain Roger Jones (our old friend ‘Mene Tekel’ who had escaped justice at York) had drawn the colonel into the conspiracy shortly ‘after Lord Ormond’s business’. The tobacconist John Harrison reported Ralph Alexander’s claims that a ‘great number of battle axes or bills with long staves’ had been stored in a house in Thames Street, near the Tower, ready for the assault on the Lords. The conspirators also planned to kidnap, ‘one night of a sudden’, the irascible George Morley, Bishop of Winchester and Dean of the Chapel Royal, and the privy counsellor, William Craven, First Earl of Craven.27 The motives or purpose behind these choices of target remain obscure.
The planned timing for this coup de main is also uncertain. Charles prorogued Parliament for a year on Saturday, 22 April 1671, and would have been present then in the Lords, ‘seated on his Royal Throne, adorned with his regal crown and robes’.28 There was no evidence whatsoever of an attack or disturbance that day and it seems very plausible that, as a major protagonist, Blood’s preoccupation with the theft of the Crown Jewels forced the postponement of this assassination attempt. Alexander later disclosed that the weapons for the attack were broken and secretly thrown into the Thames after they had heard of Blood’s confession.29
The Audacious Crimes of Colonel Blood Page 16