Nothing further is known of the lives of Blood’s two daughters, Mary and Elizabeth, except that they were still alive in 1707, as they received bequests of £50 each in Holcroft’s will.
Holcroft had taken Edmund, the eldest of his deceased brother Thomas’s two offspring, into his protection when the child was only three or four months old.36 The child’s mother died in Dublin while he was staying with his uncle in Holland. Edmund later served with the British army in Albany, the capital of New York state, and told a relative, a Mrs Mary Blood of Meath Street, Dublin in July 1734 that since he was aged eight, ‘I have been abroad in the service of the crown.’
The subject of his letter was the sad story of a long-lost inheritance: the Blood lands in Counties Meath and Wicklow granted by Charles I. After Colonel Blood’s attainder, the property was granted to Captain Toby Barnes in April 166637 for thirty-one years. After Blood’s royal pardon, Charles II directed the lord lieutenant and justices of Ireland to allow him to bring an action for a writ of error to reverse the attainder for treason against him. Unfortunately, that reversal was either not provided or had been lost in the government archives in Dublin Castle.
Barnes died in 1688, with his heirs living in England. The tenants of the properties were ‘papists . . . and the [lands] became waste’. Adam Loftus, First Viscount Lisburne,38 master of the Court of Requests, granted their title to a Mary Sloane, who afterwards made them over to a Joseph Henry who left them, presumably, to his son Hugh. By November 1734, they were worth £500 a year.39
Edmund Blood sought their return, as direct descendant, through his highwayman father, of his grandfather Colonel Blood. He told Mary Blood that Hugh Henry’s title to the estates should be investigated and ‘if he is unwilling to show his title himself he must be compelled to discover the same by a short bill of equity’. Edmund’s son-in-law [Richard] Williams ‘is lately come from Dublin . . . and together with your kind assistance may make the best inquiries and do whatever is requisite in the affair’.
I beg you . . . let me hear from you and know what is doing therein. Whatever expenses you are at in the affair be pleased to let me know and I shall make punctual remittances either to London or Dublin as conveniency offers.
He asked that her reply should be directed to ‘Capt. Edmund Blood at Mr Henry Holland, merchant, in Albany, North America, to be forwarded by Mr Joseph Nico, merchant in London’.40
Despite their best efforts, the Bloods apparently never recovered their lost lands in Ireland.
After the colonel’s attempted theft of the Crown Jewels in 1671, new security arrangements were immediately put in place. In 1710, Zacharias von Uffenbach, a foreign tourist visiting the Tower, described entering a ‘gloomy and cramped den’ that housed the regalia. After visitors had entered, the strong outer door was both bolted from inside and locked by sentries outside. He and his fellow tourists sat on wooden benches and viewed the jewels through ‘a trellis of strong iron’. More than seventy years later, William Hutton was taken to a ‘door in an obscure corner’ of the Tower that led to a ‘dismal hole resembling the cell of the condemned’.
In the nineteenth century, visitors were confronted by a rather pompous lady custodian, carrying a candle, described somewhat unkindly by an American visitor as ‘an old hag’ who ‘presided like a high priestess over the glories’ of the Crown Jewels. These security measures continued until 1840 when a new Gothic Revival Jewel House was built by the Royal Engineers, funded by visitors’ admission fees to the fortress. Unfortunately the new building proved to be damp and not fireproof and it was demolished in 1870. Work on converting the Wakefield Tower to house the regalia began in 1867. Thereafter they were displayed behind a ‘great cage’, together with railings and barriers.41 In 1910–11 the ironwork was replaced by a reinforced glass case. However, by the 1960s the volume of visitors had increased enormously and a new purpose-built area was opened beneath the Waterloo Barracks in 1967 and this was succeeded by the Tower’s current facility in 1994.42
One of the few casualties of Blood’s exploits was Talbot Edwards, the aged custodian of the Crown Jewels. As we have seen, he died in 1674, probably as a result of his injuries at the hands of Blood and his accomplices, and was buried in the Chapel Royal of St Peter ad Vincula,43 the parish church of the Tower of London, situated in the inner ward.44 The slab placed over his grave read:
Here lieth ye body of Talbot Edwards gentn late keeper of his Mats Regalia who dyed ye 30 of September 1674 aged 80 yeares and 9 moneths
If nothing in life is uncertain, neither is anything after death.
Edwards’ tombstone was ripped from his grave by the Home Secretary Sir James Graham ‘with others from the Tower’ in 1842 to be used to repair the latrines in the Queen’s Bench prison, Southwark, after the closure of the Fleet prison. The historic inscription was recognised during this recycling work and the resultant row caused it to be returned to the Tower.45
Unfortunately, it was not replaced in the Chapel Royal but instead was used as a paving stone in one of the houses in front of the Beauchamp Tower. There it was found in 1852 by General William FitzGerald-de-Ros, deputy lieutenant of the Tower, who caused it to be replaced in St Peter’s, mounted on its south wall.46
Chronology
1595: Edmund Blood, founder of the Irish branch of the family, sails to Ireland as a cavalry captain in Elizabeth I’s army to fight against an Irish rebellion. He resigns his commission, acquires property in Co. Clare and is elected in 1613 as one of two members of the Irish Parliament for the borough of Ennis.
Early 1618: Thomas Blood born at Sarney, Co. Meath, son of Thomas Blood, third son of Edmund.
1640: Thomas Blood junior is appointed a justice of the peace in Co. Meath.
1641: October Rebellion of Catholics in Ulster; the Irish Confederation becomes the de facto government of Ireland.
1642: 19 March ‘Adventurers’ Act’ (16 Caro I, cap. 34–5) passed at Westminster authorising money to be raised to suppress the Irish rebellion; anyone subscribing £200 would receive 1,000 acres (404.7 hectares) of land confiscated from rebels.
1642: 22 August Charles I raises royal standard at Nottingham; beginning of Civil War against Parliament in England. Blood probably serves on Royalist side as a captain from May 1643 and probably fought at the siege of Sherborne Castle in Dorset in August 1645.
1648: 28 October Blood probably a member of besieged garrison of Pontefract Castle, Yorkshire and may have been involved in the Royalists’ botched attempted kidnap and death of the parliamentary commander Colonel Thomas Rainborowe at his billet in Doncaster.
1649: 30 January Execution of Charles I outside the Banqueting House, Whitehall.
1649: 15 August Cromwell lands at Dublin with 12,000 men of the New Model Army together with an extensive siege artillery train to put down the Irish Confederation rebellion.
1649: 11 September Drogheda captured after eight-day siege; most of the 3,000-strong garrison are slaughtered, together with a number of Catholic priests and civilians.
1649: 11 October Wexford captured after a nine-day siege; 2,000 defenders and around fifteen hundred civilians massacred.
1650: Blood switches sides in the Civil War, serving initially as a cavalry cornet and then is promoted lieutenant in the parliamentary army, probably serving briefly with Cromwell in Ireland before going to Lancashire.
1650: 21 June Blood marries seventeen-year-old Mary Holcroft, elder daughter of parliamentary MP and hero Lieutenant Colonel John Holcroft and his wife Margaret at Newchurch, Lancashire.
1651: 30 March Baptism of the Bloods’ first child, Thomas, at Newchurch, Lancashire.
1652: 12 August Act of Settlement for Ireland passed at Westminster.
1653: April Last Irish Confederation troops surrender to parliamentary forces in Co. Cavan.
1653: July Order for the transplantation of Irish landowners to Connacht and other areas west of the River Shannon.
1655–8: The ‘Down Survey’ of Ireland en
sures the most efficient redistribution of sequestered Irish lands.
1656: 22 April Blood’s father-in-law, Lieutenant Colonel John Holcroft, is buried at Newchurch, Lancashire, leaving a flurry of legal actions over his estates.
1658: 3 September Death of Oliver Cromwell at Whitehall, aged fifty-nine.
1660: 8 May Restoration of the monarchy: Charles II enters London (on his birthday) and is crowned at Westminster Abbey on 23 April 1661.
New regalia is made for his coronation to replace that earlier sold or destroyed by the Commonwealth.
1662: 19 May Act of Uniformity, reinforcing Anglican rites, passed at Westminster.
1662: 27 September Act of Settlement passed by Irish Parliament in Dublin. Blood loses most of his property.
1662: September Blood conceives plan to seize control of Ireland.
1663: 9/10 March Original date of first attempt on Dublin Castle and coup d’état, but news of the conspiracy leaks out and the attack is postponed.
1663: March Formation of London council of nonconformist extremists. Plot to kill the king, the Dukes of York and Albemarle and the lord chancellor, Edward Hyde, Earl of Clarendon.
1663: mid-April James Butler, First Duke of Ormond, lord lieutenant of Ireland, hears of revived plan to seize Dublin Castle and take him hostage.
1663: 21 May Conspirators plan to seize Dublin Castle but the attack is delayed until the following week to allow further rebel troops to arrive in the city.
Troops arrest twenty-four plotters in early-morning raids in Dublin, including the government undercover informer, Philip Alden. Blood and the remainder of the conspirators flee, some to Scotland. Further arrests are made during the last week of May.
Ormond prorogues Irish Parliament until 21 July.
1663: 23 May Proclamation is published offering a reward of £100 for the apprehension of nine named fugitive former officers, including ‘Lieutenant Thomas Blood’, and two Presbyterian ministers concerned in the conspiracy.
1663: 30 May Ormond signs a warrant for the ‘removal of certain inhabitants of Dublin for the better security of the city’.
1663: 14 June Seventy plotters under arrest. Blood, who has recklessly returned to Dublin to see his wife, again flees from the city and dons a variety of disguises – including that of a Catholic priest. He eludes arrest on a number of occasions while hiding in the hills and mountains of Ulster and Wicklow.
1663: before 18 June Government informer Philip Alden breaks through a barred window and escapes from ‘the highest turret’ in Dublin Castle.
1663: 25 June Trial begins of Edward Warren, Richard Thompson and Alexander Jephson, MP for Trim, for high treason at the King’s Bench court in Dublin. A fourth defendant, the Presbyterian minister William Leckie (Blood’s Scottish brother-in-law) is also arraigned but appears insane (subsequently found to be feigned).
1663: 1 July Leckie convicted of high treason but proceedings halted because of his insanity.
1663: 8 July Warren, Thompson and Jephson convicted and sentenced to be hung, drawn and quartered.
1663: 15 July Thompson, Warren and Jephson are executed at Gallows Green (now Lower Baggot Street, Dublin, near the present-day bridge over the Grand Canal). After Jephson is hanged there is a ‘hot alarm’ – possibly a rescue attempt – and the crowd scatters in panic. Thompson blames Blood for ‘drawing’ him into the conspiracy.
1663: 12 October Planned date of uprising in north of England. The insurrection, largely organised by former parliamentary officers, is averted by pre-emptive arrests of many of the ringleaders.
1663: 14 November Leckie escapes from Dublin’s Newgate prison disguised in his wife’s clothes but is recaptured shortly afterwards and is executed on 12 December.
1664: Blood flees to the Netherlands and meets the Dutch naval hero Michiel de Rutyer, returning to London in March to associate with Fifth Monarchists.
1664: September Blood involved in an abortive London plot to attack Charles II at the Palace of Whitehall and to seize the Tower of London.
1664: December Blood reported in Ireland.
1665: May Outbreak of bubonic plague in the capital. The Great Plague of London, which finally died away in February 1666, kills around 120,000 citizens, or about 15 per cent of the city’s population.
1665: October Presbyterian factions hold a secret meeting in Liverpool to plan strategy. The Irish contingent is led by Blood and his fellow Dublin Castle plotter, Lieutenant Colonel William Moore.
1666: February Blood in Ireland and with Colonel ‘Gibby’ Carr (another former accomplice) plots to seize the city of Limerick.
Blood and his friend John Lockyer travel to the Dutch United Provinces and are arrested as spies. After his release, Blood visits the republican regicide Edmund Ludlow in Switzerland in an unsuccessful attempt to persuade him to return from exile and join a conspiracy to overthrow the government of Charles II.
He may have been a double agent, working for Sir Joseph Williamson, operational head of Charles II’s secret service.
1666: April Charles II grants Blood’s remaining property in Ireland to Captain Toby Barnes.
1666: August Blood involved in new Irish conspiracy.
1666: 2–5 September Blood in London and again escapes arrest.
Great Fire of London breaks out after a tinder-dry summer and a drought lasting from November 1665. It destroys more than 13,000 houses in the largely medieval city, together with eighty-seven parish churches and Old St Paul’s Cathedral. Subsequently, Blood is (wrongly) accused of starting the fire which, after investigation, is said to have been accidental.
1666: 28 November Blood probably involved in the failed Pentland uprising in Scotland which is suppressed by the rout at the Battle of Rullion Green in Lothian. He escapes unharmed and crosses the border to England, living in the Warrington and Manchester areas of Lancashire.
1667: Blood returns to London with his family and practices as a quack doctor and apothecary under the alias ‘Dr Ayliff’ in Romford, Essex. His wife lives in an apothecary’s shop in Shoreditch, Middlesex.
1667: 25 July Rescue of fellow conspirator Captain John Mason at Darrington, near Doncaster, Yorkshire, from a military escort taking him to trial at York. Blood badly wounded.
1670: Blood’s eldest son Thomas abandons his apprenticeship as an apothecary and after fitful, unsuccessful attempts to earn a living as a grocer and mercer becomes a highwayman in Surrey. He is caught and convicted on 4 July at Surrey assizes and is briefly incarcerated in the Marshalsea prison, Southwark.
1670: 6 December Attempted kidnap or murder of James Butler, First Duke of Ormond, in St James’s, London as he returns from a state banquet entertaining the Prince of Orange at the Guildhall.
Blood may be acting as hired assassin of George Villiers, Second Duke of Buckingham.
1671: 9 May Attempted theft of the Crown Jewels from the Tower of London.
1671: 1 August Blood receives a full pardon for all his crimes and the grant of lands in Ireland yielding £500 a year.
He becomes a government spy in England and Holland and a private agent for those at court who need information to fulfil their ambitions.
c.1675: Blood’s eldest son Thomas dies in unknown circumstances, leaving a widow and an infant son who is brought up by his brother Holcroft.
1679: Blood may have provided bribes to suborn witnesses against George Villiers, Second Duke of Buckingham, who is accused of sodomy. Tried on charges of blasphemy, confederacy and subornation and fined and imprisoned.
Buckingham brings an action for defamation against Blood and his accomplices, claiming £10,000 in damages.
Blood contracts a fever in prison and is freed in July 1680.
1680: 24 August Blood dies at his home overlooking Bowling Alley, Westminster, aged sixty-two after an illness lasting fourteen days. He may have suffered a stroke.
1680: 1 September Inquest in Westminster to determine whether the body exhumed from Blood’s grave is really that of Colo
nel Thomas Blood. The corpse is so swollen and disfigured that the twenty-three-man jury – made up of those who knew Blood – cannot reach a verdict, even though an army captain swears that the cadaver’s thumb is enlarged which, he claims, was a distinguishing mark identifying Blood.
Dramatis Personae
THOMAS BLOOD AND HIS FAMILY
Blood, Charles. Fifth son of Thomas Blood and Mary his wife. Around 1681, supplied intelligence to James, Duke of York warning him of ‘most dangerous conspiracies against him’ and about a conspiracy to launch an insurrection on the death of Charles II. Later became a barrister, defending his brother Holcroft Blood against accusations of assault by his estranged wife Elizabeth in October 1700.
Blood, Edmund. (? – c.1645), of Makeney, Derbyshire. Sailed to Ireland in 1595 as a cavalry captain in Elizabeth I’s army fighting Irish rebels led by Hugh O’Neill. Resigned commission and acquired land in Co Clare and elected one of the two MPs for the borough of Ennis in the Irish House of Commons in April 1613. He had three sons by his first wife Margaret: Neptune (born 1595); Edmund (died 1615) and Thomas Blood senior. After his wife’s death, he married Mary Holdcroft or Holcroft of Lancashire and by her had a fourth son, William, born in 1600. He may have married a third time.
Blood, Edmund. Fourth son of Thomas Blood and Mary his wife. As a witness, signed the receipt for the recovery of his eldest brother’s sword, belt and pistols, dated 17 October 1670 at Lambeth. Had journeyed to the East Indies twice – possibly in the service of the East India Company. Purser on board the frigate Jersey. Died in London in 1679.
Blood, Elizabeth. Younger daughter of Thomas Blood and Mary his wife. Married Edward Everard. Signed inventory of her brother William’s goods in 1688. Recipient of £50 bequest in her brother Holcroft’s will in 1707. No further details known.
Blood, Holcroft. (c.1657–1707) Third son of Thomas Blood and Mary his wife. Enlisted in Royal Navy in 1672 without his father’s permission and served during the Third Anglo-Dutch War. Later enlisted as a cadet officer in the French Guards under the alias of ‘Leture’ and studied military engineering. Guardian of Edmund, the young son of his elder brother Thomas after the latter’s death around 1675. Appointed clerk of the peace and JP in Co. Clare, April 1676. Married Elizabeth Fowler, widowed daughter of the barrister Richard King in 1686. Three years later promoted second engineer to the artillery train in the Irish wars and was wounded at the capture of Carrickfergus in Co. Antrim in August 1689; at Cashel, Co. Tipperary the following February and at the Battle of the Boyne in July 1690. Appointed second engineer of England in February 1696 and commander of artillery in the Duke of Marlborough’s campaigns, including fighting at the Battle of Blenheim on 2 August 1704. Promoted brigadier general. Because of his infidelity he became estranged from his wife, who sought his prosecution for an assault on her, which was successfully defended by his barrister brother Charles in 1700. Died in Brussels, 19 August 1707, leaving an illegitimate son, Holcroft, of St Anne’s Soho, London (died 1724) by his mistress Dorothy Cook of Dort, Holland.
The Audacious Crimes of Colonel Blood Page 24