The Audacious Crimes of Colonel Blood

by Robert Hutchinson

  27 TNA, SP 29/293/28, f.31. ‘Notes by Williamson of information received by Blood and others’, 21 September 1671.

  28 ‘Lords Jnls’, vol. 12, p.514, col. 2. 22 April 1671.

  29 Greaves, Enemies Under His Feet, p.210.

  30 Strype, A Survey of the Cities of London and Westminster . . ., vol. 1, p.99.

  31 Kippis, Biographia Britannia, vol. 2, p.823.

  32 ‘Remarks . . .’, p.229.

  33 Baxter, Reliquiæ Baxterianæ, p.89; Greaves, Enemies Under His Feet, pp.210–1.

  34 John Oldmixon, History of England during the reigns of the House of Stuart (London, 1730), vol. 1, p.500.

  35 ‘Remarks . . .’, p.228.

  36 RCHM Sixth Report, pt. 1, appendix, p.370.

  37 TNA, SP 44/34/86, f.87. Warrant to keeper of Gatehouse prison to receive John Buxton, 15 May 1671.

  38 Greaves, Enemies Under His Feet, p.212.

  39 CSP Domestic 1671, p.244.

  40 TNA, SP 29/290/11, f.15. ‘Colonel Blood to the King’. The Tower, 19 May 1671.

  41 Marshall, Intelligence and Espionage . . ., p.205.

  42 RCHM Eighth Report, pt. 1, appendix, p.159.

  43 CSP Domestic 1671, p.413.

  44 J. Hartley, History of the Westminster Election . . . (second edn., London, 1765), p.79.

  45 For example, N&Q, vol. 154 (1928), p.10; Jones, ‘Blood, Theft and Arrears: Stealing the Crown Jewels’, History Today, vol. 61, pp.10–17.

  46 CSP Domestic 1671, p.300. Ironically, Morton wanted to question Blood and Perrot about a Colonel Barrow, alias Johnson, who was suspected of sedition and conspiracy. He had called at Barrow’s home but the suspect escaped. Later Morton applied to Williamson for a warrant to question Perrot, citing Barrow’s involvement in the plot to capture Dublin Castle and also naming him as an associate of Blood ‘in the intended rising on the plague time in London’ (Sergeant, Rogues and Scoundrels, p.147).

  47 CSP Venice 1671–2, p.74. Alberti to the Doge and Senate, London, 12 June 1671.

  48 CSP Domestic 1671, p.351.

  49 ‘R.S.P.’ – ‘Free pardon’, N&Q, vol. 175 (1938), p.104.

  50 This measure became the Declaration of Indulgence in March 1672, which the following year was withdrawn, following parliamentary pressure. For further information see Bate, The Declaration of Indulgence 1672 . . .

  51 Bod. Lib. MS English history, C.487, Ludlow, A Voyce from the Watch-tower, f.1265.

  52 Marshall, Intelligence and Espionage . . ., pp. 195–6.

  53 Hanrahan, Colonel Blood . . ., p.136; Abbott, Colonel Thomas Blood . . ., p.88. CSP Domestic 1671, p.496.

  54 Bod. Lib. Carte MS 69, f.164r. Blood’s apology to Ormond.

  55 Strype, A Survey of the Cities of London and Westminster . . ., vol. 1, p.100.

  56 Carte, Life of Ormond, vol. 4, pp.446–7.

  57 CSP Domestic 1671, p.385.

  58 CSP Domestic 1671, pp.457 and TNA, SP 44/34/115, f.116. Their lands were also restored: see Shaw (ed.), Calendar of Treasury Books, vol. 3 (1669–72), p.1168.

  59 The crime of failing to report a treasonable offence.

  60 The unlawful striking or beating of one person by another.

  61 The date of Charles II’s landing at Dover at the beginning of the restoration of the monarchy.

  62 TNA SP 44/34/110 f.111. Pardon of Thomas Blood, 1 August 1671.

  63 NAI, MS 12,816, f.27. Straffan is a village on the River Liffey, sixteen miles (25 km) north-west of Dublin.

  64 Greaves, Enemies Under His Feet, p.214.

  65 Blood had suffered from smallpox which can leave pock-marks from the scabs on the face.

  66 RCHM, Sixth Report, pt. 1, appendix, p.370.

  67 ‘Williamson Letters’, vol. 1, p.14 fn.

  68 ‘Evelyn Diaries’, vol. 2, pp.259–60.

  69 RCHM, Sixth Report, pt. 1, appendix, p.370; Carte, Life of Ormond, vol. 4, p.447.

  70 Curran, Dispatches of William Perwich . . ., p.165.

  71 RCHM, Seventh Report, pt. 1, report and appendices, p.464.

  72 History of Insipids is commonly attributed to Wilmot. For a discussion on attribution, see Vivian de S. Pinto, ‘The History of Insipids: Rochester, Freke and Marvell’, Modern Language Review, vol. 65 (1970), pp.11–5. Wilmot (1647–80) was notorious for his drunken behaviour and extravagant frolics at court. At Christmas 1673 at Whitehall Palace, he delivered a satire about Charles II, entitled In the Isle of Britain, in which he criticised the king’s ‘obsession’ with sex at the expense of his kingdoms. He was exiled from court for a month. In January 1675, Wilmot, in a drunken frolic, destroyed the sundial in the middle of the Privy Gardens at Whitehall ‘which was esteemed to be the rarest in Europe’.

  73 This was south of College Street, where there was a bowling green. The house, distinguished by a shield and a coat of arms raised in relief in the brickwork of the front, was reported to be ‘no longer standing’ in 1820 (Thornbury and Walford, Old and New London, vol. 4, p.35). Fifty-three houses in Bowling Alley and thirty-six in Great Peter Street were recorded in this period (H.F. Westlake, St Margaret’s Westminster [London, 1914], p.79).

  74 See note by ‘R.C.’ in N&Q, second s., vol. 7,18659, p.131. The present manor house at Minley was built in the French style in 1858–60 for Raikes Currie, a partner in Glynn Mills bank.

  75 Shaw (ed.), Calendar of Treasury Books, vol. 3, 1669–72, p.937.

  CHAPTER 8: COMING IN FROM THE COLD

  1 TNA, SP 29/294/14, f.20.

  2 Marshall, Intelligence and Espionage . . ., p.196.

  3 TNA, SP 29/294/16, f.274. Sir John Robinson to Williamson, Tower of London, 23 December 1671. He had just closed down two Quaker meeting houses ‘and if any preach, I take them up and send them to Newgate [prison] for six months . . . Some are rich men and there’s no further way to proceed against them but to . . . seize their estates and imprison them during the king’s pleasure. If this rule was generally followed, it would break them without any noise or tumult.’

  4 CSP Domestic 1663–4, p.295.

  5 CSP Domestic 1663–4, p.287.

  6 The so-called ‘Coventicles Act’. 22 Caro. II cap. 1.

  7 TNA, SP 29/140/93 f.136: ‘Discharge of three conventiclers’. The original document is dated December ?1665, but the discharge was almost certainly granted in late 1671.

  8 TNA, SP 29/293/28 f.31. Notes of Williamson about information received from Blood and others, 21 September 1671.

  9 TNA, SP 29/29/12, f.15. Blood to Williamson, London, 18 September 1671.

  10 TNA, SP 29/293/28, f.31.

  11 Bate, The Declaration of Indulgence, fn, p.91.

  12 The Fleet prison was burnt down on the third day of the Great Fire of London in September 1666, the prisoners escaping the flames at the last possible moment. The warden, Sir Jeremy Whichcote, purchased Caroon House in south Lambeth (once the residence of the Dutch ambassador in the reigns of Elizabeth I and James I) to house the prison’s debtors while it was rebuilt on the original site at his own expense.

  13 TNA, SP 29/294/15, f.21. Notes in Williamson’s hand, 11 November 1671.

  14 TNA, SP 29/294/14, f.20.

  15 TNA SP 29/294/15 f.21. Notes in Williamson’s hand, 11 November 1671.

  16 TNA, SP 29/294/139, f.169. Notes in Williamson’s hand, 4 December 1671.

  17 Bod. Lib. Rawlinson MS A.185, f.474, entries 10, 15 and 16.

  18 TNA, SP 29/294/139, f.169.

  19 CSP Domestic 1671–2, p.14.

  20 Baber (1625–1704) lived in King Street, and was a near neighbour to Dr Thomas Manton, the nonconformist rector of St Paul’s church in Covent Garden. Baber’s son John was not nearly so discreet; in 1683 he eloped with the daughter of Sir Thomas Draper and married her. See John Wilson, Court Satires of the Restoration (Columbus, Ohio, 1976), p.95.

  21 Eliot, ‘A new MSS of George Saville, first marquis of Halifax’, Macmillan’s Magazine, vol. 36, p.456.

  22 TNA, SP 29/293/235, f.295. Notes by Williamson, 27 December 167
1.

  23 Greaves, Enemies Under His Feet, p.221.

  24 TNA, SP 29/293/235, f.295.

  25 ‘Suing it out’ means the completion of a legal process, i.e., in this case, the drawing up of a document granting a free pardon to the recipient.

  26 CSP Domestic 1671–2, p.47. Blood to Arlington, 28 December 1671.

  27 TNA, SP 29/293/28, f.31.

  28 Greaves, Enemies Under His Feet, p.221.

  29 CSP Domestic 1672, p.111.

  30 Nelthorpe’s son Richard was a conspirator against the government in the 1680s. See: Greaves, Enemies Under His Feet, p.222.

  31 CSP Domestic 11 March 1675–29 February 1676, p.56.

  32 CSP Domestic 11 March 1675–29 February 1676, p.60.

  33 Brown, Miscellanea Aulica, p.66. Arlington to Gascoign, resident at the imperial court at Vienna, Whitehall, 19 March 1672.

  34 Abbott, ‘English Conspiracy and Dissent’, American Historical Review, vol. 14, p.719.

  35 Bate, The Declaration of Indulgence, p.92.

  36 CSP Domestic 1671–2, pp.37 and 184.

  37 Marshall, Intelligence and Espionage . . ., p.201.

  38 CSP Domestic 1671–2, p.343. The Coleman Street application was unsurprisingly rejected, given its reputation for sedition.

  39 CSP Domestic 1671–2, p.434.

  40 CSP Domestic 1671–2, p.568.

  41 CSP Domestic 1671–2, p.366.

  42 CSP Domestic 1671–2, p.589.

  43 A writ of præmunire charged a sheriff to summon a person accused of asserting or maintaining papal jurisdiction in England, so denying the monarch’s ecclesiastical supremacy. The statute of Richard II, on which this writ was based, was later applied to actions seen as questioning or diminishing royal jurisdiction. This probably was the case here.

  44 CSP Domestic 1672, p.45. A total of 480 Quakers were released in May 1672.

  45 CSP Domestic 1672, p.589.

  46 Langley was appointed by Parliament in 1647 but ejected by the University visitors in 1660.

  47 Bod. Lib. Western MSS 28,184, f.250.

  48 ‘An Act for Preventing Dangers which may Happen from Papist Recusants’, 25 Caro. II, cap. 2.

  49 The doctrine of transubstantiation declares that the blessed bread and wine used in the Sacrament of the Eucharist is in reality the Body and Blood of Christ, while appearing unchanged in appearance to worshippers’ sight. The oath attached to the Act read: I, [name] do declare that I do believe that there is not any transubstantiation in the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper, or in the elements of the bread and wine at or after the consecration thereof by any person whatsoever.

  50 The monk responsible for handing out alms to the poor before the dissolution of the monasteries in the sixteenth century. The Presbyterian congregation may have used the old disused chapel of St Ann within the almoner’s house. See: H. F. Westlake, St Margaret’s Westminster (London, 1914), p.6.

  51 HMC ‘Leeds’, p.15.

  52 CSP Domestic 1678, pp.226–7.

  53 TNA,SP 84/188/125.

  54 CSP Domestic 1671–2, p.372.

  55 CSP Domestic 1672, p.683.

  56 TNA, SP 29/333/181, f.245. Notes in Blood’s handwriting, ?February 1673.

  57 CSP Domestic 1672, p.601, Colonel Thomas Blood to Williamson, 12 September 1672.

  58 ‘Williamson Letters’, vol. 1, pp.14–5. Henry Ball to Williamson, Whitehall, 2 June 1673. The lord lieutenant, Arthur Capell, First Earl of Essex, told Arlington from Dublin that ‘Mr Blood arrived here last Saturday but I have not yet seen him’. CSP Domestic January 1663-August 1664, p.335.

  59 Peter Talbot (1620–80) had been appointed queen’s almoner after Charles’s marriage but was accused of conspiring, with four Jesuit priests, and planning to assassinate the Duke of Ormond. He resigned his office and retired to France, but was appointed archbishop of Dublin in 1669. He convened a meeting of Irish Catholic gentry which decided to make representations to the king about Catholic grievances and this so alarmed Irish Protestants that harsher measures against the Catholic population were imposed and Talbot sought exile in Paris.

  60 ‘Essex Papers’, pp.90–1. Earl of Essex to Arlington, Dublin Castle, 17 June 1673.

  61 TNA, SP 29/366/181, f.11.

  62 CSP Domestic January 1663–August 1664, p.410.

  63 CSP Domestic January 1663–August 1664, p.304.

  64 CSP Domestic 1671–2, p.373. In August 1677, Neptune Blood petitioned the Duke of Ormond to grant him the two rectories of Castletown Kindalen and Churchtown, Co. Clare, formerly belonging to the Abbey of Mullingar, at an annual rent of £6 (CSP Domestic 1677–8, p.234).

  65 CSP Domestic January 1663–August 1664, p.502. Were his voyages with the East India Company?

  66 An officer on board ship who keeps the accounts and sometimes has charge of the provisions.

  67 In March 1669, the diarist Samuel Pepys, a member of the Navy Board, was temporarily named captain of Jersey as a legal manoeuvre to render him eligible to become a member of a court martial over the loss of HMS Defiance. The appointment gave him ‘much mirth’. HMS Jersey, the first of eight ships to bear the name in the Royal Navy, was captured by the French in the West Indies on 18 December 1691 and renamed, rather unimaginatively She remained in French naval service until 1716. See: Brian Lavery, The Ship of the Line, vol. 1, Development of the Battlefleet 1650–1850 (London, 2003), p.160. Her name comes from one of the Channel Islands and an image of the ship appeared on a 23p Jersey stamp in 2001. See also: BL Add. MS. 10,115 (Williamson papers on projected war with France in 1677), f.73 – Blood’s two sons serving in Royal Navy.

  68 CSP Domestic March-December 1678, p.20.

  69 Henry Ball told Williamson in June 1673 that Blood ‘pretends to have a great estate left his wife but Dr Butler tells me this was “a flam [a deceit] and he has none at all on that side”.’ ‘Williamson Letters’, vol. 1, p.15.

  70 Place or take under the control of a court.

  71 Lancashire Record Office MS DDX 26/70/1. This petition is also calendared in the State Papers under the year 1665 but as Charles Holcroft died in December 1672, it must date from 1673 at the earliest.

  72 Kaye, Romance and Adventures of Colonel Blood . . ., pp.250–3; Lancashire Record Office MS QSP/547/15.

  73 ‘Williamson Letters’ vol. 1, p.15 fn.

  74 TNA, SP 29/294/235, f.295.

  75 Lillywhite, London Coffee Houses, p.639.

  76 Marshall, ‘Colonel Thomas Blood and the Restoration Political Scene’, Hf, vol. 32, p.571.

  77 Fifty-six pounds or 25.4 kg.

  78 TNA, SP 29/333/82, f.126. Richard Wilkinson to Colonel John Russell, Appleby, 10 February 1673.

  CHAPTER 9: THE WAYS OF THE LORD

  1 Explained in a sermon, preached at Colchester [Essex] by Edmund Hickeringill, rector of All Saints, p.1.

  2 ‘T.S.’, The Horrid Sin of Man-catching . . ., p.1.

  3 To deceive or trick.

  4 ‘Sham Plots’, p.1. Samuel Bold (1649–1737), the vicar of Shapwick in Dorset and an earnest advocate of religious toleration preached a sermon against religious persecution when a brief was read out in support of Huguenot refugees in 1682, declaring that informers were the ‘brutish and degenerate part of mankind’ and were men ‘of desperate fortunes’. His sermon was subsequently published as A Sermon against Persecutions, preached 26 March 1682 (London, 1682), pp.7–9. For an excellent overview, see Marshall, Intelligence and Espionage . . ., p.207.

  5 ‘Sham Plots’ p.1.

  6 Allen, ‘Political Clubs in Restoration London’, Hf, vol. 19, pp.563 and 566.

  7 CSP Domestic 1667–8, p.89.

  8 Waller (c. 1637–99) was the son of the parliamentary general of the same name who fought in the Civil War and his second wife.

  9 Dryden, Absalom andAchitophel, pt. 2, line 53.

  10 Waller’s club is mentioned in the Catholic midwife Elizabeth Cellier’s Malice Defeated. For Blood’s infrequent attendances there, see ‘Counter-plots’, 1679, p.6
.

  11 After Richard Cromwell’s fall from power, he was unkindly nicknamed ‘Queen Dick’ by Royalists and was now exiled in France.

  12 TNA, SP 29/397/7, f.7. Williamson’s notes of information received from Mr Blood, 2 October 1678.

  13 Peyton (c. 1633–89) fled to Holland after the succession of James II but a botched attempt to kidnap him and bring him back to England caused a diplomatic incident between the two countries. In 1688, he commanded a regiment in William of Orange’s invasion force after it landed in Dorset. The following year Peyton died in London from a fever, reportedly two days after drinking bad claret.

  14 CSP Domestic 1677–8, p.571. Williamson to Boyle, Whitehall, 12 January 1678. It may have been connected with his old lands at Sarney. On 5 June 1679, a note was issued to the lord lieutenant of Ireland about ‘the petition of Thomas Blood for a grant of the chief rent payable out of land belonging to him called Sarney, Co. Meath, of £6 per annum, not claimed for thirty-eight years and the arrears thereof’. See: CSP Domestic January 1679–August 1680, p.164.

  15 CSP Domestic 1678, p.290. Blood to Duke of York, 16 July 1678.

  16 CSP Domestic 1677–8, pp.30–1. Ralph Burnett, the postmaster at Lincoln, sent on North’s letter to the king two days after it was written with a note saying the ‘enclosed is upon life and death and on other great concerns. I therefore pray you to take special notice that it may be delivered very carefully so that answer may come by Thursday’s post.’

  17 The church was not rebuilt after the fire and the parish was united with that of St Michael, Wood Street in 1670. Since 1965, there has been a garden on its site.

  18 HMC, ‘Ormond’, vol. 4, p.462.

  19 Barker was fined £50 for ‘illegal practice’ by the College of Physicians in 1656. In December 1673 he was appointed a physician in ordinary to Charles II – an honorary position, apparently without any fees.

  20 Pollock, The Popish Plot . . ., p.13.

  21 Williams, ‘The Pope-Burning Processions of 1679, 1680 and 1681’, Jnl Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, vol. 21, p.108.

  22 Kenyon, The Popish Plot, p.78.

  23 That old gossip Aubrey believed that Hill was also a member of the queen’s household (Aubrey’s Brief Lives, vol. 1, p.320). The murder had been committed in the courtyard of Somerset House, off the Strand, and the body later dumped at Primrose Hill (Kenyon, The Popish Plot, p.150). Miles Prance pleaded guilty to perjury in 1686 and was fined £100 and ordered to stand in the pillory (ibid., p.295).