The Audacious Crimes of Colonel Blood

by Robert Hutchinson

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  Acknowledgements

  This book could not have been written without the tireless and enthusiastic support of my dear wife, who has shared with me the complexities of seventeenth-century Irish politics and the conspiracies against the crown and government of Charles II.

  I am very grateful to Heather Rowland, Head of Library Collections, and Adrian James, Assistant Librarian, at the Society of Antiquaries of London; Kay Walters and her team at the Athenæum Club library; the staff at the University of Sussex library at Falmer, East Sussex and the National Archives at Kew and in the Rare Books, Manuscripts and Humanities reading rooms at the British Library. My thanks are also due to the staff at the Bodleian Library; to my researchers Hilda McGauley of ‘Records of Ireland’ for her assistance at the National Library of Ireland and especially to Denise A. Harman for her hard work at the Lancashire Record Office. Lastly, I am particularly grateful to Robert C. Woosnam-Savage, Curator of European Edged Weapons at the Royal Armouries, and to my good friend Philip J. Lankester, Curator Emeritus, for their very kind help with Colonel Blood’s ballock daggers.