The Audacious Crimes of Colonel Blood (19 page)

The clinching evidence against the two Bloods was that silver-mounted pistol, sword and belt left behind in the mud of Piccadilly, which became the all-important link that connected ‘Thomas Hunt' and, inevitably, his father with the outrage.

The link was supplied by the petition of Henry Draper, a constable, and Henry Partridge of Lambeth, who claimed the government's £100 reward because they knew the pistol belonged to the younger Blood,
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as they had taken it from him in the hue and cry following his assault and robbery of John Constable the
previous May. Moreover, they had returned all the weapons to him in October when sureties were provided after his release from the Marshalsea prison. The receipt for the equipment, signed by Hunt, was produced as additional proof.
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Finally, the authorities knew that one of the horses used in the ambush – the ‘black mare with one white foot, about sixteen hands high' – had also been seized at Lambeth and belonged to Thomas Hunt.

In late February Arlington reported to the committee that, of the men suspected, ‘Jones, Blood (called Allen), young Blood his son (called Hunt under which name he was indicted last year), Halliwell, Moore and Simons, were desperate characters sheltering under the name of Fifth Monarchy men'. Always cautious, the secretary of state urged their lordships not to publish the suspects' real names: ‘Would not exposing of their names by act of Parliament make them hide themselves in the country, whereas the nonconformists with whom they met and abhorred their crime, would otherwise be glad to bring them to justice?' he suggested.
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Apparently not. After examining a number of witnesses and reading reports of Arlington's interrogations, on 9 March 1671 the Lords finally produced their report, finding a true bill against Blood, his son and William Halliwell for the crime against Ormond – although the bill used only their pseudonyms. They were given ‘a short day' to submit themselves to justice or ‘upon failure of coming in, to stand convicted of the said assault'.
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Of course, they failed to appear. The matter was referred to the lord chief baron of the Exchequer, Sir Matthew Hale. Nothing further was accomplished.

Despite Arlington's view that the proceeds from ransoming Ormond were the prime motivation behind the attack, there seems every reason to believe that Blood intended to kill his old enemy. There are strong indications that he was going to hang the old soldier, like a criminal, from the Tyburn Tree, adding his humiliation and degradation to the heady cocktail of murder. The drama of Ormond's end would have enhanced the notoriety of the crime. Blood was looking for a place in history.

But revenge was not the only spur for the ambush. Money was
probably involved – with the cash almost certainly supplied by one of the highest in the land.

Circumstantial evidence suggests that this mystery figure who wanted Ormond dead and cold in his grave was George Villiers, Second Duke of Buckingham.

It is known that Buckingham ‘hated the duke of Ormond mortally',
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possibly because of his continuing grudge over the breakdown of a proposed marriage alliance between the two families of six years before.
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Furthermore, Buckingham was generally believed to have set in train Ormond's recall as lord lieutenant of Ireland in February 1669.
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He was always ruthlessly ambitious and regularly feuded with his rivals at court, particularly Arlington, and had even quarrelled with the king's brother, the Duke of York.
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Buckingham was ‘considered the most profligate person of the age and capable of any iniquity, however mean or enormous'.
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The other person who hated Ormond at court was Barbara Palmer, First Duchess of Cleveland and Countess of Castlemaine, one of Charles II's many mistresses and one who had a penchant for meddling in politics.
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In this, perhaps she was Buckingham's compliant ally.

Indeed, the general opinion at court was that Blood had been hired to assassinate Ormond by both Buckingham and the Duchess of Cleveland. After taking a leading role in the viceroy's removal from office, Buckingham still believed Ormond's influence with the king ‘might be able to defeat the measures which he and his cabal had formed for subverting the constitution of the kingdom'. Shortly before Blood's attack, Buckingham and his cronies had spread rumours that Clarendon and Ormond's eldest son, Thomas Butler, Earl of Ossory, had employed two men to murder Villiers. Significantly perhaps, the would-be assassins had been poisoned, but before their death had confessed to the plot.
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Buckingham possessed numerous contacts in the political underground of dissidents, particularly in London. His ‘intelligencers' moved easily in this grubby, subversive world of hidden motives, whispered confidences and madcap schemes to overthrow the government. It would not be difficult for them to find him someone both desperate enough to undertake this mission and possessing
the intelligence and resolve to plan the crime and see it through. Ideally, it should be a man who harboured a burning grudge against Ormond, to conveniently muddy the waters of motivation and keep the murder at arm's length from its secret central character. Thomas Blood fitted the bill very nicely. Indeed, there was no one else in the whole of London more qualified, or probably more willing.

Circumstantial evidence of this link between Blood and Buckingham comes in a letter, turned up by Arlington's investigations, dated 17 November 1670, from Thomas Allen to Mrs Mary Hunt and addressed to ‘Mr Davies' house at Mortlake'. We know Thomas Allen was Blood's alias and, furthermore, it is written in his distinctive handwriting. It reads simply:

I would have Thomas to come unto me to my lodging on Friday morning.

Let him bring his cloak with him.

We think about the beginning of the week if God gives an opportunity to sign the agreement, which is all at present.

Your friend ‘T.A.'

The note is endorsed in another hand: ‘John Anderson, apothecary. Near the Plough in Bishop [sgate] Street. T.H. lodges there.'
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Who was Thomas Blood about to sign an agreement with? Whilst this can only be conjecture or speculation, was this agreement with Buckingham to implement a plan for the murder of Ormond?
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The most compelling evidence, albeit hearsay, comes from a rather one-sided conversation that occurred at court between Ossory and Buckingham shortly after the events in St James's Street. Ossory, seeing Buckingham standing by the king, became red-faced with anger, and told him:

My Lord, I know well that you are at the bottom of this late attempt of Blood's upon my father. Therefore I give you fair warning [that] if my father comes to a violent end by sword or pistol; if he dies by the hand of a ruffian, or by the more secret way of poison,

I shall not be at a loss to know the first author of it . . .

I
shall consider you the assassin.

I shall treat you as such and wherever I meet you, I shall pistol you, though you stand behind the king's chair.

I tell it [to] you in his majesty's presence that you may be sure I shall keep my word.
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His eloquent, heartfelt threats were recorded by Francis Turner, the king's chaplain-in-waiting, who was in the same room. Unfortunately, the reaction of Charles II – or more pertinently, Buckingham – was not recorded, but it is telling that the duke, never slow to take umbrage or seek satisfaction in a duel, on this occasion apparently failed to challenge Ossory.

Certainly, as we shall see in the next chapter, the episode created some powerful friends for Blood inside the royal household.

It was the height of irony that Blood's attack on Ormond was closely followed by another on 21 December on Sir John Coventry, elected MP for Weymouth and Melcombe Regis, Dorset in January 1667. He was assaulted in Suffolk Street at 2 a.m. while on his way home after a long night ‘supping' at a Westminster tavern.

The previous day in the Commons, Coventry had proposed that a tax should be imposed on the theatres and playhouses and in his speech had made an unwise jibe about Charles II's affair with the actress Nell Gwynn.

James Scott, First Duke of Monmouth, born in 1649 as the king's first illegitimate son by his mistress Lucy Walter, felt this joke too near the knuckle and took great exception to the MP's impertinence. He commissioned Thomas Sandys, one of the officers in his troop of cavalry, to ambush Coventry and punish him for his impudence by a sound beating, if not worse. Some said afterwards that Monmouth's plan had the approval of the king himself.

After keeping the MP under surveillance for two or three hours (the tavern supper was clearly absorbing), Sandys and up to twenty accomplices, probably troopers, waylaid him, ‘some of them wrapping him up in his cloak, holding him fast and others cutting and mangling his face in a barbarous manner'.
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In fact, they slit Coventry's nose to the bone – once a punishment
for common criminals guilty of theft or non-payment of debt and the origin of the phrase ‘paying through the nose'. The assailants also stole the MP's periwig and the sword and belt of his servant.
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Aggrieved at this attack on one of their number and the grievous affront to parliamentary privilege, the Commons passed an Act to prevent malicious maiming and wounding.
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In the Ormond affair, the final question to be resolved is why the forces of law and order could not run the suspects to ground and arrest them. The answer was simply one of priorities and the limited resources available with which to fulfil them. Within three weeks of the attack on Ormond, the government learned of a conspiracy to attack Whitehall and kill the king, led by our old friend Captain John Mason, operating under the unlikely alias of a Catholic priest, ‘Father Thomas'.

Richard Wilkinson, a former Cromwellian soldier and now a sergeant in an infantry company stationed on the Isle of Wight, exposed the plot, which clearly predated the Ormond outrage. Fifty men had been enlisted by Mason to attack the sentries at the gates of the Palace of Whitehall, wearing makeshift protective coats ‘lined with quires of paper which would [block] carbine bullets'. The timing of this ungainly assault (with all that protective padding) would coincide with one of the glittering entertainments at court, such as ‘masking and other jovial sports'.
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Prince Rupert was sent a copy of Wilkinson's letter on 23 December and told that he knew where Mason was ‘and the name he goes by'. The informant had seen one of the conspirators' declarations, which had been printed six months before.

If the matter is kept private and Wilkinson is assured of his liberty, he undertakes to make out this and much more in a very short time or submit to be hanged.
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Arlington interrogated Wilkinson in late December, when he promised to obtain a copy of this manifesto. He had been promised ‘a sight of Mason, but for want of money and the uncertainty of his own condition, has been unwilling to seek his company'. Wilkinson
did not know whether any of the plotters had a hand in the Ormond ambush.
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Other spies had information suggesting that Blood, Captain John Lockyer and Timothy Butler were involved in planning this latest attack on the king. Butler was certainly in London that December and at Gravesend in Kent the following month.
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Given Blood's friendship with Mason and his role, and that of Lockyer and Butler, in rescuing him in July 1667, it would be surprising if he had not been caught up in the conspiracy.

But for the time being he was preoccupied, planning the greatest and most daring exploit of his entire madcap career.

6

The Most Audacious Crime

These two being brought down to Whitehall by his majesty's command, one of them proves to be Blood, that notorious traitor and incendiary.

London Gazette
, 8–11 May 1671
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Always anxious to find money, Parliament in 1642 cast covetous and avaricious eyes on the Crown Jewels, or St Edward's regalia, traditionally in the custody of the dean and chapter of Westminster Abbey and held in the Pyx Chapel within its precincts. The MPs regarded them only as the disgraceful baubles of monarchy and espied an opportunity to convert these centuries-old objects into much-needed cash, despite the vociferous objections of the Abbey authorities. In a show of commendable defiance to the legislators' might and their ephemeral whim, the church dignitaries refused to part with the regalia and placed them under lock and key. By just one vote, a parliamentary resolution to search the Abbey and force the relevant lock was defeated, but a subsequent motion established a commission to create an inventory of these items of coronation ritual.
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