The Audacious Crimes of Colonel Blood (22 page)

It finally was taken from him and Blood, now held prisoner, told Beckman breathlessly: ‘It was a gallant attempt, however unsuccessful . . . [but] it was for a crown.'
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This was now badly bent and buckled and had lost some of its precious stones that had been loosened in Blood's attempt to flatten it. A large pearl, a diamond and some of the smaller stones were
later picked up by Katherine Maddox, a poor but honest cinder-sweeping woman, who returned them to Sir Gilbert Talbot and was rewarded for her pains. A barber's apprentice also handed in a diamond, and other gemstones were found in Blood's pocket.
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Perrot had been captured by a servant of Captain Sherborne before Blood was overpowered and the orb was recovered from his baggy breeches, as was ‘a fair ballas [ruby]' from his pocket.

As with the rescue of Mason, the denouement of Blood's attempt on the Crown Jewels began to take on almost comical aspects as, in the confused fighting, friend and foe were difficult to distinguish on the riverside strand beneath the Tower walls. Young Edwards overtook a man who was covered with blood and began grappling with him. Believing he was one who had murdered his father, he was about to run him through with his sword, when Beckman yelled out a warning: ‘Hold! He is none of them!'

Beckman himself then became endangered. He had sprinted ahead of the rest of the pursuers to grab Blood and the guards, following up rather more slowly, were going to shoot him when one, who knew Beckman, shouted: ‘Forbear! He is a friend!'

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.
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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.
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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.
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The two Bloods were returned to the Tower of London as prisoners of its lieutenant, Sir John Robinson.
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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.
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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!'
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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 clerk
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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 Cambridge
³
and another to the nonconformist lawyer Robert Aldworth, the town clerk of Bristol.
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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.'
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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, surcingle
⁶
and gown
The fittest mask for those who rob the Crown
But his lay pity
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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
.
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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.
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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.
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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 all
¹²
– and on 12 May, the two Bloods were escorted across London in chains to the Palace of Whitehall for the royal interrogation.
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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.
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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.
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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'
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– was intimately involved in the Ormond affair for her own tainted personal ends.
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