The Audacious Crimes of Colonel Blood (23 page)

Furthermore, Arlington, who probably employed Blood as a government agent in the Netherlands in 1666 and in the subsequent attempt to lure the regicide Ludlow to Paris, would also have given much to prevent details of his clandestine espionage operations being described in evidence given under oath. There may also have been a more devious motivation: Williamson had described how Blood's capture was worth ‘ten times the value [of the] crown'.
¹⁸
His usefulness to the government, if not the continued safety of the realm, might be greater with him alive rather than dead, as yet another martyr in the nonconformist cause.

Therefore, those close to Charles had a range of powerful reasons, both personal and political, to argue that Blood's attempts to defend himself should be heard by a very august company behind closed doors. The king's agreement to meet him probably followed some persuasive lobbying from those around him, both courtiers and ministers.

The Duke of Ormond, an old hand (and victim) in court politics, understood full well what was going on. ‘The man need not despair,' he confided to his fellow privy counsellor Sir Robert Southwell, ‘for surely, no king would wish to see a malefactor but [only] with [the] intention to pardon him.'
¹⁹

The interview, in one of the privy apartments of the palace, was also attended by James, Duke of York, Prince Rupert and a number of senior officers of the royal household, doubtless including Arlington and Williamson. The drama and surrealism of the occasion seemingly had no effect on Blood, who appeared not in the least intimidated by being in the company of the reigning House of Stuart. Because of his involvement in a long list of conspiracies to cut short the life of Charles II, he probably remained fettered, standing between several armed King's Guards.

In reply to the king's first question, Blood immediately and
readily confessed that he was involved in the attack on Ormond six months before. He was then questioned about what had provoked ‘so bold an assault'. Brazenly, he maintained forcibly that the duke ‘had taken away his estate and executed some of his friends and that he and many others had engaged themselves by solemn oath to revenge it'.

Who were his accomplices? Blood steadfastly refused to name them, as he ‘would never betray a friend's life nor deny guilt in defence of his own'.
²⁰

The colonel tried vainly to justify his theft of the Crown Jewels by recounting the ‘wrongs, injuries and losses he had sustained . . . and the disgraces and disappointments he had met with in Ireland'.
²¹
These he sought to remedy by robbing the king, as the representative figurehead of the state that had inflicted such injustices upon him.

The old outlaw was nonplussed to hear of the true monetary value of the coronation regalia. He had initially believed ‘the crown was worth £100,000', but was horrified to learn that ‘the crown, sceptre and Prince Edward's staff [had] cost the king but £6,000'. It is a mark of the scale of Blood's considerable chutzpah that when confronted by imminent public execution for treason, this was probably not the time to feel cheated about the value of your would-be ill-gotten gains. His overactive self-esteem and ego also drove him to lie about his age.

But by admitting his involvement in the Ormond assault and the attempt on the Crown Jewels, Blood recognised that he ‘had sufficiently laid himself open to the law and [that] he might reasonably expect the utter rigour of it for which he was, without much concern of his own, prepared'.
²²

There were some unexpectedly generous statements made about his character. Prince Rupert testified to Blood's loyal service for the Royalist cause during the Civil War and acknowledged that ‘he was a very stout, bold fellow' in his military exploits committed in defence of the king's unhappy father and his crown. Fortunately for the colonel, there was no mention of his switching sides later in the conflict.
²³

Then Blood made a dramatic statement. Looking directly at his seated sovereign, he Voluntarily confessed' his role in another assassination attempt against him – this time by shooting the king ‘with a carbine, from out of the reeds by the Thames side above Battersea where he often went to swim . . . '. He confessed

that the cause of this resolution, in himself and others, were his majesty's severity over the consciences of the godly in suppressing the freedom of their religious assemblies.

[But] when he had taken his stand in the reeds for that purpose, his heart was checked with an awe of majesty and he did not only relent but diverted the rest of his associates from the design.
²⁴

So the sight of Charles skinny-dipping in the river at Vauxhall caused a dramatic change of heart, as well it might.
²⁵
Blood said he suddenly realised that the monarch's ‘life was better for them than his death, lest a worst succeed him' and put down his gun.

But was this an admission of another dangerous plot against Charles's life – or just a figment of Blood's feverish imagination, timely conjured up with the gift of an Irishman's gab, to portray himself in a reformed and thus more positive light to his monarch?

If this was something more than a fantasy, the aborted attempt must have been staged either before the Ormond incident in December 1670 or just prior to mid-April 1671, when Blood made his first moves in the plot to steal the Crown Jewels – if only because the bitterly cold temperature of the Thames in winter would deter even the most hardy of kings from swimming in the river.
²⁶

What Blood did not bother to mention – and he later acknowledged rather lamely that he had conveniently ‘forgotten' to confess to it to the king – was his entanglement in another plot to murder Charles, this time in the House of Lords during an attack on Parliament by 300 men. These, he claimed, had already been recruited and were only awaiting his call to arms. ‘It never came into my mind till the k[ing]'s absence', he ingenuously admitted to Williamson later.

The following September the spymaster noted information supplied to him by Blood and other informers that Captain Roger Jones (our old friend ‘Mene Tekel' who had escaped justice at York) had drawn the colonel into the conspiracy shortly ‘after Lord Ormond's business'. The tobacconist John Harrison reported Ralph Alexander's claims that a ‘great number of battle axes or bills with long staves' had been stored in a house in Thames Street, near the Tower, ready for the assault on the Lords. The conspirators also planned to kidnap, ‘one night of a sudden', the irascible George Morley, Bishop of Winchester and Dean of the Chapel Royal, and the privy counsellor, William Craven, First Earl of Craven.
²⁷
The motives or purpose behind these choices of target remain obscure.

The planned timing for this
coup de main
is also uncertain. Charles prorogued Parliament for a year on Saturday, 22 April 1671, and would have been present then in the Lords, ‘seated on his Royal Throne, adorned with his regal crown and robes'.
²⁸
There was no evidence whatsoever of an attack or disturbance that day and it seems very plausible that, as a major protagonist, Blood's preoccupation with the theft of the Crown Jewels forced the postponement of this assassination attempt. Alexander later disclosed that the weapons for the attack were broken and secretly thrown into the Thames after they had heard of Blood's confession.
²⁹

If so, this growing burden of conspiracy on Blood's time and energies makes it extremely unlikely that he tried to snipe at the king from his uncomfortable waterlogged hiding place among the Thameside reeds near Battersea. Arranging even a simple assassination attempt requires careful planning and detailed intelligence collection about the movements of the intended target. Just how many plots can one man – even the mercurial and feisty Blood – be entangled in at any one time? Yes, it seems highly likely that quick-thinking Thomas Blood made up this story on the spur of the moment to ingratiate himself with the king. Blarney is too weak a word to describe his quixotic canard.

His frank answers to the questions put to him were a curious concoction of bravado, impudence, humility and blatant threats.
Blood shamelessly cautioned the king that there were ‘hundreds of his friends yet undiscovered who were all bound to each other by the indispensable oaths of conspirators to revenge the death of any of the fraternity upon those who should bring them to justice'. This inviolable blood oath, he warned bluntly, would ‘expose his majesty and all his ministers to the daily fear and expectation of a massacre'.

On the other hand, ‘if his majesty would spare the lives of a few, he might oblige the hearts of many who, as they have been seen to do daring mischiefs, would be as bold, if received into pardon and favour, to perform eminent services for the crown'. Blood became ever more boastful and ‘pretended' to be able to wield ‘such an interest and sway amongst the fanatics as though he had been the chosen general and had them all entered on his muster roll'.
³⁰

So there was the deal, brazenly placed on the palace table by Blood. Grant me my life, he was proposing, and I will spy for you amongst the dangerous religious dissident community. No wonder he was so keen to be questioned by the king.

Charles had shown considerable ‘coolness and moderation' throughout his questioning.
³¹
Just to ensure everyone knew what was being offered, the king now asked: ‘What if I should give you your life?' The colonel replied shortly: ‘I would endeavour to deserve it.'
³²

There was no doubt that Blood's candour astonished his assembled listeners. He ‘spoke so boldly that all admired him, telling the king how many of his subjects were disobliged and that he was one that took himself to be in a state of hostility and that he took not the crown as a thief but an enemy, thinking that lawful which was lawful in war'.
³³

Later, some maintained that Blood had bullied the king and ‘the whole court was frighted and thought it safer to bribe him rather than to hang him'.
³⁴
Certainly, Charles treated him ‘with a leniency and moderation not to be paralleled'.
³⁵

The well-informed Sir Thomas Henshaw, lawyer, courtier and later diplomat, wrote to his friend Sir Robert Paston, MP and gentleman of the privy chamber, with an account of Blood's interrogation. He branded the colonel ‘a gallant hardly, [but] a villain as
ever herded in that sneaking sect of Anabaptists', but when he was examined by the king ‘he answered so frankly and undauntedly that everyone stood amazed'. Henshaw reported that ‘men guessed him to [look] about fifty years of age by the grey hairs sprinkled up and down his head and beard' but thought he was ‘not above forty-five and his son twenty-one'.
³⁶

The interrogation in that grand palace apartment must have lasted well over an hour. At its conclusion, Blood was returned to the fetid squalor of his cell in the Tower while Charles conferred with his ministers about his next course of action to curb this doughty fighter against the forces of the crown.

Arlington and Williamson did not rely only on Blood's testimony in their attempts to fathom out the depths of the conspiracy to steal the regalia. There were several accomplices – Halliwell and Smith – still at large. The usual suspects were rounded up and interrogated.

For example, on 15 May the keeper of the Gatehouse prison in Westminster received a warrant to hold John Buxton ‘for dangerous practices and combinations with Thomas Blood and his son' and was ordered to keep him a close prisoner.
³⁷
This was the same John Buxton, of Bell Alley, Coleman Street, who had been questioned after the Ormond incident because of his friendship with the two Bloods and Halliwell and his involvement in finding a surety for ‘Thomas Hunt' to buy him freedom from the Marshalsea prison.
³⁸
Once again, no telling evidence could be found against him, and Buxton walked free from the Gatehouse within twenty-four hours.
³⁹

Amid all the comings and goings to Whitehall in the aftermath of the attempt on the Crown Jewels, there is one mystery document surviving in the State Papers held in the National Archives at Kew. It purports to be a letter from Blood, written from the Tower, to Charles II, dated 19 May 1671, which implicates some of the great and good in the Jewel House robbery:

May it please your majesty: this may tell and inform you that it was Sir Thomas Osborne and Sir Thomas Lyttleton, both your
treasurers of your Navy, that set me to steal your crown, but he that feeds me with money was James Lyttleton esquire. 'Tis he that pays under the treasurers at your pay office.

He is a very bold villainous fellow, a very rogue, for I and my companions have had many a £100 of your majesty's money to encourage us upon this attempt.

I pray no words of this confession [be disclosed] but know your friends.

Not else but I am your majesty's prisoner and if [my] life [is] spared your dutiful subject whose name is Blood which I hope is not that your majesty seeks after.
⁴⁰

This apparent account of a wider conspiracy operating at the very heart of government was a blatant forgery, even though the last line contains a mischievous pun worthy of Colonel Blood's tortured humour. The handwriting bears no resemblance whatsoever to his familiar sloped straggly scrawl and it is no surprise that Williamson dismissed it immediately with the contemptuous endorsement: ‘A foolish letter.'

This attempt to incriminate Osborne and Lyttleton must be another squalid episode in the political intrigue and constant jockeying for position that constantly pervaded the royal court. Both men were friends of Buckingham – Osborne was one of the duke's staunchest allies at this time, but later was to fall out with him. Lyttleton (1647–1709) later became speaker of the House of Commons, but the aspiring Osborne (1632–1712) was probably the main target of this forgery.