The Audacious Crimes of Colonel Blood (27 page)

Another man to bless the name of the king was Thomas Blood.

He had more venal reasons to praise, laud and magnify the name of Charles
Rex.
The implementation of the Declaration of Indulgence, if properly arranged, might be a source of profit for someone who understood and could manipulate the intricate workings of government. With numerous contacts within the nonconformist communities, he could represent himself as a kind of broker or agent on behalf of individuals and congregations seeking licences to legitimise their regular church services. If Blood had any compunction about taking money from those pursuing the basic right of religious freedom, he did little to show it.

Within weeks, scores of applications for licences for worship were received in Whitehall from across England. Many were forwarded on by Blood, such as on 18 April:

Request by Mr Blood on behalf of the Anabaptists at Cranbrook, Kent, for licences for the houses of Thomas Beaty and Alexander Vines and for Richard Gun as their minister and also on behalf of the Anabaptist meeting in Coleman Street [London] for John Martin's house in White's Alley.
³⁸

There was another block application a few days later:

Request by Thomas Blood for licences for Mr Kitly, Essex, person and house; for the house of Mr Willis in Essex, his person being licensed [already]; for the houses of George Locksmith and William Mascall, both at Romford Essex; for Mr Gilson, Brentwood, Essex . . . for John Mascall's house in Monis [
sic
] Essex, for Henry Lever of Newcastle; for Thomas Crampton of Toxteth Park . . . for a meeting house at Kingsland, Middlesex; for Richard Gilpin and Mr Pingell of Newcastle, all Presbyterians and for Mr Durant of Newcastle, and for James Simonds, at a house at Lamberhurst, Kent, both Congregational.
³⁹

Blood must have become acquainted with William Mascall, a surgeon of Romford, when he briefly (and fraudulently) practised medicine there in 1667. On 14 May he wrote to Mascall, enclosing the desired licences. As barefaced as ever, the colonel told him: ‘There is no charge for them, only it is agreed that five shillings for the personal licences be gotten.' The machinery of government should be well oiled to make its wheels turn faster: ‘The doorkeepers and under-clerks should afterwards be remembered by a token of love', Blood insisted. Doubtless those bribes would be rendered via the old renegade himself and one must wonder whether the money ever reached the officials. Confidently, he added: ‘If you need any other places to be licensed, you can have them.'
⁴⁰

Although the licences were initially free, the flood of applications severely tested the capacity of the Whitehall bureaucracy to handle the volume of paperwork. Dr Butler, who had originally insisted that the permits should be ‘large and free', later changed his mind and advised Williamson that he was a fool to give himself trouble for no return.
⁴¹
Thereafter, a small fee was charged for licences for preachers, but none at all for places of worship.

After this new arrangement was imposed, Thomas Gilson of Weald, Essex, complained bitterly that Blood had only sent down ‘licences for our houses which signify nothing without a parson . . . We should have taken it better if he had sent the personal licences and left it to our courtesy what we would gratify the clerks and doorkeepers with, rather than have a sum imposed contrary to the king's express command that nothing should be required.' Petulantly, Gilson added: ‘Therefore, we advise him to send down presently the personal licences for us, lest we make our address some other way.'
⁴²

Blood showed himself to be a trifle more altruistic ten days later when he wrote to Arlington urging the release of eighteen named prisoners held for ‘excommunication, nonconformity or præmunire,
⁴³
being Presbyterians, independents or Anabaptists'. Noting that a general pardon was to be offered to Quakers who were ‘imprisoned for conscience sake', Blood sought the release, by special warrant, for those ‘of other persuasions [who] are like to remain in
prison who are not Quakers . . . if imprisoned for no other crime'.
⁴⁴

The Declaration of Indulgence was implemented in the teeth of loud opposition from many in the Church of England. In September 1672, William Fuller, Bishop of Lincoln, complained to Williamson that ‘all these licensed preachers grow insolent and increase strangely. The orthodox poor clergy are out of heart. Shall nothing be done against the Presbyterians, who grow and multiply faster than the other?'
⁴⁵

The University of Oxford was also aghast that licences were granted to Presbyterians and Anabaptists in the city. The preacher for the former was Dr Henry Langley, an erstwhile master of Pembroke College,
⁴⁶
who delivered his first sermon in June and

held forth for two hours (possibly he was to eat roast meat after and so needed not to spare his breath to cool pottage) upon the [Holy] Spirit on which subject they say he preached in the late times near two years and they say he was all the while so unintelligible that from that time to this nobody could tell whence the sound came [from] or whither [it was] going.

The University's scholars were invariably rude to these ‘parlour preachers', but feelings began to run higher and its vice-chancellor, Peter Mews, had to appear in person that month to protect one preacher from the violence of the undergraduates – acknowledging that there were those ‘who would have hanged him had he fallen into their hands'.
⁴⁷

Opposition and growing discontent were also endemic in Parliament, where many interpreted the suspension of penal laws covering religion as a symptom of the king's covert preferences not only for Catholicism but also for absolutist rule over his people. With an eye on the succession to the throne, many MPs were also fixated by the notion that, by slow degrees, the way was being paved for the Catholic faith to be officially approved in England. Inexorably, the delicate flower of religious tolerance withered and died in the political hothouse of Westminster. Parliament forced Charles to withdraw the Declaration in March 1673 and replaced it with the
first of the so-called ‘Test Acts',
⁴⁸
which required anyone entering public office, civil or military, to deny the Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation,
⁴⁹
take Anglican communion within three months of appointment and swear the twin oaths of Church Supremacy and Allegiance to the king. In an angry response, James, Duke of York, the king's brother and heir presumptive, openly acknowledged his Catholic faith that year and resigned all his public appointments.

At least some liberty remained for nonconformists to practise their religious beliefs. A list of conventicles in London in 1676 included details of a regular meeting of Presbyterians in the ‘great almry' (the former house of the monastic almoner)
⁵⁰
located behind Westminster Abbey. The congregation regularly included ‘Mr Blood and his two sons', probably Charles and William.
⁵¹
Two years later they heard ‘Mr Cotton' preach on a text taken from Psalms 144, verse 2: ‘My goodness and my fortress, my high tower and my deliverer; my shield and He in whom I trust who subdues my people under me.' Listening in rapt attention, according to a government informer, were Sir John Hopton, ‘a Scotchman and his lady . . . Lady FitzJames and [again] Mr Blood and his two sons. He was much for the defence of the Kirk [the Scottish Presbyterian church] and they sang the Scotch psalms.'
⁵²

Now happily rehabilitated in the eyes of his paymasters, Blood continued his spying activities, both domestic and overseas, in prosecution of the Dutch war. Some of his efforts produced valuable military intelligence, albeit time-sensitive. In March 1672, Blood was in Amsterdam and spent some time on the island of Texel, monitoring the passage of Dutch warships.
⁵³
The following month he informed Arlington that a ‘person who came through the Dutch fleet last Wednesday saw sixty-three ships, men at war and fireships together, rendezvoused at the Weling [
sic
] but could not distinguish how many there were of each. The Zeeland squadron was not come in from last Friday. I had an account also from thence with the presumption that none of their fleet would stir till after today.'
⁵⁴

Two months later the State Papers record the departure of ‘Mr Newman, Blood's friend', sent to Holland ‘for intelligence' on the Dover packet boat, armed with instructions and forty guineas in his purse.
⁵⁵
The following February, Blood reported that seditious ‘pamphlets from Holland' were expected the next week on the packet-boats. ‘The bulk were to be sent to the Spanish ambassador, whose goods are to be searched by persons of the Customs house. They intend to put them in some small casks in barrels of butter . . . to the ambassador.'
⁵⁶

At home, he passed on a sealed letter in September 1672 that had come into his hands from an informant, promising that any reply could be sent via him ‘if you do not have a readier way'.
⁵⁷
In June 1673, Blood was back in Dublin, ‘as he pretended, by my lord Arlington's leave'. Henry Ball told Williamson, now serving as a plenipotentiary at the Franco-Dutch Congress of Cologne, that Arlington was glad of Blood's absence ‘because of his impertinence', but the colonel faced an uncertain welcome: ‘The Presbyterian party all renounce him as one that has kept not very well his word with his majesty as to serving him.'
⁵⁸

In fact Blood had delivered a letter from Arlington to Arthur Capell, First Earl of Essex, the lord lieutenant of Ireland. The secretary of state, with his well-hidden Catholic sympathies, was worried that he had been accused of supporting the cause of Peter Talbot, the Catholic Archbishop of Dublin,
⁵⁹
in his attempts to ease the grievances of the Catholic population of Ireland. Essex reassured Arlington: ‘I am sure there is nothing in it but of advantage to you and your lordship may be fully satisfied that there were no questions put leading to your lordship's name.'
⁶⁰

For his espionage efforts, Blood was paid a salary of £100 a year, equivalent to £13,750 in today's purchasing power, as well as receiving his £500 a year pension from Irish lands.
⁶¹
The king also moved to restore him to his lost Irish estates, writing to Essex that Blood had not yet repossessed his property, as he required a licence for bringing a ‘writ of error for reversal of his outlawry'. The viceroy was now authorised to grant that licence.
⁶²

In May 1673, Blood also applied to the king for a grant of £1,400 which had been paid to the former treasurer of Ireland but ‘not yet disposed of by any order'.
⁶³
Whether he eventually received this lost money is unknown.

Blood was also willing to use his position at court and at the heart of government to advance the wider interests of his family. In April 1672, he wrote to Arlington, begging his lordship to remember ‘my uncle Dean [Neptune] Blood's advance in Ireland . . . He has been dean thirty years and was with the king [Charles I] at Oxford and was an active person [on his behalf].'
⁶⁴
Unfortunately, in this instance, his pleas went unanswered. The following January, he suggested that his son, Thomas Blood junior, if serving alongside an ‘able' lieutenant, ‘could manage a company in the army' and that his third son Edmund ‘was fit for an ensign or a sea officer, having been twice to the East Indies'.
⁶⁵
Blood even recommended an ‘able lieutenant' to act as mentor for his former highwayman son. Captain Nicholas Carter ‘is very fit for a lieutenant', he observed. It is not known whether the eldest son took the king's shilling as he died around 1675, leaving a wife and an infant son, of whom his brother Holcroft became guardian. Edmund, the fourth son, was appointed purser
⁶⁶
of
Jersey
,a forty-gun fourth-rate frigate of 560 tons built for the Commonwealth and launched at Maldon in Essex in 1654. Blood's second son William was a steward on the same ship. Both are known to have been serving in the Royal Navy in 1677.
⁶⁷

He also sought to advance his third son Holcroft's career in the army. In March 1678, Blood wrote to Williamson, having heard about a ‘vacancy of an ensign's place in Captain Rook's company in Sir Lionel Walden's regiment. The captain accepted my son but the colonel preferred another, since he was accepted. Wherefore, I would request that he may not be put by.'
⁶⁸

There was, however, a more pressing issue preoccupying Blood's time and attention. He petitioned the king about his father-in-law's estates, still the subject of a wearying, tedious (and expensive) legal dispute. The property, he claimed, was now legally his in right of his wife, as the old parliamentary colonel's last male heir, Charles, had died in December 1672.
⁶⁹
Blood had instituted his own legal proceedings against some of the Holcrofts to claim the estate, but matters had now got to the stage where violence and even two murders had been committed in attempts to finally decide the matter.

His petition pointed out that the Holcrofts ‘had laboured . . . to defraud [him] of his
just right and finding their own title to be weak have combined with Richard Calveley to promote an old title to his part of the said estate which title for these forty years has been overthrown at law'.

Yet . . . the said Calveley [has] been so vexatious that when his title at law was rejected, they laboured by violence to get [a] footing in the estate . . .

About six years ago, they hired several obscure persons out of Wales that went to the house of a gentlemen, one Hamlet Holcroft . . . and with a pistol killed him dead for not giving them possession when they had no legal process nor officer to demand it by . . .