The Audacious Crimes of Colonel Blood (37 page)

PROLOGUE

1
     Vol. 2, p.818. This was the first ‘who was who' of major figures in British
history, published by Andrew Kippis in six volumes between 1747 and 1766. As an indication of Blood's enduring notoriety, his biography takes up nine pages, sandwiched between those of Admiral Robert Blake, the Cromwellian founder of British naval supremacy, and ‘the very ancient, once noble and still truly honourable' family of Blount.

2
     TNA, SP 44/34/110, f.111.

3
     Blood was thus described in the
London Gazette
, issue no. 572, 8–11 May 1671, p.2, col.2.

4
     Adam the Leper' was the leader of a gang of robbers in the 1330s–40s who specialised in stealing the property of members of the royal court and their retainers, mainly in towns in south-east England. Adam and his gang besieged the London home of a merchant who was safeguarding the queen's jewels. When he refused to hand them over, the house was set ablaze and the jewels were seized. See: William Donaldson,
Rogues
,
Villains and Eccentrics
(London, 2005), pp.6–7 and Luke Owen Price,
A History of Crime in England
,
illustrating the Changes in Laws in the Progress of Civilisation
(2 vols., London, 1873–6), vol. 1, p.245. Adam died in the 1360s.

5
     Edward I was away fighting the Scots when the burglary occurred. See: Dean Stanley's
Historical Memorials of Westminster Abbey
, 3rd ed. (London, 1869), pp.428–30. English monarchs had stored their treasure in the Chapel of the Pyx from a few years after the Norman Conquest in 1066. The name ‘Pyx' comes from the wooden chests stored there, which held randomly chosen samples of the coinage of
the realm. These are still tested for metal content (and thus value) annually in a ceremony presided over by an official with the impressive title of ‘Queen's Remembrancer of the Royal Courts of Justice'. This was undertaken in the Palace of Westminster, but in 1870 the ceremony was transferred to the Goldsmiths' Hall in the City of London and continues there today.

6
     Richard of Pudlicott or ‘Dick Pudlicote' was a wool merchant who, having fallen on hard times, decided to undertake a little grand larceny to better his lifestyle. His haul from Edward's wardrobe treasury was valued at £100,000 or £73,350,000 in today's monetary values. He was executed in 1305. See: Paul Doherty,
The Great Crown Jewel Robbery of 1303: The Extraordinary Story of the First Big Bank Raid in History
(London, 2005) and T. F. Tout,
A Medieval Burglary
(Manchester, 1916), pp.13–5. Sadly for the more bloodthirsty amongst us, expert analysis in 2005 found the skin on the wooden door to be cow hide. The door is probably the oldest surviving one in Britain – dating from the 1050s.

7
     Bod. Lib. Rawlinson MS A. 185, ff.473
v
–474
r
.

8
     Montgomery-Massingberd (ed.),
Burke's Irish Family Records
, p.142. Duffield is five miles (8 km) from Derby. England's first smelt mill to extract lead from its galena ore was established at Makeney in 1554 by the German mining engineer Burchard Kranich and in 1581 Sir John Zouch, of nearby Codnor Castle, built a wire-drawing works there. Perhaps Edmund Blood decided to escape the noise and smells of early industrialisation and seek pastures new? See: Brian Cooper,
Transformation of a Valley: The Derbyshire Derwent
(London, 1983).

9
     More than 18,000 English troops fought against the Irish rebels – the largest military operation on land conducted during Elizabeth's reign. (The English expeditionary force assisting the Dutch rebels against Spain in the Low Countries under the Treaty of Nonsuch of August 1585 was never more than 12,000-strong.) Like other Irish rebellions, this one failed to oust the English from Ireland.

10
   The confusingly named Murrough McMurrough O'Brien (1562–97), fourth baron Inchiquin, was a member of one of the oldest families in the Irish peerage. In 1597, during a skirmish, he was shot
under the arm while fording the River Erne near Sligo. He fell off his horse and, encumbered by his armour, drowned. Inchiquin was buried in Donegal Abbey. His two-year-old son Dermot succeeded to the title.

11
   Kilnaboy Castle was destroyed in 1641 by Cromwellian forces. The site is off the R476 Kilfenora-Ballyvaughan road, north of Inchiquin Lough.

12
   Burke,
Genealogical and Heraldic History of the Landed Gentry of Ireland
, p.56.

13
   NAI, MS 12,816, f.29. Catholic resentment at this gerrymandering spilled over when the new Parliament first met on 18 May 1613, resulting in an unseemly brawl in the Commons chamber in Dublin Castle. As a result of these protests, some constituencies were scrapped, leaving a Protestant majority of only six seats.

14
   The arms of Blood are:
Or, 3 bucks couchant vulned with arrows proper
, with the crest
A buck's head erased with an arrow in its mouth
.

15
   NAI, MS 12,816, f.32 includes a family tree, dated 1879, that adds a fourth brother, Robert, with the comment: ‘supposed to have settled at Tamworth [Staffordshire]. Buried there 16 September 1646. The Bloods of Birmingham claimed descent from this Robert Blood.' However, there is no other mention of Robert Blood in this MS but he appears in another family tree in NAI, MS 451, f.11.

16
   NAI MS 451, f.11; MS 12,816 f.18. Mary Holcroft was supposedly related to the Hyde family of Norbury, Cheshire, from whom descended Sir Edward Hyde, First Earl of Clarendon, lord chancellor to Charles II. Her relationship to the Holcroft family into which Thomas Blood married is uncertain.

17
   NAI, MS 12,816, f.7.

18
   
CSP Domestic 1671–2
, pp.372–3.

19
   Hanrahan,
Colonel Blood
. . ., p.2.

20
   The chalice at Kilfenora has this inscription engraved upon it: ‘
Calix Ecclesia Cathedralis Fineboensis empt
[or]
expensa diocensis valet £4 15s 3d Neptuna Blood decanoAnno Domini 1665
' – ‘This chalice from St Fin Barr's Cathedral was purchased for £4 15s 3d by Neptune Blood, dean, 1665'. See: NAI MS 12,816, f.30. Neptune married three times and died in 1692, three years short of his 100th birthday. He
was succeeded as dean of Kilfenora by his fourth son by his third wife, another Neptune. His brothers and sisters, with ages ranging from five to sixteen, are commemorated by a large tablet with a long Latin inscription on the north wall of the cathedral. See:
Jnl of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland
, vol. 30 (1900), p.396.

21
   NAI, MS 12,816, f.35.

22
   Marshall, ‘Colonel Thomas Blood' in
ODNB
, vol. 6, p.270. Other authorities suggest Blood was born ten years later, e.g. Montgomery-Massingberd (ed.),
Burke's Irish Family Records
, p.142, but this seems unlikely.

23
   ‘Remarks . . .', p.219.

24
   NAI, MS 12,816, f.21. A survey in 1654–6 indicated that Thomas Blood, ‘Protestant', had held 220 acres (89 hectares) of land in Sarney since at least 1640. Robert Simington (ed.),
Civil Survey 1654–6; County of Meath
, vol. 5, p.126.

25
   
Civil Survey 1654–6; County of Meath
, vol. 5, p.129; NAI, MS 12,816, f.35.

26
   
CSP Ireland
1666–9, P.88. NAI, MS 12,816, f.20 in an account dated 1791 also records 120 acres (48.5 hectares) in ‘Seatown and Beatown' and 103 acres (41.3 hectares) in Westfieldstown, East Fingal. Glenmalure is a remote wooded valley in the Wicklow Mountains, with the River Avonbeg running through. It was the site of a battle on 25 August 1580 when an English force under Arthur Grey, Fourteenth Baron Grey of Wilton, was routed as they advanced to capture Balinacor, the stronghold of the rebel chieftain Fiach McHugh O'Byrne. See: Richard Brooks,
Cassell's Battlefield of Britain and Ireland
(London, 2005), p.331–2.

27
   NAI, MS 12,816, f.35.

28
   The Irish Confederation rebellion is also known as the ‘Eleven Years War'.

29
   Frost,
History and Topography of the County of Clare
, pp.369–70.

30
   Tibbutt (ed.),
Life and Letters of Sir Lewis Dyve 1599–1669
, p.148. A Captain Blood was reported as serving in ‘the old King's army under Sir Lewis Dyves' in 1671 (BL Add. MS. 36,916 f.233) and a ‘Capt Bludd' was noted as quartermaster in his regiment in the indigent officers' list of 1663 (Anon.,
A List of Officers Claiming to the Sixty
Thousand Pounds Granted by his Sacred Majesty
. . ., p.39). However, Blood is absent in the published regimental lists of both the Royalist and parliamentary armies in 1642, so he must have rallied to the king's colours after this date. See: Peacock (ed.),
The Army Lists of the Roundheads and Cavaliers
.

31
   Blood's name does not appear in the brief account of the Sherborne siege by a parliamentary author. John Rylands Library, Manchester, Tatton Park MS 68.20, f.210.

32
   ‘Remarks . . .', p.220.

33
   Also spelt ‘Rainsborough'.

34
   Paulden and Col. Morrison, wearing disguises, had gained entry to the fortress by fooling the parliamentary sentries and snatched control of Pontefract Castle on 3 June 1648.

35
   Bod. Lib. Clarendon MS 34, f.27
v
. ‘R.H.' in his account of Blood's life, maintained that Rainborowe had been ‘pistolled [shot] in his chamber'. See ‘Remarks . . .', p.220. Rainborowe's fellows in the Leveller faction (which advocated religious tolerance, extended suffrage and equality under the law) claimed that he had been assassinated on Cromwell's orders. A subsequent investigation produced no evidence to support this allegation. Three thousand people took part in his funeral procession through the streets of the City of London before Rainborowe was buried at Wapping. Subsequent street pamphlets, such as
Colonell Rainborowe's Ghost
, vociferously demanded revenge to be inflicted upon the royalists.

36
   The defeat at the Battle of Preston quashed any lingering hopes of a Royalist victory. Pontefract, the last cavalier stronghold, hung on grimly. After Charles I was executed, his son was proclaimed king within the besieged castle. This is the origin of Pontefract's motto,
Post mortem patris pro filio –
‘After the death of the father, support the son'. The 100 survivors of the garrison finally surrendered on 25 March 1649 and the castle was slighted.

37
   ‘Remarks . . .', p.220. Blood's entry in Andrew Kippis'
Biographia Britannica
(vol. 2, p.817), written seven decades after his death, implies his involvement in the Rainborowe attempted kidnapping by pointing out that ‘he was in England' in 1648 when the colonel ‘was surprised and killed at Pontefract' [
sic
].

38
   Sergeant,
Rogues and Scoundrels
, p.111.

39
   
CSP Domestic 1671–2
, p. 373; RCHM
Sixth Report
, p.370.

40
   John Rylands Library, Manchester, Tatton Park MS 68.20, f.210.

41
   Kippis,
Biographia Britannia
, vol. 2, p.817. For more information on those who switched allegiance, see Andrew Hopper's
Turncoats and Renegadoes: Changing Sides during the English Civil War
(Oxford, 2012). A cornet is the most junior commissioned rank in a cavalry regiment.

42
   Cromwell remains a figure of intense odium in Ireland because of the sheer brutality of this campaign. Irish Catholic Confederate battlefield casualties probably totalled almost 20,000. After the fall of Drogheda, Cromwell commented: ‘I am persuaded that this is a righteous judgment of God upon these barbarous wretches, who have imbrued their hands in so much innocent blood and that it will tend to prevent the effusion of blood for the future, which are satisfactory grounds for such actions, which otherwise cannot but work remorse and regret.' In total, around 200,000 civilians died in the famine and in a bubonic plague pandemic that followed the fighting – although some authorities estimate that Ireland's then population of 1.6 million was reduced by as much as half a million. In addition, 50,000 Irish were forcibly deported to the West Indies as indentured labourers. See: Sean O'Callaghan:
To Hell or Barbados: The Ethnic Cleansing of Ireland
(Dingle, Co. Kerry, 2000), p.85. The last Irish and Royalist troops surrendered in Co. Cavan in 1653.

43
   W. Johnson-Kaye & E. W. Wittenburg-Kaye (eds.),
Register of Newchurch in the Parish of Culcheth: Christenings
,
Weddings and Burials
, p.217.

44
   Off Holcroft Lane, Culcheth, Warrington, Lancashire. National Grid Reference: SJ 67979 95162. Postcode: WA3 4ND. Holcroft's wife was the daughter of John Hunt of Lymehurst and his wife Margaret: BL Harley MS 2,161, f.158.

45
   Hanrahan,
Colonel Blood
. . ., p.14.

46
   An action for recovery of £200 debt was brought in 1367 in the Chancery Court against Thomas, son of John de Holcroft of Lancashire, by his creditor, Henry de Tildeslegh of Ditton [Widnes]. See: TNA, C/241/147/39; 17 February 1367.

47
   
VCH Lancs
, vol. 4, fn. p. 161.

48
   
Manchester Archives MS L89/1/23/1.

49
   Douglas Brunton and D. H. Pennington,
Members of the Long Parliament
(London, 1954), p.234, and Browne Willis,
Notitia Parliamentaria: Part II
–
A Series of Lists of the Representatives in the Several Parliaments held from the Reformation
1541
to the Restoration 1660
, pp.229–39. Dissident troops under the command of Colonel Thomas Pride had forcibly removed opponents to their political aims. Some forty-five were imprisoned for a time, initially in a nearby tavern called ‘Hell'. It is difficult to determine how many MPs were prevented from sitting: there were 471 active members before the events of 6 December and 200 afterwards. Some eighty-six had absented themselves voluntarily and a further eighty-three were allowed back. The way had been cleared for Parliament to establish a Republic and to try the king for treason. Holcroft's name does not appear on the list of those excluded but neither does it appear in the HoC
Jnl
reports of the proceedings of the Rump Parliament.