The Audacious Crimes of Colonel Blood (38 page)

50
   
Lancashire Civil War Tracts
, pp.32–3; Lancashire Record Office MS DDX 2670/1.

51
   
Lancashire Civil War Tracts
, p.85.

52
   W. Johnson-Kaye & E. W. Wittenburg-Kaye (eds.),
Register of Newchurch in the Parish of Culcheth: Christenings
,
Weddings and Burials
, p.15.

53
   Montgomery-Massingberd,
Irish Family Records
, p.142.

54
   Kippis,
Biographia Britannia
, p.817.

55
   ‘Remarks . . .', pp.219–20.

56
   Sergeant,
Rogues and Scoundrels
, p.112.

CHAPTER 1: CAPTURE THE CASTLE

1
     TNA, SP 63/313/168, f.346.

2
     The Commonwealth Parliament was perennially short of money to pay its troops. In 1646, it resolved to sell the gilded bronze effigy of Henry VIII that lay on top of the black marble sarcophagus marking his grave in St George's Chapel, Windsor. Around £600 for the statue was paid to ‘Colonel [Christopher] Whichcot, governor of
Windsor Castle, to be by him employed for the pay of that garrison'. (In one of those delicious ironies of history, Henry had filched the sarcophagus from the unfinished tomb of Cardinal Thomas Wolsey after his downfall in 1529 and the tomb-chest was recycled in 1808 for the huge monument to Nelson in St Paul's Cathedral, where it remains today.) See Robert Hutchinson,
Last Days of Henry VIII
(London, 2005), pp.268–70.

3
     See C. H. Firth and R. S. Rait,
Acts and Ordinances of the Interregnum 1642–60
, vol. 2, pp.598–603 (3 vols. London, 1911), for more information on this draconian legislation and pp.722–53 for the subsequent Act of Satisfaction. Under the so-called Adventurers' Act, passed 19 March 1642, funds for the suppression of the Irish rebellion could be solicited from speculators. Anyone who invested £200 would receive 1,000 acres (404.7 hectares) of property confiscated from rebel landowners – or four shillings (twenty pence in modern English money), an acre. Cromwell subscribed £600.

4
     John Scott, an English traveller in the West Indies during the Commonwealth period, saw Irish labourers working in gangs in the fields, alongside black slaves ‘without stockings under the scorching sun'. He reported that the Irish were derided by ‘the negroes and branded with the epithet “white slaves'” (TNA, CO 1/21,1667, no. 170). See: Hilary Beckles, ‘A “riotous and unruly lot”: Irish indentured servants and Freemen in the English West Indies, 1644–1713',
William and Mary Quarterly
, vol. 47 (1990) pp.503–22. Irish traditions and heritage survive in the Caribbean – St Patrick's Day is still celebrated as a national holiday in Montserrat, the only nation to do so outside Ireland.

5
     A star fort known as ‘Cromwell's Barracks', dating from this period, defends the harbour of Inishbofin.

6
     Sir William Petty (1623–87), who had leave of absence from his position as professor of anatomy at Brasenose College, Oxford, was paid £18,532 for his pains, but had to accept 30,000 acres near Kenmare, Co. Kerry, in lieu of the last £3,181 of his fee as, inevitably, Parliament's treasury was bare.

7
     For full details of Blood's holdings after the Down Survey and
previous landowners, see the Trinity College, Dublin, website:
http://downsurvey.tcd.ie/landowners.

8
     Irish House of Commons 14 & 15 Car 2
cap.
2.

9
     See: Wilson, ‘Ireland under Charles II', p.79.

10
   The commissioners appointed were: Sir Richard Rainsford, Sir Thomas Beverley, Sir Edward Dering, Sir Edward Smith, Sir Allan Broderick, Winston Churchill and Colonel Edward Cooke, ‘all men of good parts, learned in the law and clear in their reputation for virtue and integrity', Carte,
Life of . . . Ormond
, vol. 4, book 6, p.123.

11
   Sergeant,
Rogues and Scoundrels
, p.114 and Greaves,
God's Other Children
, p.21. Leckie is described in a number of sources as Blood's ‘brother-in-law', but we have no firm record of Blood having had a sister.

12
   Abbott,
Colonel Thomas Blood
. . ., p.42.

13
   Lancashire Record Office MS, DDX 2670/1.

14
   TNA, E 134/1652/Mich2. Pursfurlong had been purchased by Sir John Holcroft in 1549 and it was sold in 1605 to Ralph Calveley but later reverted to the Holcrofts. See:
VCH Lancs.
, vol. 4, pp. 159–60.

15
   Lancashire Record Office DP 397/25/4, f.4.

16
   Lancashire Record Office QSP/147/3.

17
   TNA, E 134/12Chas2/Mich6.

18
   TNA, E 134/13Chas2/East21 and E 134/13/Chas2/Trin6.

19
   13 & 14 Car 2
cap.
4.

20
   TNA, SP 63/313/230, f.465; 13 June 1663.

21
   Greaves,
Deliver Us from Evil
, p.159.

22
   
CSP Ireland 1663–65
, pp. 22–7.

23
   Carte,
Life of . . . Ormond
, vol. 4, book 6, p.129.

24
   
CSP Ireland 1663–65
, p.31. The king to the commissioners, Whitehall, 28 February 1663.

25
   
CSP Ireland 1663–5
, p.31. Ormond to the king, Dublin Castle, 7 February 1663.

26
   Bod. Lib. Carte MS 44, ff.708–9, with a fuller version in Carte MS 64, ff.392
v
–339
v
.

27
   Greaves,
Deliver Us from Evil
, pp.140–41. Ludlow had been appointed lieutenant general of horse during Parliament's war against the Irish Confederation. After Henry Ireton died in November 1651,
he became commander in chief. During the bitter counter-insurgency campaign of 1651–2, Ludlow complained of his operations in the ninety-seven square miles (250 sq. km) of the Burren, Co. Clare, that it was ‘a country where there is not enough water to drown a man, wood enough to hang him, nor earth enough to bury him'. A small portion of the area is now an Irish national park. Ludlow later became one of the four commissioners imposing the land seizures under the Act of Settlement of Ireland 1652. In September 1660 a proclamation ordered the apprehension of ‘Edmund Ludlow esquire, commonly called Col. Ludlow'; SAL Proclamations, vol. 13, 1660–06, f.27.

28
   Bod. Lib. Carte MS 214, f.448. Vernon was told of the conspiracy by an unidentified correspondent, a member of the Pigott family (?Thomas Pigott, an Irish MP) in a letter of 11 March: ‘I suppose you will hear from others of the late design of surprising the castle here by some fanatic. The design was desperate and would have been bloody in its execution for most as yet observed to be engaged in it were formerly officers and since discontented tradesmen. Every day makes new discoveries so that many know not and most fear where it will end.' Addressed to Colonel Edward Vernon ‘at Mr Henry Nutings, his house in Plow Yard, in Fetter Lane, London'.
CSP Ireland 1663–5
, p.37.

29
   Bod. Lib. Carte MS 214, f.446; in cipher with decoded text interleaved. Minute in the hand of Sir George Lane, Irish Secretary. Dublin Castle, 4 March 1663.

30
   HMC ‘Ormond', vol. 2, p.251.

31
   Abbott, ‘English Conspiracy and Dissent 1660–74', p.519.

32
   Carte,
Life of Ormond
, vol. 4, book 6, pp.124–5.

33
   Bod. Lib. Carte MS 143, ff.96–7; Dublin Castle, 7 March 1663.

34
   On 30 January 1649 Hewlett was the officer in charge of the troops providing security at the execution of Charles I. After the restoration of the monarchy, he was convicted for his part in the king's beheading but was not executed with the two other officers who were found guilty at the same time – Daniel Axtell and Francis Hacker. Another prisoner in Dublin Castle was Henry Porter, who had been locked up for two years, charged with being one of the
two disguised and masked executioners of Charles I in Whitehall in 1649. On 29 April, Ormond and his Irish Council wrote to Secretary Bennet pointing out that if he was on the scaffold, ‘he should be tried in England and he is clamouring for a
habeas corpus
' – a court appearance to free him without charge. They added: ‘We are anxious for his majesty's direction in the matter' (TNA, 63/313/120, f.243). The issue was apparently ignored in Whitehall. The public executioner at the time of Charles's death was Richard Brandon (son of Gregory Brandon, the common hangman), who had beheaded Thomas Wentworth, First Earl of Strafford in 1641 and Archbishop Laud in 1645. Initially, he reportedly refused to behead the king, but was persuaded otherwise and was paid £30, all in half-crowns, within an hour of the execution – and was given a handkerchief taken from the king's pocket and an orange, which he sold for £10 at his home in Rosemary Lane, Whitechapel. Brandon died on 20 June 1649 and was buried at Whitechapel. See: H.V. Morton,
In Search of London
(London, 1951) pp. 198–9. In 1813, the vault in St George's Chapel, Windsor containing the body of Charles I was opened and it was confirmed that the king had been decapitated with one clean strike – surely the work of an experienced executioner.

35
   
CSP Ireland 1663–5
, p.34.

36
   
CSP Ireland 1663–5
, p.37.

37
   Bod. Lib. Carte MS 214, f.442; Dublin Castle, 18 March 1663.

38
   ‘Pepys Diary', vol. 3, p.67; 20 March 1663. A token from a coffee house at the west end of St Paul's is described in Boyne's
Trade Tokens issued in Seventeenth-century London
, ed. G.C. Williamson (2 vols., London, 1889) vol. 1, p.736.

39
   
CSP Ireland 1663–5
, p.51.

40
   
CSP Ireland 1663–5
, p.51. Ormond to the king, 28 March 1663. Later, he told Charles that he had found out no more about the earlier plot. ‘There certainly was one and if I decided to let it come to a head, as one of my spies [? Alden] suggested, I might have made great discoveries. But Parliament was sitting at the time in very ill humour and there were many dangerous people in Dublin and I did not care to let the game go so long';
CSP Ireland 1663–5
, p.83. Ormond to the king, 8 May 1663.

41
   
The mythical circular island of Brasil or Hy-Brasil, rumoured to be located in the Atlantic Ocean, west of Ireland, was said to be cloaked in magical mists which cleared for only one day in seven years, the only time it could be seen by sailors. In 1674 Captain John Nisbet claimed to have seen it, finding it inhabited only by giant black rabbits and a solitary sorcerer who lived alone in a stone castle. Porcupine Bank, a rocky shoal in the Atlantic about 120 miles (200 km) west of Ireland, which was charted in 1862, has been suggested as the site of Hy-Brasil.

42
   
CSP Ireland
1663–5, p.47. In fact, the ship had Colonel Henry Pretty, former parliamentary governor of Carlow, on board, who was also under suspicion of involvement in the conspiracy. The ship escaped from Limerick but was captured in mid-May while hiding among the Aran Islands off Ireland's west coast. Ludlow was not on the ship. See: Greaves,
Deliver Us from Evil
, p.141.

43
   Bod. Lib. Carte MS 34, f.674
r
– ‘Advice of Incidents in Ireland'. The information was sent anonymously to Ormond.

44
   Bod. Lib. Carte MS 143, f.128–31. Ormond to the king, 8 May 1663.

45
   Bod. Lib. Carte MS 46, ff.51–2. Bennet to Ormond, Whitehall, 15 May 1663.

46
   Marshall,
Intelligence and Espionage
. . ., p.188.

47
   
CSP Ireland 1663–5
, p.111.

48
   HMC ‘Ormond', vol. 2, p.252.

49
   ‘Veitch & Brysson Memoirs', appendix 9, pp.508–9.

50
   
CSP Ireland 1663–5
, p.115.

51
   
CSP Ireland 1663–5
, p.79. Vernon to Bennet, Dublin, 6 May 1663.

52
   Bod. Lib. Carte MS 32, ff.384–5 and 388.

53
   
CSP Ireland 1663–5
, p.92. Ormond to the king, Dublin Castle, 18 May 1663.

54
   Bod. Lib. Carte MS 68, f.580; Dublin Castle, 19 May 1663.

55
   The commander of an army's reconnaissance troops.

56
   Donagh MacCarthy, First Earl of Clancarty, Second Viscount Muskerry (died 1665), was among the last Irish commanders to surrender to the English after Cromwell's invasion. He was defeated by Roger Boyle, later Earl of Orrery, at the Battle of Knocknaclashy in 1651 and retreated into the Kerry Mountains. He surrendered the
following June, his 5,000-man army disbanded, and he fled Ireland. Charles II granted MacCarthy the title of Earl of Clancarty and his estates were restored under the Act of Settlement 1662. He died in London.

57
   RCHM
Eighth Report, Appendix
, pt. 1, pp.263–4; Bod. Lib. Carte MS 118, f.63.

58
   HMC ‘Ormond', vol. 2, p.253.

59
   Greaves,
Deliver Us from Evil
, p.144.

60
   
CSP Ireland 1663–5
, p.112.

61
   
CSP Ireland 1663–5
, pp.97;
TNA, SP 63/313/170, f.351 and
Bod. Lib. Carte MS 68, f.564.

62
   TNA, SP 63/313/164, f.335.

CHAPTER 2: ESCAPE AND EVASION

1
     TNA, SP 63/313/221 f.451.

2
     Following damage caused by a munitions explosion in the castle armoury in 1764, the Bermingham Tower was demolished down to its first-floor level and rebuilt in 1777.