The Audacious Crimes of Colonel Blood (44 page)

19
   The Tower's Royal Menagerie was founded in 1200 during the reign of King John (1199–1216) and was established for 600 years, drawing hundreds of visitors each year to see the animals there. In 1251 a ‘white bear' was brought from Norway which was allowed to fish in the River Thames on the end of a stout cord. Four years later, Louis IX of France donated an African elephant. Acknowledging the menagerie's value as an attraction, James I built stone viewing platforms in 1622. Finally, in 1831–2 the animals were transferred to the Zoological Society of London's new buildings in Regent's Park and the menagerie was closed in 1835.

20
   Herostratus sought notoriety by burning down the temple of Artemis at Ephesus in 356
BC
, one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. He was executed and mere mention of his name thereafter was forbidden under penalty of death. ‘Herostratus' therefore has become a metonym for anyone who commits a crime in order to become notorious.

21
   ‘Remarks . . .', p.227.

22
   
Harrison was hung, drawn and quartered as a regicide at Charing Cross on 13 October 1660, ‘he looking as cheerful as any man who could do in that condition' according to the diarist Samuel Pepys, who witnessed his execution (‘Pepys Diary', vol. 1, p.241).

23
   Greaves,
Enemies Under His Feet
, p.209.

24
   BL Lansdowne MS 1,152, vol. 1, f.238
r
A former parliamentary colonel, John Rathbone, and seven other New Model Army officers and soldiers were found guilty at the Old Bailey in April 1666 of conspiring the death of Charles II and the overthrow of his government. The plot involved capture of the Tower of London, setting fire to the City of London and the Horse Guards being surprised in the inns where they were quartered, several ostlers having been suborned for that purpose. Alexander, who escaped capture, had acted as paymaster for the conspirators. The date of 3 September was chosen for the attempt because
Lilly's Almanack
deemed this date to be especially lucky, as a ruling planet predicted the downfall of the monarchy.

25
   BL Harley MS 6859, f.1. Bod. Lib. Rawlinson MS A.185, f.471
r
.

26
   ‘Remarks . . .', p.227.

27
   Bod. Lib. Rawlinson MS A.185, f.471
r
.

28
   Strype,
A Survey of
the Cities of London and Westminster
. . ., vol. 1, p.97; Hanrahan,
Colonel Blood
. . ., p.110.

29
   Bod. Lib. Rawlinson MS A.185, ff.471
v
–472
v
.

30
   Strype,
A Survey of the Cities of London and Westminster
. . ., vol. 1, p.97.

31
   Bod. Lib. Rawlinson MS A.185, ff. 471
v
. Some accounts say it was four pairs of gloves.

32
   Blood visited three or four more times, according to one account. (Bod. Lib. Rawlinson MS A. 185, ff. 471
v
).

33
   Strype,
A Survey of the Cities of London and Westminster
. . ., vol. 1, p.97.

34
   Strype,
A Survey of the Cities of London and Westminster
. . ., vol. 1, p.97.

35
   BL Harley MS 6,859, f.5.

36
   Strype,
A Survey of the Cities of London and Westminster
. . ., vol. 1, p.97.

37
   ‘Remarks . . .', p.227.

38
   Strype,
A Survey of the Cities of London and Westminster
. . ., vol. 1, p.97.

39
   A wooden tool with a heavy head and handle for ramming, or driving wedges.

40
   
London Gazette
, 8–11 May 1671, issue 572, p.2, col. 2.

41
   Bod. Lib. Rawlinson MS A.185, ff. 471
r
.

42
   ‘Remarks . . .', p.228.

43
   Throughout Beckman's life he had been fascinated by loud bangs and was injured in an accidental explosion which occurred while he was rigging up a firework display to celebrate the coronation of Charles II at Westminster on 23 April 1660. Later he turned to military engineering and mapped the defences of Tangier (the Moroccan port held by the English in 1661–84 after it had been ceded as part of the dowry of Charles II's queen, Catherine of Braganza. See BL Sloane MS 2,448, f.15 – ‘Necessities for fortifying Tangier' by ‘T. S. Bekman'). In October 1663, he traitorously offered to help Spain capture Tangier and accepted part-payment for his information from the Duke of Medinaceli and later supplied the duke's letters to the English consul at Cadiz. In early 1664 he returned to England, expecting a warm welcome. However, Arlington had been alerted about his dubious character, being warned by Colonel John Fitzgerald, deputy governor of Tangier, that ‘Beckman the intelligencer is to be feared'. His suspicions were confirmed when, unaware of the surveillance both he and the envoy were under, he visited the Dutch ambassador in London, offering a ‘free discourse of Tangier'. Charles himself ordered an investigation of Beckman's movements and loyalties to be undertaken (Bod. Lib. Rawlinson MSS D.916, f.101. Marshal,
Intelligence and Espionage
. . ., pp.180 and 184). Beckman found himself in the Tower for six months, from where he complained: ‘I have been a near half year a close prisoner only from one person's [?Colonel Fitzgerald's] malicious and false tongue.' After this period in prison, Beckman was released and sent back to Tangier to draw up plans for stronger defences of the city, together with the Dutch engineer Bernard de Gomme (Jonathan Spain, ‘Sir Martin Beckman',
ODNB
, vol. 6, p.741).

44
   
London Gazette
, 8–11 May 1671, issue 572, p.2, col. 2; de Ros,
Memorials of the Tower of London
, p.198.

45
   BL Harley MS 6,859, f.5; Strype,
A Survey of the Cities of London and Westminster
. . ., vol. 1, p.98.

46
   Sergeant,
Rogues and Scoundrels
, p.142; ‘Remarks . . .', p.228; Greaves,
Enemies Under His Feet
, p.210. While other gems were recovered by a yeoman warder and ‘faithfully restored', some were lost for ever. (Strype,
A Survey of the Cities of London and Westminster
. . ., vol. 1, p.99). See also Bod. Lib. Rawlinson MS A. 185, ff.472
v
and Nigel Jones, ‘Blood, Theft and Arrears: Stealing the Crown Jewels',
History Today
, vol. 61, pp.10–17.

47
   Strype,
A Survey of the Cities of London and Westminster
. . ., vol. 1, p.98.

48
   TNA, SP 29/289/187, f.366. Newsletter to Mr Kirke at Cambridge; Kennett,
A Compleat History of England
. . ., vol. 3, p.283.

49
   Strype,
A Survey of the Cities of London and Westminster
. . ., vol. 1, p.98.

50
   Robinson (1615–80), was lieutenant of the Tower of London in 1660–79 when he was dismissed. One of his duties was acting as jailer to political prisoners and he was accused in 1664 of taking ‘excessive fees' from them. He was lord mayor of London in 1662–3 and Samuel Pepys was scornful of his talents, describing him as ‘a talking bragging bufflehead [fat-headed, foolish or stupid] . . . as very a coxcomb as I would have thought had been in the City . . . nor has he brains to outwit any ordinary tradesman' (‘Pepys Diary', 16 March 1663, vol. 3, p.65).

51
   The larger knife remains in the Royal Armouries at Leeds, with the number X.214a. The smaller, which had the number X.214b, has been missing since 1983 and was finally deemed lost in 2002. Both daggers were deposited in the Armouries by the Royal Literary Fund in 1926, having being bequeathed to them in 1807 by Thomas Newton, a descendant of the scientist and mathematician Sir Isaac Newton. Sir Isaac may have come by them through his post as firstly warden (1696) and later master of the Royal Mint (1699) located within the Tower of London. My grateful thanks are due to my good friend Philip J. Lankester and to Robert C. Woosnam-Savage,
Curator of European Edged Weapons at the Royal Armouries, for much help and assistance with the issue of the daggers. See also: Ffoulkes, ‘Daggers Attributed to Colonel Blood',
Antiquaries Jnl
, vol. 7, pp. 139–40 and Caldwell and Wallace, ‘Ballocks, Dudgeons and Quhingearis: Three Scottish Daggers recently acquired by the Scottish Museum',
History Scotland
, November-December 2003, pp.15–19.

52
   Bod. Lib. English Letters D.37, f.84.

CHAPTER 7: A ROYAL PARDON

1
     Hervey Redmond Morres, Second Viscount Mountmorres,
History of the Principle Transactions of the Irish Parliament
, vol. 1, p.273.

2
     
CSP Domestic 1671
, p.244.

3
     TNA, SP 29/289/187, f.366. Newsletter to Mr Kirke at Cambridge. London; 9 May 1671.

4
     
CSP Domestic 1671
, p.247.

5
     
CSP Venice 1671–2
, p.49. Alberti to the Doge and Senate of Venice. London, 22 May 1671.

6
     The belt fastening clerical garb.

7
     Humanity or sympathy.

8
     Egmont Papers. BL Add. MS 47,128, f.13
r
. Poem attributed to Andrew Marvell.

9
     See copies in the papers of Dr Nehemiah Grew of London (BL Sloane MS 1,941, f.18, in English and Latin) and in the papers of Dr Walter Charleton (d.1707) of Norwich (BL Sloane MS 3,413, f.29
r
, also in English and Latin).

10
   BL Harley MSS 6,859, ff.1–17.

11
   Strype,
A Survey of the Cities of London and Westminster
. . ., vol. 1, p.99.

12
   Younghusband,
The Jewel House
. . ., p.187.

13
   
London Gazette
, issue 572, 8–11 May 1671, p.2, col.2. HMC ‘le Fleming', p.78. One account maintains that Perrot, not Thomas Blood junior, accompanied the colonel to the audience with Charles II.

14
   Marshall,
Intelligence and Espionage
. . ., p.194.

15
   HMC ‘le Fleming', p.78.

16
   ‘Evelyn Diary', vol. 2, p.259, 1 March 1671.

17
   
See Burghclere,
Life of Ormond
, vol. 2, pp. 190–91.

18
   Bod. Lib. MSS English Letters D.37, f.84.

19
   Burghclere,
Life of Ormond
, vol. 2, p.190.

20
   Abbott,
Colonel Thomas Blood
, p.76.

21
   ‘Remarks . . .', pp.228–9.

22
   Strype,
A Survey of the Cities of London and Westminster
. . ., vol. 1, p.99.

23
   RCHM,
Sixth Report
pt. 1, appendix, p.370. MSS of Sir Henry Ingilby, Ripley Castle, Yorkshire.

24
   Strype,
A Survey of the Cities of London and Westminster
. . ., vol. 1, p.99; Carte,
Life of Ormond
, vol. 4, pp.422–3; RCHM,
Fourth Report
, pt. 1, report and appendix, p.370.

25
   In the seventeenth century, the waters of the River Thames were still so clean that noblemen who lived in the string of great houses along the Strand in Westminster used to bathe in it frequently. In the reign of Charles I this was the regular practice of Lord Northampton; and Sir Dudley North swam so ‘constantly that he could live in the water an afternoon with as much ease as others walk upon land' (Thornbury,
Old and New London
, vol. 3, p, 309). Charles II was a keen swimmer.

26
   Because the Thames was broader and shallower before it was embanked in the Victorian period, its flow was much slower and it was frequently frozen over for some days in the seventeenth centuries, as in 1663, 1666 and 1677. The mean temperatures in centigrade for November and December 1670 have been estimated at 6
^°
and 3
^°
, and for January, February and March 1671, 4
^°
, 3.5
^°
and 5
^°
respectively (see: Gordon Manley, ‘Central England Monthly Mean Temperatures 1659–1973',
Quarterly Jnl Royal Meteorological Society
, vol. 100 (1974), p.393.

27
   TNA, SP 29/293/28, f.31. ‘Notes by Williamson of information received by Blood and others', 21 September 1671.

28
   ‘Lords
Jnls'
, vol. 12, p.514, col. 2. 22 April 1671.

29
   Greaves,
Enemies Under His Feet
, p.210.

30
   Strype,
A Survey of the Cities of London and Westminster
. . ., vol. 1, p.99.

31
   Kippis,
Biographia Britannia
, vol. 2, p.823.

32
   ‘Remarks . . .', p.229.

33
   Baxter,
Reliquiæ Baxterianæ
, p.89; Greaves,
Enemies Under His Feet
, pp.210–1.

34
   John Oldmixon,
History of England during the reigns of the House of Stuart
(London, 1730), vol. 1, p.500.

35
   ‘Remarks . . .', p.228.

36
   RCHM
Sixth Report
, pt. 1, appendix, p.370.

37
   TNA, SP 44/34/86, f.87. Warrant to keeper of Gatehouse prison to receive John Buxton, 15 May 1671.

38
   Greaves,
Enemies Under His Feet
, p.212.

39
   
CSP Domestic 1671
, p.244.

40
   TNA, SP 29/290/11, f.15. ‘Colonel Blood to the King'. The Tower, 19 May 1671.

41
   Marshall,
Intelligence and Espionage
. . ., p.205.

42
   RCHM
Eighth Report
, pt. 1, appendix, p.159.

43
   
CSP Domestic 1671
, p.413.