The Audacious Crimes of Colonel Blood (6 page)

But more prudent counsels soon prevailed among the conspirators.

Even the most optimistic recognised as the evening wore on that they had too few troops with which to hold the city, let alone guard its gates. Their doubts were intensified by a row with the two landladies who were putting up some of Blood's assault party for
the night. Worried about their possible incrimination in such dark matters discussed on their premises, these doughty proprietors ‘kept up such a clamouring and threatened to discover them' to the government unless the would-be rebels quit their house immediately. Fearing the next day's attack had been compromised, caution overcame confidence and it was decided around nine o'clock that Wednesday night that it would be prudent to delay the coup d'état until the following week when another 500 cavalry were expected to arrive in Dublin as reinforcements.
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Alden alerted Colonel Vernon to the change in plans by eleven o'clock.
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After the information was confirmed, the lord lieutenant was awakened at four the following morning in his opulent quarters in Dublin Castle.

Ormond decided to take no more chances. He pounced on the plotters immediately.

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Escape and Evasion

There is one Blood that was very notorious in this late wicked plot and is fled . . . who has a small house and £100 a year of land Dunboyne . . . now forfeited to his majesty. I have begged this of the king; the duke and duchess of York and the earl of Bath will speak for me.

Sir Gilbert Talbot to Joseph Williamson, 13 June 1663
¹

Twenty-four would-be rebels were detained during the early morning raids ordered by the lord lieutenant. As troops continued to kick down the doors of tenements and taverns in Dublin in their frantic hunt for conspirators, those already held were marched, manacled and under heavy guard, into Dublin Castle for interrogation – ironically, the very fortress they had planned to seize. Among these grim-faced men under close arrest was Philip Alden, the government's slippery prize informer. Was his detention the action of an over-enthusiastic officer, who arrested everyone in sight? Or was it a clever ploy by his spymaster Ned Vernon to preserve the agent's cover amongst the conspirators?

Six of the plotters now locked up in the castle's south-west Bermingham Tower
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were former army officers: the voluble and indiscreet Irish MP Alexander Jephson and his brother colonels Edward Warren and Thomas Scott, who had both served under Henry Cromwell; captains John Chambers, Theophilus Sandford and Lieutenant Richard Thompson. Six prisoners had been cavalry troopers in the parliamentary army: Thomas Ball of Dublin; Robert Davies, John Biddell, John Smullen, John Griffin and William
Bradford. Two were nonconformist ministers – Blood's brother-in-law William Leckie and Edward Baines, once a pastor at St Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin, and another chaplain to Henry Cromwell.
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The remainder were smaller fry, including John Foulke, the son of a former governor of Drogheda, the innkeeper Andrew Sturges and James Tanner, who very soon was to sing his heart out in a desperate attempt to save his own neck.

Amongst the evidence seized that morning were copies of the rebels' public declaration of their objectives – one copy set out in Blood's bold, straggly handwriting. It described forcefully the plight of those Protestants dispossessed of their lands:

Having long expected the securing . . . of our lives, liberties and estates as a reasonable recompense [for] that industry and diligence exercised by the Protestants of this kingdom in restoring his majesty to the exercise of his royal authority, instead, we find ourselves, our wives and children, without mercy, delivered as a prey unto these barbarous and bloody murderers, whose inhumane cruelty is [registered] in the blood of 150,000 poor Protestants
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[since] the beginning of the war in this kingdom.

The king, claimed this manifesto, had ‘suffered himself to be seduced by evil councillors' and the result was that ‘the bloody Papists' were ‘the first that tasted of his royal clemency in settling them in their justly forfeited estates'. Moreover, Ormond had [admitted] ‘keeping a correspondence with several of the said murderers during their hostility, as appears by his certificates on their behalf to the Court of Claims.

We may undoubtedly conclude . . . that evil is determined upon us and before it [can] be executed . . . to stand upon our just and necessary defence and to use all our endeavours for our self-preservation . . .

And to the end [that] no well-minded Protestants in the three kingdoms may be afraid to stand by us in this our just quarrel, we declare we will stand for that liberty of conscience proper to
everyone as a Christian for establishing the Protestant religion in purity, according to the Solemn League and Covenant
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[and we call] for the restoring of each person to his lands as they held them in the year 1659 and discharging of the army's [pay] arrears.

The declaration ended with the defiant: ‘In all which, we doubt not the Lord of Hosts, the mighty God of Jacob, will strengthen our weak hands.'
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Copies of the rebels' statement, which had been ‘fixed in several parts' of the Irish capital, were torn down and on one sheet someone had scribbled a brief narrative of the plot and the names of the principal conspirators – some arrested, others who had made their escape. Among the latter was Blood, described as ‘Captain Blood' – apparently now having reverted to his more senior rank in the Royalist army.
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The lord lieutenant reported to Bennet on 23 May on his efforts to destroy the insurrection:

I made full preparations and was so ready that if the attack on Dublin Castle had been made, as was intended, on the 21st of this month, the conspirators would, I think, have been taken in their own snare.

But thinking they were discovered, these conspirators who, up to nine o'clock on Wednesday night, were ready to carry out their design, feared to do so on the following morning.

It then became necessary to seize the conspirators and we arrested some and shall arrest more.
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In the days and nights that followed, Ormond conducted many interrogations of the detainees in person, assisted by his ‘trusty secretary' Sir Paul Davies, sometimes calling in his advisers to suggest specific questions.
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As a result of what he heard, he was quietly confident that his prisoners would be ‘inclined, I think, to save themselves at the expense of accusing others' and despite ‘the nicety of our laws' – the requirement for convincing proof presented before a judge and jury – ‘we shall be able to make examples of some of these conspirators'.
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This skilful and none-too-gentle questioning revealed the scale of the plot and Vernon warned Sir Joseph Williamson in London that ‘many persons of note are implicated in it'.
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The veteran Scottish soldier Sir Arthur Forbes at Newton, Co. Meath, reported widespread talk of an imminent rebellion: ‘There is just ground to suspect some sudden design against the State. The people generally hereabouts, seem to apprehend present trouble.'
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As part of the fallout from the abortive coup, the vultures were beginning to gather around the estates and possessions of those accused of involvement – now potentially forfeit to the crown and thus obtainable by those happy fortunates who enjoyed royal favour.

First out of the traps was Francis Aungier, Third Baron Aungier, the English MP for Arundel, Sussex, and governor of Westmeath and Longford.
¹³
In a helpful postscript to his letter to Bennet on 23 May, he acknowledged having seen a list of imprisoned suspects, which included the name of Major Alexander Staples. ‘He has a good estate [worth] £500 a year in Tyrone, which will be worth getting. Act quickly, or you will be too late', Aungier warned the secretary of state in Whitehall.
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Winston Churchill,'
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one of the despised commissioners in the Court of Claims, had recognised the same golden opportunity. The next day, he too wrote to Bennet, seemingly affecting no great desire to ‘gain by these forfeits'. Then, shamelessly, he moved on to reasons why he should be so rewarded.

But owing to the duty which I here discharge I was more exposed, even than my brothers [fellow commissioners] to danger in the event of this design being successful, I think I may not unreasonably put in for a small proportion among the rest.

Among the twenty or more who are about to be proclaimed traitors . . . there is one Major Abel Warren that has a newly acquired estate of about £400 or £500 a year – most of it such as cannot be taken from him without any previous reprisal.

If the king will grant it, I think I shall be able to reserve it out of the jaws of the Act of Settlement . . .

I need not tell you how ‘dry' our employment is here; clogged
with clamour without any certainty of profit. I am only anxious to serve the king.
¹⁶

Any hopes of immediate profit from the downfall of the conspirators, however, were dashed by the lord lieutenant's suggestion that Charles II should delay ‘engagements for the estates of those found guilty' which should be used for ‘the king's service and [for] the rewarding of those who discovered the plot'.
¹⁷

This did not deter Sir Gilbert Talbot's naked avarice. A few weeks later, he asked Williamson blatantly:

I ask your honour's pardon for this trouble [but] his majesty promised me on my parting [that] if I could find out any small grant, I should have it.

There is one Blood, that was very notorious in this last wicked plot and is fled, who has a small house and £100 a year of land in the barony of Dunboyne . . . of his ancient ancestry but now forfeited to his majesty.

I begged this of the king; the duke and duchess of York and the Earl of Bath will speak for me.

He concluded confidently: ‘I doubt not your honour's favour'.
¹⁸

Ormond moved quickly to prorogue the Irish Parliament until 20 July to prevent MPs fomenting any opposition to his measures to secure the kingdom. Furthermore, he published a proclamation to demonstrate that he still retained a firm grip on law and order in Ireland. This described how ‘certain wicked persons of fanatic and disloyal principles disaffected to his majesty's just and gracious government' had conspired to raise ‘disturbances in Ireland and

especially to attack his majesty's castle of Dublin and seize the person of us, the lord lieutenant, in order to their carrying on their mischievous contrivances or renewing bloody confusions throughout this kingdom from which evils this realm and all his majesty's subjects . . . [which] have been but newly released [by the restoration of the monarchy] . . .
We look upon these odious conspiracies as the mischievous contrivances of some fanatic and disloyal persons of desperate fortunes as well as of desperate and destructive principles who endeavour to amend their own condition by the ruin of others . . .

We think it well to make it known for the quieting of all honest men that we direct . . . the presidents of provinces, mayors of corporations and sheriffs and justices of the peace to arrest and imprison all such persons as they shall within their several areas find to have a hand in this conspiracy.
¹⁹

Ormond had taken an enormous risk in deploying troops, with their uncertain loyalties, to crush the would-be rebellion. Vernon acknowledged frankly that those soldiers ordered to round up the conspirators were ‘not without corruption', but only trusted officers ‘who had always served his majesty were acquainted with [the plot] and no other'.
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Continuing fears of military subversion lay behind the publication of another proclamation the next day, ordering officers to ‘repair to their said quarters and there to attend their . . . duties, notwithstanding any licence formerly granted for [their] absence . . . Wherefrom they may not fail as they will answer [to] the contrary at their peril'.
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Vernon was typically more forthright, believing that the ‘naked truth' was that there were only ‘four troops [of cavalry] in Ireland [that] I dare [give] my word for'. Six troops of horse had rounded up the suspects, ‘yet upon my conscience, had the enemy attacked them, they [would have] beaten our [soldiers]'.

I confess I saw little safety in this kingdom before the design was broke [n] but my Lord Arran's regiment and a few old cavaliers and the prudence of a government must protect us for a time, by making the English and Irish balance each other.

Vernon then turned to the fate of his spy Alden:

My friend will be able to do us good service and I will endeavour to protect him. He is now in prison but if I can manage it he shall
leap out of prison into England, where nothing can stir but that he will be able to detect it.
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