The Audacious Crimes of Colonel Blood (8 page)

and whilst the plot was in contriving, he wrote hither a letter signifying that if the business was ripe here a person (not named in the letter but interpreted by one Thomas Blood . . . to be Henry Cromwell) would soon be here ‘to seal the writings' but [this was] interpreted by Blood to be ‘head the party' [or
coup].

Charnock lodges with Robert Littlebury, stationer, at the sign of the Unicorn in Little Britain [in London]
⁴²
and Littlebury can say where he is if he is not there.

It is absolutely necessary that he be sought out and apprehended . . .
⁴³

Ever co-operative, Tanner disclosed that letters to Charnock should be addressed to Littlebury but have the letter ‘C' inserted below the address, so the minister would know they had been sent by the Dublin conspirators. ‘Unless you go warily', he warned Sir George Lane, ‘you will hardly meet with Charnock.' He also penned a letter to Charnock himself.
⁴⁴

Additional proof of Tanner's value as a turncoat came a few days later, when he wrote to another plotter, Major Staples, urging him to turn himself in and ‘make an ingenuous confession of his whole knowledge of the plot. The evidence is clear', he warned him, adding ominously: ‘and the law will condemn us all. The duke [Ormond] inclines to mercy.'
⁴⁵

Arrests continued throughout Ireland and, with seventy suspects now crowding the prison in Dublin Castle, there was a need to find additional accommodation to house the detainees. Eventually, a nineteen-year lease was procured on Proudfoot's Castle, a four-storey square tower on the city quay wall alongside the River Liffey at the southern end of Fishshamble Street, and work began on its conversion into a new jail.
⁴⁶

Ormond remained worried about the chances of convicting the conspirators, taking advice from Patrick Darcy, ‘a learned counsel'
⁴⁷
lodging at the Boar's Head, Dublin, on a number of occasions in May and June on various points of law.
⁴⁸
The lord lieutenant reported that Sir James Barry, First Baron Santry,
⁴⁹
chief justice of the Irish court of King's Bench, ‘who is an honest man and good
lawyer, thinks that the prisoners should be tried by a special commission . . . I have ordered him to consult with the other justices and king's counsel and agree on the easiest and quickest way of proceeding'.
⁵⁰
Later Ormond acknowledged that, in deciding to ‘proceed promptly to prosecute the conspirators', he had ‘overruled the scruples of some of the judges'.
⁵¹

Vernon had few doubts about the legal methodology necessary to win successful convictions. In a letter to Williamson, he radiated confidence not only that the prosecutors possessed sufficient proof against the ringleaders, but also that an existing criminal law could be deployed effectively:

[There is] an excellent statute of tenth [year] of Henry Vllth.
⁵²
'Tis but ten lines but they are pithy and make [clear] that all persons who shall design against the lord lieutenant [or] deputy or stir up the Irishry against the Englishry or Englishry against the Irishry are, to use their own words, guilty of treason.

It is plain that we are in danger between two rebellious people and I, between two stools, am going to the ground.

Whilst serving my prince here, my own family wants me. You taste the delights of England whilst I eat shamrocks.
⁵³

In a further attempt to suppress Presbyterian unrest, on 16 June, Ormond and his Irish Council signed a proclamation instructing the presidents of the Irish provinces to arrest all ‘such ministers or pretended ministers that you find cause to suspect (to have had any hand in the late conspiracy or to be likely, by their preaching,) to seduce the people from their due obedience and subjection to his majesty's authority, ecclesiastical or civil'.
⁵⁴
He also signed orders for the seizure of unauthorised firearms, ordering searches in the city and county of Dublin. Confiscated weapons should be placed ‘in a secure place' and anyone who did not surrender their firearms ‘shall be deemed disaffected to the king and will be proceeded against accordingly'.
⁵⁵

Lieutenant Colonel Robert Shapcott had also been arrested in Ireland and Charles II himself wrote to Ormond instructing that
the prisoner be sent to London for interrogation ‘before me or such as our Privy Council appoint' to find ‘more effective proof against him'. The king ordered: ‘You shall send him over here in custody and see that he speaks to none save when his custodians are present.'
⁵⁶

One in, one out. Due to Vernon's behind-the-scenes machinations, Philip Alden managed to escape from the Dublin Castle prison a few days afterwards by clambering out through a barred window. To the outside world, this disconcerting jailbreak appeared to be the result of careless or lax security; indeed, Ormond blamed the ‘negligence' of the constable of the castle. Ned Vernon kept up the pretence, writing to Secretary Williamson, rather tongue-in-cheek, on 19 June:

You will hear how that most notorious villain Alden broke prison. Great efforts are being made to find him and the constable of the castle, a very knave, [has been] turned out about him.
⁵⁷

The rogues (dissident Presbyterians) are very pleased at his escape as it is believed that he knew much of all their designs in England and Ireland . . .

So subtle was the knave that 'tis not imagined how he broke loose, for the window bar that he broke was upon the top of all the castle in the highest turret.

If he comes to Whitehall I know you will secure him.
⁵⁸

The first batch of prisoners were arraigned at the bar of the King's Bench court in Inns Quay, Dublin
⁵⁹
on 25 June, among them Leckie, Edward Warren, Alexander Jephson and Richard Thompson. All pleaded ‘not guilty' to charges of treason.

But the government's judicial retribution on the rebels had an ill-starred beginning. After the prisoners were called into the dock, there was, according to Sir George Lane, ‘an unlucky accident which frightened the whole court in so much that the judges were disturbed and even ready to rise'.

Private John Fellows, one of the soldiers standing guard, was ‘discomposed' by the large, noisy crowd thronging the courtroom,
and accidentally fired his musket, the bullet killing another soldier nearby. Immediately, everyone assumed that an audacious rescue of the prisoners was under way – a belief shared by the men in the dock,

especially Mr Leckie who smiled very pleasantly when he saw the disorder but when he saw there was no redemption, he quickly changed his leering countenance.
⁶⁰

When order was finally restored, the trial was resumed. Leckie, in a loud, rambling outburst from the dock, claimed the devil had possessed him and went ‘stark mad, blaspheming God and affecting to be Christ', reported Vernon. Because of his sudden insanity, his case was deferred.

Other conspirators would face trial in the new law term. Those found guilty ‘will die penitent Christians, desiring that their brethren, the Presbyterians, may be carefully watched, for there is a thorough engagement amongst them both in England and Ireland and Scotland and this [they confessed] without desire of their lives but by way of repentance, being worked to it by Dr Parry and others [of Ormond's] chaplains, from whom they received the Sacrament this day', according to Vernon.
⁶¹

On 22 June, the lawyer Darcy had written to Ormond, enclosing twenty-nine names of the members of the grand juries of the county and city of Dublin who had been sworn in to try the conspirators. He was less than sanguine about the outcome of their judicial deliberations: ‘I know so few of them that I cannot tell what to say unto them but I fear that . . . not many of them are fit for the business now to be agitated'.
⁶²
Darcy also passed on some disquieting gossip:

This morning . . . Sir John Ponsonby said openly in the presence of his old gang that in this trial of the prisoners they [the government] would find themselves deceived . . .

Ponsonby and others pretending to [know the] law [maintain that] the conspiracies and declarations without [being] done is no treason.
⁶³

The lawyer urged the lord lieutenant to follow three simple courses of action to avoid disaster in prosecuting the would-be insurgents. Firstly, he should choose ‘old Protestants' as jurymen; secondly, he should act with speed; and finally, the words of the indictments should be selected carefully or ‘the king and your grace may be the sufferers when it may be too late to call the fact treason'. He concluded: ‘The God of heaven preserve the king and his interests.'
⁶⁴

Leckie, Warren, Thompson and jephson appeared again in court on 1 July and the indictment was read out to Leckie. Vernon, who must have attended the hearing, reported that the jury were all ‘able discreet persons of good estates' with Sir John Percival acting as foreman. Sir William Domville, attorney general, and Sir John Temple, solicitor general for Ireland, in two eloquent speeches

showed the practices in all ages both by the Mosaical law,
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the Saxon, Norman and our more modern laws, how conspirators against princes were most severely punished.

About six witnesses were then called, Col. Scott, Capt. Sanford and persons engaged with them to prove the [scope] of the design, both in Ireland, England and Scotland . . .

How they intended to march through Scotland with this English army whom they thought their own; that 20,000 Scots in the north of Ireland would keep the Irish employed whilst the English invaded England with what party they could raise in Scotland . . .

That it was a covenant design and driven on by the pretended clergy of that gang, many of which met in periwigs the day before the design to ask a blessing on it.

Domvile also called eight witnesses against Leckie ‘who all proved the charge against him'.

Then there was another sensation in court. ‘A most handsome woman . . . with very great soberness and more prudence than usual in that sex' swore that she was with Leckie's wife (who had just given birth at her home near Dunboyne), when the troopers arrived to arrest her husband.

Mrs Leckie expressed great
fear that the attack on Dublin castle had been discovered but afterwards she was much cheered with a belief that though her husband was taken and condemned, yet his pardon would be obtained by two persons [who] were bold and so much concerned for him that they would not be denied.

These mystery men of power and influence were named in court as Sir Audley Mervin, speaker of the Irish House of Commons (and Ormond's
bête noire)
and John Clotworthy, First Viscount Massereene,
custos rotulorum
of Co. Londonderry and a prominent and vocal champion of Irish Presbyterians. In the event, while official suspicion over their loyalties remained, no action was taken against them.

Leckie, in his defence, would ‘not admit the truth of the whole of the charge but put himself upon the law and was not free to say or answer more'. The previous night he had suffered another apparent bout of madness, but at the bar ‘his Presbyterian spirit was very calm and he said little'.

The jury promptly found him guilty.
⁶⁶

Despite his earlier grave doubts about the outcome of the trial, the ‘learned counsel' Patrick Darcy was delighted by its progress. He told Ormond on 3 July that never in his life had he ‘met with better management by lawyers of a matter [of procedure] than that shown by Sir William Domville against Lackes [Leckie]. Nor was ever evidence better managed by all the King's Counsel.'
⁶⁷

A week later, Warren, Jephson and Thompson were brought back to court for sentence. Baron Santry, the increasingly infirm chief justice, employed striking biblical references and language to leave them in no doubt as to the heinousness of their crimes and promised death and damnation for all rebels. Sternly, he condemned them to suffer the terrible fate of all traitors: death by hanging, drawing and quartering.
⁶⁸

Such executions turned the scaffold into a veritable butcher's block of gore and suffering. The victim was initially hanged by the neck but cut down from the gallows while still alive. He then was castrated and his vital organs ripped out and burnt before his
eyes. Finally the corpse was beheaded and hacked into quarters, and the body parts displayed in public spaces as a dreadful deterrent to those who rashly contemplated conspiracy against their king.

Robert Leigh, Williamson's agent in Dublin, told him: ‘Leckie, having turned mad within two days (or feigned himself so) was brought to the bar but escaped sentence – the law being not able to take hold of a madman and so was carried across in a cart back to his prison. Some people pity their cases here, but not I.'
⁶⁹

Sir George Lane noted that Leckie was ‘stark mad and is therefore reprieved, though if he should recover his wits, [there would be a delay] until the next [law] term because till then death cannot be pronounced upon him'. He had arranged that reports of the trial proceedings should ‘be collected carefully for the press, so that the world may see the horridness of this wicked plot'. Copies would be printed and sent for distribution in England.
⁷⁰

Leckie had meanwhile reportedly tried to cheat the executioner ‘by knocking out his own brains in prison' but had survived this apparent suicide attempt.
⁷¹

One of those condemned, Thompson, deputy provost-marshal for Leinster,
⁷²
wrote ‘a declaration' from his Dublin Castle cell on 5 July about his ‘unhappy role in the late plot', naming Blood as the man who drew him into the failed conspiracy: