The Audacious Crimes of Colonel Blood (9 page)

First, that Thomas Blood late of Sarney . . . was the first person that I ever heard make mention of the plot.

He assured me that their aim was to surprise the castle and city of Dublin for the accomplishment of which . . . he had many friends both in the city and in the regiment and particularly two sergeants in the regiment whose names he would never tell me though I oft pressed him and also that he expected seven hundred men out of the north from among the Scots before the appointed day of surprise to assist them in the act . . .

Second, he mentioned no less than 30,000 Scots (if occasion offered itself) who were ready to prosecute the design or to draw into the field the particular persons he would never name whom
he corresponded with [except] only one, Mr Hart, a Scotch minister, as I take it, of the north . . .

Third, when I urged (that in case the designs failed) to know what sanctuary we might have to secure ourselves in, he assured me that Drogheda was made fit to receive [us] by which means I could never tell but I apprehended his way still was to [win over] some inferior officers and the common soldier and upon these hopes I conceive he [would] remove his family into Drogheda.

Thompson had overheard conversations between Blood and others about the city of Derry and the ‘general disquiet of the army' which they hoped to exploit. Blood had also talked about an old conspiracy to rescue the leading Scottish covenanter Archibald Campbell, First Marquis of Argyll, who had been accused of treason and imprisoned in the Tower of London in 1660. A plan to liberate him, also involving Gibby Carr, was abandoned after he told them he was an ‘infirm man and ancient, therefore they should desist until a more seasonable time – or that they should await God's pleasure'.
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In his covering letter to the confession, Thompson asked Ormond to be ‘pleased graciously to accept these last words of a dying man which not the fear of death but a sense of duty forces the writer to present to your grace'. He stressed:

I call God to witness that I was no contriver but drawn by Mr Blood into these plots for which great sin I beg pardon from God, the king and your grace and all good people.

And give me leave to make this last protestation that if your grace shall please to employ me as a witness to [help] find the contrivers and depths of this design I shall use the utmost of my endeavours.

This I beg of your grace, not as a design . . . for fear of death but to make some satisfaction for my past crimes.
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Despite his contrition and anxiety to make amends, it was inevitable that Thompson would still die for treason, but because of
his confession, his sentence was commuted to simple hanging.
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What of the fugitive conspirators who, despite every effort, still eluded capture?

The ‘minister' Andrew McCormack had managed to escape to Scotland before the round-up of Presbyterian clergy. Colonel ‘Gibby' Carr had been reported in Scotland and then, rather embarrassingly, was said to have been living in Rotterdam in Holland, according to an official certificate signed by the city's borough masters and governors, provided by Jacob Vortius.
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A few weeks later, Bennet told Ormond that Carr's wife, who was then living in London, had ‘produced testimony from magistrates in Rotterdam that he had been constantly seen there these six months'. He added, a trifle cynically: ‘Perhaps 'tis a bought testimonial only.' Ormond commented later that if these statements were ‘authentic, let me say they are here [regarded as being] much in the wrong'. There were some in Dublin who would ‘swear they saw him in the north about the 23rd of May, two days after the plot was to have been executed'. He concluded more in hope than expectation: ‘He should come here where he will be heard if he has a fair defence.' One can detect frustration and asperity in this response, but the lord lieutenant's black mood may have been affected by his painful gout and ‘an extraordinary indisposition of the spleen'.
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Bennet had more bad news in the same letter: despite the most meticulous of inquiries, no trace of Charnock had been found in London.
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And what of Thomas Blood? Although the spymaster Vernon believed him beyond reach in Scotland, he apparently remained stoically in Dublin for three days while the arrests and searches continued around him. Probably believing the city was becoming too hot to hold him, Blood headed north, using the alias Thomas Pilsen, to seek shelter with his Presbyterian cronies. James Milligan was later arrested and questioned over his concealment of the fugitive
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and was described as ‘Blood's only guide and protector in Co. Antrim'. He had hidden him at his mother's home in Antrim while she was away and had been dispatched by Blood with a message for
his wife who had moved to Drogheda and was living ‘in a house beyond the bridge next [to a tavern] of the King's Arms'.
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There were fears that Blood was planning to assassinate Ormond and the lord lieutenant was warned ‘to have about his person a sufficient guard'.
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He had a number of narrow escapes while on the run from the government manhunt. His later notes of the times when God had provided him with deliverance mention an incident at Loughbrick-land, a small village south of Banbridge in Co. Down, near the main Dublin-Belfast road, and another ‘in the wood', unfortunately with no more information as to what happened or the precise location. He also eluded arrest after being betrayed ‘by false brethren'.
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Blood hid in the hills and mountains in the north of Ireland, sometimes in the unlikely guise of a Catholic priest. At one stage he even sheltered with a group of ‘papists'. Using other aliases and disguises, he headed for the wastes of Co. Wicklow, where he was sheltered in the home of a minister called Cox. There, he corresponded with a fellow fugitive, the Dublin brewer, John Chamberlin, probably early that August. Blood tried hard to keep faith with his dreams of rebellion, believing that ‘most of our friends are safe, as I understand by the [list of] prisoners' names . . . [and] that many were taken up that were not concerned [in the plot]'. Therefore, he had ‘hopes yet to advance that broken interest' by trying to recruit supporters for a fresh insurrection amongst former parliamentary cavalry troopers in the area.

I have no confidence in the Scots . . . they stick so to the king's interests, though I have laboured with some of them of a small sort to come along with me.

I can prevail little yet I doubt not to pick up some.
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An additional slip of paper attached to this letter contained instructions for the bearer, listing friends who could provide assistance and information.
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Daringly, and not without a touch of arrogance, Blood then returned to Dublin to visit his wife and children, who had gone back
to the city. Even though their lodgings must have been watched, he spent a ‘night and part of a day' with them, before departing brazenly ‘at the gates at noonday and through the streets'.
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Meanwhile, those who had played key roles in foiling the conspiracy were contemplating their rewards for their services to the crown. On 14 July, Ormond wrote to Charles II recommending Vernon, ‘who was mainly instrumental in discovering the late plot. He has on all occasions served the king well.'
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Vernon left Dublin en route to London the next day – almost certainly with the spy Philip Alden in tow, who doubtless had spent the three weeks in a Dublin safe house. If the lord lieutenant had been disingenuously unaware of the true nature of the informer's escape, he now knew the full extent of Vernon's plans, as he wrote to the lord chancellor in London:

Col. Vernon will bring a friend of his and of the writer to see the chancellor. He is the man by whose honesty and industry, notice was given of the late [traitorous] design . . . He cannot appear here and be any longer useful in that way. But 'tis hoped that he may be useful in England.
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The day of Vernon's departure also marked the executions of Warren, Jephson and Thompson at Gallows Green, situated where today's Lower Baggot and Fitzwilliam streets intersect in Dublin. Sir George Lane, the Irish Secretary, was very sparing in detail in his businesslike account of their deaths sent to Bennet:

The speeches of Warren, Thompson and Jephson will show you that they are executed.

The first died like a Christian. The other two had made the world believe, before they came to the place of execution, that they would do their duty by confessing their guilt and exhorting the people to loyalty, obedience and the renunciation of popery.

But this was clearly only a feint in expectation of pardon, for their speeches, which they had penned beforehand, declared their seditious thoughts.
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Perhaps it was a politician's reluctance to be the bearer of bad news, or just plain bureaucratic reticence, but Sir George's report lacks much of the drama and pace of what really occurred that summer morning on the scaffold.

Happily, Robert Leigh, Williamson's shrewd agent in Dublin, was also an eyewitness to events and his vivid narrative provides us with a glimpse of the horror and pandemonium that followed the arrival of the prisoners at the place of execution, after being bumped and battered as they were dragged along the cobbled streets from Dublin Castle, tied on to three sledges or sheep hurdles.

The renegade MP Alexander Jephson was the first to die. Standing on the scaffold, bizarrely still wearing his hat, he made a ‘large speech', counselling the crowd around him to avoid sin at all costs. He acknowledged his own crime of concealing treason but said that his death was caused by ‘none but the vile Papists'.
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The condemned man then meekly handed his hat to the hangman who

immediately turned the ladder and with it Jephson, who held fast by the same to save his life as long as he might, but that would not do.

With Jephson still hanging from the gibbet, there was sudden commotion, described by Leigh as a ‘hot alarm'.

Everyone betook themselves to several defences, most part that had arms, besides the guard to their [weapons], and those who had none to their heels, who, tumbling over one another as they ran (and some on horseback amongst them) did some mischief, [such] as breaking legs and arms and some children killed.

Panic and fear spread through the Dublin streets – ‘all began to shut up their shops and a great many to betake themselves to the castle' for safety. A company of infantry was sent to reinforce the sheriff's halberdiers who were guarding the prisoners.

Thompson and Warren who stood by the gallows foot, only pinioned by the arms, began to pluck up good heart, but the sheriff holding Thompson by the one hand and his sword in the other, did let neither stir.

Eventually, order was restored and Warren was pushed towards the gibbet ladder. He made ‘a tedious troublesome discourse' to play for time, ‘and looking several ways about him, as we supposed, for help'. Warren spoke of his ‘just and righteous cause which now lies in the dust [but which] someday would terrify the greatest monarch'.
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Tired of this diatribe, the sheriff interrupted him and Warren asked angrily ‘why a dying man should not have the liberty to speak his conscience?' Unnerved by the earlier alarm and fearing an impending rescue attempt, the sheriff had become jumpy and hustled Warren up the ladder ‘so that in some discontent and much against his stomach, he was turned over, though he held as fast as he could by the ladder and then by the rope that Jephson hung by'.

It was then Thompson's turn to be executed. Leigh reported: ‘He made a modest speech, acknowledging his crime, saying he was drawn in by one Blood, who made his escape and, having declared himself for the Church of England and prayed for the king, he cast himself off resolutely. There I left all three, wishing all the rest of their fellow plotters were with them.'

What triggered the panic? Some claimed afterwards that a pair of coach horses had escaped and run amok in the crowd. Others believed firmly ‘it was done maliciously with [the] intention to rescue the prisoners'.
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Was Blood's reputation, as a man of action who would risk all to liberate his friends even at the eleventh hour, the catalyst for the Dublin crowd's terror? Or was there a real attempt to snatch the prisoners off the scaffold, which came to naught?

Warren's widow Elizabeth later appealed for financial assistance, placing the blame for her husband's fate squarely on Blood's shoulders. At a ‘time of great sickness [he] was wrought upon by the pestilential insinuation of one Blood to join with him in his plot
against the castle of Dublin'. She pleaded for what was left of his forfeited estate to be remitted to her and her seven children.
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Leckie remained in Dublin's Newgate prison, no doubt still ranting and raving, for many months. At about six o'clock on the evening of 14 November he escaped.

It was an enterprising rescue. Leckie apparently exchanged clothes with his wife in order to fool the guards as he broke prison. He was assisted by two men, also disguised as women, who had filed through the bolts holding fast his cell door. Sir George Lane, unusually voluble, described the aftermath:

[They] conveyed him to Little Thomas Court and lodged him over the gate of the court in the hollow of the wall.

On Sunday, a gentleman living near that place, [sent] his servant into the city [and on his] return, discovered Leckie in woman's attire endeavouring to [get off] the wall and he, seeing the servant, desired him to procure a ladder to help him down.

The servant told his master in Little Thomas Court about what had happened and, looking out of the window, saw Leckie on the wall. They ran out and overtook him as he was walking towards a clothier's shop.