The Audacious Crimes of Colonel Blood (15 page)

At the first action, they fired upon the soldiers' backs without saying a word or making any show of force . . .

It appeared they [were] resolved to kill Leving, who is come in,
along with the gentlemen who were able to travel, three or four of whom are believed to be mortally wounded.

Scott, a citizen of York, being in the soldiers' company, was slain outright.

The rogues had taken such care that they secured all the passes [entrances] to the field by several footmen and their accomplices.
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Four days after the attack, Darcy, still recovering from his wounds whilst lodging at the Black Swan, in York's Coney Street, sent his two-page official report to the office of Sir Charles Wheeler, an officer in Prince Rupert's Horse, in Old Palace Yard, Westminster.
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Any letter describing the failure of a mission is a difficult one to write for a young, aspiring soldier and, in selecting his words, he was properly aware of the importance of the value of military horses:

As I am bound, I thought fit to give you an account of our late sad misfortune upon Thursday last in the evening about six or seven of the clock at Darrington, a small village in Yorkshire.

We were set upon in a narrow lane in the rear by half a score, as near as [I] can judge, well-armed men who, after they had fired some pistols [at] us, said: ‘Deliver, or you are all dead men'.

Whereupon I presently faced about and we fought with them [for] half an hour till we were so disabled we could engage them no longer; Procter being shot through the body, Knifton through the arm, Lobley through the thigh, Hewet into the back and I wounded in the hand and head. My horse [was] shot in the leg.

Lobley, Proctor and Jackson's horses were carried away.

I shot one and got another of their horses. One had mounted Singleton's horse, but Lobley dismounted him and recovered it again.

Only now did Darcy acknowledge the loss of his prisoner:

They rescued Mason and we sent the hue and cry after them.

Three of them are known by Leving, the prisoner who is sent to
York Castle, and he has discovered them to Justice Stringer to be Lockyer, Butler and Blood.

A gentleman of York, being behind, was slain.

I was forced to have the assistance of the country, none being left with me but Singleton and Jackson. The other[s] were left behind, but alive. I took all possible care of them. They will want money, as it will be three months before they are able to stir.
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The hunt was now on for Mason and Blood and his accomplices for a crime generally regarded among the gentry as ‘a most insolent act against the king and the government'.
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Predictably, the renegade Cromwellian Edmund Ludlow, safe in comfortable exile in Switzerland, saw Mason's rescue as ‘agreeable work for the Lord'.
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After the fight at Darrington ended, the fugitives had wisely separated and sought safe houses in which to hide, which they reached within a few days.

Blood ‘rode all that night and lost his way', his body and clothes ‘covered with blood and gore from top to toe'. He managed to find an unidentified friend's house (presumably within thirty miles of Darrington and still in Yorkshire) where his gunshot wounds were treated by a local surgeon, who was undoubtedly well paid for his silence.
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There he ‘lay close' to recuperate.
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Afterwards, Blood, true to form, disappeared from sight.

In London, John Betson, another government informer – and a crony of Leving – believed he could organise the arrests of ‘some of Mason's friends'. He had lined up a potential traitor within the Presbyterian dissident community, but warned that ‘he wants money'.

Betson had blotted his copybook with Arlington when he complained, a few weeks earlier, about the ungenerous £10 of secret service cash he had received as a reward for the role he played in Mason's earlier detention. ‘I will be satisfied with £40 and your lordship's favour', he had told the spymaster smugly.
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Now the informer sought an urgent meeting with Arlington. ‘I will wait upon your lordship this morning and desire that you will not be in a passion against me', though he added meekly, ‘I justly deserve it.
I would rather die than offend again.'
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He also sought the king's pardon for past crimes and misdemeanours.

The government published another proclamation for the arrest of Blood on 8 August, offering £100 for his capture, that of his accomplices, and of Mason.

Whereas we have been informed that John Lockyer, Timothy Butler and Thomas Blood (commonly called Captain Blood) with several other persons did lately in a most riotous and rebellious manner, at Darrington, near Wentbridge in the county of York, violently set upon and assault the guard entrusted with the care of conducting one John Mason, a prisoner for treason, from Our Tower of London to Our City of York in order to [stand] his trial there.

[They] having killed [
sic
] and desperately wounded several of the guard and others, did rescue and carry away the said Mason and do lurk in secret places and not submit themselves to justice.

The lord lieutenants of the English counties, justices of the peace, mayors, bailiffs and subjects were ‘straightly charged' to be diligent and ‘use their best endeavours to search for and apprehend' these fugitives ‘in all places whatsoever'. Those who concealed or harboured them would be ‘proceeded against with all severity'.
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Meanwhile, Leving at least had received a blanket reprieve on 31 July, ‘if found guilty only of felony'.
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He was back in York Castle, still scared about his day in court as a witness. As a last resort, he wrote to Robert Benson, the clerk of York assizes, asking to be ‘excused [from] witnessing anything against Jones, Atkinson or Joplin [as] they are men I have nothing to say against, having been very little concerned with them'. Leving used his good service as one of the government's informers to justify his request, emphasising: ‘During my compliance [association] with the fanatics, I was always faithful to them and after my eyes were opened, I knew better and his majesty was graciously pleased to pardon and employ me.'
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It was the last letter written by a man who was always terrified
that one day those whom he had betrayed to Charles II's secret service would find him and wreak their bloody vengeance.

That day of retribution had finally arrived. Scribbled on the front of Leving's one-page letter was a note declaring it was found on the dead body of the writer on 5 August. Leving had been tracked down and poisoned within the supposed security of York Castle. He was quickly and quietly buried in one of the city's cemeteries.

Who was his murderer?
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Superficially, Thomas Blood appears the prime suspect. He had recognised Leving during the skirmish at Darrington and must have guessed that he was on his way to bear witness against his fellow would-be rebels at York. He must also have grasped that Leving had identified him and his accomplices Lockyer and Butler during Mason's rescue and would pass on this information to the authorities in an attempt to ingratiate himself. Blood therefore had ample reason to be motivated by revenge and, because he was still in Yorkshire (within reach of York Castle), he might have had the opportunity to administer the poison, using one of his many disguises. His experience as a sham apothecary might also have provided the knowledge about which poison to employ, if not the means.

Revenge, as we will see, was always a powerful, insistent driver in Blood's actions, goading him into committing ever more audacious crimes and outrages. Yet somehow, his direct involvement in Leving's death seems unlikely.

To him, the means was always part of the intended message to the wider world in all his exploits. The use of poison never featured in Blood's
modus operandi
, as he preferred to employ spectacular, if not flamboyant, methodology in his escapades, rather than using such a silent and ambiguous technique in lethal retribution.

Blood was also seriously wounded, and just eleven days after the Darrington affray was probably in no fit state to travel far, no matter how compelling the reason. He may, however, have been able to smuggle an easily concealed small bottle of poison into York Castle and to arrange for it to be put into Leving's food or drink, either by a sympathiser to his cause, or someone easily corrupted by a generous bribe.

Another potential suspect is John Atkinson, who had fled to London after the collapse of the projected rebellion in Yorkshire and had been betrayed by Leving in the spring of 1665. As one of those Leving was going to testify against in the forthcoming trial, he also had a strong and immediate personal motive and was held in York Castle at the time of the murder, although, presumably, his movements within the prison were constrained.
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Finally there is the august personage of George Villiers, Second Duke of Buckingham. Leving had fallen foul of this powerful nobleman by providing evidence against him after allegations had been made that he had plans to assist those plotting against the crown. Buckingham had recently been freed from the Tower of London after trumped-up charges of treason against him were withdrawn
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and he may have found it prudent to neatly remove one of the witnesses against him. Others who had crossed him were also to die in mysterious circumstances.

Tellingly perhaps, Buckingham later deemed it necessary to fend off, rather ambiguously as it turned out, accusations of poisoning made against him. He wrote: ‘Let any man show that [he was] really poisoned and he will do me the greatest kindness imaginable. Let the matter of fact be proved and I'll undertake to tell for what reason it was done.'
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So Buckingham had the motive and certainly the means to order Leving's murder.

Meanwhile, William Freer, Leving's friend and fellow informer, had the misfortune to come up before a stern and testy magistrate called White at Wakefield, Yorkshire, accused of highway robbery. Like Leving before him, Freer offered up a document to spring him from jail – this time a pardon from the king for his crimes. Again, it failed to work, as White judged it invalid because it lacked the royal seal.

Freer begged Arlington to write ‘two or three lines' within nine days to the magistrate to arrange his freedom, otherwise he was to be sent to York Castle. The prospect terrified him because of the ‘danger of being poisoned by the same that did it to Mr Leving'.

He had not been wasting his time before his arrest. Freer ‘had caused one man to be taken who was able to give account of several
that are contributors to hiding persons who were with Blood and Butler in Yorkshire'. They posed no danger to the state ‘as they dared not trust one another'.
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His desperate pleas and his industrious collection of intelligence all came to nothing. On 28 September, Freer was in York Castle, still appealing to Arlington to write to Justice White ‘who committed me, and another justice, to procure my liberty, the king having promised me my life'. Probably from contacts among the prisoners, he had received stunning news:

Blood is dead and the rest of them are in London. I hope when at liberty to give an account of [Timothy] Butler.

If one who came from London and was lately in the Tower were promised his life, he could inform of all persons concerned.
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The news about Blood was completely untrue. Whether this was disinformation, planted by friends of Blood to cover his tracks, can only amount to conjecture. Perhaps it was just wishful thinking on Freer's part. Certainly, the manhunt continued for the fugitives with no diminution in effort or intent on the part of the authorities.

Others were swept up by the search for the fugitives. In late September, Sir Philip Musgrave,
custos rotulorum
of Westmorland, reported on the ‘safe keeping' by the garrison in Carlisle Caste, Cumbria, of one Elton, a lieutenant serving Mason in the former parliamentary army. The prisoner was an Anabaptist, ‘a stubborn, ill-principled man, with nothing to maintain himself. I therefore wish him a quick remove' from Carlisle.
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Despite the name of ‘John Mason' appearing in a list of prisoners held in Windsor Castle that September,
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he remained happily at large. Three years later, we find him keeping a tavern in London and utterly undaunted. He was still conspiring to overthrow the government.
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After his wounds healed, Blood once again decided to stay away from conspiracies and returned to his old quack practice at Romford in Essex
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where he resumed his alias of Doctor Ayliff or Allen. His wife Mary and her family remained in the apothecary's shop in
Shoreditch, just north of the city of London, still using the cover name of Weston.

His son Thomas was apprenticed in 1667 to a Scottish apothecary in Southwark, the former parliamentary army surgeon Samuel Holmes.
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His servant noted that he was ‘very poor in clothes while he lived [there]' but afterwards ‘dressed very fine'.
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However Thomas quit after six months to work in Romford, firstly to sell drugs to its gullible citizens alongside his father, then to try his hand independently as a grocer. He may also have worked as a mercer – dealing in textiles, fabrics, especially silks, velvets and other costly materials. The former tailor-turned-grocer Samuel Weyer was employed by the two Bloods at Romford but was sacked by them.
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Then young Thomas fell into a ‘debauched life' and his father wrote ruefully about his son's growing ‘wickedness'.
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Finding himself falling heavily into debt, he became a highwayman in Surrey, preying on the affluent passing trade to raise cash, operating under the alias of ‘Thomas Hunt'. Clearly he enjoyed some success, as Holmes's sister, Mrs Elizabeth Price, believed him to be worth £500, and as a twenty-one-year-old ‘lusty' highwayman he may also have made some progress in the affairs of the heart as she recalled him being a servant ‘to a young gentlewoman'.
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