The Audacious Crimes of Colonel Blood (34 page)

1663: March
Formation of London council of nonconformist extremists. Plot to kill the king, the Dukes of York and Albemarle and the lord chancellor, Edward Hyde, Earl of Clarendon.

1663: mid-April
James Butler, First Duke of Ormond, lord lieutenant of Ireland, hears of revived plan to seize Dublin Castle and take him hostage.

1663: 21 May C
onspirators plan to seize Dublin Castle but the attack is delayed until the following week to allow further rebel troops to arrive in the city.

Troops arrest twenty-four plotters in early-morning raids in Dublin, including the government undercover informer, Philip Alden. Blood and the remainder of the conspirators flee, some to Scotland. Further arrests are made during the last week of May.

Ormond prorogues Irish Parliament until 21 July.

1663: 23 May
Proclamation is published offering a reward of £100 for the apprehension of nine named fugitive former officers, including ‘Lieutenant Thomas Blood', and two Presbyterian ministers concerned in the conspiracy.

1663: 30 May
Ormond signs a warrant for the ‘removal of certain inhabitants of Dublin for the better security of the city'.

1663: 14 June
Seventy plotters under arrest. Blood, who has recklessly returned to Dublin to see his wife, again flees from the city and dons a variety of disguises – including that of a Catholic priest. He eludes arrest on a number of occasions while hiding in the hills and mountains of Ulster and Wicklow.

1663:
before
18 June
Government informer Philip Alden breaks through a barred window and escapes from ‘the highest turret' in Dublin Castle.

1663: 25 June
Trial begins of Edward Warren, Richard Thompson and Alexander Jephson, MP for Trim, for high treason at the King's Bench court in Dublin. A fourth defendant, the Presbyterian minister William Leckie (Blood's Scottish brother-in-law) is also arraigned but appears insane (subsequently found to be feigned).

1663: 1 July
Leckie convicted of high treason but proceedings halted because of his insanity.

1663: 8 July
Warren, Thompson and Jephson convicted and sentenced to be hung, drawn and quartered.

1663: 15 July
Thompson, Warren and Jephson are executed at Gallows Green (now Lower Baggot Street, Dublin, near the present-day bridge over the Grand Canal). After Jephson is hanged there is a ‘hot alarm' – possibly a rescue attempt – and the crowd scatters in panic. Thompson blames Blood for ‘drawing' him into the conspiracy.

1663: 12 October
Planned date of uprising in north of England. The insurrection, largely organised by former parliamentary officers, is averted by pre-emptive arrests of many of the ringleaders.

1663: 14 November
Leckie escapes from Dublin's Newgate prison disguised in his wife's clothes but is recaptured shortly afterwards and is executed on
12 December
.

1664:
Blood flees to the Netherlands and meets the Dutch naval hero Michiel de Rutyer, returning to London in March to associate with Fifth Monarchists.

1664: September
Blood involved in an abortive London plot to attack Charles II at the Palace of Whitehall and to seize the Tower of London.

1664: December
Blood reported in Ireland.

1665: May
Outbreak of bubonic plague in the capital. The Great Plague of London, which finally died away in
February 1666
, kills around 120,000 citizens, or about 15 per cent of the city's population.

1665: October
Presbyterian factions hold a secret meeting in Liverpool to plan strategy. The Irish contingent is led by Blood and his fellow Dublin Castle plotter, Lieutenant Colonel William Moore.

1666: February
Blood in Ireland and with Colonel ‘Gibby' Carr (another former accomplice) plots to seize the city of Limerick.

Blood and his friend John Lockyer travel to the Dutch United Provinces and are arrested as spies. After his release, Blood visits the republican regicide Edmund Ludlow in Switzerland in an unsuccessful attempt to persuade him to return from exile and join a conspiracy to overthrow the government of Charles II.

He may have been a double agent, working for Sir Joseph Williamson, operational head of Charles II's secret service.

1666: April
Charles II grants Blood's remaining property in Ireland to Captain Toby Barnes.

1666: August
Blood involved in new Irish conspiracy.

1666: 2–5 September
Blood in London and again escapes arrest.

Great Fire of London breaks out after a tinder-dry summer and a drought lasting from November 1665. It destroys more than 13,000 houses in the largely medieval city, together with eighty-seven parish churches and Old St Paul's Cathedral. Subsequently, Blood is (wrongly) accused of starting the fire which, after investigation, is said to have been accidental.

1666: 28 November
Blood probably involved in the failed Pentland uprising in Scotland which is suppressed by the rout at the Battle of Rullion Green in Lothian. He escapes unharmed and crosses the border to England, living in the Warrington and Manchester areas of Lancashire.

1667:
Blood returns to London with his family and practices as a quack doctor and apothecary under the alias ‘Dr Ayliff' in Romford, Essex. His wife lives in an apothecary's shop in Shoreditch, Middlesex.

1667: 25 July
Rescue of fellow conspirator Captain John Mason at Darrington, near Doncaster, Yorkshire, from a military escort taking him to trial at York. Blood badly wounded.

1670:
Blood's eldest son Thomas abandons his apprenticeship as an apothecary and after fitful, unsuccessful attempts to earn a living as a grocer and mercer becomes a highwayman in Surrey. He is caught and convicted on
4 July
at Surrey assizes and is briefly incarcerated in the Marshalsea prison, Southwark.

1670: 6 December
Attempted kidnap or murder of James Butler, First Duke of Ormond, in St James's, London as he returns from a state banquet entertaining the Prince of Orange at the Guildhall.

Blood may be acting as hired assassin of George Villiers, Second Duke of Buckingham.

1671: 9 May
Attempted theft of the Crown Jewels from the Tower of London.

1671: 1 August
Blood receives a full pardon for all his crimes and the grant of lands in Ireland yielding £500 a year.

He becomes a government spy in England and Holland and a private agent for those at court who need information to fulfil their ambitions.

c
.
1675:
Blood's eldest son Thomas dies in unknown circumstances,
leaving a widow and an infant son who is brought up by his brother Holcroft.

1679:
Blood may have provided bribes to suborn witnesses against George Villiers, Second Duke of Buckingham, who is accused of sodomy. Tried on charges of blasphemy, confederacy and subornation and fined and imprisoned.

Buckingham brings an action for defamation against Blood and his accomplices, claiming £10,000 in damages.

Blood contracts a fever in prison and is freed in
July 1680.

1680: 24 August
Blood dies at his home overlooking Bowling Alley, Westminster, aged sixty-two after an illness lasting fourteen days. He may have suffered a stroke.

1680: 1 September
Inquest in Westminster to determine whether the body exhumed from Blood's grave is really that of Colonel Thomas Blood. The corpse is so swollen and disfigured that the twenty-three-man jury – made up of those who knew Blood – cannot reach a verdict, even though an army captain swears that the cadaver's thumb is enlarged which, he claims, was a distinguishing mark identifying Blood.

Dramatis Personae

THOMAS BLOOD AND HIS FAMILY

Blood, Charles.
Fifth son of
Thomas Blood
and
Mary
his wife. Around 1681, supplied intelligence
to James, Duke of York
warning him of ‘most dangerous conspiracies against him' and about a conspiracy to launch an insurrection on the death of
Charles II.
Later became a barrister, defending his brother
Holcroft Blood
against accusations of assault by his estranged wife Elizabeth in October 1700.

Blood, Edmund.
(? –
c
.1645), of Makeney, Derbyshire. Sailed to Ireland in 1595 as a cavalry captain in Elizabeth I's army fighting Irish rebels led by Hugh O'Neill. Resigned commission and acquired land in Co Clare and elected one of the two MPs for the borough of Ennis in the Irish House of Commons in April 1613. He had three sons by his first wife Margaret:
Neptune
(born 1595);
Edmund
(died 1615) and
Thomas Blood senior.
After his wife's death, he married Mary Holdcroft or Holcroft of Lancashire and by her had a fourth son, William, born in 1600. He may have married a third time.

Blood, Edmund.
Fourth son of
Thomas Blood
and
Mary
his wife. As a witness, signed the receipt for the recovery of his eldest brother's sword, belt and pistols, dated 17 October 1670 at Lambeth. Had journeyed to the East Indies twice – possibly in the service of the East India Company. Purser on board the frigate
Jersey.
Died in London in 1679.

Blood, Elizabeth.
Younger daughter of
Thomas Blood
and
Mary
his wife. Married Edward Everard. Signed inventory of her brother William's goods in 1688. Recipient of £50 bequest in her brother
Holcroft'
s will in 1707. No further details known.

Blood, Holcroft.
(
c
.1657–1707) Third son of
Thomas Blood
and
Mary
his wife. Enlisted in Royal Navy in 1672 without his father's permission
and served during the Third Anglo-Dutch War. Later enlisted as a cadet officer in the French Guards under the alias of ‘Leture' and studied military engineering. Guardian of Edmund, the young son of his elder brother
Thomas
after the latter's death around 1675. Appointed clerk of the peace and JP in Co. Clare, April 1676. Married Elizabeth Fowler, widowed daughter of the barrister Richard King in 1686. Three years later promoted second engineer to the artillery train in the Irish wars and was wounded at the capture of Carrickfergus in Co. Antrim in August 1689; at Cashel, Co. Tipperary the following February and at the Battle of the Boyne in July 1690. Appointed second engineer of England in February 1696 and commander of artillery in the Duke of Marlborough's campaigns, including fighting at the Battle of Blenheim on 2 August 1704. Promoted brigadier general. Because of his infidelity he became estranged from his wife, who sought his prosecution for an assault on her, which was successfully defended by his barrister brother
Charles
in 1700. Died in Brussels, 19 August 1707, leaving an illegitimate son, Holcroft, of St Anne's Soho, London (died 1724) by his mistress Dorothy Cook of Dort, Holland.

Blood, Mary
née
Holcroft (1633–
c
.1672). Elder daughter of
Lieutenant Colonel John Holcroft
and his wife Margaret. Married
Thomas Blood
at Newchurch, Lancashire, 21 June 1650 and the couple had seven children. In 1667, lived with her eldest son
Thomas Blood
in an apothecary's shop at Shoreditch, north of London, under the alias of Weston. In 1670, stayed at the home of schoolteacher Jonathan Davies in Mortlake, Surrey, with one of her daughters but prudently disappeared the day after the assault on
Ormond
. In 1671, said to be ill in Lancashire.

Blood, Mary.
Eldest daughter of
Thomas Blood
and
Mary
his wife. Married —Corbett. Received a £50 bequest in her brother Holcroft's will in 1707. No further details known.

Blood, Neptune
(1595–1692). Eldest son of
Edmund Blood
and his first wife Margaret. Born during passage across St George's Channel to Ireland. Ordained minister in March 1623 and appointed dean of Kilfenora in 1663. Served with Charles I at Oxford during the first Civil War. Uncle of
Thomas Blood junior.
Married three times and was succeeded as dean by another Neptune Blood, his fourth son by his third wife.

Blood, Thomas senior
(1598–1645). Third son of
Edmund Blood
(died
c
.1645) of
Makeney, Derbyshire and Kilnaboy, Co. Clare, Ireland and his first wife Margaret. Born in Kilnaboy, and became an ironmaster in Sarney, Dunboyne, Co. Meath. Details of wife unknown. Two sons and at least one daughter. Died at Sarney, 1645.

Blood, Colonel Thomas junior
(1618–80), aliases include Allen, Ayliff and Morton. Born at Sarney, Dunboyne, Co. Meath, probably elder son of
Thomas Blood senior.
Appointed JP in 1640 and fought against the rebels in the Irish Confederation insurrection after 1642. Fought for the Royalist side in the Civil War, probably at the sieges of Sherborne Castle, Dorset in 1645 and Pontefract Castle, Yorkshire three years later. By 1650, had changed sides, fighting for parliamentary forces in Ireland. Married
Mary Holcroft
, eldest daughter of Lieutenant Colonel John Holcroft of Lancashire, 21 June 1650, and had five sons –
Thomas
,
William
,
Holcroft
,
Edmund
and
Charles –
and two daughters,
Mary
and
Elizabeth
. Lost possession or share in 1,426 acres granted in Ireland under the 1652 Act of Settlement and, thus embittered, embarked on a long career of rebellion and violent intrigue against the government in Ireland, Scotland and England to further the Presbyterian cause. After attempting to assassinate the
Duke of Ormond
in December 1670 and to steal the Crown Jewels from the Tower of London the following year, he was pardoned and granted a pension from Irish lands. He became a government spy in England and Holland (1672) and was employed privately by some in the royal court to further their ambitions. Caught up in various popish plots after 1679 and may have provided bribes to suborn witnesses against
George Villiers
,
Second Duke of Buckingham
, who sued him and his accomplices for defamation, claiming £10,000 in damages. Tried on charges of blasphemy, confederacy and subornation; fined and imprisoned. Caught a fever and was freed in July 1680. He died at his home overlooking Bowling Alley, Westminster, but as some thought reports of his death were just another of Blood's tricks, his body was exhumed and identified by the inordinate size of one of his thumbs.