And that success was still to him denied
Fell sick with grief, broke his great heart and died."
But there is still one curious circumstance about his family which it would be too bad not to insert here, and with which this story may fittingly conclude. It concerns one of his sons whom we have not met, Holcroft Blood. This youth, evidently inheriting the paternal love of adventure, ran away from home at the age of twelve. He found his way, through an experience as a sailor, into the French army. After the Revolution of 1688 he became an engineer in the English service, owing chiefly to his escape from a suit brought against him by his enemies, which was intended to ruin him but by accident attracted to him instead the notice of the man with whose visit to England our story began, now William the Third of England and Holland. This became the foundation of his fortunes. In the English service young Blood rose rapidly through the long period of wars which followed. He gained the praise of the great Marlborough, and ultimately became the principal artillery commander of the allied forces in the War of the Spanish Succession, dying, full of honors, in 1707. Meanwhile Ormond's grandson and heir, the second Duke, distinguished himself likewise in that same war in other quarters, and bade fair to take high rank as a commander. But on the death of Queen Anne he took the Jacobite side, was driven into exile, and died many years later, a fugitive supported by a Spanish and Papal pension. Thus did Fate equalize the two families within a generation.
I said at the beginning that this was to be the story of the greatest rascal in English history, but I am not so sure that it is, after all. It may be only the story of a brave man on the wrong side of politics and society. For his courage and ability, thrown on the other side of the scale, would, without doubt, have given him a far different place in history than the one he now occupies. What is the moral of it all? I do not know, and I am inclined to fall back on the dictum of a great man in a far different connection: "I do not think it desirable that we should always be drawing morals or seeking for edification. Of great men it may truly be said, 'It does good only to look at them.'"
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE.
The story here told has been related elsewhere though not in such detail nor, so far as I am aware, from precisely this point of view. Apart from the accounts in encyclopedias and biographical dictionaries, of which by far the best for its day is the Biographia Brittanica, the most accessible source of information is the article on Blood in the Dictionary of National Biography and the fullest details are to be found in W. Hepworth Dixon's Her Majesty's Tower, VOL. IV, pp. 119, and in a note (No. 35) to Scott's Peveril of the Peak, in which novel the Colonel plays enough part to have a pen-portrait drawn of him by Scott in a speech by Buckingham.
These, of course, touch but lightly on the broader aspects of the matter. The sources for nearly all the statements made in the foregoing narrative are to be found in the Calendars of State Papers, Domestic and Ireland, 1660-1675, in the Reports of the Historical Manuscripts Commission, especially in the Ormond Papers and in Carte's Life of Ormond. In 1680 was published a pamphlet entitled Remarks on the Life and Death of the Famed Mr. Blood, etc., signed R. H., which includes, besides a general running account of several of the outlaw's chief adventures, a curious and obscure story of the Buckingham incident from which it is practically impossible to get any satisfaction. To this is added a Postscript written some time after the body of the work and describing Blood's illness, death and burial. This tract appears to have been written by some one who knew Blood, and in places seems to represent his own story. It would perhaps be too much to assume from the similarity of the initials that it was composed by that Richard Halliwell, Hallowell or Halloway, the tobacco cutter of Frying-Pan Alley, Petticoat Lane, whose name, or alias, appears among those often connected with Blood in his enterprises. Sir Gilbert Talbot's narrative of Blood's adventures, especially valuable for its full account of the attempt on the crown, is to be found in Strype's Continuation of Stowe's Survey of London. Some details as to Blood's London haunts may be found in Wheatley and Cunningham's London, Past and Present.
There are several portraits of Blood extant of which the one in the National Portrait Gallery, painted by Gerard Soest, is the best. This is reproduced in Cust's National Portrait Gallery, VOL. I, p. 163. Another which appeared in the Literary Magazine, for the year 1791, is evidently a copy of the one prefixed to this study. This is reproduced from a contemporary mezzotint, which is described in Smith's British Mezzotinto Portraits, (Henry Sotheran & Co., Lond., 1884), as follows:
THOMAS BLOOD.
H. L. in oval frame directed to left facing towards and looking to front, long hair, cravat, black gown. Under: G. White Fecit. Coll Blood. Sold by S. Sympson in ye Strand near Catherine Street. H. 10; Sub. 8¾; W. 7¼; O.D.H. 8¼; W. 7.