Colonel Thomas Blood, Crown-stealer, 1618-1680

by Wilbur Cortez Abbott

It was not to be supposed that such a man was overlooked in the assignment of parts for the great conspiracy. A committee had been formed in Dublin to organize and enlist the old Cromwellians in the design and of this committee Blood and his brother-in-law were prominent members. They were, in fact, the chief means by which correspondence was maintained with the north Irish Presbyterians in Ulster, and the so-called Cameronians in Scotland, as well as the Nonconformist group in Lancashire and north England, with whom Blood's marriage had given him some connection. The local design, as evolved by this committee, was most ingenious. A day, the 9th or 10th of May, was set for its execution, men and arms were collected, and the details carefully arranged for the seizure of Dublin Castle and the person of Ormond. According to an old usage the Lord-lieutenant was accustomed from day to day to receive petitions in person from all who cared to carry their troubles to him in this way. Taking advantage of this custom, it was proposed by the conspirators to send certain men enlisted in the enterprise into the Castle in the guise of petitioners. Some eighty others, meanwhile, disguised as workingmen and loiterers, were to hang about the great gate of the Castle. Another, disguised as a baker, and carrying a basket of bread on his head, was to enter the gate, as if on his way to the kitchen. As he went in he was to stumble and let fall his pile of loaves. It was calculated that the careless guard would probably rush out to snatch the bread thus scattered. The baker would resist, the pretended workmen and loiterers would gather to see the fun, and, under cover of the disturbance, rush the gate, seize the guard-house and its arms, overpower the guard, and, with the aid of the petitioners within, occupy the Castle. Upon the news of this, risings were to take place throughout the country, and the English troops and officials overpowered and brought over or killed.

It was an admirable plan. The volunteers were chosen, the disguises prepared, a proclamation to the people was printed, and the whole matter laid in train. The plot, in fact, wanted but one thing to succeed—secrecy. This it was not destined to have. At the proper time the inevitable informer appeared in the person of Mr. Philip Alden or Arden, a member of the committee. By him and by a certain Sir Theophilus Jones, to whom some knowledge of the plot had come, Ormond was warned of his danger. He took immediate steps to secure himself and arrest the conspirators. But they were warned of their danger in time to escape, and under the rules of the game they should have made off at once. Instead they boldly went on with their plans, but set the time four days ahead, for May 5th. Even this daring step failed to save them. The Castle guard was increased, troops and militia called out, the other districts warned, and the conspirators sought out and arrested. Among the first victims was Blood's brother-in-law, Lackie. He was thrown into prison, where the severity of his treatment is said to have driven him insane. His wife petitioned for his release, and there is a story that his colleagues, the fellows of Trinity College, joined her in begging that his life be spared. They were told that he might have his liberty if he would conform, which, however, even at that price, he refused to do. This much is quite certain, his wife was promised, not her husband's liberty but his body. And this, after his execution in December, was accordingly handed over to her. The other conspirators suffered likewise in life, or liberty, or property, and every effort was made to include Blood in the list of victims. A proclamation he had issued was burned by the hangman. He was declared an outlaw, his remaining estates were confiscated, and a price was set on his head. But the government was compelled to satisfy itself with this, the man himself disappeared. Among the brethren of his faith he was able to find plenty of hiding places. But, according to his own story, told many years later, he scorned to skulk in corners. Disguised as a Quaker, as a Dissenting minister, even as a Catholic priest, he made his way from place to place, living and preaching openly, and by his very effrontery keeping the officers off his scent for some years. And so great, it is said, was the terror of his name and his daring that a plot to rescue Lackie from the scaffold not only frightened away the crowd from the execution, but nearly succeeded in its object, while for months afterward Ormond was hindered from venturing out of Dublin by the fear of his friends that he would be kidnapped or killed by Blood and his companions.

Meanwhile the great design in England, like that in Ireland, found its shipwreck in treachery. Two of the men entrusted with the secrets of the design revealed it to the government. One of the leaders, Paul Hobson, was early seized, and his correspondence intercepted. The first leader chosen went mad, and the miracles which were prophesied, did not come to pass. The plans for a rising in Durham, Westmoreland and Lancashire were betrayed, troops and militia were hurried to the points of danger, and the few who rose in arms during that fatal month of October, 1663, discouraged by the fewness of their numbers and the strength brought against them, dispersed without a blow. The rest was but the story of arrests, examinations, trials, and executions. More than a score of those who took part in the design were executed, more than a hundred punished by fine or imprisonment or exile, or all three. Hobson was kept prisoner in the Tower for more than a year. His health failed, and in consideration of information he had given, he and his family were permitted to go under heavy bonds, to the Carolinas, where, as elsewhere in the colonies, he doubtless found many kindred spirits. By the middle of 1664 the tale of victims was complete, and the conspiracy was crushed. The alarm again reacted on Parliament, and a bill against meetings of Dissenters, which had been long pending, was passed under pressure of the plot. By its provisions it became unlawful to hold a religious meeting of more than five persons beside the family in whose house the worshippers assembled under severe and cumulative penalties. This was the Conventicle Act.

Blood, meanwhile, like several of his co-conspirators, flitted from place to place, in Ireland and England, the authorities always on his trail. Finally, like many before and after him, he seems to have found refuge in the seventeenth century sanctuary of political refugees, Holland. There no small number of the leaders and soldiers of the old army had preceded him, and many had taken service in the Dutch army and navy. It may be that he had some thought of following their example, perhaps his designs were deeper still. He had nothing to hope from England, for his confiscated estates had been leased to a certain Captain Toby Barnes, reserving the rights of the government, based on his forfeiture by treason. He therefore made his way and extended his acquaintance not only among the English, but among the Dutch as well, and, if his story is true, was introduced to no less a person than the great Dutch admiral, De Ruyter, the most formidable of all England's enemies. And this was of much importance, for while he sojourned abroad, England and Holland had drifted into war. From February, 1665, to July, 1667, the two strongest maritime powers strove for control of the sea. In the summer of 1665 the English won some advantage in the fierce battle of Lowestoft, but the noise of rejoicing was stilled by a terrible catastrophe. In that same summer the Plague fell upon London. The death list in the city alone swelled from 600 in April to 20,000 in August. Business was suspended, the court and most of the administration and the clergy fled, and the war languished. A few brave spirits like Sheldon, the bishop of London, a certain secretary in the Admiralty, Samuel Pepys, of much fame thereafter, and the old Cromwellian general, Monk, now Duke of Albemarle, stuck grimly to their posts. But they and their fellows were few among many. Amid the terror and confusion the Nonconformist clergy came out of their hiding places, ascended the pulpits which had been deserted by their brethren of the Anglican church, few of whom followed the example of their brave, intolerant old bishop, and ministered to the spiritual needs of the stricken people. Conventicles sprung up everywhere, and conspiracy again raised its head. This time new plans were devised. Hundreds of old soldiers were reported coming to London and taking quarters near the Tower. Arms were collected and a plan formed to surprise the great stronghold by an attack from the water side. In addition there was a design for risings elsewhere, aided by the Dutch. The government bestirred itself under the direction of the inevitable Monk. The London conspirators were seized, information was sent to the local authorities, who made arrests and called out the militia, and the danger was averted. Parliament met at Oxford in October and, as a sequel to the plot, passed the most ferocious of the persecuting measures, the Five Mile Act, by which no Nonconformist preacher or teacher was permitted to come within that distance of a city or borough, save on a duly certified journey.

The next year repeated the history of its predecessor. The English fleet under the only man who seemed to rise to emergencies in this dark time, Monk, met the Dutch off the North Foreland and fought there a terrible battle which lasted three days, and was claimed as a victory by both sides. Again this was followed by a calamity. In September a fire broke out in London which raged almost unchecked for a week, and laid the greater part of the city in ashes. France, meanwhile, entered the war on the side of Holland, and the English government, corrupt and exhausted, seemed almost ready to fall. It was little wonder that the sectaries, though their arms had been lost in the fire, plucked up courage and laid more plans. Six weeks after the fire the Covenanters in west Scotland, maddened by persecution, were in arms, and maintained themselves for some weeks against the forces sent against them. During the following winter the English, short of money, and negotiating for peace, resolved not to set out a fleet in the spring. In June the Dutch, apprised of the defenceless condition of the English coasts, brought together a fleet under De Ruyter, sailed up the Medway and the Thames, took Sheerness and Chatham, broke through the defenses there and captured or destroyed the English ships they found at anchor. There was little to oppose them. The Guards were drawn out, the young gentlemen about the court enlisted, the militia was brought together, and volunteers collected. Some entrenchments were dug, and guns were mounted to oppose a landing. And the Lord General Monk, who had done all that was done, marched up and down the bank, before the Dutch ships whose big black hulks lay well within the sound of his voice, chewing tobacco, swearing like a pirate, shaking his heavy cane at the enemy, and daring them to land. They did not kill him as they might easily have done. From their ships came a brisk cannonade, volleys of jeers and profanity, and the insulting cries of English seamen aboard, deriding their fellow-countrymen ashore. And with these insults the fleet presently weighed anchor and sailed away to patrol the coasts, interrupt commerce, and attack other ports. In particular an attempt was made on Landguard fort, covering Harwich. There the Dutch fleet was taken into the harbour by English pilots, some twelve hundred men landed under command of an English exile, Colonel Doleman. But despite the heroic efforts of the "tall English lieutenant-colonel" who led them, efforts which extorted the admiration of his fellow-countrymen who held the fort against him, the Dutch were driven off. At Portsmouth and elsewhere similar attempts were made but with no greater success and, the negotiations then in progress at Breda having been expedited by this exploit, the Dutch fleet withdrew, leaving England seething with impotent rage and mortification. Peace was signed at Breda a month later, on terms influenced in no small degree by this notable raid, the first in centuries which had brought an enemy into the Thames.

And what had become of our friend Blood in these stirring times? It is not to be supposed that the organizer of Irish rebellion, the correspondent of English revolutionary committee and Scotch Covenanters, and the friend of De Ruyter, sat quietly apart from this turmoil of war and conspiracy. Yet, working underground as he did, like a mole, it is possible to trace his movements only by an occasional upheaval on the surface. It seems quite certain that he did not, like so many of his countrymen, enlist in the Dutch service and that he was not among the four or five thousand troops, mostly English, which manned their fleet, nor did he, like them, take part in the attempt to storm the forts covering Harwich. On February 13, 1666, there is a secret service note, that Captain Blood may be found at Colonel Gilby Carr's in the north of Ireland, or at his wife's near Dublin, and that the fanatics had secretly held a meeting at Liverpool and put off their rising till after the engagement of the fleets. On May 3, there is a similar note concerning a man named Padshall, then prisoner in the Gatehouse in London, that if he is kept close he may discover where Allen, alias Blood, lodges, or "Joannes" alias Mene Tekel, and the note indicates their presence in the city. Then came the battle of the North Foreland and the failure of the Dutch to crush the English fleet. On August 24th we learn that these two men, Blood and Jones, have gone to Ireland to do mischief. There another plot was reported forming, which contemplated the seizure of Limerick. But this, like that of the preceding year on the Tower, both of which bear a strong family resemblance to the old design on Dublin Castle, were discovered and defeated. One insurrection alone, as we have seen, resulted from this unrest, the rising of the Scotch Covenanters in October. And among them, according to advices which came to the administration, was Blood. He had evidently found the Irish plot betrayed and with some of his companions, described in the accounts of the Pentland rising as "some Presbyterian ministers and old officers from Ireland," hurried to the only chance of real fighting. That was not great. The Covenanters, cooped up in the Pentland Hills, were beaten, dispersed and butchered, before concentrated aid could be given them. Blood, as usual, escaped. He seems first to have sought refuge in Lancashire among his relatives. Thence he went to Ireland, but, landing near Carrickfergus, was so closely pursued there by Lord Dungannon that he turned again to England, and by the first of the following April was reported to the government as being at the house of a rigid Anabaptist in Westmoreland. From there he watched the government unravel the web of conspiracy he had been so busy weaving.

Yet even here lies another mystery. In 1665, at the time when he might be supposed to have been most active against the government, his wife petitioned, through him apparently, for the return of certain property seized from her father by one Richard Clively, then in prison for killing a bailiff, and in December of that year it appears that certain men convicted of attending conventicles are to be discharged, and the order is endorsed by Blood. More than that, there is a petition of September, 1666, the month of the Fire, noted as "Blood's memorial," requesting a permit from Secretary Arlington that the "hidden persons, especially the spies, be not seized till they are disposed of." From such data it has been conjectured that Blood was playing a double part, that he was, after all, no dangerous conspirator but a mere informer.

And this brings us to a most curious phase of this whole movement, the relation of the conspirators to the government. It is a remarkable fact that no small number of those who to all appearances were most deeply implicated in conspiracy, corresponded at one time or another with the administration, in many instances furnishing information of each other to the secretaries. And this might lead, indeed, it has led, many to imagine that the whole of these vaunted conspiracies were, after all, nothing but what we should call in the language of modern crime, "plants," devised and executed by the government itself for purposes of its own. There is, in some instances, evidence of this. But in many others it is apparent that this is not a full explanation of cases like that of Blood. In that doubtful borderland between secret service and conspiracy it was often possible for a man to serve both sides. Having engineered a plot and acquired money and arms and companions to carry it out a man not infrequently found himself in the clutches of the law. The officers, because they did not have evidence to hang him, or because they hoped to gain more from him alive than dead, were often disposed to offer him his life, even his liberty, in return for information. He, on his part, was nearly always ready to furnish information in any quantity and of any sort, in return for this favour. And, if he were shrewd enough, he might amuse his captors for years with specious stories, with just enough truth to make them plausible, and just enough vagueness to make them unusable, and ultimately escape, meanwhile carrying on the very plans which he purported to betray. He might even get money from both sides and make a not to be despised livelihood from his trade. This is very different from the regular informer, who, like Alden, received a lump sum or an annuity from the government, and it was a very fair profession for a man with enough shrewdness and not too much conscience in those troubled times. If, indeed, Blood were such a man, as seems probable, he represented a considerable element in the underground politics of the early Restoration. And it is to be observed that no small proportion of the men who were executed for actual and undeniable complicity in the plots were of just this type and had at various times been in government service, only to be caught red-handed at the end. And that such was the case of Blood seems to be proved by the fact that the next time he appears above the horizon his actions seem to dissipate any idea of permanent accommodation with the government.

The arrests and examinations which succeeded the abortive conspiracy of 1663 had led the secretaries of state into many dark ways of subterranean politics, and they had steadily pushed their investigations through the years of the war, the plague and the fire. They had broken up one group after another, pursuing a steady policy of enlisting the weaker men as informers, and executing or keeping in prison the irreconcilables. Among those they had thus discovered had been a little group, the "desperadoes," the names of some of whom we have come across before, Blood, his brother-in-law, Colonel Lockyer, Jones, the author of Mene Tekel, and a Captain John Mason. The last had been taken, had escaped, and some time during the Dutch war, was recaptured. On the 20th of July, 1667, while the Dutch fleets still patrolled the English coast and the peace of Breda was just about to be signed, warrants were issued from the Secretary of State to the Keeper of the Tower and the Keeper of Newgate to deliver Captain John Mason and Mr. Leving to the bearer to be conveyed to York gaol. This duty was assigned to a certain Corporal Darcy, otherwise unknown to fame, who with some seven or eight troopers proceeded to carry out his instructions. The little party thus made up rode north by easy stages for four days without incident. On the fourth day they were joined by one Scott, a citizen of York, apparently by profession a barber, who, not much fancying solitary travel in that somewhat insecure district, sought safety with the soldiers. About seven o'clock on the evening of the 25th of August the little party entered a narrow lane near the village of Darrington, Yorkshire, and there met a most extraordinary adventure. As they rode along, doubtless with no great caution, they heard behind them a sudden rattle of horses' hoofs. They turned to meet a pistol-volley from a small body of well armed and mounted men, and a demand for their prisoners. Several of the guard were wounded at the first fire, and the surprise was complete. But Corporal Darcy was not a man to be thus handled. He faced his little force about, delivered a volley in return, charged his assailants briskly and in a moment was the center of a sharp hand-to-hand fight. He was twice wounded and had his horse shot under him. Three of his companions were badly hurt. Of the attacking party at least one was severely wounded[4]. But when they drew off they carried Mason with them. Leving, feeling discretion the better part of valour, took refuge in a house near by and after the fight surrendered himself again to the stout corporal. Scott, the innocent by-stander who had sought protection with the soldiers, was killed outright, the only immediate fatality in either party, though some of the troopers died later of their wounds. The corporal, despite his disabled condition, managed to get one of his opponents' horses in place of the one he lost, and rode hurriedly into the nearby village for help. But the fearful villagers had barricaded themselves in their houses, and were moved neither by his promises nor his threats to join in the pursuit of the desperadoes. He had, therefore, to be content with giving information to the nearest justice, sending after them the hue and cry, and making his way to York with his remaining prisoner.

This, it will be remembered, was one Leving. And with him we come upon a character, and a plot beneath a plot, which well illustrates the times. William Leving, or Levings, or Levering, or Leonard Williams, as he was variously called, was very far from being the man his guards thought him. It must have been a surprise to them after the fight to see one of their prisoners instead of making off with the rescuers, render himself again into their hands. But the explanation, though the good corporal and his men did not know it, nor yet the governor of York gaol to whom Leving was delivered, was only too well known to Captain Mason's friends, and explains the strange conduct of the Captain's fellow prisoner on other grounds than mere cowardice. Leving had been deeply implicated in the plots of 1661 and 1662, perhaps in that of 1663 as well. He had been caught, and, to save his life, he had "come in," to use an expressive phrase of the time. He was, in short, one of the most useful of the government's spies. It was he who had given news of Blood and his companions in Ireland. It was he who had furnished some of the information on which the government was then acting, and who proposed to furnish more, acquired, possibly, by this very ruse of sending him North with Mason. And it was he who now gave to the justice and the officers the names of the principal rescuers, Captain Lockyer, Major Blood, and Timothy Butler, and wrote to Secretary Arlington suggesting that the ways into London be watched as they would probably seek refuge there. It was little wonder that Mason's rescuers had sought to kill Leving, or that he had sought refuge in flight and surrender.