The Project Gutenberg eBook ofColonel Thomas Blood, Crown-stealer, 1618-1680This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.Title: Colonel Thomas Blood, Crown-stealer, 1618-1680Author: Wilbur Cortez AbbottRelease date: February 22, 2014 [eBook #44980]Most recently updated: October 24, 2024Language: EnglishCredits: Produced by Chris Curnow and the Online DistributedProofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file wasproduced from images generously made available by TheInternet Archive)*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK COLONEL THOMAS BLOOD, CROWN-STEALER, 1618-1680 ***
This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.
Title: Colonel Thomas Blood, Crown-stealer, 1618-1680Author: Wilbur Cortez AbbottRelease date: February 22, 2014 [eBook #44980]Most recently updated: October 24, 2024Language: EnglishCredits: Produced by Chris Curnow and the Online DistributedProofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file wasproduced from images generously made available by TheInternet Archive)
Title: Colonel Thomas Blood, Crown-stealer, 1618-1680
Author: Wilbur Cortez Abbott
Author: Wilbur Cortez Abbott
Release date: February 22, 2014 [eBook #44980]Most recently updated: October 24, 2024
Language: English
Credits: Produced by Chris Curnow and the Online DistributedProofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file wasproduced from images generously made available by TheInternet Archive)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK COLONEL THOMAS BLOOD, CROWN-STEALER, 1618-1680 ***
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BYWILBUR CORTEZ ABBOTTProfessor of History, Sheffield Scientific SchoolYale UniversityROCHESTER, NEW YORK1910Copyright, 1910, byEdward WheelockGENESEE PRESSROCHESTER, N.Y.
BY
WILBUR CORTEZ ABBOTT
Professor of History, Sheffield Scientific School
Yale University
ROCHESTER, NEW YORK1910
Copyright, 1910, byEdward Wheelock
GENESEE PRESSROCHESTER, N.Y.
The story which follows is, without doubt, one of the most curious and extraordinary in English history. It is, in fact, so remarkable that it seems necessary to begin by assuring the cautious reader that it is true. Much as it may resemble at times that species of literature known in England as the shilling shocker and in America as the dime novel, its material is drawn, not from the perfervid imagination of the author, but from sources whose very nature would seem to repudiate romance. The dullest and most sedate of official publications, Parliamentary reports, memoranda of ministers, warrants to and from officers and gaolers, newsletters full of gossip which for two hundred years and more has ceased to be news, these would seem to offer little promise of human interest.
Yet even these cannot well disguise the fascination of a life like that of Thomas Blood. The tale of adventure has always divided honours with the love story. And such a career as his, full of mystery, of personal daring, and the successful defiance of law by one on whom its provisions seem to have borne too hardly, cannot be obscured even by the digest of official documents. Moreover it has historical significance. This most famous and successful of English lawbreakers was no common criminal. In a sense he was the representative of an important class during a critical period of history. Not merely to the Old Englander, but to those interested in the rise of the New England beyond seas, the fate of the irreconcilable Puritans, no less than that of their more submissive brethren, must seem of importance. This is the more true in that no small number of the men whose names appear in this narrative played parts on both sides of the Atlantic. The younger Vane, who had been the governor of Massachusetts, in 1636, and whose execution marked the early years of Restoration vengeance, is the most striking of these figures. Next to him come the fugitive regicides, Goffe, Whalley and Dixwell, who lived out their days in New Haven, Hartford and Hadley. It is not so well known, however, that Venner, whose insurrection in the early days of the Restoration was one of the most dramatic and important events of that time, was at one time a resident of Salem. Still less is it likely to be known that Paul Hobson, one of the contrivers and the involuntary betrayer of the great plot of 1663, was later allowed to remove to Carolina. The relationship of Lawrence Washington, whose activities in the early years of Charles II's reign gave the government such anxiety, to the Washingtons who settled in Virginia has been vigorously denied. But certainly no small element among these irreconcilables found sympathy, support or refuge among their brethren in the New World. And it was perhaps no more than chance that the subject of this sketch did not become governor of an English colony in America.
This essay began as a serious historical study, whose larger results are chronicled in another place. But it grew insensibly into the only form of composition which seemed to do it any sort of justice, a species of story. It is, in short, a romance, which differs from its kind chiefly in that it has a larger proportion of truth. On the other hand it lacks in equal measure what is generally superabundant in such works, a plot. It has a plot, indeed many plots, but it is not always easy to determine just what the plot is or what relation the hero or villain as you like, bears to it. It has, above all, a mystery which may atone for its shortcomings in other directions. And it has, finally, for its central figure a character whose strange, surprising adventures were the marvel of his day and are not greatly dimmed by the dust of two centuries. On these grounds it seems not unprofitable nor uninteresting to contemplate again and in a new light the life and works of the man who has been generally conceded the bad eminence of being the most daring and successful of English rascals, Thomas Blood, courtesy-colonel of conspiracy and crown-stealer. The scene of his activity was that brilliant and obscure period we know as the Restoration, those years during which his most gracious Majesty, King Charles the Second, of far from blessed memory, presided over the destinies of the English race. And you are, if you wish, to transport yourself at once into the very midst of the reign of him who for his wit and wickedness has been forever miscalled the Merry Monarch.
The great event of the winter of 1670-1 in English politics and society was a circumstance unprecedented in European affairs, the visit of the head of the House of Orange to the English Court. The young Prince William, soon to become the ruler of Holland, and later King of England, made this, his first visit to the nation which one day he was to rule, ostensibly to pay his respects to his uncle Charles who was then King, and his uncle James, who was Duke of York. Beside this his journey was officially declared to have no other purpose than pleasure and the transaction of some private business. What affairs of state were then secretly discussed by this precocious statesman of nineteen and His British Majesty's ministers of the Cabal, we have no need to inquire here, nor would our inquiries produce much result were they made. The web of political intrigue then first set on the roaring loom of time which was to plunge all England into agitation and revolution and unrest, and all western Europe into war, has, for the moment, little to do with this story. There was enough in the external aspects of his visit to fill public attention then and to serve our purpose now. The five months of his stay were one long round of gayety. Balls, receptions, and dinners, horse-races, cocking mains, gaming and drinking bouts followed each other in royal profusion. And a marriage already projected between the Prince and his cousin, the Princess Mary, gave a touch of romance to the affair, only qualified by the fact that she still played at dolls in the nursery.
The court was not alone in its efforts to entertain the young prince. The ministers, the leaders of the opposition, and many private individuals beside, lent their energies to this laudable end. The work was taken up by certain public or semi-public bodies. And, in particular, the corporation of the great city of London felt that among these festivities it must not be outdone in paying some attention to the most distinguished citizen of the neighbouring republic, who, as it happened, was also the most promising Protestant candidate for the English throne. Accordingly on the afternoon of Tuesday, December 6, 1670, as the custom then was, they tendered him a banquet at Guildhall where were assembled the wealth and beauty of the city to do him honour. The great function, apart from a subtle political significance which might have been noted by a careful and well-informed observer, was not unlike others of that long series of splendid hospitalities by which the greatest city in the world has been accustomed for centuries to welcome its distinguished guests. There was the same splendour of civic display, the same wealth of courses, the same excellent old wine, doubtless the same excellent old speeches. And in spite of the greatness of the event and the position and importance of the guest of honour, the glories of this noble feast, like those of so many of its fellows, might well have passed into that oblivion which enfolds dead dinner parties had it not been that before the evening was over it had become the occasion of one of the most daring and sensational adventures in the annals of crime, the famous attempt on the Duke of Ormond.
This extraordinary exploit, remarkable in itself for its audacity and the mystery which surrounded it, was made doubly so by the eminence and character of its victim. James Butler, famous then and since as "the great Duke of Ormond," bearer of a score of titles, member of the Council, sometime Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, and still Lord High Steward of England, was by birth and ability one of the greatest, wealthiest and most powerful men in the three Kingdoms. He was, moreover, scarcely less distinguished for his noble character than for his high rank. Neither these nor the circumstances of his career in public life gave any apparent ground for belief that he was in danger of personal violence. During the Civil Wars he had followed the fortunes of King Charles the father with courage and fidelity, though with no great success. When the royal cause was lost he followed Charles the son into exile. When monarchy was restored he regained his ancient estates and dignities, he was made the virtual ruler of Ireland and with his two friends, the Chancellor, Clarendon, and the Treasurer, Southampton, completed a triumvirate which dominated English affairs during the first half dozen years of the Restoration. When our story opens, Southampton was dead, Clarendon in exile. But Ormond, last of the staunch Protestants and stately Cavaliers of the old regime, remained conspicuous in a corrupt and worthless court for his ability and his virtues. By reason of these, as well as his office, he had been chosen on this occasion to accompany the Prince of Orange to the city feast. And by reason of his years he had, before the concluding revels of the younger men, left the banquet to return home and so found his way into a most surprising adventure and this story.
At the time of which we write he lived in a mansion opposite St. James's palace, built by his friend the Chancellor and still known as Clarendon House. His establishment, like that of most men of rank in those days, was on a scale almost feudal. It included some scores of servants, companions and dependents of the family. A porter sat at the gate, day and night, and when the Duke went abroad in his chariot he was attended by six footmen, a coachman and a runner. It would have seemed that in the three kingdoms there was scarce a man who, by virtue of his position, character and surroundings, was less likely to be exposed to violence than he. What enemies he might have made in his administration of Ireland, if such there were, could at best be men of little importance, living besides in a land then as distant from London as the United States is to-day. They would, presumably, not be well informed of his movements, least of all of his social engagements, and they would be helpless in the midst of London, against the power at his command. What rivals he had in England, it might be premised from their station, would be far above the practice of personal assault as a means of political triumph. Certainly nothing could have been farther from his thoughts or those of his family than that any danger beyond a possible attack of indigestion could threaten him in connection with a Guildhall dinner. As the early winter evening came on, therefore, the porter dozed at the gate, the family and servants retired early, according to the better customs of a ruder age, and the quiet of a house at peace with itself and the world settled down on the little community within its walls.
It was of short duration. When the lumbering seventeenth century chariot was heard making its way up the street on its return about eight o'clock, the porter roused from his nap and came out to unbar the gates for the home-coming Duke. But to his dismay there was no Duke, and neither footmen nor runner, only an empty coach and a frightened coachman, crying that they had been set upon by seven or eight men in St. James Street almost in sight of the house, that the footman, lagging behind on the hill, had been overpowered or put to flight, that the Duke had been dragged out of the chariot and carried off down Piccadilly way, and that he was, perhaps, already killed. The porter was a man of courage and decision. He gave the alarm and, with a certain James Clark, one of the Duke's household, who happened to be passing through the courtyard when the coach came in, hastened off in the direction indicated. They found no one at the place where the attack had been made, but hurrying on past Devonshire House they came upon two men struggling in the mud of the Knightsbridge road. As they approached, one of the combatants, a man of huge stature, struggled to his feet. He was immediately joined by another who appeared from the shadows, and both fired their pistols at the prostrate figure. Then, without waiting to see the result, the ruffians mounted their horses which had meanwhile been held by a third man, and rode off. The rescuers, joined by many persons whom their alarm had brought together, hurried to the man in the road. He was too far spent for words and in the darkness was unrecognizable from dirt and wounds. It was only by feeling the great star of the order of the Garter on his breast that they identified him as the Duke. He was carried home and though much shaken by his adventure was found otherwise uninjured and after some days he fully recovered. His account of the night's happenings added a curious detail to the history of the attack and explained why he had been found so far from where the coach was stopped. The plan of his assailants, it appeared, was not merely to capture or kill him, nor, as might have been supposed, to hold him for ransom. They proposed, instead, to carry him to the place of public execution, Tyburn, and hang him from the gallows there like a common criminal. In pursuance of this design they had mounted him behind the large man, to whom he was securely bound, while the leader rode on to adjust the rope that there might be no delay at the gallows. When, however, the others failed to appear, this man rode back and found that the Duke, despite his age, had managed to throw himself and his companion from their horse and so gain time till help came.[1]
Such was the extraordinary attempt on the Duke of Ormond, than which no event of the time showed more daring and ingenuity, nor created as great a sensation. The assailants were not recognized by the Duke nor his men, no assignable motive for their actions could be given, nor any further trace of them discovered. And this was not from lack of effort. The court, the city, and the administration were deeply stirred by the outrage, and the whole machinery of state was set in motion to discover and apprehend the criminals. Unprecedented rewards were offered, the ports were watched, the local authorities warned to be on the lookout for the desperadoes, and spies were sent in every direction to gain information. The House of Lords appointed a committee of no less than sixty-nine peers to examine into "the late barbarous assaulting, wounding and robbing the Lord High Steward of His Majesty's Household."
For more than a month this august body, aided by the secret service officers, pursued its investigations. The result was small. The most important testimony was that of a "drawer" at the Bull Tavern, Charing Cross. He deposed that on the day of the assault, between six and seven in the evening, five men on horseback, with cloaks, who said they were graziers, rode up to the inn. They dismounted, ordered wine, some six pints in all, and sat there, drinking, talking and finally, having ordered pipes and tobacco, smoking for nearly an hour. About seven o'clock a man came by on foot crying, "Make way for the Duke of Ormond," and shortly after the Duke's coach passed by. Fifteen minutes later the five men paid their reckoning and rode off, still smoking, toward the Hay Market or Pall Mall, leaving behind some wine, which the boy duly drank. Beside this, a certain Michael Beresford, clerk or parson of Hopton, Suffolk, testified that on the same evening, somewhat earlier it would appear than the incident at the Bull, he had met in the "Piattza," Covent Garden, a man formerly known to him as a footman in the service of the regicide, Sir Michael Livesey. This man, Allen by name, appeared much disturbed, and after some conversation in which he hinted at "great designs" on foot, was called away by a page, who told him the horses were ready. The principal piece of evidence, however, was a sword, belt and pistol, marked "T. H." found at the scene of the struggle and identified as the property of one Hunt, who had been arrested in the preceding August under suspicion of highway robbery, but released for lack of evidence against him. Three horses were also found, one of which corresponded to the description of the animal ridden by the leader of the five men at the Bull. In addition to this there was the usual mass of more or less irrelevant informations, rumours, arrests, witnesses and worthless testimony which such a case always produces. After much deliberation the committee finally drew up a bill against three men, Thomas Hunt, Richard Halliwell, and one Thomas Allen, also called Allett, Aleck and Ayloffe. These were summoned to render themselves "by a short day" or stand convicted of the assault. The bill was duly passed by both houses and fully vindicated the dignity of the Lords. But it had no further result. The men did not render themselves by any day, short or long, the government agents failed to find them and there the matter rested.
The result and indeed the whole procedure was thoroughly unsatisfactory to many in authority. At the outset of the investigation Justice Morton of London, the far-famed terror of highwaymen, was asked by Ormond to look into the matter and was furnished with the names of certain suspects. He reported on Hunt and his career, and went on to say that Moore and Blood, concerning whom his Grace had enquired, were in or about London. A month later, Lord Arlington, the Secretary of State, who had charge of the secret service, reported to the Lords' committee that of the men suspected, "Jones, who wroteMene Tekel,[2]Blood, called Allen, Allec, etc., young Blood, his son, called Hunt, under which name he was indicted last year, Halliwell, Moore and Simons, were desperate characters sheltering themselves under the name of Fifth Monarchy men." "Would not this exposing of their names by act of Parliament," he asked, "make them hide themselves in the country, whereas the Nonconformists with whom they met, and who abhorred their crime would otherwise be glad to bring them to justice?" Apparently not, in the opinion of the Lords, and the result was what we have seen. Neither Arlington's advice nor the men were taken. And though in the minds of Ormond, Morton and Arlington, apparently little doubt existed as to the authors of the outrage, no way was found to put their opinions into effect. It needed another and even more daring exploit to demonstrate the truth of their conjecture and bring the criminal into custody. And it was not long until just such a circumstance confirmed their surmise that the man guilty of the assault was the most famous outlaw of his day, long known and much wanted, many times proclaimed, and on whose head a price had often been set. He was, in short, Thomas Blood, courtesy-colonel of conspiracy, plotter, desperado, and now, at last, highwayman, a man not much known to the world at large, but a source of long standing anxiety to the government.
Who was he and what was the motive of this apparently foolhardy and purposeless piece of bravado? The answer to that question lies deep in the history of the time, for Blood was no common rascal. Unlike the ordinary criminal he was not merely an individual lawbreaker. He was at once a leader and a type of an element in the state, and the part that he and his fellows played in affairs was not merely important in itself and in its generation, but even at this distance it has an interest little dimmed by two centuries of neglect. The story of his life, in so far as it can be pieced out from the materials at our command, is as follows:
In the reign of James I, that is to say, in the first quarter of the seventeenth century, there lived at an obscure place called Sarney, County Meath, Ireland, a man named Blood. He was by trade a blacksmith and ironworker and seems to have been possessed of some little property, including an iron works. He was not a native Irishman but one of those north English or Scotch Presbyterians, colonized in that unhappy island according to the policy which had been pursued by the English government. Of him we know little more save this. About 1618 there was born to him a son, christened Thomas, who grew to young manhood unmarked by any noteworthy achievements or qualities of which any record remains. But if the circumstances of his own life were of no great importance, the times in which he lived were stirring enough, and remote as he was from the center of English political life, he could hardly have failed to know something of the great issues then agitating public affairs, and be moved by events far outside his own little circle. When he was ten years old, the long struggle between the English king and Parliament blazed up in the Petition of Right, by which the Commons strove to check the power of the Crown. Thereafter for eleven years no Parliament sat in England. There, supported by royal prerogative, the Archbishop Laud sought to force conformity to the Anglican ritual on multitudes of unwilling men and women, while the Attorney-General, Noy, and the Treasurer, Weston, revived long-lapsed statutes and privileges and stretched the technicalities of the law to extort unparliamentary revenue. Then it was that the Great Emigration poured thousands of settlers into the New World and established finally and beyond question the success of the struggling Puritan colonies oversea. Such matters touched the boy in the Irish village little. But when the greatest of the Royalists, Thomas Wentworth, Earl Strafford to be, was transferred from the presidency of the English Council of the North to rule Ireland, Blood, like all others in that troubled province, was brought face to face with the issues of the time. He, like others, saw in that administration the theory and practice of the enlightened despotism which English Parliamentarians said it was the aim of this man and his master to force upon England when English liberties should have been crushed with the Irish army then forming.
Whether young Blood enlisted in that army we do not know, but it is not improbable. In any event, when the Civil War finally broke out, the Blood family seem to have been in the thick of it. Years afterward Prince Rupert said that he remembered the young man as a bold and dashing soldier in his command. And, later still, Blood himself wrote King Charles II, in behalf of his uncle Neptune, for thirty years dean of Kilfernora, noting among his virtues that he had been with Charles I at Oxford. Thus it would appear that the Bloods first sided with the royal cause. Beside this we know that, in the year before the execution of the King, Blood married a Miss Holcroft of Holcroft in Lancashire. And we know further that then or thereafter, like many another stout soldier, like the stoutest of them all, General Monk[3]himself, the young Royalist changed sides, for the next time he appears in history it is with the rank of lieutenant in the Cromwellian army.
Before that, however, many great events had taken place, in war and politics. The Royalist resistance in England had been beaten down, and the king was dead, the title and office of king had been abolished, the House of Lords had been done away with, and England was a commonwealth with a Huntingdonshire gentleman, Oliver Cromwell, at its head. The war had shifted to Scotland and Ireland. Charles II had been proclaimed in Edinburgh, and Catholic and Royalist had risen in Ireland. Thither Cromwell had hastened with his invincible Ironsides, to crush the Irish before they could gather head and, with the aid of the Scotch, overthrow his hard-won power. His stroke was swift and merciless. The chief strongholds of his enemies, Drogheda and Wexford, were stormed and their inhabitants put to the sword after the manner of the old Testament. The Irish army was overpowered and Cromwell hurried back to crush the Scots at Dunbar and Worcester, leaving his son-in-law, the lawyer-general Ireton, to stamp out the embers of rebellion. Thereafter, he sent the ablest of his sons, Henry, to hold the island for the Commonwealth.
With him Blood came into touch with the house of Cromwell. The young Irishman had probably been among the troops which were brought over to conquer the "rebels" serving under the Lord General and Ireton after him. For when the new government, following the example of its predecessors, confiscated the land of its enemies and the fair domains of Royalist and Catholic passed into the hands of the hard-hitting and loud-praying colonels and captains and even common soldiers of the Commonwealth, Blood not only acquired estates, but was further distinguished by being made Justice of the Peace under Henry Cromwell. Thus with his fellows, and in greater proportion than most of them, he prospered and after an adventurous career seemed about to achieve the ambition of most Englishmen then and since, and become a real country gentleman. For a space of seven years, under Commonwealth and Protectorate, he lived, like many others of his kind, satisfied and secure in the enjoyment of the fruits of his share in saving England from the tyrant, little moved by the great events oversea. And, had it not been for circumstances as far outside his little sphere as those which had raised him to this position, he might well have finished an obscure and peaceful existence, with little further interest for the historian or moralist. But at the end of those seven fat years Fate, who had been so kind to Blood and his fellows, changed sides, and he, like many others, missing the signs of the times, or moved by conviction, could not, or would not, at all events did not change with her.
On September 3, 1658, Oliver Cromwell died and the fabric of government which for some years had rested on little more than his will and his sword, began at once to crumble. For a few months his son Richard endured the empty honour of the Protector's title. Then he resigned and the administration was left in a weltering chaos of Rump Parliament politicians and Cromwellian army generals. To end this anarchy came the governor of Scotland, General Monk, with his army, to London in the first months of 1660. Under his shrewd, stern management the old Parliament was forced to dissolve itself and a new House of Commons was chosen. The first act of this so-called Convention was to recall the House of Stuart to the throne, and on May 29, 1660, Charles II rode into London and his inheritance, welcomed by the same shouting thousands who had so recently assembled to pay the last honours to the Protectorate. As rapidly as might be thereafter the new regime was established. The old officers and officials were replaced by Royalists, the forces by land and sea were disbanded, save for five thousand trusty troops to guard the new monarchy, the leaders of the fallen party were arrested and executed, or driven into exile, or put under security. Some, like Monk and Montague and Browne, were now the strongest pillars in the new political edifice. Many, like Harrison and his fellow-regicides, were marked for speedy execution, while others, like Vane, were kept for future sacrifice. Many more, like Marten and Waller and Cobbet, dragged out a wretched existence as political prisoners, exchanging one prison for another till death released them. Some, like Hutchinson, were put under bonds and granted a half liberty that in too many cases led only to later imprisonment. Only a few, like Lambert, lived long in the more pleasant confinement of the Channel Islands and the Scillies. Yet many escaped. Ludlow and Lisle and their companions found protection if not safety in Switzerland. Many more sought refuge in Holland. Some like Algernon Sidney flitted over Europe like uneasy spirits. No small number joined the Emperor to fight the Turk, or took service in Holland or Sweden or the petty states of Germany. And still others, like Goffe and Whalley and Dixwell, sought and found security in the New World. The leaders of the fallen party out of the way, for the ensuing six years the government left no stone unturned to undo the work of revolution and to restore in so far as possible the old order.
It was no easy task. For twenty years England had been engaged in a civil strife where political animosities were embittered by religious dissensions, emphasized by lines of social cleavage. Not merely had the ancient fabric of church and state been shattered, but society itself had been convulsed by the intrusion of ideas and classes hitherto little regarded as vital elements of public affairs. One by one institutions long held sacred fell before these new vandals who seemed about to set up a new heaven and a new earth. King, Lords, Church, local government, finally the House of Commons itself disappeared. An open way for the talents was created. A carter became a colonel and member of Parliament, a butcher became a major-general. The son of a country merchant developed into the greatest English naval commander of his time. Meeting house and conventicle took their place beside parish church and cathedral. Bishops, vestments, liturgy, at last the whole Establishment disappeared, and there came to be thousands of men who, like Pepys, saw a church service with its "singing men" for the first time after the Restoration. One section of the people in short had triumphed over another. Many of them, like Blood, actually entered into their enemies' inheritance and seemed likely to found a new dominant caste. Nor was the effect confined to England. That land where Puritanism had taken refuge across the sea, New England, felt the impulse no less strongly. The current of emigration which some years before had flowed so strongly toward the new world was checked and even turned back. With the clash of arms not a few New World Puritans hastened to the mother country to strike a blow for their cause. Thus the young George Downing, but just graduated from Harvard, entered the Parliamentary army as chaplain, turning thence to diplomacy, and with the overthrow of the Puritans, to Royalism. But many were more scrupulous or less fortunate than he. When 1660 came and this was all reversed, when the old party was in the ascendant, the king on the throne, what would become of them? They had been free to worship in their own way and had been largely exempt even from many forms of taxation. But all this was now suddenly reversed. The Royalists were again in the ascendant, the king was on his throne, Puritanism was discredited, its leaders gone, its organization destroyed. What were men like Blood to do?
Matters moved rapidly in those early months of 1660 as they had need to do if the restoration of the old order was to be accomplished without bloodshed. From the first of January when Monk with his Scotch army entered England on its way to London to the end of May when Charles II rode into Whitehall and his inheritance, great events pressed close on each other's heels. The old Long Parliament was restored to decree its own dissolution and the summoning of its successor. A general election when Royalism was stimulated by the Declaration from Breda promising amnesty and toleration produced the Convention Parliament which under stress of Royal promise and fear of the sectaries recalled the King. A Royal Council was hurriedly brought together, the House of Lords filled up, the Commonwealth officials and officers replaced as rapidly as might be by Royalists and before the end of June administration had been secured for the new monarchy. Thus under the protection of Monk and his trusty regiments, King, Lords, Commons resumed their ancient place, administration came into new hands, the bishops were taking their place in the Lords, the clergy in their parishes as they could and all England seemed well on the way to accept a settlement. Yet great issues remained.
For the moment the restoration had affected only the leaders of the fallen party and the army. The divisions in society and politics remained, and the three classes which had fought the civil war persisted. But their positions were greatly changed. The Anglicans were in power. The Presbyterians for the time shared that power with their rivals, and it was only by their aid the king had been recalled. But the Third Party, or sectaries—Independents, Baptists, Unitarians, Quakers, and the rest, were now hopelessly at sea. Cromwell, under whom they had risen to numbers and influence, was dead, their army was being disbanded, they had little voice in Parliament, and the shadow of persecution was already upon them. Yet though cast down they were not destroyed. They had not time to fully establish themselves as a factor in religion and politics. Their development was checked half way and they had been given no opportunity to work out their salvation unhindered. But they were there and they were to be reckoned with.
For several months, though the Anglicans strove to prevent it, the Presbyterians at least, seemed likely to receive the recognition they had earned by their services to the restoration. In the Parliament they were the most powerful group. In the new Council twelve men of the thirty had borne arms against the late king. Among the royal chaplains ten Presbyterian divines found place. And beside issuing the Declaration from Breda promising liberty of conscience, the king presently called a conference of Anglicans and Presbyterians at the Savoy palace to consider some plan of toleration or comprehension. So far all promised well for an amicable adjustment of relations between the two great parties in church and state. But their very agreement boded ill for the third party. In the days of their prosperity they had suppressed Anglican and Presbyterian alike. Now that these had joined hands the sectaries had little to hope. They had early stirred to meet the danger. While the Convention debated the terms on which the king should return, their deliberations were cut short not less by the declaration of the king, than by the fear of a rising of the republicans and sects. But, as the event proved, it was not in the alliance of the two greater parties their danger lay, for that alliance was of a few days and full of trouble. The Convention was dissolved without the embodiment into legislation of those guarantees which might have made the Presbyterians secure. And before the new House was chosen, or the Savoy Conference held, their cause was hopelessly compromised by the third party with whom, against their will, the Anglicans successfully endeavored to identify them. For in January, 1661, fanaticism broke out in London. A cooper named Venner, a soldier of the old army, sometime conspirator against Cromwell, sometime resident of Salem, in New England, with some three score followers, all of that peculiar millennial sect known as Fifth Monarchy men, rose against the government, and for three days kept the city, the court and the administration in a state of feverish alarm. But the odds against them were too great. They found neither aid nor comfort from outside, and the children of this world triumphed over those who would have restored the rule of the saints under King Jesus.
That rising helped destroy whatever chance the Presbyterians had of holding their strength in the new Parliament, and the House of Commons showed a clear majority of Royalist Anglicans. Hardly had this body begun its deliberations when the Savoy Conference met, and, after some wrangling, dissolved without reaching any agreement. Thence ensued a period of reaction whose results are writ large in religious history to this day, for this was the time when established church and denominations definitely parted company. The dominant party lost no time in destroying the strength of their rivals. The Corporation Act drove the dissenters from those bodies which governed the cities and towns and chose a majority of the Commons. The Act of Uniformity excluded all dissenting ministers from the Church of England. And the restoration of the bishops to the House of Lords, and of its confiscated property to the Church completed the discomfiture of the Presbyterians. These, indeed, suffered most for they had most to lose, but the new policy bore no less hardly on the sectaries. And these, joined by the more extreme Presbyterians, were less inclined to submit to the revived authority in church and state. Many moderate men, indeed, found it in their consciences to conform enough to evade the law. But many more were not able nor inclined to take this course. Deprived of their army, of their political position, of their religious liberty, even at length of their right to petition, in many cases of what they considered their rightful property, with no outlet for their opinions in Parliament, the case seemed hopeless enough. Some recanted, the most began a long and honorable course of silent endurance of their persecution. And some, of bolder spirit, turned to darker ways.
These events in England had their counterpart in Scotland and Ireland. In the former a Royalist Parliament, intoxicated with power, a source, however, from which its name of the Drunken Parliament was not derived, repealed at one stroke all the acts of the preceding twenty-eight years, and abolished that document so dear to Presbyterian hearts, the Solemn League and Covenant. In the latter a Court of Claims was established to unravel the intricacies of the interminable land question and restore the estates, as far as possible, to their former owners. In all three kingdoms the dispossessed party was thrown into a ferment of discontent over this sudden reversal of their fortunes. The soldiers of the old army were especially enraged. They felt that they had lost by political trickery what had been won in fair fight. By a sudden turn of fortune's wheel, a bit of legal chicanery, their old enemy, the Parliament, had caught them off their guard and overthrown them. Their place had been taken by the ungodly, the Arminian and the idol-worshipper. And these brethren of the Covenant and the sword were not men to rest quietly under such wrongs. Many, indeed, turned aside from politics and war, taking no further part in public affairs. But not a few declared they would not be led into an Egyptian bondage under a new Pharaoh. They would not be turned adrift by the empty vote of a packed Parliament, whence they had been excluded. Those whom they had fairly fought and fairly conquered, those who had followed Mammon, and bowed the knee to Baal, the worshippers of Rimmon, the doers of abominations, the servants of the Scarlet Woman who sits on the Seven Hills, were these to enter upon that fair inheritance, so lately in the hands of the Saints, without a blow? Surely the Lord was on the side of His servants, as he had shown them by so many signal instances of His favour, at Naseby, at Marston Moor, at Dunbar and Worcester, and a hundred fights beside, in the great days gone by. Was He to look on unmoved? Had He abandoned them to their enemies? Was this not rather a device of His to try their constancy and courage? Was it not their part as brave and righteous men to strike another blow for the faith that was in them and the heritage He had put in their hands? A bold stroke had once prevailed against their oppressors. Might not another restore the Covenant and give back to the afflicted saints their inheritance and the spoil of the Philistines? A new king was on the throne who knew not Joseph. But his rule was recent, his hold precarious. His father had been overthrown though all the wealth and power of the mighty had been on his side. Now the land was honeycombed with sedition, there were thousands of bold spirits accustomed to discipline and the use of arms, and thousands more of the faithful with money and sympathy to aid in the great work of destroying the rule of grasping bishops and a Catholic king.
Thus while the regicides fled from the wrath of the new government, or suffered the penalty of their deeds in London, while Parliament was driving Nonconformity from church and state and the greater part of the dispossessed party girded itself to endure the impending persecution, while new-fledged royalty flaunted its licentiousness in Whitehall, earnest and vindictive men plotted against the new order in England, in Ireland and Scotland and Wales, in London itself. Emissaries made their way by night along unfrequented roads, or stole from village to village in tiny fishing boats, or crept through narrow lanes of the old City and its environs, to cheer the secret and unlawful conventicles of Baptist and Quaker, Presbyterian and Congregationalist, Unitarian and Fifth Monarchist, with hopes and plans for the resurrection of the Kingdom of the Righteous. The old Republicans were approached, the holders of land taken in the recent troubles, the members of the old Rump Parliament, the exiles abroad, the officers and soldiers of the old army at home. Proclamations were printed promising all things to all men, but chiefly toleration and lighter taxes. Tracts were smuggled from London or Holland full of the language of prophecy. The new monarchy had been measured and found wanting, the old Covenant was about to rise, Phoenix-like, from its ashes, the heavens were full of signs and portents, and prodigies everywhere indicated the fall of king and bishop. A new Armageddon was at hand, the rule of King Jesus was to be restored, "even by Blood." Everywhere arms were gathered and men enlisted against that great day. A council of conspirators directed the activities of its agents from London and communicated with other groups throughout the three kingdoms and with the refugees on the Continent. In such wise were woven the threads of conspiracy against restored royalty and the pride of the Anglicans, widely but loosely.
And everywhere, meanwhile, the government followed close on the trail of the conspirators and kept in close touch with the elements of discontent. Everywhere spies and informers were enlisted, even from the ranks of conspiracy itself, to discover and also, it was whispered, to foment conspiracy where none existed, that dangerous men might be drawn in and seized. From every county justices and deputy lieutenants poured a steady stream of prisoners and information into the hands of the administration. Under the careful direction of the Lord General the militia was reorganized, former strongholds weakened or destroyed, troops moved here and there, suspicious persons seized and incipient disturbance vigorously repressed. So for three years this underground warfare went on. Late in 1661 the government found or professed to find, a clue to conspiracy and exploited its discovery in Parliament to secure the act against corporations. Again in 1662 another, and perhaps more real danger was brought to light, and again this was used to pass the Act of Uniformity, a measure against dissenting ministers which drove some eighteen hundred from the Church and rendered comprehension finally impossible. Some of the alleged conspirators were hanged, some were used to get more information, but for the most part the leaders remained unknown, or escaped. Thus far the disaffected had played into the hands of their bitterest enemies, and had accomplished little more than furnish a much desired excuse for legislation to destroy Nonconformity root and branch. If insurrection had been planned at all it had been thwarted, and turned against its authors and their party. So useful had it been to the Anglicans, indeed, that it was more than hinted that the so-called conspiracies were in fact engineered by them for use in Parliament.
This was not quite true. Conspiracy there had been, and was, as events were to prove. The increasing persecution of Dissent, the increasing weight of taxation, the increasing luxury of the court and the exactions of the church, provided an increasing basis of discontent, deep and far-reaching. And the administration learned presently that the plot they had so diligently pursued and exploited had a very real existence. By 1663 it was a wide spread and apparently well-organized conspiracy. It included the discontented Nonconformists of the west and north of England, the Scotch Covenanters, the dispossessed Cromwellians in Ireland, the London conventiclers and the Continental refugees. A central Committee of Six, chiefly old army officers, sat in London, whence they directed the movement from their hiding places in those little known regions of the metropolis where even the King's writ ran with difficulty or not at all. The scheme contemplated the surprise and seizure of Whitehall and the Tower, the capture of the King and his brother, of the Chancellor, and the Lord General. Simultaneous risings were to take place throughout the country whereby the local authorities were to be overpowered, the Guards, if possible, decoyed away from the capital, and the central administration paralyzed and destroyed. The forces of the conspirators, under their former leaders, especially General Ludlow, were to unite, march on London, and there either exact terms from the captive King or set up another Republic, but in any event relieve the people from the burdens of religious and financial oppression. Such was the dream of the discontented, which, transformed into action might well have plunged England again into the throes of civil war.
Meanwhile what of our friend Blood amid all these great affairs? Had he, like many others, preferred the safer course, withdrawn into private life and abandoned his property and ambitions together? That, indeed, seems to have been his first course. The Court of Claims apparently deprived him, among many others, of part or all of his new-found fortune in land, and he seems to have taken up his residence in Dublin, with or near his brother-in-law, Lackie, or Lecky, a Presbyterian clergyman, and, like his modern namesake, the historian, a fellow of Trinity College. Even so he maintained his reputation as an active man, for on June 30, 1663, a Dublin butcher, Dolman by name, is found petitioning the Duke of Ormond for the return of an "outlandish bull and cow" of which he had been unlawfully deprived by Thomas Blood, lieutenant in the late army. The petition was duly granted and the animals doubtless duly recovered. But before that the gallant lieutenant was in far deeper designs than the benevolent assimilation of other people's outlandish bulls, and before the worthy butcher petitioned against him he had come under the direct attention of the Lord-lieutenant in a much more serious connection.
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 ofMene 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.
These indeed availed him little. He was kept a prisoner at York even after it appeared from his examination who and what he was. This was doubtless done more for his own safety than for any other reason, but even this was not effectual. Not many weeks later he was found dead in his cell. Some time after another informer, similarly confined there, wrote Arlington a terrified letter begging protection or release, "that he might not, like Leving, be poisoned in his cell." Thus, it appears, his enemies found him out even there. And that you may not think too hardly of the poor spy, it may be added that on his dead body was found a letter, apparently one he was engaged on when he died, completely exonerating certain men then in hiding for the great conspiracy. It would, perhaps, be uncharitable to hint that this was part of an even more subtle plot beneath the other two, and that his murderers sought to shield their friends outside by this device. York gaol, in any event, was no place to keep men disaffected toward the government. From the Lord-lieutenant down the place was thick with discontent and conspiracy. Indeed no great while before the Council had arrested the Lord-lieutenant himself, no less a person than one of their own number, the great Duke of Buckingham, on the charge of corresponding with the sectaries, and had confined him for some time in the Tower.
But what, meanwhile, had happened to Mason and his friends? On August 8th they were proclaimed outlaws by name and a hundred pounds reward was offered for Lockyer, Butler, Mason and Blood. But they had disappeared, as usual. Blood, it was said, had been mortally wounded, and was finally reported dead. That part of the story, at least, was greatly exaggerated, and was, no doubt, spread by Blood himself. He seems, in fact, to have retired to one of his hiding places and there recovered from his injuries, which were severe. The rest dispersed, and Mason, we know, found his way to London where three years later he appears in the guise of an innkeeper, still plotting for the inevitable rising. To us this seems strange. Our minds conjure up a well-ordered city, properly policed and thoroughly known. But apart from the fallacy of such a view even now, the London of Charles II was a far different place from the city of to-day in more ways than its size and the advances wrought by civilization. The City itself was then distant from the Court. The long thoroughfare connecting them, now the busy Strand, was then what its name implies still, the way along the river, and was the seat of only a few great palaces, like the Savoy, and the rising pile of Buckingham. Beside what is now Trafalgar Square stood then, as now, St. Martin's in the Fields. But the fields have long since fled from Piccadilly and Whitehall. Beyond and around in every direction outside the purlieus of the Court and the liberties of the City, stretched great collections of houses and hovels, affording rich hiding places for men outside the law. The inns abounding everywhere offered like facilities. Beneath the very walls of St. Stephen's where Parliament devised measures to suppress conventicles, those conventicles flourished. Among their numbers, among the small and secluded country houses round about, among the rough watermen and sailors along the river, in wide stretching districts where the King's writ ran with difficulty or not at all, and a man's life was safe only as his strength or skill made it so, or, it was whispered, even among some of the great houses like that of the Duke of Buckingham, men flying from justice might find safety enough.
Later Mason seems to have been joined in London by Blood and the old practices were renewed. But the Major, for Blood had now by some subterranean means arrived at that title, was apparently not wholly content with this. He retired, it would appear, to the little village of Romford, in Surrey, and there, under the name of Allen or Ayloffe, set up—amazing choice among all the things he might have chosen—as a physician. His son-in-law was apprenticed to an apothecary, and thus, with every appearance of quiet and sobriety, the outlaw began life again. But it was not for long, at any rate. Most likely, indeed, this whole business, if it ever existed at all, was a sham. For on May 28th, 1670, we find Secretary Trevor, who had succeeded Arlington in office, ordering the Provost Marshal to search out and take in custody Henry Danvers and William Allen, alias Blood. In December of that same year came the assault on Ormond, with which our story began, and Blood, under his alias, was for the third time proclaimed an outlaw, and for the third time had a price set on his head. Surely, you will say, this is enough of that impudent scoundrel who so long disturbed the slumber of His Majesty's secretaries, and flouted the activities of their agents. And, in spite of the stir raised by the attempt on Ormond, if Blood had disappeared after that for the last time, he would not have lived again in the pages of history. For that he is indebted to the great exploit which at once ended his career of crime and raised him above the ordinary herd of outlaws and criminals.
At the time of which we write the Tower of London served even more numerous and important purposes than it does to-day. It was then, as now, a depository of arms and ammunition, and the quarters of a considerable body of troops, which served to overawe possible disturbance in the city. But in 1670 it was also the principal prison for political offenders, and it was the place where the state regalia, the crown, the orb, and the scepter, were kept. Then, as now, the various functions of the great fortress were quite distinct. The visitor of to-day passes through a wide courtyard to the main edifice, the White Tower of William the Conqueror, whose chambers are filled with curious weapons and armour. He may climb the stone stairs to see the grim apartments once reserved for men reckoned dangerous to the state, and gaze with what awe he can muster upon the imitation crown jewels set out for the delectation of the tourists. Everywhere he finds in evidence the guardians of these treasures, the unobtrusive attendant, the picturesque beefeater, the omnipresent policeman, and if he looks down from the high windows he may see far below him the red tunics or white undercoats of the soldiers on parade or at work. In some measure this was true in 1670, and it is to this spot we must now turn our attention. We have already seen some of the characters in this story taken to or from the custody of the lieutenant of the Tower, and our steps in trace of our hero or villain, as you choose to call him, have often led perilously near its grim portals. At last they are to go inside.