It was soon after [this] that Thomas Blood, a self-styled colonel, made his extraordinary and almost successful attempt to steal the crown jewels. Blood was a notorious desperado whose grandfather, an English army officer, had settled in Ireland where he had been elected Member of Parliament for Ennis. Thomas was born in Ireland in about 1618 and, through his father's influence, had become a Justice of the Peace at the age of twenty-one. During the Civil War between Parliament and the royalists he had, with characteristic opportunism, fought first on one side, then on the other. Contriving somehow to be on the winning side when the war was over, he was rewarded with confiscated royalist lands. In 1650 Blood married the daughter of a well-to-do Lancashire landowner, and his future seemed happily assured. But at the restoration of King Charles II in 1660 his estates, in turn, were confiscated by the Court of Claims, and embittered and penniless, as he put it himself, he embarked upon the life of an adventurer. It was a life he was never afterward to abandon.
In 1663 Blood was implicated in a daring plot to seize Dublin Castle. After the plot's failure, he escaped from the authorities and roamed about Ireland in a variety of disguises before settling down in Holland and then in England, where he succeeded in passing himself off as a doctor. In 1670 he and some companions made an unsuccessful attempt to kidnap and hold for ransom the Duke of Ormond, the Lord High Steward. But having failed to retrieve his fortunes this way, he conceived an even more daring crime - the theft of the crown jewels.
At that time the crown jewels were kept in a cupboard behind a wired grille in the basement of the Martin Tower. They were in the custody of the Assistant Keeper of the Jewels, Talbot Edwards, an ex-soldier of seventy-six who lived with his wife and daughter on the upper floors of the Martin Tower. Since his meager salary was so often in arrears, Edwards had sought and obtained permission from Gilbert Talbot, Keeper of the Jewels, to show the collection to visitors for a fee.
One day in April 1671 an aged, bearded clergyman in the robes of a doctor of divinity came to the Tower and asked if he and his wife, an equally ancient lady, could see the crown jewels. Granted permission to do so, the couple was conducted to the Martin Tower where the old lady, upon sight of such valuable and mystical regalia, was seized with "a qualm upon her stomach." She prevailed upon Mr. Edwards to fetch her a glass of spirits. This was provided by Mrs. Edwards, who invited the clergyman's wife to her own private apartments where she could lie down and recover her strength upon a bed. The invitation was accepted; and when the lady and her husband departed some time later, they expressed themselves as being "very thankful for this civility."
Wishing to express his thanks in a more generous manner, the clergyman returned to the Tower a few days later with a present of several pairs of white gloves for Mrs. Edwards. These were accepted with delighted gratitude, and the clergyman was asked to call again whenever he felt so inclined.
The next time he did so he made some flattering remarks about Mrs. Edwards's daughter, such a "pretty gentlewoman"; and he mentioned that he had a nephew about her age, a young man with a handsome income of some two or three hundred pounds a year in land. "If your daughter be free," he added, "and you approve of it, I will bring him hither to see her, and we will endeavor to make it a match!"
Delighted by the prospect of so wealthy a son-in-law, Mrs. Edwards asked the clergyman to dinner. He accepted readily, said grace with deep piety, and offered up a prayer for the king and queen and all the royal family. After dinner, Edwards conducted his guest through the Martin Tower, pointing out its most notable antiquities. During the tour the clergyman expressed his admiration of a case of pistols: they were just the very article to serve as a present for a young nobleman of his acquaintance, if Edwards could be persuaded to part with them for a consideration. Edwards readily agreed. And so, having arranged to return to the Tower with his nephew at seven o'clock on the morning on May 9, the clergyman departed.
Dressed once again in his clerical attire, his unprepossessing features disguised as before by a false white beard, Colonel Blood - for, of course, it was he - arrived at the Tower on the ninth. Blood was accompanied by his son, to act the part of the nephew, and by two others, introduced as friends of his who had a strong curiosity to see the crown jewels. All four men carried walking sticks with rapier blades concealed in the shafts, and all had daggers and pistols in their pockets.
His wife was on her way, Blood told Edwards, suggesting that they wait for her arrival before going upstairs to the ladies. In the meantime, perhaps his friends might see the jewels? Edwards was happy to oblige and conducted them downstairs. The young man remained outside; and Miss Edwards, dressed in her best clothes and excitedly looking down upon him from her upstairs window, supposed that he must be the young nephew, her intended bridegroom.
No sooner had Edwards reached the bottom of the steps that led down into the cellar than a cloak was thrown over his head and a gag pushed into his mouth: "a great plug of wood, with a small hole in the middle to take breath at, was tied on with a waxed leather which went round his neck. At the same time they fastened an iron hook to his nose that no sound might pass from him that way."
The conspirators told Edwards that no harm would come to him if he stayed quiet, but the brave old man refused to submit. He struggled to free himself and made as much noise as he could. His assailants gave him a few "unkind knocks" on the head with a wooden mallet until he fell to the ground, where he continued to struggle until one of the men stabbed him in the belly. "There," his attacker said, kneeling down beside his head and listening for the sounds of breathing, "he is dead, I will warrant him."
The three men then set about breaking into the cupboard where the jewels were kept. Blood got out a crown and stamped on it so that it could be more conveniently concealed under his cloak; one of the others picked up an orb and pushed it down his baggy breeches; the third put the Black Prince's ruby into his pocket and began to file a scepter in two.
Just at that moment Edwards's son arrived unexpectedly at the door of the Martin Tower. He had been abroad in the army for several years and was now on leave. Blood's son attempted to delay the young solider at the door, but since this was his family's home he could not reasonably be prevented from entering it and going upstairs to see his mother and sister. As soon as he was out of sight, young Blood rushed down to warn his father what had happened.
The colonel and his accomplices emerges from the Martin Tower with the pieces of the regalia they had so far managed to steal from the cupboard hidden under their clothes. Walking as quickly as they dared, but not running for fear of arousing suspicion, they passed by the White Tower, then went through the gateway of the Bloody Tower and along the outer ward toward the Byward Tower. Before they had reached the Byward tower, however, there were loud shouts behind them.
Edwards's son, having greeted his mother and sister, had gone downstairs to see his father whom he had discovered on the floor of the Jewel House, still alive but lying in a pool of blood. The alarm had been given and the pursuit began. The yeoman on guard at the gateway of the Byward Tower attempted to stop the four by-then running men with his halberd, but Blood let fly at him with his pistol and, followed by the others, raced out along the causeway toward the Middle Tower.
Instead of seeking safety by escaping through the Middle Tower, however, Blood and one of his accomplices turned to the left, jumped down onto Tower Wharf and pushed their way through the crowds along the river front. Shouting "stop thief" at the tops of their voices, they pointed to their pursuers as the villains. For a few moments it seemed that they might escape in the confusion they succeeded in causing, but they were soon overpowered and thrown into the dungeons, where their two companions shortly joined them. The benign old clergyman was seen to be, in fact, a beardless, tall, "rough-boned man, with small legs, a pock-frecken face with little hollow blue eyes." His features were "daring, villainous and unmerciful."
A pearl and a diamond had fallen out of their settings in the crown during "the robustious struggle." But both they and the Black Prince's ruby were eventually recovered and returned to the custody of Talbot Edwards, whose stalwart behavior was rewarded by a grant of 200 pounds. So delayed was the payment, however, that Edwards was obliged to sell his right to receive it at a discount of 50 per cent in order to pay his doctor's bill. He died soon afterward.
Colonel Blood fared much better. The king, intrigued by accounts of his exploit, wanted to meet the famous rogue. At the interview, Charles was evidently much taken with the colonel's outrageous charm and impudence, his disarming rascality; for Blood was not merely pardoned, but his lands were restored to him together with a pension of 500 pounds a year.
Such munificence naturally led to rumors that the king had all along been in league with Blood, that sorely pressed for money, he had proposed the theft to Blood so that the two of them might share the proceeds. Others held that the king, when drunk, had laid a bet that the crown jewels would be stolen and had put up Blood in order to win his wager for him. The truth was more prosaic. In return for his freedom, his lands, and his pension, the ingenious and daring colonel was to act as a spy for the government and the court, to spread rumors in the city when required to do so, and to inform against republicans and would-be traitors. He evidently found the bargain a satisfactory one, for a few days after it was concluded an acquaintance found Colonel Blood strutting about on Tower Green wearing a handsome new suit and periwig, "exceeding pleasant and jocose."
- from
The Tower of London, Christopher Hibbert
