by Jones, Nigel
Gilbert Talbot’s assistant keeper at the Tower, coincidentally named Talbot Edwards, was not nearly as well-off as his boss. Since Gilbert preferred the more commodious surroundings of Whitehall Palace to the Tower as his chief residence, it fell to Edwards to live permanently on site in the Tower. At the Restoration, the remade Crown jewels had been given a new home in the Martin Tower in the north-eastern corner of the fortress. Edwards and his wife and daughter literally lived over the shop – occupying the top floors of the tower immediately above the Jewel House, which was in a fortified basement vault. Edwards officially drew a state salary, but since he was lower down the pecking order than Gilbert Talbot, his wages were years in arrears – and since Edwards in 1671 was seventy-seven it appeared unlikely that he would ever see his money. He relied instead on the fees he charged visitors who came to see the jewels. He did not know it, but he was about to entertain the most singular visitor that the jewels would ever receive.
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Thomas Blood, or ‘Colonel’ Blood as he is known to posterity (he constantly promoted himself and never actually rose above the rank of lieutenant), was not only the most celebrated jewel thief in history, but one of the most outlandish, outrageous and above all lucky rogues never to swing from a gibbet. His life story reads like a piece of far-fetched fiction from the pen of a Defoe or a Fielding, but it is well-documented reality.
Blood was born into a family of English Protestant settlers in County Meath, Ireland, in about 1618. His father – also named Thomas Blood – though a humble blacksmith, owned some 230 acres around Sarney, his notorious son’s birthplace. The privileged position Protestants enjoyed is also reflected in the ironic fact that his son – an infamous outlaw if ever there was one – was appointed a magistrate at the tender age of twenty-one.
Soon afterwards, in 1641, the simmering tension between Catholic and Protestant communities exploded into violence when the Catholics rose in rebellion. Hundreds of Protestants were massacred; thousands more were driven from their homes to take shelter in the capital, Dublin, held for King Charles I by the moderate Anglican Protestant James Butler, Duke of Ormonde. English politics were also reaching boiling point. The Westminster Parliament was increasingly in opposition to King Charles I’s high-handed attempts to impose his Anglo-Catholic, high church beliefs on the English Church and rule without parliamentary approval. In 1642 these strains led to the outbreak of the English Civil War.
Urgently needing troops to support his cause, Charles ordered Ormonde to reach a truce with the Irish rebels. Blood, a militant Protestant Nonconformist, switched support from king to Parliament. It also marked the beginning of a lifelong grudge that he held against Ormonde, whom he saw as a traitor to the Protestant cause. Blood came to England, joined the Parliamentary army, and married Mary, the daughter of a landed Lancashire family.
Blood settled into domestic life with Mary and their growing family. But Cromwell’s death in 1658 changed everything for Blood. Bold and adventurous, he refused to accept the return of the monarchy. He was deeply involved in several Republican plots and risings – one aimed at seizing the Tower – in London in the 1660s, but, showing an extraordinary talent for escapology which would stand him in good stead throughout his life, managed to evade arrest.
Blood sank into the murky depths of London’s political and criminal underworld. Under a variety of aliases, and in a bewildering array of disguises – the canonical robes of priests and minsters were his favourite costume – he flitted between ill-lit inns and basement cellars where spies, government provocateurs, religious maniacs, pimps, prostitutes and thieves mingled. In such a shady world it was difficult to tell a principled plotter from a treacherous rogue or government plant, but Blood took to it as to the manner born.
In July 1667, Blood executed an audacious coup. Hearing that one of his former co-conspirators, a Captain John Mason, who had been held in the Tower since the failure of an anti-government plot in 1663, was being transferred to York for trial and probably execution, he resolved to rescue him. Travelling north in Mason’s party was one William Leving, a former rebel who had turned king’s evidence, and was due to testify against Mason at his trial. Blood organised a daring ambush to save Mason and silence Leving for good. When the prisoners and their escort paused at an inn near Doncaster, Blood sprang his ambush. Despite falling from his horse three times, and sustaining a sword thrust through his arm, Blood won the fracas that followed, and managed to grab Mason from his guards’ clutches and get clean away. In the confusion, Leving escaped; he lay low, only to be found poisoned in his jail cell in York a short time later, a killing probably arranged by the Duke of Buckingham – Blood’s principal patron in the governing class.
Buckingham was also behind Blood’s next audacious crime: the attempted abduction in 1570 of his old enemy, the Duke of Ormonde, who was ambushed by Blood’s gang while driving in his carriage in the middle of London. Although the duke managed to escape his kidnappers, it was a very near thing. The outrageous Buckingham, a strong anti-Catholic, used Blood as a hitman to carry out crimes that he did not wish to sully his own hands with. The strong suspicion must be that Buckingham – who had himself survived four terms of imprisonment in the Tower – was also behind Blood’s next, and even more sensational crime: the theft of the Crown jewels.
Sometime in the early spring of 1671, just weeks after the abortive abduction of Ormonde, Talbot Edwards, Assistant Keeper of the Jewels, received an unusual visitor at the Tower. The man was dressed as a clergyman of the Church of England, appeared to be about fifty years old, and had fierce, penetrating eyes above a hawkish Roman nose with a notable scar (a relic of Blood’s rescue of John Mason). Although the cleric’s appearance was slightly outlandish – he sported a long beard, a cassock and cloak, and a cap with ‘ears’ – Edwards, scenting a fee, was only too happy to show the reverend gentleman and the lady accompanying him – whom he introduced as his wife – the jewels in his care.
Edwards led the odd couple to the basement of the Martin Tower, unlocked the reinforced door, and let them into the vault where the jewels were kept behind a metal grille in a cupboard inside a recess in the thick walls. As Blood greedily feasted his eyes on the glittering regalia, his ‘wife’ – in reality a hired actress named Jenny Blaine – apparently overcome by the sight, proved her theatrical skills by staging a fainting fit, or in Edwards’ words, complained of ‘a qualm upon her stomack’. The old gentleman hurried away to fetch a reviving glass of water, leaving Blood to case the joint. Jenny, invited to rest in the Edwards family’s apartment, made a rapid recovery. As she did so, Blood took the opportunity to strike up an intimacy with the assistant keeper and his wife – and returned a few days later, still in his clergyman’s garb, with a gift of gloves as a token of appreciation for their kindness.
Blood now began an intensive campaign of ‘grooming’ the elderly couple and their unmarried daughter – a softening-up process for the crime he was planning. After several visits, the relationship had progressed far enough for Blood to advance a typically bold proposal. He had, he said, a very eligible nephew and he could not help noticing the wondrous beauty of the Edwardses’ spinster daughter Elizabeth. Would it not be a fine thing, he asked, if the young people were joined in holy matrimony? And, naturally, he added, he would conduct the ceremony for the happy couple. The Edwardses were overwhelmed by this generous offer to take their daughter off their hands, particularly after Blood threw in the information that his nephew had a couple of hundred acres of good land in Ireland. A celebratory dinner was held in the Martin Tower to formalise the betrothal, at which the clergyman offered fervent prayers for the well-being of the royal family. Afterwards Edwards gave his guest a detailed tour of the Tower, and even sold him a pair of pistols that Blood had admired. Having thus neatly disarmed his ‘mark’ both literally and metaphorically, and thoroughly reconnoitred the scene of the coming crime, Blood departed to make final preparations for his heist.
He had arrang
ed to bring his ‘nephew’ to meet the Edwardses at the Martin Tower on 9 May 1671 – at seven in the morning – an hour when the Tower was unlikely to be crowded. He kept the appointment, accompanied by his criminal son, Thomas Blood junior, a professional highwayman, who was playing the part of the nephew under the alias ‘Tom Hunt’. Also in the party were two regular members of Blood’s gang, Robert Perrot, a fierce Baptist and former Parliamentarian trooper turned silk dyer, and Robert Halliwell, who was to act as lookout man. All were armed to the teeth with concealed pistols, stiletto daggers and swordsticks. A fourth member of the gang, William Smith, a Fifth Monarchist sect stalwart, remained outside the Tower walls as ‘getaway driver’ – he was holding their horses. Halliwell hung around outside the Martin Tower, trying not to look furtive, while the Bloods, père et fils, went inside with Perrot. Elizabeth Edwards, eager to see her fiancé, but shy of making a premature appearance, sent her maid to take a peek. The maid saw Halliwell at the door of the tower, assumed he was her mistress’s intended, and returned to make her report.
Meanwhile, inside the Tower, after making the introductions, Blood suggested that while they awaited the arrival of Mrs Edwards and her daughter – still at their toilette in an upper room – Mr Edwards could show the jewels to the ‘nephew’ and Perrot. Once again thinking of his fee, the old man readily agreed, and led the Bloods and Perrot below. As soon as Edwards had unlocked the door and admitted the trio to the Jewel House, he was set upon as he bent to lock the door behind them. A cloak was thrown over his head, and a pre-fashioned gag – a plug of wood with an air hole drilled through it – was thrust into his mouth and secured with a leather thong. Immediately Edwards began to struggle frantically. His assailants told him that if he kept still his life would be spared. Undaunted, the brave old man continued to attempt to fight free of the cloak enveloping him. The ruthless Blood produced a wooden mallet and bludgeoned Edwards to the ground. But the keeper continued to kick, struggle and gurgle, and so Blood stabbed him in the stomach with a long stiletto knife.
Leaving Edwards for dead, the gang set about their task. Blood removed the metal grille and flattened the king’s state crown with his mallet. This made it easier to carry it off in a bag he wore under his cassock. Young Blood started to saw the long sceptre in half with a file so he could carry it away; while Perrot hid the heavy orb in his breeches. The blows of Blood’s mallet dislodged some of the jewels encrusting the crown, including the Black Prince’s famous ‘ruby’. As Blood scrabbled on the floor after the precious stones there was an unwelcome interruption.
It was exactly at this moment that the Edwardses’ long-lost son, Wythe – who had been in Flanders fighting as a soldier for the last ten years – returned to witness his sister’s betrothal. Edwards junior passed Halliwell at the door, identified himself, and went upstairs to greet his mother and sister. Halliwell hurried down to the Jewel House to let his companions in crime know what was afoot. With no time to complete the sawing in half of the sceptre, the jewel thieves hastily made off with only the crown and orb, leaving the rod lying on the floor.
As soon as they had gone, old Talbot Edwards, miraculously still alive, with a superhuman effort managed to spit his gag out and shout, ‘Treason! Murder! The crown is stolen!’ at the top of his voice. Hearing his cries, his daughter rushed downstairs to find her father in a pool of blood. She followed the thieves’ trail across the courtyard between the Martin and White Towers and took up her father’s cries, wailing, ‘Treason! The crown is stolen!’ Hearing his sister’s shouts, young Wythe Edwards emerged from the Martin Tower, accompanied by a Captain Marcus Beckman, a military friend of his who had also been invited to witness Miss Edwards’ betrothal. The fit young soldiers gave chase across the courtyard. Beckman, a Swedish-born military engineer and soldier of fortune, was already familiar with the Tower, having once been imprisoned there as a suspected spy.
In the short time the two soldiers took to catch up with the thieves, young Blood and Halliwell had passed through the Byward and Middle Towers, reached their horses and were about to mount and ride away. Blood himself, and Perrot, weighed down with their loot, had just passed under the archway of the Bloody Tower and turned right into Water Lane, heading towards the Byward Tower and the exit. Seeing them about to escape, Edwards and Beckman shouted to the Yeoman Warder manning the drawbridge over the moat between the Byward and Middle towers to stop the thieves. As he attempted to do so, Blood drew a pistol and fired, causing the warder – wisely but not heroically – to hit the deck. A second warder at the Middle Tower also let discretion play the better part of valour and allowed the two miscreants to escape. If Blood and Perrot had turned right up Tower Hill, they might have got clean away with their booty, but instead, closely pursued, they decided to try to lose themselves in the early-morning crowds thronging the riverside wharves.
They swerved sharp left and ran along the quays. But the two soldiers, younger and fitter men, were fast gaining on them. Blood resorted to the old ploy of yelling, ‘Stop thief!’ as he ran, pointing to his two pursuers. Momentarily fooled, some upstanding citizens laid hands on Edwards and Beckman, but the deception did not last long, and the chase continued. In the confusion, both Bloods and Perrot managed to reach their horses held by Smith at the Iron Gate and were in the act of mounting, when their persistent pursuers finally caught up with them. Blood fired the second of the pistols he was carrying at Beckman, but missed, and after a grim struggle, during which some of the jewels fell from his pockets, rolled off and were never seen again, both Blood and Perrot were subdued and arrested. The crown and orb – minus some missing stones – were repaired and restored to their rightful place. Blood’s son, whose horse had collided with a cart and thrown him during his hasty escape, was also detained; and Halliwell was picked up later. As he was led away Blood was philosophical, remarking, ‘It was a gallant deed, although it failed.’
Blood and his gang were imprisoned in – where else? – the Tower. They were held in the vaults beneath the White Tower – where prisoners had been tortured in Tudor times – to await the king’s pleasure. Few doubted that their fate would be the traditional terrible death meted out to traitors of hanging, drawing and quartering. The theft of the Crown jewels was not just any old jewel robbery. Taking the jewels with their sacral, religious symbolism was akin to kidnapping the monarch himself. But, astonishingly, this was not the punishment that awaited the notorious Thomas Blood. In fact, the abortive and bloody raid on the jewels was to be but the beginning of another stage in Blood’s amazing career. From being the Republican rebel and bold, buccaneering outlaw forever outwitting the state’s agents, Blood became one such agent himself. How did this transformation from poacher to gamekeeper come about?
The motivation behind Blood’s attempt to steal the jewels has been much debated. Though violent and ruthless, Blood was never a career criminal per se and despised his namesake son for being a common highwayman. Blood senior’s crimes – from a plot to seize Dublin Castle to the attempted abduction of the Duke of Ormonde – were of a different order. They always had a political and/or religious motive. If his aim was financial gain it is likely that he would have used any monies obtained to further the cause of Republican Nonconformism. It has also been plausibly suggested that the raid was an ‘inside job’ organised with the knowledge and secret approval of the king himself, who – as ever – was chronically short of cash.
Charles’s actions after the crime were certainly suspicious. Blood remained remarkably calm in captivity, maintaining that he would only make a complete confession to the king himself. Although Blood was brought to Charles in irons and closely questioned by a royal inquisition, consisting of Charles, his brother James, and their cousin Prince Rupert, he was never executed, nor even punished, beyond his few weeks’ imprisonment in the Tower. Nor were any of his confederates. Even more astonishingly, Blood was actually rewarded by the king for his crime – receiving lands in his native Ireland, and a pension of £500 a year. B
efore bestowing this, the king laughingly asked Blood what he would do if granted mercy, and Blood, typically bold, replied, ‘I would endeavour to deserve it, sire.’ Cheekily, he added that Charles owed him his life, since in his Republican days, he had once stalked the king with a musket, intending to assassinate him. But, observing the king skinny-dipping in the Thames at Vauxhall, Blood, hiding in some nearby reeds, said he was so ‘awe-struck’ by the sight of his naked sovereign that he forebore to open fire.
Whatever his reasons – and they certainly do not bear much examination – Charles’s lenient treatment of Blood astonished his contemporaries. The diarist John Evelyn was staggered to see the jewel thief sitting at the treasury table at a dinner to honour a party of French noblemen soon after the heist:
