Transcriber's Note: Minor typographical errors have been corrected
without note. Irregularities and inconsistencies in the text have
been retained as printed. Words printed in italics are noted with
underscores: _italics_.
Rochester Reprints
XIII
_One hundred copies on French hand-made paper for subscribers_
[Illustration: COL : BLOOD.]
COLONEL THOMAS BLOOD
CROWN-STEALER
1618-1680
BY
WILBUR CORTEZ ABBOTT
PROFESSOR OF HISTORY, SHEFFIELD SCIENTIFIC SCHOOL
YALE UNIVERSITY
ROCHESTER, NEW YORK
1910
COPYRIGHT, 1910, BY
EDWARD WHEELOCK
GENESEE PRESS
ROCHESTER, N.Y.
COLONEL THOMAS BLOOD
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]
[1] Carte, Life of the Duke of Ormond.
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 wrote _Mene 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.
[2] A famous fanatic pamphlet against 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.
[3] This spelling of the General's name has been disputed of
late, such authorities as Professor Firth and Mr. Willcock
preferring Monck. But the form here used seems as good, it
has much tradition and authority on its side, and the point
is, after all, of no special importance.
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.