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Read Ebook: Colonel Thomas Blood Crown-stealer 1618-1680 by Abbott Wilbur Cortez
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Ebook has 59 lines and 21821 words, and 2 pages
Variously noted as 20, 24 and 27.
In the third great measure of the period, the Stop of the Exchequer, Blood naturally had no part, but when the war actually broke out, he found a new field of usefulness in obtaining information from Holland, in ferreting out the tracts which the Dutch smuggled into England, in watching for the signs of conspiracy at home. Thus he lived and flourished. His residence was in Bowling Alley, now Bowling Street, leading from Dean's Yard to Tufton Street, Westminster, convenient to Whitehall. His favorite resort is said to have been White's Coffee House, near the Royal Exchange. His sinister face and ungraceful form became only too familiar about the court. His bearing was resented by many as insolent. He was both hated and feared as he moved through the atmosphere of intrigue by which the court was surrounded, getting and revealing to the king information of the conspirators, of the Dutch, and the other enemies of royalty. His was not a pleasant trade and there were undoubtedly many who, for good reasons of their own, wished him out of the way. There were many who contrasted his reward with the neglect of the unfortunate Edwards, and who railed at Blood and the king alike. Rochester allowed himself the usual liberty of rhymed epigram:
There were doubtless many more who regretted that the king had not bestowed on him a reward that was at one time contemplated, the governorship of a colony, the hotter the better. In that event America would have had some direct share in the career of England's most distinguished criminal. And even so it is by no means certain she would have suffered greatly in comparison with the situation of some colonies under the governors they actually had. But Blood was far too useful at home to be wasted on a distant dependency. And, on the whole, the outlaw seems to have fully justified his existence and even his pardon, as an outer sentinel along the line of guards between King Charles and his enemies. That he was so hated is perhaps, in some sort a measure of his usefulness. For the times when men in the ministry or just out of the ministry conspired or connived at conspiracy against the government and held communication with an enemy in arms to compel their sovereign to their will are not those in which a ruler will be too squeamish about his means, least of all such a ruler as Charles.
The motive of Buckingham in beginning this suit is obscure, but it was suspected that he thought by this means to hush up certain accusations which might have been brought against his own machinations, then scarcely to be defended in the light of day. The curious and unusual procedure and the absurdity of the charge which one might suppose it beneath the dignity of so great a nobleman to press in such fashion against such men, lends a certain colour to this suspicion. In any event the suit was tried and Blood was duly found guilty. But he was never punished. He fell sick in the summer of 1680 and, after two weeks of suffering, died August 24, in his house on the southwest corner of Bowling Alley. He was firm and undaunted to the last, and looked death in the face at the end with the same courage he had exhibited many times before. All England was then in the throes of the excitement of the Popish Plot and the Exclusion Bill, and civil war seemed almost in sight. Whig and Tory stood arrayed against each other, with the crown as the prize between. It would not be supposed that the death of the old adventurer could have caused more than a passing ripple of interest. Quite the contrary was the case. Strange end of a strange story, the mystery which surrounded him during his life did not altogether end with his death and burial. Even that, said many, was but one of the old fox's tricks. And to prove that it was not his body which had been interred in the adjoining churchyard of New Chapel, Tothill Fields, the grave was opened after some days, the corpse carried before a coroner and identified by the curious fact that one of the thumbs was twice the natural size, a peculiarity which it seems would have betrayed Blood many times during his life.
Thus ended the troubled life of a mysterious man. If his end was not peace it certainly was not worse than his beginning. Not a few persons must have breathed easier at the final burial of the secrets which died with him. He was not without some literary remains, chief of which was a Life, which though not written by his own hand, gives evidence of having been written, either under his direction, or from material furnished by him. It contains, as perhaps its chief matter of interest outside the facts here included, not many of which adorn its pages, a story of which Blood seems to have been very proud. It is that on one occasion some of the men in his following of desperadoes proved unfaithful. He caused them to be seized and brought before him for trial in a public house. There, after the case had been set forth and the arguments made, he sentenced them to death, but later reprieved them. This, of all the good stories he might have told, is left to us as almost his sole contribution to the account of his adventures. For the rest, his memory was promptly embalmed in prose and verse, mostly libellous and wholly worthless, from any standpoint, of which the following sample may suffice whether of history or literature:
But there is still one curious circumstance about his family which it would be too bad not to insert here, and with which this story may fittingly conclude. It concerns one of his sons whom we have not met, Holcroft Blood. This youth, evidently inheriting the paternal love of adventure, ran away from home at the age of twelve. He found his way, through an experience as a sailor, into the French army. After the Revolution of 1688 he became an engineer in the English service, owing chiefly to his escape from a suit brought against him by his enemies, which was intended to ruin him but by accident attracted to him instead the notice of the man with whose visit to England our story began, now William the Third of England and Holland. This became the foundation of his fortunes. In the English service young Blood rose rapidly through the long period of wars which followed. He gained the praise of the great Marlborough, and ultimately became the principal artillery commander of the allied forces in the War of the Spanish Succession, dying, full of honors, in 1707. Meanwhile Ormond's grandson and heir, the second Duke, distinguished himself likewise in that same war in other quarters, and bade fair to take high rank as a commander. But on the death of Queen Anne he took the Jacobite side, was driven into exile, and died many years later, a fugitive supported by a Spanish and Papal pension. Thus did Fate equalize the two families within a generation.
I said at the beginning that this was to be the story of the greatest rascal in English history, but I am not so sure that it is, after all. It may be only the story of a brave man on the wrong side of politics and society. For his courage and ability, thrown on the other side of the scale, would, without doubt, have given him a far different place in history than the one he now occupies. What is the moral of it all? I do not know, and I am inclined to fall back on the dictum of a great man in a far different connection: "I do not think it desirable that we should always be drawing morals or seeking for edification. Of great men it may truly be said, 'It does good only to look at them.'"
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE.
THOMAS BLOOD.
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