Colonel Blood stole the Crown Jewels in 1671 and was pardoned

Thomas Blood tried to steal the Crown Jewels from the Tower of London on 9 May 1671, got the crown as far as the Iron Gate before he was caught, and was then pardoned by King Charles II. According to The National Archives, he remains the first and only person ever to attempt to steal them.

How did Blood get into the Jewel House?

Through weeks of patient disguise. The regalia, much of it sold or destroyed after Charles I’s execution and replaced for Charles II’s coronation in 1661, could be viewed by the public for a fee paid to their custodian. Posing as a clergyman under the alias Dr Ayliffe, Blood befriended the assistant keeper, Talbot Edwards, and even arranged a marriage into his family.

A newsletter dated 9 May 1671 records five men riding up at about six in the morning. Two held the horses while three went in, bound, wounded and gagged Edwards, and carried off the crown, which Blood had flattened with a mallet to hide it. Edwards’s son arrived, gave chase and was shot at but missed. The writer described the prize catch at the Iron Gate:

“old Blood who went under the name of Ailoffe, the priest disguised” — newsletter to Mr Kirke, 9 May 1671

Blood’s son was caught after falling from his horse in Gravel Lane; he was the same man who had earlier seized the Duke of Ormonde.

Why did Charles II pardon him?

Nobody knows for certain. His record was appalling: he had been involved in a plot to seize Dublin Castle and the Lord Lieutenant, and the jewel raid followed his failed attack on Ormonde. Yet the king not only spared him but granted him Irish lands worth £500 a year, to Ormonde’s disgust. Westminster Abbey’s biography calls him a “possible Government double agent” and notes that even his claim to be a colonel is dubious.

After 1671 the jewels were kept under armed guard. Blood died in Westminster on 24 August 1680, and the pocket book taken from him at his capture is in Oxford’s Bodleian Library.