Thomas Blood attempts to steal the Crown Jewels from the Tower of London
On this day · 9 May 1671
Disguised as a parson, an Anglo-Irish adventurer mallet-flattened the crown and nearly walked out of the Tower with England's regalia.
On 9 May 1671, Thomas Blood came astonishingly close to stealing the Crown Jewels from the Tower of London. Posing as a clergyman, “Parson Blood” had spent weeks befriending the elderly keeper of the jewels, Talbot Edwards, even floating a marriage between Edwards’s daughter and his fictitious nephew.
That morning Blood arrived around dawn with three accomplices. Once Edwards opened the Jewel House, the gang struck him with a mallet, bound and stabbed him, then set to work on the regalia. Blood flattened the crown with the mallet to hide it under his coat, while a companion stuffed the orb down his breeches and another began filing the scepter in two.
“Treason! Murder! The crown is stolen!”
Edwards’s son arrived unexpectedly, and the alarm went up; Blood was seized near the Iron Gate. Remarkably, King Charles II not only pardoned him but granted him Irish lands worth £500 a year, to the disgust of courtiers.
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