Seventeenth Century Royal Scam. On this day in 1671, Colonel Thomas Blood, one of the most audacious rogues in history, attempted to steal the Crown Jewels. Blood, disguised as a parson, had over a number of weeks, befriended the Jewel Keeper, Talbot Edwards and at 7 am on 9 May persuaded him to show the jewels to a group of his parson friends. Edwards, apparently not in the least bit surprised at being confronted by half a dozen drunken Irish parsons at seven in the morning, unlocked the door to the room where they were kept. At this point, Blood hit him on the head with a mallet and knocked him to the floor, where he was bound, gagged and stabbed with a sword. The crown was flattened with the mallet and stuffed into a bag, and the orb stuffed down Blood’s breeches. The sceptre was too long to go into the bag, and wouldn’t fit down his breeches, so Blood’s brother-in-law, Hunt (one of the other ‘parsons’), tried to saw it in half. Astonishingly, Edwards’s son chose that moment to visit his father for the first time in many years and on his approach the gang dropped the loot and fled. Blood, after unsuccessfully trying to shoot one of the guards with a wet pistol was captured. Blood refused to answer questions, saying only "I’ll answer to none but the King himself". Strangely, King Charles II then met with Blood and asked, "What if I should give you your life?" Blood, with a roguish wink, replied, "I would endeavour to deserve it, Sire!" Much to everyone’s amazement the King, instead of having him hung drawn and quartered, pardoned Blood, and gave him an income of five hundred pounds per annum! Of course, whilst one hesitates to question the motives of a Monarch, some commentators, bearing in mind the Royal impecuniousness at the time, have surmised that Blood was acting under orders and that the jewels were destined for sale to refill the royal treasury.
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