The Audacious Crimes of Colonel Blood: The Spy Who Stole the Crown Jewels and Became the King’s Secret Agent

by Robert Hutchinson

'A marvellous romp' The Times
'The clash of blades, the whizzing bullets and galloping hooves guarantee nonstop adventure' Literary Review

In May 1671, Colonel Blood became the only person ever to steal the Crown Jewels from the Tower of London. How did he succeed? Why did King Charles II decide to pardon him, and hire him as his personal spy?

In a page-turning narrative that reads like a thriller, Robert Hutchinson tells the compelling story of Colonel turncoat, fugitive, double agent - and the most wanted man in Restoration England.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Biography, True Crime, London, 17th Century, Ireland

368 pages, Paperback

First published May 14, 2015

Reviews

[Emmanuel Gustin · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is not a bad book, but I did not like or enjoy it much. Its promise to tell the life story of the audacious adventurer, and self-styled Colonel, Thomas Blood, remains somewhat unfulfilled. The "whizzing bullets and galloping hooves" promised by the back cover (of the paperback edition) are present, but form only a small part of the story.

There are a few incidents, such as Blood's notorious attempt to steal the Crown Jewels, his attack on the duke of Ormond, and his daring rescue of the co-conspirator Mason, that are vivid and reasonably well documented. They make up about a quarter of this volume, not counting the substantial appendices. For the rest, however, this is a book about political conspiracies: Real conspiracies, wannabe conspiracies, and imagined conspiracies; often with evidence that amounts to little more than hearsay, and that becomes tedious. And Blood's role in them remains accordingly obscure.

It is no doubt in the nature of anti-government conspiracy, and secret service operations to combat it, that it may not leave much of a paper trail. Perhaps Hutchinson should have quoted more from whatever documents he has available, to bring the spirit of the times back to life. Maybe he should have provided more context (an appendix of fifteen pages is devoted to short biographies). Whatever the reason, I found it hard to care about the events described. It is like a spinning barrel full of names.

As a biography of a notorious adventurer, then, this disappoints, both because too much of his story consists of dots without lines to connect them, and because the man behind the notorious escapades remains entirely enigmatic.

[Alger Smythe-Hopkins · Rating 2 out of 5]

Col. Blood was an interesting character at a crucial moment of England's history, but this book leaves open more doors than it closes. The promised thrills are few and spaced hundreds of pages apart in prose that borrows heavily from 17th century broadsides and records. The reader is also assumed to have a pretty good grasp of Restoration England and Ireland to follow the action. Over-detailed for the casual reader, the chapters tend to bog down in the details of aborted plots and the lives of people whom we meet only once or twice. On the other hand, Hutchinson does not take pains to describe the political conditions of the Restoration, which of course is the focus of the action. That attention to detail is not carried over to setting the stage outside of naming the dramatis personae and how the events were described in source documents. I give Hutchinson credit; it is remarkably difficult to breath life into a slush pile of archival documents, and he has a good story here of an unlikely man. The story is worth the telling, but the primary feeling I was left with upon closing the book was that we are still missing most of the story.

[Argum · Rating 2 out of 5]

I wanted very much to read this book. I had heard the story of the theft of the crown jewels and thought this would be quite the adventure story of an interesting man with a bent for the criminal. Instead it was dry and somehow hard to follow the stream of interest. It maybe failed in trying to do too much or maybe it was just not as entertaining as I anticipated. But I know no more now than before about how or why this all came to be. Plus it just kind of ended I thought pages were glued together when his death started being discussed.

[Kate · Rating 2 out of 5]

I thought this book was great almost all the way through, until I noticed that it has an unfortunate tendency to BS. Seems like the author immersed himself a bit too much and started channeling the shameless blarney of his subject.

First I saw what seemed like an innocent vagueness. The author speculates that Blood's theft of the crown jewels could have been political because "the Tuesday after" Blood's attempted robbery someone also stole the Great Seal of England. I thought it was weird that there is no mention of Blood being questioned about this suspicious coincidence, since, according to Hutchinson's account, by that date Blood had already become an informer for the king. Also, why would the conspirators continue with their plot, if by that point Blood's portion of it had failed? So I checked the author's footnote, which only lists the primary source for the Great Seal incident-- p.79 of "History of the Westminster Election" by J. Hartley, second edition, 1765. Well, thanks to the internet and Archive.org, 5 seconds later I was reading the exact page in the original source. And not only does the original source clearly and explicitly date the theft of the Great Seal to March 23, 1784, more than 100 years after Col. Blood's death, but the book itself was also published in 1784, and is mostly about the events of that same year, so it would take some impressive time travel to publish a second edition of that book in 1765.

After that, I flipped to the beginning of the book and started randomly checking sources, to see if there were any more author shenanigans. And sure enough, right at the beginning Hutchinson invented a step-grandmother for Blood, who is not documented by any sources anywhere, is completely unknown to anyone tracing the genealogy of the Blood family, and suspiciously has the same name as Blood's wife. Maybe Hutchinson really did dig this grandma up in some source unknown to any other historian, but if so, why conveniently forget to reference it? It's such a random weird lie that doesn't even make the subject any more interesting. He seems to be making stuff up just because.

As far as I'm concerned, that's two pieces of baloney too many. I appreciate the absolute irony of being lied to in a book about a famous historical liar, I really, really do. 2 stars for giving me a good laugh. But at the end of the day, I signed up for the audacious crimes of Colonel Blood, not the audacious lies of Robert Hutchinson.

[Christina · Rating 3 out of 5]

I had heard of the exploits of Colonel Blood when I was a child, and seeing this book about his life and the times he lived in, I bought it for future reading.
I am happy to have read more about the man and his misdeeds, but i did struggle with the style in which the book is written.
It has clearly been meticulously researched and has been written with a great deal of enthusiasm and some humour - but i found the lengthy extracts from contempory sources, and the constant stream of people that were introduced and referenced throughout the book, rather distracting.
I prefer a biography that is written as the authors interpretation of the source materials, rather than lots of verbatim extracts - but that is probably just personal preference.
I enjoyed learning more about this notorious character, and found that there was so much about him that I had not known.
Perhaps a second read through will go more smoothly for me, as I will already have been introduced to the people mentioned within the book?
I very much appreciated the Epilogue section of the book, which deals with the fates of many of those people mentioned - I liked having a more complete view of what happened to those around Colonel Blood, as well as to the man himself.
Certainly, this book is about an amazing person from history, and is well worth a read.

[Pat MacEwen · Rating 4 out of 5]

An astonishing true-life tale of a Cavalier who plotted to overthrow British rule in Ireland after the Restoration, to murder King Charles II and his younger brother (who soon enough became James II), and succeeded in stealing the crown jewels from the Tower of London, though he got no further with them than the riverside quay outside the Tower. This is the same man who tried to kidnap the Duke of Ormond, intending to hang HIM at Tyburn. So why didn't Blood die on the gallows? Apparently, the King thought him more useful alive than dead. Charles II not only forgave Blood, he paid him a handsome stipend to spy on his fellow rebels, many of whom did suffer a traitor's death. This history helps explain why a Royalist turned against his king, then took the king's shilling, and yet continued to plot against him till very nearly the day he died (of natural causes!). Larger than life in every respect, Blood pulled off so many tricks and deceptions that Londoners insisted on having his body exhumed a week after his summertime death to be sure the body was really his. The proof of the pudding? An oversized thumb thanks to an old injury, since his face was no longer recognizable. Another case of truth outdoing fiction by many a mile, on horseback in Blood's case.

[Chris Elzi · Rating 4 out of 5]

Colonel Thomas Blood (what a name!) was a larger-than-life character, who flourished in the the late 17th century. Never lacking in nerve or ambition, he and his accomplices attempted to capture Dublin Castle (unsuccessfully). He and his fellow conspirators the wounded and kidnapped the Duke of Ormonde, an important official in the government of King Charles II. Like the earlier plot, this plan was almost insanely overcomplicated. Instead of simply killing Ormonde, Blood anted to take him to a place of public execution. Unfortunately for Blood's plans, Ormonde (though wounded) managed to escape.
What to do next? Naturally Blood decided to steal some of the Crown Jewels from the Tower of London, which he did. He nearly escaped, too, but was caught and imprisoned in the Tower.
Best of all, Blood asked for an audience with the King, and managed to talk himself into a full pardon as well as a generous pension!

[Dean · Rating 3 out of 5]

Although this is a very well-researched book, with reams of information on dates, people, background stuff etc it is ultimately a slight disappointment. The selling point of the book is the attempt to steal the Crown Jewels, and so we naturally expect a lot of information concerning that. We do, in fact, get very little.
We get a lot of background on Blood himself, which although interesting in part, descends into details about endless plots against the King. Virtually every one came to nothing except the attempt to steal the Jewels.
Is there anything new here? Any new nugget of info? No.
Worth a read? Just, but not essential by any means.

[Nicky Lee-Delisle · Rating 4 out of 5]

I knew of Colonel Blood as the man who botched his spectacular attempt to steal Charles II's Crown Jewels. Therefore when I saw that 'Crimes' was plural in the title I knew this was going to be a wild ride.

Halfway through the book there had already been many daring crimes which were tied in with the complex politics of the hangover of the interregnum and religious division. Colonel Blood's reputation as an arrogant outlaw full of bravado preceded his attempt on the Crown Jewels. It's a wonder that such escapades have escaped the attention of modern film makers.

[Fuzail Hassan · Rating 2 out of 5]

Rather dull. At no point do you feel much engaged with this book. Was rather non fussed about all of it. Just before this I had read "The last duel", and that was set in a similar timeframe with far more excitement and personality woven into the story. I don't blame the author too much here since it is apparent that most of the source material is vague intelligence reports and secretive letters, but the book is most certainly misrepresented as something exciting. Perhaps it should more aptly be called "A collection of the plots against Charles II".

[Robert Hepple · Rating 3 out of 5]

Published in 2015, 'The Audacious Crimes of Colonel Blood' purports to be the gripping tale of the English Civil War adventurer who stole the Crown Jewels during his busy life. Realistically, the life story is very muddled, but the detail about some of the lesser known issues of the English Civil War make it almost worth it.

[Vintagebooklvr · Rating 3 out of 5]

A crazy life; a crazy time. This guy's exploits at times read more like a Police Academy film or the three stooges, but more deadly, than something you would expect in real life. But then...true life can be stranger than fiction.

[Echo · Rating 2 out of 5]

I have never read a book that makes such an interesting subject seem so boring.
This was definitely on the dry side when it comes to history books, and I struggled through even the "exciting" parts.

[Daniel Pearse · Rating 3 out of 5]

Really interesting look at the life of a very ambitious man who lived in a very turbulent time. I love the fact that even though he died (or did he) that they had to dig up his corpse just to verify it.

[Andrew · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good entertainment. Clearly a lot of research has gone into the book but no clear picture of the character or motivation of the man appears

[Kira · Rating 2 out of 5]

Too difficult to listen to. I gave up trying to remember who was who. Not bad, but I would’ve rather read the Wikipedia page.

[Iris Blasi · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is fantastic — a stranger-than-fiction story of one of the most notorious turncoats in British history.

Hutchinson paints a vivid portrait of Blood as a truly slippery fellow, always seemingly able to avoid getting into trouble and end up on the right side of the situation, no matter how much lying and treachery it took. He was so deceitful, in fact, that the British government was forced to exhume his body from his grave because so many Londoners thought he had faked his own death as the ultimate escape.

I acquired U.S. rights for this book for Pegasus Books, and I cannot wait for American readers to get to read it in 2016!

[nikkia neil · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thanks Pegasus Books and netgalley for this ARC.

I love to read about history especially well-written accounts that are outrageous enough to sound like fiction. Colonel Blood's life is a tale like no other.

[Elisabeth · Rating 1 out of 5]

Hard going, and not as exciting as it sounded. Plus the additional edits [square brackets] when quoting original texts where driving me mad... they seemed unnecessary [ie not necessary] in so many places...

[SM · Rating 2 out of 5]

Firstly the huge amount of research and material that was drawn together for this book should be acknowledged. Unfortunately however, the writing style and resultant reading experience is poor. it is quite repetitive in places especially towards the end. Also the flow is very confusing at the end. What is most frustrating though is that there are huge spoilers and the final outcome of each piece of intrigue is revealed before the narrative is given. There is also a tendency to speculate based on questionable evidence. Despite that there is a very useful description of each character at the back of the book as well as a timeline which is often lacking in many narrative history books with multiple characters