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Bonkers Crimes and Criminals In History

Khalid Elhassan February 7, 2020 32 min

Thomas Blood - Royal Academy of Arts — Colonel Blood Stealing the Crown Jewels. Royal Academy of Arts

4. Stealing the Crown Jewels From the Tower of London

Colonel Thomas Blood (1618 – 1680), an Anglo-Irish officer from County Clare, was the son of a prosperous blacksmith who came from a good family – his grandfather lived in a castle, and was a Member of Parliament. Blood became one of Britain’s most audacious rogues, famous as “The Man Who Stole the Crown Jewels“.

Blood’s roguish career began in the English Civil War, when he left for England in 1642 to fight for King Charles I. When it became clear that the royalists were going to lose, Blood abandoned Charles and switched to the king’s Parliamentarian enemies. Charles I was defeated and beheaded. In the new regime, Blood was rewarded with a big estate and was made a justice of the peace. He prospered, but in 1660 the monarchy was restored, and Charles I’s son was crowned as Charles II. Blood lost all his lands, and fearing reprisals, fled to Ireland with his family.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.