Transcriber's Note: Minor typographical errors have been corrected without note. Irregularities and inconsistencies in the text have been retained as printed. Words printed in italics are noted with underscores: _italics_. Rochester Reprints XIII _One hundred copies on French hand-made paper for subscribers_ [Illustration: COL : BLOOD.] COLONEL THOMAS BLOOD CROWN-STEALER 1618-1680 BY WILBUR CORTEZ ABBOTT PROFESSOR OF HISTORY, SHEFFIELD SCIENTIFIC SCHOOL YALE UNIVERSITY ROCHESTER, NEW YORK 1910 COPYRIGHT, 1910, BY EDWARD WHEELOCK GENESEE PRESS ROCHESTER, N.Y. COLONEL THOMAS BLOOD The story which follows is, without doubt, one of the most curious and extraordinary in English history. It is, in fact, so remarkable that it seems necessary to begin by assuring the cautious reader that it is true. Much as it may resemble at times that species of literature known in England as the shilling shocker and in America as the dime novel, its material is drawn, not from the perfervid imagination of the author, but from sources whose very nature would seem to repudiate romance. The dullest and most sedate of official publications, Parliamentary reports, memoranda of ministers, warrants to and from officers and gaolers, newsletters full of gossip which for two hundred years and more has ceased to be news, these would seem to offer little promise of human interest. Yet even these cannot well disguise the fascination of a life like that of Thomas Blood. The tale of adventure has always divided honours with the love story. And such a career as his, full of mystery, of personal daring, and the successful defiance of law by one on whom its provisions seem to have borne too hardly, cannot be obscured even by the digest of official documents. Moreover it has historical significance. This most famous and successful of English lawbreakers was no common criminal. In a sense he was the representative of an important class during a critical period of history. Not merely to the Old Englander, but to those interested in the rise of the New England beyond seas, the fate of the irreconcilable Puritans, no less than that of their more submissive brethren, must seem of importance. This is the more true in that no small number of the men whose names appear in this narrative played parts on both sides of the Atlantic. The younger Vane, who had been the governor of Massachusetts, in 1636, and whose execution marked the early years of Restoration vengeance, is the most striking of these figures. Next to him come the fugitive regicides, Goffe, Whalley and Dixwell, who lived out their days in New Haven, Hartford and Hadley. It is not so well known, however, that Venner, whose insurrection in the early days of the Restoration was one of the most dramatic and important events of that time, was at one time a resident of Salem. Still less is it likely to be known that Paul Hobson, one of the contrivers and the involuntary betrayer of the