There is a blank in the list of commitments to the Tower between the years 1668 and 1678. They are supposed to have been lost, but we know that the year after Pepys’ friend Sir John Robinson had ceased to command in the Tower, the gossiping diarist himself was a prisoner within the walls, having been in some way concerned in the so-called Popish Plot of 1679. It is greatly to be deplored that no account of Samuel’s experiences in the Tower have come down to us, for his diary ends ten years before this date: Pepys was in the Tower from the month of May 1679 until the following February. His expenses, however, have been recorded:—“For safe keeping of Sir Anthony Deane and Mr Pepys, from and for the 22nd day of May 1679 unto and for the 24th of June 1679, being four weeks and six dayes, at £3 per week, ancient allowance, and 13s. 4d. per weeke, present demands, according to the retrenchments, £6, 9s. 6d.” (Bayley’s “Tower of London.”) Among other prisoners in the Tower in this reign was Nathaniel Desborow, or Disbrew, as his name is sometimes written. Desborow was Cromwell’s brother-in-law, “clumsy and ungainly in his person,” and, a born plotter, he hated all who were placed above him. He had been made Chancellor of Ireland by his nephew Richard Cromwell, but nevertheless he helped to pull down the Protector’s son and successor from his short-lived position. There were many others besides, imprisoned for political and non-political offences, and of the latter was Stephen Thomson, who was imprisoned for “stealing and conveying beyond the seas the sole daughter and heiress of Sir Edmund Alleyn, deceased, she being an infant.” The most sensational event that occurred in the Tower during the reign of Charles II. was the attempt made by a ruffian who called himself “Colonel” Blood to steal the Crown and Regalia. Blood, half sailor, half highwayman, and a complete scoundrel, was about fifty years old when, in the month of May 1671, he made what was literally a dash for the Crown. Blood appears to have served under Cromwell, and consequently styled himself “Colonel”; after the war he became a spy of the Government, and a short time before his performance at the Tower he had almost succeeded in having the old Duke of Ormond hanged on the gallows at Tyburn.