The Audacious Crimes Of Colonel Blood - Plot & Excerpts
Arlington outlined part of his mission in evidence to the Committee of Foreign Affairs on 22 October 1671 by relating that ‘upon the pardoning of Blood he went away among his brethren to bring in some of his friends on assurance of pardon’.2 With the prospect of war with the Dutch looming ever nearer on the horizon, accompanied by the unacceptable risk of concurrent sedition and insurrection being fomented amongst religious dissidents, it was imperative not only to deactivate the known renegades but also to quieten nonconformist resentment and anger at the congregations’ treatment at the hand of government. Here Blood could make his mark by spying on his former friends and also by facilitating behind-the-scenes dialogue between government and dissenters. While he still met Sir Joseph Williamson, Blood’s main contact with his new paymasters, initially at least, was his old jailer, Sir John Robinson at the Tower of London. At the end of December, Sir John, profitably engaged in catching Quakers – those ‘besotted people, fools and knaves’ – reported that ‘Mr Blood sometimes visits me and tells me he has been faithful in keeping his promises’.3 During the mid-166os there was growing popular opposition to nonconformists being hauled up before the courts for flaunting the Act of Uniformity’s insistence that none other than Church of England rites should be employed in worship.
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