May 9, 1671: "Colonel Thomas Blood attempted to steal the Crown Jewels from the Tower of London
May 9, 1671: "Colonel Thomas Blood attempted to steal the Crown Jewels from the Tower of London, in a failed heist that is still the closest anyone has come to successfully taking the Jewels from the Tower. Blood was an Irish officer who switched allegiances during the English Civil War to be on the winning side of victorious Oliver Cromwell, but was later forced to flee with his family back to Ireland after Charles II returned to the throne in 1660. Already a practised criminal with a failed Cromwellian uprising and an attempted kidnapping to his name, in 1670 he hatched an ambitious plan to steal the Crown Jewels. Blood spent a period of weeks at the Tower befriending the elderly Keeper of the Jewels Talbot Edwards and his family, posing as ‘Parson Blood’, and offering to arrange a marriage between Edwards’ daughter and a fictitious wealthy nephew. On 9 May 1671, Blood brought his ‘nephew’ (actually his son) and two other accomplices to the Martin Tower where the Edwards family