How Thomas Blood got close to the crown jewels
In 1671, Thomas Blood approached the Tower of London’s jewel keeper, Talbot Edwards, disguised as a clergyman. Blood cultivated Edwards’s trust, then returned with accomplices to carry out the theft. The jewels were kept in the Tower, but visiting them was possible under supervision—a vulnerability Blood turned into an opening.
Once inside, the thieves attacked the objects themselves. Blood used a mallet to flatten St Edward’s Crown so it could be concealed, while the orb was hidden in his clothes. They were caught as they tried to escape, after Edwards’s son arrived and disrupted the plan.
Why the king’s response was so unusual
The stolen objects were not merely valuable metal and gems: the crown and orb were royal regalia, used to represent the monarch’s authority. Yet Charles II did not give Blood the punishment many might expect. He pardoned him and granted him an estate and an annual pension.
The precise reasons for that favor are not clear. Blood had a reputation for daring political schemes, and the king may have found him useful or entertaining; accounts of the episode do not establish one definitive explanation. The leniency was striking precisely because the crime touched the symbols of the monarchy itself.
The practical consequence was harder to miss than any proposed motive: a man who had tried to steal the crown jewels left with royal property and a regular income. His escape turned an audacious theft into one of the most remarkable—and unsettling—pardon stories in English history.
