Following the Restoration of King Charles II to the Crowns of the Three Kingdoms in 1660, Blood fled with his family to Ireland. In 1653 at the cessation of hostilities Cromwell awarded Blood land grants as payment for his service and appointed him a justice of the peace. As the conflict progressed he switched sides and became a lieutenant in Oliver Cromwell's Roundheads. Īt the outbreak of the First English Civil War in 1642, Blood returned to England and initially took up arms with the Royalist forces loyal to Charles I. At the age of 20, he married Maria Holcroft, the daughter of John Holcroft of Holcroft Hall, Culcheth, Cheshire, and Golborne, Lancashire, and returned to Ireland. He received his education in Lancashire, England. His grandfather was a member of the Irish Parliament, and had lived at Kilnaboy Castle (also in County Clare). His family was respectable and prosperous (by the standards of the time) his father held lands in Counties Clare, Meath and Wicklow. Sources suggest that Blood was born in County Clare, in the Kingdom of Ireland, the son of a successful land-owning blacksmith of English descent, and was partly raised at Sarney, near Dunboyne, in County Meath. Described in an American source as a "noted bravo and desperado," he was also known for his attempt to kidnap and, later, to kill, his enemy, James Butler, 1st Duke of Ormond. Colonel Thomas Blood (1618 – 24 August 1680) was an Anglo-Irish officer and self-styled colonel best known for his attempt to steal the Crown Jewels of England from the Tower of London in 1671.
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