9 May 1671: "Treason! Murder! The Crown is stolen!" With these words the alarm was raised by the 77-year-old Talbot Edwards, Keeper of His Majesty’s Jewels in the Tower of London. The reason for his outcry was an audacious plot that was in operation to steal the Crown Jewels of King Charles II. The leader of the perpetrators was one Colonel Thomas Blood who was born in County Meath in 1618. Rogue, adventurer and turncoat he was captured and hauled before the King who amazingly pardoned him – much to the disgust of the 1st Duke of Ormond, Lord Lieutenant of Ireland who had been kidnapped by Blood years before and barely escaped with his life!

9 May, 1766 - Count Lally was executed by the French for losing Pondicherry in India to the English. The General was convicted of ‘treason’ as a result. He was decapitated by sword before a huge crowd at the Place de l'Hôtel de Ville in Paris on this day. The son of an Irish Jacobite exile, Lally served in the Irish Brigade of the French army under Maurice, Comte de Saxe, and accompanied Charles Edward Stuart on his expedition to Britain in 1745. He was sent out to India in 1758 and was forced in 1760 to surrender to the English. The Count de Lally was 64 years old and had been a loyal servant of the regime throughout his lifetime. This execution was one of the worst inequities of the government of Louis XV.

9 May 1828: Author and Fenian leader Charles J. Kickham was born on this day, at Mullinahone in Co. Tipperary. An accident with gunpowder at the age of 13 permanently damaged his sight and hearing. In 1850 he worked for Tenant Right League but lost faith in political agitation after its failure in 1855. Kickham’s politics became more radical and he joined the IRB in 1860. He worked on the editorial staff of the Irish People newspaper but on 11 November 1865 he was arrested with the Fenian Leader James Stephens. He was released in 1869 with his health severely impaired and returned to Mullinahone.. He became member of the Supreme Council in 1872 and was its leading figure until his death. He believed that the IRB must concentrate only on winning complete independence for Ireland and not be diverted into other causes.
Kickham was also a prominent ballad writer and the author of several books. His first novel Sally Cavanagh was written while he was in Woking prison. His sentimental, deeply nostalgic and farcical Knocknagow (1879) was a huge and instant success and made him one of the most popular novelists of the nineteenth century.

9 May 1916: Thomas Kent was executed by firing squad in Cork Detention Barracks on this day. His family home had been raided by the RIC in the aftermath of the Rising as he and his brothers were under suspicion at the time. They resisted however and after a gunfight that lasted for four hours, in which an RIC officer, Head Constable William Rowe, was killed and David Kent was seriously wounded. Eventually the Kents were forced to surrender, although Richard Kent made a last minute dash for freedom and was fatally wounded. For his roll in the death of Rowe he was tried and found guilty for his "part in an armed rebellion...for the purpose of assisting the enemy." and sentenced to death.