O Cromwell
ROBERT BLAKE, THE GREAT ADMIRAL OF THE COMMONWEALTH.
CHAPTER IX. HE ACHIEVED FOR ENGLAND THE TITLE, NEVER SINCE DISPUTED, OF “MISTRESS OF THE SEA.”
To designate some of the naval heroes of early times gallant “sea dogs,” is not disrespectful to these worthies. Dashing courage, indomitable perseverance, and open-handed generosity, were the qualities, by which they were chiefly distinguished. But to apply such an epithet to Robert Blake, “Admiral and General at Sea,” would be altogether unsuitable.
Grave, scholarly, courageous, generous, disinterested, wise in counsel, valiant in war, Admiral Blake occupied a high place among the men of his time. He has been pronounced one of the most perfect characters of his age.
Robert Blake was born at Bridgewater, Somersetshire, in 1598, the year before that in which Oliver Cromwell first saw the light. His father, Humphrey Blake, was possessed of landed property, and was also a merchant adventurer. He belonged to what Fuller, in his Worthies, calls the “middle-sized gentry.” The first portion of his education he received at the Bridgewater grammar school. When sixteen years of age he entered St. Alban’s Hall, Oxford, and afterwards shifted to Wadham College. He remained at Oxford for nine years, and had probably a stronger inclination to follow a scholastic life than for the adventurous career he passed through. He felt drawn into the great struggle of his time by his position and his sense of duty; the hurry and distracting influences of the life of after years never took away either the taste, which had made him learned, or the earnestness which had made him a Puritan.
In the year 1625, Robert was recalled home on account of the illness of his father, whose business affairs were in a very unsatisfactory condition. The father died in embarrassed circumstances, and upon Robert devolved the charge of his widowed mother and a large family, with a somewhat straitened income. He discharged his duties as head of the family with fidelity and success, and conducted himself in an exemplary manner in his domestic, social, and business relations. His brothers and sisters made their way in the world, married, and settled respectably.
At the time of Blake’s return to Bridgewater, State affairs and the relations between the sovereign and his subjects were causing much excitement and turmoil. Charles I. was at war with his Parliament, and wringing taxes illegally from his people, which many of them resisted. The king’s Catholic consort, Henrietta Maria, daughter of Henry IV. of France, hated the Puritans, and urged Charles to the exercise of absolute power, in resisting their reasonable demands. His first and second Parliaments refused the supplies he demanded. His third Parliament wrung from him assent to the famous “petition of right,”—a second Magna Charta,—which he nominally granted, but in practice resisted. From 1629 to 1640 there had been no meeting of Parliament; in 1640, when the Short Parliament, as it was called, was summoned, Blake was returned as representative for Bridgewater. In 1645 he was elected for Taunton to serve in the Long Parliament.
Oxford was not a likely nursery for Puritans, but Blake was a man of independent mind, and of resolute character. He considered the dissolution of the Short Parliament a declaration of defiance to the people on the part of the king, and took it as a signal for action, and declared for the Parliamentarians. He raised a troop of dragoons, who were among the first of the Parliamentary army that took the field; they were engaged in almost every action of importance in the western counties. Blake, although himself only a raw, untrained volunteer, distinguished himself above all the men about him, in the “marvellous fertility, energy, and comprehensiveness of his military genius”—evidence of native superiority. It has been stated that Prince Rupert alone, in the Royalist force, could be compared to him as a commander and leader. Blake distinguished himself by his gallant defence of Prior’s Hill fort, at the siege of Bristol in 1643, which he would have held, but for the surrender by his chief, Colonel Fiennes. In his next command, Blake had not a pusillanimous commander to overrule him, and showed conclusively the stuff he was made of. He had won the confidence of the Parliament, and was appointed to the Somerset Committee of Ways and Means, and to the lieutenant-colonelcy of Popham’s regiment, a body of stalwart Roundheads, fifteen thousand strong. He made an entry into Bridgewater, with the intention of seizing the castle, but finding that the attempt would be foolhardy, he desisted, and marched with his regiment to Lyme, where he was wanted for the defence of the place. He had a sad memory to carry away from this visit to the familiar scenes of the home of his youth. His younger brother Samuel, who was with his force, strayed from headquarters, and boldly attacked a Royalist recruiting party he fell in with. He was slain in the fray. When the news reached the town, the officers were greatly distressed. Colonel Blake suspected from their grave conferences that there was something wrong, of which they were reluctant to tell him. He demanded information, which was given reluctantly in the communication, “Your brother Sam is killed,” explaining how the thing came to pass. The colonel’s grave response was, “Sam had no business there.” Retiring, however, to the Swan Inn, he shut himself up in a room, and mourned bitterly the loss of his brother.
Colonel Blake’s defence of the “little vile fishing town” of Lyme, as Clarendon contemptuously calls it, was a brilliant service. It was besieged by Prince Maurice after he had failed in an attempt to take Plymouth by storm. It was a small place, with a population of about a thousand inhabitants. The natural defences were very weak. The Cavaliers in descending from the heights behind the town, drove in Blake’s outposts, charged with horse, and a shower of hand grenades. The prince summoned Blake to surrender, but the summons was only answered by a fire that emptied many saddles, threw the attacking force into confusion, and compelled them to retire. Day after day, from week to week, the attack was renewed by siege trains and storming parties, in which many gallant Cavaliers were slain. Charles was at Oxford, where he and his court waited in anxious expectation the defeat of Blake and the fall of Lyme, the successful defence of which seemed a marvel and a mystery. Instead of receiving the welcome news of Blake’s defeat, they had the mortifying intelligence, that his spirited defence was rousing and rallying the dispersed Parliamentary party in those parts. After a protracted siege, Warwick’s fleet arrived, in time to save Colonel Blake and his besieged heroes from being starved out. The siege was raised, after a loss to the Royalists of two thousand men, many of them of noble and gentle blood,—Blake’s fire having been more deadly, and the cause of heavier loss, than all the actions in the West since the commencement of the war.
Blake’s name and fame were now established, and he had proved his capacity sufficiently to be trusted to cut out his own work. All over the western counties the Cavaliers had strong fortresses, and consequently a line of communication. Blake saw that the possession of Taunton by his party would be of vital importance. He made a rapid march upon it, and carried it almost without encountering resistance. This was on the 8th of July 1644, six days after Cromwell and the Scots had defeated Prince Rupert at the battle of Marston Moor. The possession of Taunton was as important to the Cavaliers as it was to the Parliamentarians, and troops poured round the lines that had been formed for the defence of the inland town. Blake, who had been invested with office as Governor of Taunton, was summoned to surrender, but a deaf ear was turned to the summons. Again, the Governor of Bridgewater, Wyndham, sent an earnest entreaty to his old neighbour and fellow-townsman to accept the liberal terms of surrender offered, but Blake was influenced by a sense of public duty with which considerations of friendly ties or his own personal safety and comfort could not be allowed to interfere. Appeals to the patriot were made in vain, and so the siege began.