Of the Castle of Bridgwater, once a strong fortress, both by virtue of its own stout walls, and by reason of the fine position it held at the crossing of the Parret, nothing is left, except portions of the Water Gate, on the West Quay, and the cellars of what is now the Custom House. The last occasion of its appearance in history was the shameful surrender of it to a besieging army under Fairfax, on July 23rd, 1645, after a two days’ assault. It had been so generally considered impregnable that the wealthy Royalists of the countryside, afraid for the safety of their jewellery and other valuables, had sent them hither from what they thought to be the insecurity of their own houses. Thus the taking of the impregnable castle and the surrender of the invincible garrison resulted in exceptionally heavy spoils, amounting to £100,000 value.
Bridgwater boasts one famous son; Robert Blake, the great Admiral, or rather, General-at-Sea, of the Commonwealth, who taught foreign nations in general, and the Dutch in particular, who wanted the lesson badly, the respect due to England. His birthplace is still standing in this his native town, in a quiet byway, where tall, staid eighteenth-century merchants’ residences look down, as it were with a certain condescension, upon the less imposing house in which the hero was first introduced to a troubled world, in 1599. It is a comfortable, rather than a stately, house; but it was built to last. It is the oldest house now remaining in the town, and was probably built in the early years of the sixteenth century, the interior disclosing a greater antiquity than would be suspected from the frontage. Huge, roughly squared oak timbers frame the walls and cross the ceilings with immense rafters. They had been all carefully covered up some generations ago, and their existence hidden by plaster and wall-papering; but recent repairs of the house have resulted in all this honest construction being again disclosed; and very noble, in the rugged old way, it looks. During the progress of these repairs and alterations, the plaster on the walls of an upper room was found to have been liberally scratched and otherwise drawn upon at a period contemporary with Admiral Blake. Sketches of ships were prominent among these rough sgraffiti: ships built and rigged in a manner characteristic of the seventeenth century, and the words “Rex Carolus” appeared among them. It was necessary, for the repair of the walls, to cover up most of these sketches, but the best have been carefully preserved.
Robert Blake’s father was a merchant, with more children (a round dozen of them) than business. His mother came of an old landed family; the Williamses of Planesfield. Robert himself was sent to Oxford and was in residence there, chiefly at Wadham College, fifteen years, wishful of becoming a Fellow, but finally balked of that ambition for an easeful life. It is curious to contemplate that old possibility of this stout man of war having ever become a cloistral butt of futile learning, of the peculiar brand of futility affected by Oxford.
His father died, leaving but an insignificant sum to be divided among his many children, and Robert, with strong Republican views, was returned to Parliament for his native town of Bridgwater. Events were moving rapidly towards Civil War, and in the outbreak of that momentous struggle many men found at last their vocation. Among them was Blake, whose great defence of Taunton town against the Royalist siege in 1645 was one of the most dogged and successful incidents of that time. Encompassed by ten thousand men and his ammunition all shot away, food exhausted, and a breach actually made in the walls and the enemy swarming through it; still he would not yield, and declared he would eat his boots first. Fortunately the rumour of Fairfax’s relieving army at that moment spread among the besiegers, and the siege was raised, else Blake would have had a full and an unappetising meal before him, as any one who contemplates his statue here, and the great thigh-boots he is wearing, may judge for himself.
At the establishment of the Commonwealth, Blake was given high command at sea: a military man afloat as Admiral; a thing in our own highly specialised times unthinkable. His complete success in that new environment is a part of our history that need not be recounted here. After many inconclusive duels with the Dutch, who, under Van Tromp, disputed the sovereignty of the seas, and after brilliant services abroad, Blake died while yet in what may be termed the prime of life, of an intermittent fever, and probably also from an exhaustion induced by old wounds, on board his flagship, off Plymouth, in 1657. With his death disappeared one of the few entirely honest Republicans of that time: a man that England could then ill spare, as the nation was to find but ten years later, when the Dutch fully revenged themselves for former reverses by their historic raid up the Medway and destruction of English ships off Chatham.
After many years, Bridgwater has at last honoured itself and the memory of this great man with a statue, placed prominently in front of the Corn Exchange. He is represented in the military costume of the time, with a short, wind-blown cloak flying from his shoulders, pointing into space. It is a pose admirably chosen, and every line of this fine bronze figure expresses the courage, zeal, and bull-dog determination characteristic of the man. Bronze panels in relief on the plinth represent Blake’s fleet off Portland, February 1653; the capture of Santa Cruz, April 20th, 1657; and Blake’s body brought into Plymouth Sound, August 7th, 1657. This appropriate couplet from Spenser is added:
Sleepe after toyle, port after stormy seas,
Ease after war, death after life, doth greatly please.
Bridgwater church has its place in history, for it was from the battlements of this tower that the ill-fated Monmouth looked forth upon the plain of Sedgemoor, just before the battle that was to decide his fortunes.
Nothing in the long story of the West so stirs the blood as the incidents of the disastrous expedition captained by this handsome, ambitious, and well-liked son of Charles II. It was a generous enterprise—if at the same time not without its great personal reward, if successful—to attempt the saving of England from the domination of Popery that again threatened her; and it deserved a better conclusion than that recorded by history.