Blake had not been able to prevent Rupert from running through the Straits, probably because his ships were all equally foul, and equally in need of scraping, and he was therefore unable to station vessels at sea to intercept the Royalists. So soon as he could get ready, he followed Rupert up the Mediterranean, and about the 7th of November came on the bulk of the Royalist cruisers at Carthagena. Rupert himself was absent. His ships had been scattered in a gale on the 5th of November, and he, with one other vessel, was cruising in the neighbourhood of Formentera, where he took a richly-laden merchant ship called the Marmaduke, after some fighting. With his prize, Rupert returned to the mainland of Spain, and, not finding his consorts, left a message informing them that he had sailed for Toulon. It was not till he reached the French port that he heard of the disaster which had overtaken the rest of his squadron. Blake had attacked at once. The Royalists complained that the Spaniards had suffered the law of nations to be outraged in their harbours. They had very little choice, but, from their point of view, the action of Blake cannot have appeared much worse than Rupert's. The Royalists made no resistance, many of the men were pressed out of the English prizes, and, even of those who were not, many were getting tired of an adventure which brought them little but danger and exile.

Rupert had been driven on to the coast of Sicily by bad weather, before he could make the coast of France. There he was well received, and allowed to sell his prizes—an act of compliance on the part of the French officers for which the commerce of France was severely punished. Blake, acting on his instructions, immediately retaliated by capturing French merchant vessels, and when he left the Mediterranean, as he did shortly afterwards, the same course was vigorously pursued by his successor, William Penn. Penn's cruise in the Mediterranean lasted till April of '52, and was fruitful in French prizes. He had been called from the coast of Ireland to command a squadron of eight frigates, designed to replace the heavier ships of Blake's command. The Parliament was now using the naval forces of England with a vigour of which there had been no previous example. The necessity of proving to the country that it was capable of protecting commerce against the utmost Rupert could do, acted as a stimulus, even if there had not been a strong wish to make the monarchies of the Continent understand that the new Government was far too powerful to be treated with neglect. The measures taken were not inadequate to the work on hand. In the November of 1650 William Penn sailed with a squadron of eight frigates, and with orders first to make a cruise against the Portuguese on their own coast, and in the Western Islands, with the object of capturing their merchant ships on the way home from Brazil, and then to enter the Mediterranean, where he was to relieve Blake in the work of hunting down Rupert. The Council of State was so resolute not to delay the work, that it did not wait until the whole squadron was ready. Penn sailed on the 30th of November, with five of his frigates, for the Azores. The other three joined him there under the command of John Lawson. The whole force contained an exceptional proportion of men who gained distinction in the sea service: it consisted of the—

Ships.Men.Guns.Captains.
Fairfax25052William Penn, vice-admiral.
Centurion15036John Lawson.
Adventure15036Andrew Ball.
Foresight15036Samuel Howett.
Pelican15036Joseph Jordan.
Assurance15036Benjamin Blake.
Nonsuch15036John Mildmay.
Star8022Robert Sanders.

This squadron was in the Azores by the 17th of January 1651, and, after cruising with fair success between them and the Rock of Lisbon, entered the Mediterranean in March. In addition to Penn's squadron, another was fitted out under command of Captain Edward Hall, for the purpose of convoying the trade to the Mediterranean. Hall's squadron consisted of—

Ships.Men.Guns.Captains.
Triumph30052Edward Hall, vice-admiral.
Tiger15036James Peacock.
Angel15030William Rand.
Ant. Bonadventure15030Walter Hopton.
Trade's Increase16044William Jacob.
Lion19044Jac. Birkdel.
Hopeful Luke12634William Goodson.

There was thus a double protection. While Hall applied himself to the convoying of merchant ships, Penn was free to pursue Rupert. The Royalists gave no trouble, and the two squadrons of the Parliament had little to do beyond making reprisals on the nations which had incurred the hostility of England by showing favour to Rupert, and by endeavouring to put some check on the excesses of the Algerines. Yet the presence of two forces acting in the Mediterranean at once, so soon after the appearance of Blake, must have given the Southern nations a greatly enhanced opinion of the naval power of England. The officers in command were well aware that they were doing much more than merely chasing away a handful of Royalist cruisers. Their sense of the higher importance of their work is very well expressed in a letter written by Captain Hall from Cadiz, on the eve of entering the Mediterranean.

"Your fleets meeting here, so soon after the departure of the other fleet, is of no less admiration to other foreign kingdoms (into which reports fly of them daily) than to Spain; who much admire your quickness, in such strength and full supplies. So as I believe, in a short time, the Spaniards, between fear and love, will grow respectful to us. Though, hitherto, we have had little sign of it, more than compliments (only free access to the shore, where we are in nowise molested in our business), which we fail not to equalise them in."

Although Rupert vanished from the sight of Blake and his successors in the Mediterranean, and indeed did not again come in contact with the naval forces of the Parliament, we cannot ignore the actions of a gentleman who was Lord High Admiral, and who flew the Royal Standard by commission of the rightful king. After the defeat at Carthagena he was now reduced to three vessels, and a large part of his crews was discontented. Only the high courage of the man, and the determination of the exiled Royalists who had accompanied him, sufficed to prevent wholesale desertion, or open resistance to his authority. Partly by good management, but more by force, Rupert kept his command together. With the proceeds of his prizes he purchased a fourth vessel, and started on certainly the most extraordinary cruise ever undertaken by a Lord High Admiral of England. It lasted for two years, and at the end there remained only one of the four ships with which it began. He had entered the Mediterranean with "poverty and despair as his companions, and revenge as his guide." These comrades attended him, and he kept this aim in view to the end. From Toulon he sailed to the coast of Africa, and there began avenging the wrongs of his master and uncle, Charles I., by capturing a Genoese carrack, partly on the pretext that the Republic had given him offence, and partly through the "clamour of the seamen," who, having entered on a voyage which had much the look of piracy, were minded to enjoy the privileges of the position. Then he took a Spanish galleon, making use of the Parliament flag as a device to throw her off her guard. Having now done his very best to arouse the whole naval forces of the Mediterranean against him, Rupert wisely roamed out into the Atlantic. He had a scheme for making a cruise on the coast of Africa, and thence over to Barbadoes, which was known to be still held for the king by Lord Willoughby of Parham. It may be that this scheme was not very definite, and that he in reality drifted about very much at the mercy of accident, and the pressure exercised on him by the hope of booty, or the constant mutinous conduct of his men. He first went to Madeira, where he was civilly received by the Portuguese authorities, who were subject to hostilities both from Spain and the Parliament, and could therefore not put themselves in a worse position by favouring Rupert. From Madeira he went to the Canaries, and then to the Cape de Verd Islands, and then back to the Azores, always capturing what English and Spanish ships came in his way. On the coast of Africa he was actively helped by the Portuguese, and even by the Dutch, who were now themselves on the eve of war with England, and were not sorry to see the Lord High Admiral engaged in destroying the trade and settlements of the king's disloyal subjects. The Hollanders did not foresee that within a few years the knowledge gained in these cruises would be turned against themselves. Among the officers who followed Rupert was the Captain Robert Holmes who became an admiral after the Restoration and led a squadron to the coast of Africa for the purpose of sweeping out the Dutch.

In the September of 1651 Rupert's strength was sorely diminished. His flagship went down in a gale with three hundred and thirty men, although every effort was made to stop the leak, even to the thrusting of a hundred and twenty pieces of raw beef into it, and stancheoning them down. Rupert was saved by the devotion of his followers. Shortly afterwards another of his little squadron ran aground in the Azores and became a total wreck. He endeavoured to replace these losses by arming his prizes, but his resources diminished too fast. His men continued to desert, and he had no means of replacing them. After his disasters in the islands, he returned to the coast of Africa in May '52, and applied himself alternately to plundering the English at sea, and the Moors on shore in the neighbourhood of Cape Blanco. By this time his vessels had become strained, so that well-found merchant ships had less difficulty in escaping them. The Portuguese, too, had made peace with England. His refuges were being shut to him, and he could not sell his prizes. After failing to capture an English vessel, "very snug, with taut masts," which they took for a man-of-war (the fighting ship was already known by her greater smartness), Rupert deserted Africa and the Atlantic islands and betook himself to the Antilles. He had come too late to assist in the defence of Barbadoes against the Parliament, but the Dutch war had now begun. Rupert had not the smallest scruple in assisting the enemies of England against the enemies of the king. He was busy near Nevis and other parts of the Windward Islands. In the course of his cruising he gave his name to Prince Rupert's Bay on the western side of the island of Dominica, very close to the scene of one of the most famous of English naval victories. At last, among the Virgin Islands, he was overtaken by the most destructive of the many storms he had experienced. His brother Maurice went down with all hands, and Rupert himself, being now worn out and overmatched, returned home with his only remaining ship. He reached Nantes early in 1653 in safety. His one surviving vessel was burned by accident, so that nothing was left of the force with which he had originally sailed, except a few of the adventurers.

While the small remnant of the king's naval forces was pursuing a course of adventures which hovered between piracy and privateering, the Council of State was making vigorous use of its navy for the purpose of stamping out what resistance to its authority still lingered on in outlying territories. In 1651 it armed, in addition to the Home Guards and the squadrons of Penn and Hall, a further squadron under the command of Sir George Ayscue. His mission was to reduce the royal garrison at Barbadoes, and to receive the submission of the plantations of North America. Barbadoes had passed into our hands by occupation as far back as the reign of Elizabeth. It had never been held by the Spaniards, who probably neglected it because it lay well out in the Atlantic to the eastward of the Antilles. Although of little direct value to them, its position made it desirable to a Power which wished to be able to attack the Spanish Indies. Being to windward, it supplied an excellent starting-point for a squadron intending to assail the Antilles. It has a good harbour and fertile soil. The early history of our settlement in Barbadoes is peaceful and obscure. The settlers appear to have included an exceptional number of capitalists, and few among them belonged to that class of emigrants who left England for religious reasons during the reign of Charles I. By the middle of the century it is said to have contained fifty thousand inhabitants, over and above the black slaves and the remnant of the native Indian population. In the desperate state to which the king's fortunes were reduced, his desire to retain so valuable a fragment of his dominions was very natural. He could do little to defend it in the way of supplying men or money. It was, however, in his power to appoint a resolute governor; and this he did. The Lord Willoughby of Parham, who had been named Vice-Admiral by Charles at Helvoetsluys in 1648, had been displaced by the mutiny of his men when the squadron returned from its unsuccessful cruise into the Thames, was sent as governor to Barbadoes, and was well received by the planters. So long as they were not called upon to fight or suffer for the royal cause, these persons were perfectly prepared to recognise the king's authority. They had a militia apparently well armed, and forts in the principal settlement at Carlisle Bay, but the reality of strength was not in proportion to the show.