Admiral Blake

Front matter

s

::^s Jtr.

Bought . i

Chapter I. To The Civil War

When Nelson was about to sail on the one unsuccessful enterprise of his life — the attack on Santa Cruz de Tenerife — he wrote these words to Earl St. Vincent : ' I do not reckon myself equal to Blake : but, if I recollect right, he was more obliged to the wind coming off the land than to any exertions of his own/ ' The greatesu sailor since our world began' was not wholly just in his implied criticism on the seventeenth-century Admiral. Blake did not sail into the harbour of Santa Cruz blindly relying on the chapter of accidents to give him a means of retreat, but this sentence is none the less peculiarly fit to stand at the head of his biography. If Robert Blake had no other claim to be remembered, it would still be enough to entitle him to a high place among our heroes, that he planned and successfully carried out an enterprise which, a hundred and fifty years later, in the midst of a war of continual victories, still seemed over-bold to Horatio Nelson.

B

Robert Blake, like the great soldier and statesman who became his sovereign, ' was by birth a gentleman ; living neither in any considerable height, nor yet in obscurity.' The Blakes were indeed a family of less wealth and less distinguished connections than the Orom wells, but they belonged to the same class. They were country gentry in Somersetshire, owning land and engaged in trade. The anonymous author of the ' History and Life ' of the Admiral probably tells the strict truth when he says that the ' Blakes of Plansfield, in Spaxton parish, were of good antiquity, but of no higher account as to descent than that of the principal yeomanry.' The name was a form of Black, and is so spelt by the author of the ' Life of Cornelius van Tromp.' Early in Elizabeth's reign the Blakes were settled in Bridgewater, and were prosperous traders of sufficient standing to fill the most important municipal offices of the town, and sufficient wealth to leave legacies to the poor. A tradition no better founded than such things usually are, tells how the first information of the sailing of the Invincible Armada was brought by a Bridgewater ship, the property of Humphrey Blake j the Admiral's father. Whether he did the State this service or not, it is certain that he was a prosperous man who left behind him a considerable fortune and a very large family. The fortune is put at 8,000L, a much larger sum in the early seventeenth century than it would be in these days. Even at the end of the last century, Boswell wrote of the Thrales' one hundred and thirty- five thousand pounds as he would have written of a million, or even two, in this year of grace 1886.

In 1625, the date of Humphrey Blake's death, 8,000?. was a third of the income of the richest noble in England, the Earl of Worcester, and common report is exceptionally mendacious if a hundred thousand would bear the same proportion to the equivalent revenue now. The moneywas invested in an estate at Knoll Hill, near Bridgewater, which continued in the Admiral's possession till his death, and passed to his brother. The names of thirteen sons, of whom six grew to manhood, and of two daughters, have been preserved, and there is some reason for believing that even this long list is not exhaustive. Robert Blake was the eldest of the family. His baptism is entered in the parish register under the date of September 27, 1599, and his parents must have been lax in the discharge of their religious duties if they deferred the ceremony for more than a week after his birth. He was, therefore, some five months younger than Oliver Cromwell. As he owes his fame to the discharge of duties forced on him by the civil war, but not sought by any ambition of his own, the records of his early life are necessarily scanty. He was a middle-aged man before he gave up the quiet life of a country gentleman. So little is known about him that it is possible in his case to apply the system of modern historians in the most developed form, and incorporate all the authorities in the text verbatim. They are in fact only two — Anthony Wood and Clarendon. The first, giving a list of B.As in his ' Fasti,' under the date of February 10, 1617, says: 'Robert Blake of Wadham College. This right valiant person having taken no higher degree in this University, I must therefore make mention of him in this place. Born therefore he was at Bridgewater in Somersetshire, being the son

B 2 and heir of Humplirey Blake of tliat place, gent., but descended of an antient family, of tlie Blakes of Blanchfield in the said county. In the beginning of Lent Term in 1615, he being then about fifteen years of age, was matriculated in the University as a member of St. Albans Hall, about which time, standing for a scholarship of C. C. OoU. with Eob. Hegge and Bob. Newlin, was put aside, whether for want of merit or friends I cannot tell. While he continued in the said Hall he was observed by his contemporaries to be an early riser a.nd studious, but withal he did take his pleasure fishing, fowling, and sometimes in stealing of swans. Before the time came when he was to take a degree in arts he translated himself to his countrymen in Wadham Coll., and as a member of that house he did stand for a fellowship of Merton Coll. with Alex. Fisher, John Douglas, Edw. Keynolds, John Earl, &c. an. 1619, but whether it was for want of scholarship, or that his person was not handsome or proper (being but of stature little) which Sir Henry Savile, then Warden of that Coll., did much respect, he lost it, continued in W^adham Coll. without the taking of any other degree, and in 1623 wrote a copy of verses on the death of the learned Camden. Afterwards he went into his own country, where he lived in the condition of a gentleman, but always observed to be puritanically inclined.'

So far Anthony Wood, saying very m.uch what Clarendon says in his more stately way as far as the mere facts go. ' He was a man of a private extraction, yet had enough left him by his father to give him a good education, which his own inclination disposed him to receive in the University of Oxford, where he took tlie degree of a Master of Arts [it was a B.A.], and was enough versed in books for a man wlio intended not to be of any profession, having sufficient of liis own to maintain liim in the plenty he affected, and having then no appearance of ambition to be a greater man than he was. He was of a melancholy and sullen nature, and spent his time most with good fellows, who liked his moroseness and the freedom he used in inveighing against the licence of the times and the power of the Court. They that knew him inwardly discovered that he had an anti-monarchical spirit, when few men thought the government in any danger.' This account is doubtless substantially accurate, and may be accepted with the proviso that Clarendon wrote after the civil war, and does not profess to have known Blake personally. He would naturally interpret the Admiral's early opinions by the light of his later actions.

If the amount of evidence is not considerable, it has the merit of affording a reasonably good text for speculation. And the biographers have not been wanting to themselves. They have asked how Blake came to lose the fellowships, and what would have happened to England if he had won either. Even Dr. Johnson has left a sententious reflection on Sir Henry Savile's curious whim as a thing not to be expected from an editor of Chrysostom. In the course of conversation, if the subject had ever come up, the Doctor would probably have pointed out that Wood's passing reference to the Warden's liking for tall fellows was not necessarily much more than a proof of the Oxford man's fondness for a mild jest at the expense of the Head of a College. Neither was it necessary for Mr. Hepworth Dixon to bring in Blake's puritan principles to account for his failure. Biographers have, in fact, jumped to the conclusion that because the student from Somersetshire beat Tromp in the fifties he was qualified to hold a fellowship thirty years earlier. For the rest, if he had gained one, it would not have prevented him from girding on the sword in 1642. Colonel Michael Jones made a very efiicient commander of the Parliament's army in Ireland, lawyer as he was, and a fellowship, even if he had held it so long, would not have prevented Blake from defending Taunton. As regards his learning we may safely accept Clarendon's statement that the future Admiral worked at Oxford as much and as little as thousands of others who have gone through the University because it was part of their education as gentlemen, but with no intention of qualifying for a learned profession. He could quote Latin to the end of his life. The verses on Camden's death were not by him, but by William Blake, perhaps a younger brother, and it is possible that Wood's mistake as to their authorship led him into exaggerating the length of Robert's stay at the University.

Upon the death of his father in 1625, Blake entered into possession of the family estate of Knoll Hill, and with it he would naturally undertake the duty of educating and establishing in life his very numerous brothers and sisters. This obligation, which was the burden attached to his privileges as eldest son, probably accounts for the fact that he lived unmarried ; ' though some would insinuate,' says a biographer, '• that, as far as his religion would allow, he had a monkish turn, and others, that he was a woman-hater.' His election as member for Bridgewater in 1640 is to a certain extent a proof of tlie trutli of Clarendon's statement that Blake was known for tlie freedom of his comments on the King's administration. Two Puritan divines, Devenish and Norman, are said to have been mainly instrumental in securing his return. Indeed, the Admiral's whole life is there to prove that he was one of the majority of thinking Englishmen, Clarendon himself and Falkland among them, who heartily disliked Charles's method of government. England was not oppressed by a grinding tyranny between 1625 and 1640, nor was it the country to have endured oppression. The habit of talking of the King as if he had been a Duke of Alva, popular a few years ago, may now be given up ; but if Charles was not a tyrant he was guilty of the folly of continually advancing claims which would have led to tyranny if applied by a stronger man. His habit of appealing to a higher law which gave him the right to override the law as known to Englishmen was in itself enough to irritate his subjects. They feared for the future if they were not seriously oppressed in the present. And this government which asked the country to trust its wisdom so blindly was weak at home and imbecile in its foreign policy. Above all, Englishmen suspected, and, as we now know, with justice, that the Court, if not the King, was prepared to go to dangerous lengths in intriguing with the Pope and the Catholic Powers. They saw the King's fondness for all that seemed to tend to Eome, and his hearty dislike to whatever was most hostile to it. The long struggle with Spain and the Catholic reaction had made it the first article of most Englishmen's creed, that the Pope and all he represented were the visible agents of the Enemy. It is permissible to liave no doubt of Blake's opinion on tlie subject. He almost certainly looked at tke Komanising tendencies of tbe Court and the misgovernment of the King as parts of the same whole, which it was the duty of Englishmen to amend at the first fair opportunity. With these opinions he would naturally be a welcome candidate for the country party, when the failure of the first Bishops' war ^ compelled Charles to have recourse to his Parliament after an interval of eleven years.

Blake was not re-elected after the hasty dissolution of the Short Parliament. His place was taken in the Long Parliament by a Wyndham. The fact that the Wyndhams were steady Eoyalists throughout the war is not in itself a proof that there had been any change of opinion in Bridgewater between the beginning and the end of 1640. In the November of that year the country had been angered and frightened into unanimity. It was determined to be done with the kind of government it had endured for more than a generation under James and Charles. Men who were to fight for the King, and men who w^ere to fight for King and Parliament, were of one mind when the Houses met at Westminster. While this vehement feeling lasted, it mattered little who was chosen by a constituency as its representative, as long as he was not a mere courtier, and Bridgewater would naturally send a member of a great neighbouring house to Parliament. The influence of the Wyndhams was strong in that part of Somerset,

* It is, I trust, not impertinent to remind the reader that the 'first Bishops' war,' so called, was the King's futile attempt to support Episcopacy in Scotland in 1639.

and would be vigorously used at such a crisis as a matter of course.

Fifteen months later a great change had come over the country. The attack on the King's methods of government had inevitably developed into an attack on the hereditary power of the crown. With this change had come division ; on one side, a profound distrust of the character of the King, and an equally deejD hatred of the ecclesiastical policy of Laud, had taken form in a series of measures, which, whatever else we may think of them, were assuredly calculated to produce a very sweeping change in the character of the English Monarchy and Church. Men who thought first of all of the liberties of England and the puritan side of religion were prepared to support these measures. On the other hand, those to whom the ancient Monarchy and the Church of their youth were dear recoiled when they began to see whither the Parliament was tending. In the early summer of 1642 England was at the parting of the ways, and though she knew it not, was on the verge of the great civil war.

Sainte-Beuve, in his essay on D'Aubigne, has noted the old Huguenot's delight in the hearty zeal of the Frenchmen's fighting in the religious struggle of the sixteenth century. It was little, in D'Aubigne's opinion, that torrents of blood were spilt, but much that Frenchmen could freely throw away their lives for a cause. We may be pardoned, or even think no pardon is needed, for looking in some such spirit on our own great struggle of the seventeenth century. There was hypocrisy and spite and acrid priggery on the side of the Parliament. There was unpatriotic intrigue and dissolute ruffianism on tlie side of the King, but it is not by these things that either side is to be judged. The meaner men of the parties could never have emerged from obscurity except by the involuntary help of nobler fighters. It may be said of the country as justly as of its King, that it nothing common did nor mean upon that memorable scene. Cavalier and Eoundhead both fought like men, and it is good for a country when its sons can so fight for principles.

Blake took the side of the Parliament, and having once drawn the sword, he threw away the scabbard. In the absence of any details of his words and actions we are reduced to argue from the conduct of the class to which he belonged, in order to form an idea of his course. As a small country gentleman of puritanical leanings and grim anti-papal patriotism his natural place was with the Parliament. He took it, and in the spirit at least he kept it till he died on board the ^ George,' entering Plymouth Sound, worn out by the greatest series of victories save one ever gained by any English admiral.

Chapter II. Three Sieges

The crisis of the civil war was passed before the name of Blake began to be of any considerable mark among the Parliamentary officers. His great feat, the defence of Taunton, was performed during a year beginning six days after the battle of Marston Moor and ending in the July of the following year ; when the New Model advanced into the West, after ruining the King's army in the Midlands at Naseby. During these critical months he alone upheld the cause of the Parliament in the important belt of country which extends from the Severn to the Channel, and he did his cause vital service by hindering the Western army from marching to the help of the King. Up to July 1644, he had been known only as an able and trustworthy officer in Popham's regiment of militia. As might be expected, his early services have shone with a certain amount of glory reflected from his later victories. Family tradition, and even contemporary Royalist opinion, have credited him with having raised a troop, variously said to have been horse, foot, or dragoons, for the forces of the Parliament. This statement seems to have been dictated rather by the opinion of the writers as to what, considering his subsequent eminence, lie ought to have done, than founded on any knowledge of what he actually did. Wherever his name appears, it is as a member of Popham's regiment. Whatever recruiting he did was doubtless for his own corps, and in that service he would naturally not be remiss. Indeed, when the war began, there was no occasion to raise particular corps for the Parliament's service in Somersetshire. The organised force of the county, formed of the militia regiments of Sir John Horner and Colonel Alexander Popham, was loyal to the Houses. They had so marked a superiority over the unorganised Royalists, that when the Marquis of Hertford attempted to serve the King's summonses of array at Wells in the summer of 1642, he was driven into Hampshire without even being able to strike a blow. It is characteristic of the absence of any conscious tendency to a social revolution on the Parliamentary side, that Popham's regiment was raised by precisely the means used to form forces for the King. Alexander Popham himself was a country gentleman of large estate, and he recruited his men from among the tenants on his manor of Houndstreet, near Bridgewater. Blake took his place, according to the social ideas of the time, as lieutenant or captain under his wealthy neighbour. At a later period we shall find the name of one of the Pophams associated with Blake's among the chiefs of the fleet.

A detailed account of the first campaigns in the West would be out of place here, but some leading facts must be mentioned for the purpose of showing, as far as possible, what was Blake's share in these, the most picturesque and chivalrous episodes of the civil war. After his failure at Wells in August of 1642, tlie Marquis of Hertford retired to Slierborne in Dorset. Here he remained till Goring surrendered Portsmouth to the Parliament, and then finding his position untenable, marched across Dorset and Somersetshire, to Minhead on the Bristol Channel. That he should have been allowed to march right past the force which had lately driven him from Wells is a proof of the military inexperience of both sides in the early times of the war, and also of the prevailing belief that the quarrel would be settled by the first battle between the King and the main Parliamentary army. The Somersetshire men were probably under the impression that it was nowise incumbent on them to fight unless they were directly attacked. If so, they soon had good cause to wish they had been more stirring. The marquis himself took ship at Minhead, and passed over to South Wales, but he despatched a small body of horse to Cornwall, under the command of Sir Kalph Hopton, the best officer in the King's service. This handful of cavalry, and its brave and skilful leader, were soon reinforced by the Cornish Koyalists under Sir Bevil Greenvil, Sir Nicholas Slanning, and Sir John Trevannion, and from the two was formed the famous Cornish army which by the end of the summer of 1643 had conquered all the West, except the ports, for the King, and had joined hands with his forces from the midland counties. What share Blake had in the various scandalous Parliamentary defeats under their incompetent generals, the Earl of Stamford, and Euthven, at Bodmin, Tavistock, Stratton, and elsewhere it is impossible to say. As part of the garrison of Bristol, to which his regiment belonged was detached under the Earl in the "West, it may, however, be the case that he learned his business in the wholesome school of defeat.

While the Oornishmen were organising and preparing for their advance, the Somersetshire Royalists had not been wholly idle. The Stawells, Wyndhams, and other Royalist gentry, whose estates for the most part lay to the west of the Parret, began to stir for their cause. As early as the summer of 1642 blood had been drawn by Sir John Stawell's arraymen at Marshall's Elms, and although the King's partisans were not yet strong enough to make head against the Parliamentarians, they kept up a struggle for influence for a time. It is in some part of this confused conflict that we must place an event in Blake's life which is singularly characteristic of the Puritan and the Englishman. His regiment was in possession of Bridgewater, engaged in trying to bring the surrounding country over from its allegiance to the Wyndhams. Among the captains of the regiment was Samuel Blake, his younger brother. One day ' Captain Samuel Blake was diverting himself at a little inn, then and now the Shoulder of Mutton, at Pawlet, four miles from Bridgewater ' (' Hist, and Life/ p. 67), when he heard that a Royalist officer was at Combwich, in the neighbourhood, engaged in levying men for the King. The array captain was attended by an armed party, and Samuel Blake was alone, which of itself was sufficient reason for keeping quiet. The Malignant, moreover, was on his way to the Royalist side of the Parret, which was a further motive why Captain Samuel Blake should ^ take his bate and go home ' peacefully. With a rashness, however, which may be, without excessive want of charity, partly accounted for by the excellence of the ' bate ' at the Shoulder of Mutton, the Parliamentary officer started in pursuit of the intruders, and caught them up at Streachill. Here he persisted in attacking them, and was inevitably — but one hopes not without reluctance on the part of arraymen — cut down. The bad news was soon brought to Bridgewater, and reported to the officers of Popham's regiment. None of them were inclined to carry it to Blake, who was known to have a particular affection for his rash brother. "While they were discussing in whispers and debating who should tell, in the constrained way natural to the circumstances, Blake joined them, and soon saw that something was amiss. The absence of his brother would of itself be a painful warning. He was not the man to hang back for hearing the worst, and his direct question soon extorted the evil news, with all the circumstances. When the story was ended, he made the laconic and superficially heartless comment, '• Sam had no business there,' and went stoically about his duty. When the work was done he returned to his quarters, and then the natural man let his grief have its way. When his door was shut his servant heard him break into weeping, exclaiming, ^Died Abner as the fool dieth.' He would be a strange Englishman who did not sympathise with lago's reluctance to carry his heart upon his sleeve for daws to peck at.

By the summer of 1643 the Royalists were masters in the West. The Cornish army and Rupert's men had joined hands in Somersetshire, and had utterly routed the unlucky Sir William Waller at Roundaway Down.

In July the combined Eoyalist armies sat down before Bristol. The town was insecurely held by Colonel Nathaniel Fiennes for the Parliament with a weakish garrison. There was a strong Eoyalist party in Bristol, and a plot to hand it over to the King had only recently been crushed by stern military executions. Neither was the town strong in itself. It lies in the low ground round the juncture of the Avon and the Frome. On the south or Somersetshire side it was not commanded, but on the north or Gloucestershire side its defences were composed of forts on Prior's, St. Michael's, and Beacon Hill, which skirt the Frome. Blake was in command of Prior's Hill. These forts were connected by a low wall hastily constructed, and not appreciably strengthened by a shallow and for the most part dry ditch. As long as this line was held Bristol was safe, but when it was pierced at any point the town ceased to be defensible, for it lay ' in a hole,' as a Eoyalist officer who served in the siege justly points out. Once inside the line, the assailants could, of course, clear it by charging the defenders in flank. This is precisely what happened. The intaking of Bristol — to use Dalgetty's expressive though, unhappily, obsolete word — was an excellent example of the sieges of the civil war. In these remarkable military operations — until Cromwell appeared on the scene — the general method seems to have been to send ' fire-balls ' and other missiles over the wall at the roofs of the houses, until you thought you had thoroughly frightened the enemy, and then to fall on with pike and sword, keeping your cavalry ready for a charge up the streets as soon as the gates had been opened by the infantry.

Against a weak garrison or a sympatlietic town, this procedure had its merits and succeeded very well. Where these conditions were wanting, as at Gloucester or Taunton, it commonly resulted in the loss of hundreds of men uselessly shot down at the edge of a ditch. The Royalists made their attacks from both sides : the Cornish, army on the south, and Rupert's force, from Durdham Down, on the north. They prepared for the storm by a series of inefficient cannonades, night attacks, and other ' military masquerades/ which made ' beautiful pieces of danger ' in the dark. In the course of these preparatory operations, Prior's Hill fort was ^ shrewdly torn,' but it does not appear to have been effectually breached. At last, on the night of July 25-26, after various feints and postponements, the Royalist chiefs made their final and successful storm. The time had been fixed for the early morning of the 26th, but the Cornish men were so eao^er to begrin that they anticipated the hour, and rushed furiously at the southern fortifications in the dark. They were decisively repulsed, with the loss of their gallant leaders, Slanniug and Trevannion. As soon as Rupert's men on Durdham Down saw the flash of the Cornish army's fire, they, too, mustered for the attack, burning not to be outdone. One consequence of all this undisciplined ardour was that the northern force had to attack without their storming ladders, which were not yet ready, and, except at one point, they fared as might have been expected. Lord Grandison commanded the force which attempted Prior's Hill fort, and advanced with all the attention to art possible in his unprovided state. Captain Blake was found on the alert, with his matches

C burning. Attacks to right and left of the fort, headed by lieutenants of Lord Rivers' regiment, with fifty men apiece but no ladders, were summarily beaten off. Colonel Fawcett attached a petard to a gate, but it exploded outwards only. Then the repulsed men were drawn together, reinforced from the reserve, and having failed at the weaker points, were sent ladderless, as before, to try the desperate task of storming the fort. They failed to shake the nerves of Captain Robert Blake and his musketeers, and were again beaten off with loss. Hopeless as the game was, the Royalists were not prepared to give it up. Their officers had many weaknesses, but want of courage was never one of them, and Sir Ralph Dutton brought his men on again, to be again uselessly sacrificed. A last attempt was now made by Lord Grandison himself. Sword in hand, he led his soldiers into the very ditch. By this time Blake had become so conscious of his strength that he no longer waited to be attacked, but sallied out and met the enemy at the foot of the wall. A purely professional soldier would have profited by his assailant's folly to win an easier victory, and have shot him down at leisure from over the parapet, but in the civil war there was a certain love of fighting for its own sake, and a spirit of fair play, which made men do these rash things. The Parliamentarians yielded to the carnal vanity of a desire to show the Malignants that the saints were not afraid to meet them on equal terms, and so received them at push of pike in the ditch.