A good biography is ever welcome; and if it be the biography of a good
and a great man, the cordiality of the _bienvenu_ is doubled. Mr
Prescott remarks,[2] that there is no kind of writing, having truth
and instruction for its main object, which, on the whole, is so
interesting and popular as biography: its superiority, in this point
of view, to history, consisting in the fact, that the latter has to
deal with masses--with nations, which, like corporate societies, seem
to have no soul, and whose chequered vicissitudes may be contemplated
rather with curiosity for the lessons they convey, than with personal
sympathy. Among contemporary biographers, Mr Hepworth Dixon has
already established for himself a name of some distinction by his
popular lives of William Penn and John Howard; nor will his credit
suffer a decline in the instance of the memoir now before us--that of
the gallant and single-minded patriot, Robert Blake. Of this fine old
English worthy, republican as he was, the Tory Hume freely affirms,
that never man, so zealous for a faction, was so much respected and
even esteemed by his opponents. 'Disinterested, generous, liberal;
ambitious only of true glory, dreadful only to his avowed enemies; he
forms one of the most perfect characters of the age, and the
least stained with those errors and vices which were then so
predominant.'[3] Yet hitherto the records of this remarkable man have
been scanty in matter, and scattered in form--the most notable being
Dr Johnson's sketch in the _Gentleman's Magazine_, and another in the
_Encyclopædia Britannica_. Mr Dixon has consulted several scarce
works, of genuine though obsolete authority, and a large mass of
original documents and family papers, in preparing the present able
and attractive memoir; not omitting a careful examination of the
squibs, satires, and broadsides of that time, in his endeavour to
trace, in forgotten nooks and corners, the anecdotes and details
requisite, as he says, to complete a character thus far chiefly known
by a few heroic outlines. We propose taking a brief survey of his
life-history of the great admiral and general at sea--the 'Puritan
Sea-King,' as Mr Dixon more characteristically than accurately calls
his hero. A sea-king he was, every inch of him; but to dub him
Puritan, is like giving up to party what was meant for British
mankind. To many, the term suggests primarily a habit of speaking
through the nose; and Blake had thundered commands through too many a
piping gale and battle blast for _that_.
Robert Blake was born at Bridgewater, in August 1599. His father,
Humphrey Blake, was a merchant trading with Spain--a man whose temper
seems to have been too sanguine and adventurous for the ordinary
action of trade, finally involving him in difficulties which clouded
his latter days, and left his family in straitened circumstances: his
name, however, was held in general respect; and we find that he lived
in one of the best houses in Bridgewater, and twice filled the chair
of its chief magistrate. The perils to which mercantile enterprise was
then liable--the chance escapes and valorous deeds which the
successful adventurer had to tell his friends and children on the dark
winter nights--doubtless formed a part of the food on which the
imagination of young Blake, 'silent and thoughtful from his
childhood,' was fed in the 'old house at home.' At the Bridgewater
grammar-school, Robert received his early education, making tolerable
acquaintance with Latin and Greek, and acquiring a strong bias towards
a literary life. This _penchant_ was confirmed by his subsequent
career at Oxford, where he matriculated at sixteen, and where he
strove hard but fruitlessly for scholarships and fellowships at
different colleges. His failure to obtain a Merton fellowship has been
attributed to a crotchet of the warden's, Sir Henry Savile, in favour
of tall men: 'The young Somersetshire student, thick-set, fair
complexioned, and only five feet six, fell below his standard of manly
beauty;' and thus the Cavalier warden, in denying this aspirant the
means of cultivating literature on a little university oatmeal, was
turning back on the world one who was fated to become a republican
power of the age. This shining light, instead of comfortably and
obscurely merging in a petty constellation of Alma Mater, was to
become a bright particular star, and dwell apart. The avowed
liberalism of Robert may, however, have done more in reality to shock
Sir Henry, than his inability to add a cubit to his stature. It is
pleasant to know, that the 'admiral and general at sea' never outgrew
a tenderness for literature--his first-love, despite the rebuff of his
advances. Even in the busiest turmoil of a life teeming with accidents
by flood and field, he made it a point of pride not to forget his
favourite classics. Nor was it till after nine years' experience of
college-life, and when his father was no longer able to manage his
_res angusta vitæ_, that Robert finally abandoned his long-cherished
plans, and retired with a sigh and last adieu from the banks of the
Isis.
When he returned to Bridgewater, in time to close his father's eyes,
and superintend the arrangements of the family, he was already
remarkable for that 'iron will, that grave demeanour, that free and
dauntless spirit,' which so distinguished his after-course. His tastes
were simple, his manners somewhat bluntly austere; a refined dignity
of countenance, and a picturesque vigour of conversation, invested him
with a social interest, to which his indignant invectives against
court corruptions gave distinctive character. To the Short Parliament
he was sent as member for his native town; and in 1645, was returned
by Taunton to the Long Parliament. At the dissolution of the former,
which he regarded as a signal for action, he began to prepare arms
against the king; his being one of the first troops in the field, and
engaged in almost every action of importance in the western counties.
His superiority to the men about him lay in the 'marvellous fertility,
energy, and comprehensiveness of his military genius.' Prince Rupert
alone, in the Royalist camp, could rival him as a 'partisan soldier.'
His first distinguished exploit was his defence of Prior's Hill fort,
at the siege of Bristol--which contrasts so remarkably with the
pusillanimity of his chief, Colonel Fiennes. Next comes his yet more
brilliant defence of Lyme--then a little fishing-town, with some 900
inhabitants, of which the defences were a dry ditch, a few
hastily-formed earth-works, and three small batteries, but which the
Cavalier host of Prince Maurice, trying storm, stratagem, blockade,
day after day, and week after week, failed to reduce or dishearten.
'At Oxford, where Charles then was, the affair was an inexplicable
marvel and mystery: every hour the court expected to hear that the
"little vile fishing-town," as Clarendon contemptuously calls it, had
fallen, and that Maurice had marched away to enterprises of greater
moment; but every post brought word to the wondering council, that
Colonel Blake still held out, and that his spirited defence was
rousing and rallying the dispersed adherents of Parliament in those
parts.' After the siege was raised, the Royalists found that more men
of gentle blood had fallen under Blake's fire at Lyme, than in all the
other sieges and skirmishes in the western counties since the opening
of the war. The details of the siege are given with graphic effect by
Mr Dixon, and are only surpassed in interest by those connected with
Blake's subsequent and yet more celebrated defence of Taunton, to
which the third chapter of this biography is devoted.
The hero's fame had become a spell in the west: it was seen that he
rivalled Rupert in rapid and brilliant execution, and excelled him in
the caution and sagacity of his plans. He took Taunton--a place so
important at that juncture, as standing on and controlling the great
western highway--in July 1644, within a week of Cromwell's defeat of
Rupert at Marston Moor. All the vigour of the Royalists was brought
to bear on the captured town; Blake's defence of which is
justly characterised as abounding with deeds of individual
heroism--exhibiting in its master-mind a rare combination of civil and
military genius. The spectacle of an unwalled town, in an inland
district, with no single advantage of site, surrounded by powerful
castles and garrisons, and invested by an enemy brave, watchful,
numerous, and well provided with artillery, successfully resisting
storm, strait, and blockade for several months, thus paralysing the
king's power, and affording Cromwell time to remodel the army,
naturally arrested the attention of military writers at that time; and
French authors of this class bestowed on Taunton the name of the
modern Saguntum. The rage of the Royalists at this prolonged
resistance was extreme. Reckoning from the date when Blake first
seized the town, to that of Goring's final retreat, the defence lasted
exactly a year, and under circumstances of almost overwhelming
difficulty to the besieged party, who, in addition to the fatigue of
nightly watches, and the destruction of daily conflicts, suffered from
terrible scarcity of provisions. 'Not a day passed without a fire;
sometimes eight or ten houses were burning at the same moment; and in
the midst of all the fear, horror, and confusion incident to such
disasters, Blake and his little garrison had to meet the
storming-parties of an enemy brave, exasperated, and ten times their
own strength. But every inch of ground was gallantly defended. A broad
belt of ruined cottages and gardens was gradually formed between the
besiegers and the besieged; and on the heaps of broken walls and burnt
rafters, the obstinate contest was renewed from day to day.' At last
relief arrived from London; and Goring, in savage dudgeon, beat a
retreat, notwithstanding the wild oath he had registered, either to
reduce that haughty town, or to lay his bones in its trenches.
Blake was now the observed of all observers; but, unlike most of his
compeers, he abstained from using his advantages for purposes of
selfish or personal aggrandisement. He kept aloof from the 'centre of
intrigues,' and remained at his post, 'doing his duty humbly and
faithfully at a distance from Westminster; while other men, with less
than half his claims, were asking and obtaining the highest honours
and rewards from a grateful and lavish country.' Nor, indeed, did he
at any time side with the ultras of his party, but loudly disapproved
of the policy of the regicides. This, coupled with his influence, so
greatly deserved and so deservedly great, made him an object of
jealousy with Cromwell and his party; and it was owing, perhaps, to
their anxiety to keep him removed from the home-sphere of action, that
the hero of Taunton was now appointed to the chief naval command.
Hitherto, and for years afterwards, no state, ancient or modern, as
Macaulay points out, had made a separation between the military and
the naval service. Cimon and Lysander, Pompey and Agrippa, had fought
by sea as well as by land: at Flodden, the right wing of the English
was led by her admiral, and the French admiral led the Huguenots at
Jarnac, &c. Accordingly, Blake was summoned from his pacific
government at Taunton, to assume the post of 'General and Admiral at
Sea;' a title afterwards changed to 'General of the Fleet.' Two others
were associated with him in the command; but Blake seems at _least_ to
have been recognised as _primus inter pares_. The navy system was in
deplorable need of reform; and a reformer it found in Robert Blake,
from the very day he became an admiral. His care for the well-being of
his men made him an object of their almost adoring attachment. From
first to last, he stood alone as England's model-seaman. 'Envy,
hatred, and jealousy dogged the steps of every other officer in the
fleet; but of him, both then and afterwards, every man spoke well.'
The 'tremendous powers' intrusted to him by the Council of State, he
exercised with off-handed and masterly success--startling politicians
and officials of the _ancien régime_ by his bold and open tactics, and
his contempt for tortuous bypaths in diplomacy. His wondrous exploits
were performed with extreme poverty of means. He was the first to
repudiate and disprove the supposed fundamental maxim in marine
warfare, that no ship could attack a castle, or other strong
fortification, with any hope of success. The early part of his naval
career was occupied in opposing and defeating the piratical
performances of Prince Rupert, which then constituted the support of
the exiled Stuarts, and which Mr Dixon refuses to interpret in such
mild colours as Warburton and others. Blake's utmost vigilance and
activity were required to put down this extraordinary system of
freebooting; and by the time that he had successively overcome Rupert,
and the minor but stubborn adventurers, Grenville and Carteret, he was
in request to conduct the formidable war with Holland, and to cope
with such veterans as Tromp, De Witt, De Ruyter, &c. Of the various
encounters in which he thus signalised himself, his biographer gives
most spirited descriptions, such as their length alone deters us from
quoting. On one occasion only did Blake suffer a defeat; and this one
is easily explained by--first, Tromp's overwhelming superiority of
force; secondly, the extreme deficiency of men in the English fleet;
and thirdly, the cowardice or disaffection of several of Blake's
captains at a critical moment in the battle. Notwithstanding this
disaster, not a whisper was heard against the admiral either in the
Council of State or in the city; his offer to resign was flatteringly
rejected; and he soon found, that the 'misfortune which might have
ruined another man, had given him strength and influence in the
country.' This disaster, in fact, gave him power to effect reforms in
the service, and to root out abuses which had defied all his efforts
in the day of his success. He followed it up by the great battle of
Portland, and other triumphant engagements.
Then came his sweeping _tours de force_ in the Mediterranean; in six
months he established himself, as Mr Dixon says, as a power in that
great midland sea, from which his countrymen had been politically
excluded since the age of the Crusades--teaching nations, to which
England's very name was a strange sound, to respect its honours and
its rights; chastising the pirates of Barbary with unprecedented
severity; making Italy's petty princes feel the power of the northern
Protestants; causing the pope himself to tremble on his seven hills;
and startling the council-chambers of Venice and Constantinople with
the distant echoes of our guns. And be it remembered, that England had
then no Malta, Corfu, and Gibraltar as the bases of naval operations
in the Mediterranean: on the contrary, Blake found that in almost
every gulf and island of that sea--in Malta, Venice, Genoa, Leghorn,
Algiers, Tunis, and Marseilles--there existed a rival and an enemy;
nor were there more than three or four harbours in which he could
obtain even bread for love or money.
After this memorable cruise, he had to conduct the Spanish war--a
business quite to his mind; for though his highest renown had been
gained in his conflicts with the Dutch, he had secretly disliked such
encounters between two Protestant states; whereas, in the
case of Popish Spain, his soul leaped at the anticipation of
battle--sympathising as he did with the Puritan conviction, that Spain
was the devil's stronghold in Europe. At this period, Blake was
suffering from illness, and was sadly crippled in his naval
equipments, having to complain constantly of the neglect at home to
remedy the exigencies of the service. 'Our ships,' he writes,
'extremely foul, winter drawing on, our victuals expiring, all stores
failing, our men falling sick through the badness of drink, and eating
their victuals boiled in salt water for two months' space' (1655.) His
own constitution was thoroughly undermined. For nearly a year, remarks
his biographer, 'he had never quitted the "foul and defective"
flag-ship. Want of exercise and sweet food, beer, wine, water, bread,
and vegetables, had helped to develop scurvy and dropsy; and his
sufferings from these diseases were now acute and continuous.' But his
services were indispensable, and Blake was not the man to shrink from
dying in harness. His sun set gloriously at Santa Cruz--that
miraculous and unparalleled action, as Clarendon calls it, which
excited such grateful enthusiasm at home. At home! words of
fascination to the maimed and enfeebled veteran,[4] who now turned his
thoughts so anxiously towards the green hills of his native land.
Cromwell's letter of thanks, the plaudits of parliament, and the
jewelled ring sent to him by his loving countrymen, reached him while
homeward bound. But he was not again to tread the shores he had
defended so well.
As the ships rolled through the Bay of Biscay, his sickness increased,
and affectionate adherents saw with dismay that he was drawing near to
the gates of the grave. 'Some gleams of the old spirit broke forth as
they approached the latitude of England. He inquired often and
anxiously if the white cliffs were yet in sight. He longed to behold
once more the swelling downs, the free cities, the goodly churches of
his native land.... At last, the Lizard was announced. Shortly
afterwards, the bold cliffs and bare hills of Cornwall loomed out
grandly in the distance. But it was too late for the dying hero. He
had sent for the captains and other great officers of his fleet, to
bid them farewell; and while they were yet in his cabin, the
undulating hills of Devonshire, glowing with the tints of early
autumn, came full in view.... But the eyes which had so yearned to
behold this scene once more were at that very instant closing in
death. Foremost of the victorious squadron, the _St George_ rode with
its precious burden into the Sound; and just as it came into full view
of the eager thousands crowding the beach, the pier-heads, the walls
of the citadel, &c. ready to catch the first glimpse of the hero of
Santa Cruz, and salute him with a true English welcome--he, in his
silent cabin, in the midst of his lion-hearted comrades, now sobbing
like little children, yielded up his soul to God.'
The corpse was embalmed, and conveyed to Greenwich, where it lay in
state for some days. On the 4th of September 1657, the Thames bore a
solemn funeral procession, which moved slowly, amid salvos of
artillery, to Westminster, where a new vault had been prepared in the
noble abbey. The tears of a nation made it hallowed ground. A prince,
of whom the epigram declares that, if he never said a foolish thing,
he never did a wise one--saw fit to disturb the hero's grave, drag out
the embalmed body, and cast it into a pit in the abbey-yard. One of
Charles Stuart's most witless performances! For Blake is not to be
confounded--though the Merry Monarch thought otherwise--with the
Iretons and Bradshaws who were similarly exhumed. The admiral was a
moderate in the closest, a patriot in the widest sense.
In the chivalric disposition of the man, there was true affinity to
the best qualities of the Cavalier, mingled sometimes with a certain
grim humour, all his own. Many are the illustrations we might adduce
of this high-minded and generous temperament. For instance: meeting a
French frigate of forty guns in the Straits, and signaling for the
captain to come on board his flag-ship, the latter, considering the
visit one of friendship and ceremony, there being no _declared_ war
between the two nations--though the French conduct at Toulon had
determined England on measures of retaliation--readily complied with
Blake's summons; but was astounded, on entering the admiral's cabin,
at being told he was a prisoner, and requested to give up his sword.
No! was the surprised but resolute Frenchman's reply. Blake felt that
an advantage had been gained by a misconception, and scorning to make
a brave officer its victim, he told his guest he might go back to his
ship, if he wished, and fight it out as long as he was able. The
captain, we are told, thanked him for his handsome offer, and retired.
After two hours' hard fighting, he struck his flag; like a true French
knight, he made a low bow, kissed his sword affectionately, and
delivered it to his conqueror. Again: when Blake captured the Dutch
herring-fleet off Bochness, consisting of 600 boats, instead of
destroying or appropriating them, he merely took a tithe of the whole
freight, in merciful consideration towards the poor families whose
entire capital and means of life it constituted. This 'characteristic
act of clemency' was censured by many as Quixotic, and worse. But, as
Mr Dixon happily says: 'Blake took no trouble to justify his noble
instincts against such critics. His was indeed a happy fate: the only
fault ever advanced by friend or foe against his public life, was an
excess of generosity towards his vanquished enemies!' His sense of the
comic is amusingly evidenced by the story of his _ruse_ during a
dearth in the same siege. Tradition reports, that only one animal, a
hog, was left alive in the town, and that more than half starved. In
the afternoon, Blake, feeling that in their depression a laugh would
do the defenders as much good as a dinner, had the hog carried to all
the posts and whipped, so that its screams, heard in many places,
might make the enemy suppose that fresh supplies had somehow been
obtained. According to his biographer, never man had finer sense of
sarcasm, or used that weapon with greater effect--loving to find
expression for its scorn and merriment in the satires of Horace and
Juvenal; and thus in some degree relieving the stern fervour of
Puritan piety with the more easy graces of ancient scholarship.
The moral aspects of his character appear in this memoir in an
admirable light. If he did not stand so high as some others in public
notoriety, it was mainly because, to stand higher than he did, he must
plant his feet on a _bad_ eminence. His patriotism was as pure as
Cromwell's was selfish. Mr Dixon alludes to the strong points of
contrast, as well as of resemblance, between the two men. Both, he
says, were sincerely religious, undauntedly brave, fertile in
expedients, irresistible in action. Born in the same year, they began
and almost closed their lives at the same time. Both were country
gentlemen of moderate fortune; both were of middle age when the
revolution came. Without previous knowledge or professional training,
both attained to the highest honours of the respective services. But
there the parallel ends. Anxious only for the glory and interest of
his country, Blake took little or no care of his personal
aggrandisement. His contempt for money, his impatience with the mere
vanities of power, were supreme. Bribery he abhorred in all its
shapes. He was frank and open to a fault; his heart was ever in his
hand, and his mind ever on his lips. His honesty, modesty, generosity,
sincerity, and magnanimity, were unimpeached. Cromwell's inferior
moral qualities made him distrust the great seaman; yet now and then,
as in the case of the street tumult at Malaga, he was fain to express
his admiration of Robert Blake. The latter was wholly unversed in the
science of nepotism, and 'happy family' compacts; for although
desirous of aiding his relatives, he was jealous of the least offence
on their part, and never overlooked it. Several instances of this
disposition are on record. When his brother Samuel, in rash zeal for
the Commonwealth, ventured to exceed his duty, and was killed in a
fray which ensued, Blake was terribly shocked, but only said: 'Sam had
no business there.' Afterwards, however, he shut himself up in his
room, and bewailed his loss in the words of Scripture: 'Died Abner as
a fool dieth!' His brother Benjamin, again, to whom he was strongly
attached, falling under suspicion of neglect of duty, was instantly
broken, and sent on shore. 'This rigid measure of justice against his
own flesh and blood, silenced every complaint, and the service gained
immeasurably in spirit, discipline, and confidence.' Yet more touching
was the great admiral's inexorable treatment of his favourite brother
Humphrey, who, in a moment of extreme agitation, had failed in his
duty. The captains went to Blake in a body, and argued that Humphrey's
fault was a neglect rather than a breach of orders, and suggested his
being sent away to England till it was forgotten. But Blake was
outwardly unmoved, though inwardly his bowels did yearn over his
brother, and sternly said: 'If none of you will accuse him, I must be
his accuser.' Humphrey was dismissed from the service. It is affecting
to know how painfully Blake missed his familiar presence during his
sick and lonely passage homewards, when the hand of death was upon
that noble heart. To Humphrey he bequeathed the greater part of his
property.
In the rare intervals of private life which he enjoyed on shore, Blake
also compels our sincere regard. When released for awhile from
political and professional duties, he loved to run down to Bridgewater
for a few days or weeks, and, as his biographer says, with his chosen
books, and one or two devout and abstemious friends, to indulge in all
the luxuries of seclusion. 'He was by nature self-absorbed and
taciturn. His morning was usually occupied with a long walk, during
which he appeared to his simple neighbours to be lost in profound
thought, as if working out in his own mind the details of one of his
great battles, or busy with some abstruse point of Puritan theology.
If accompanied by one of his brothers, or by some other intimate
friend, he was still for the most part silent. Always good-humoured,
and enjoying sarcasm when of a grave, high class, he yet never talked
from the loquacious instinct, or encouraged others so to employ their
time and talents in his presence. Even his lively and rattling brother
Humphrey, his almost constant companion when on shore, caught, from
long habit, the great man's contemplative and self-communing gait and
manner; and when his friends rallied him on the subject in
after-years, he used to say, that he had caught the trick of silence
while walking by the admiral's side in his long morning musings on
Knoll Hill. A plain dinner satisfied his wants. Religious
conversation, reading, and the details of business, generally filled
up the evening until supper-time; after family prayers--always
pronounced by the general himself--he would invariably call for his
cup of sack and a dry crust of bread, and while he drank two or three
horns of Canary, would smile and chat in his own dry manner with his
friends and domestics, asking minute questions about their neighbours
and acquaintance; or when scholars or clergymen shared his simple
repast, affecting a droll anxiety--rich and pleasant in the conqueror
of Tromp--to prove, by the aptness and abundance of his quotations,
that, in becoming an admiral, he had not forfeited his claim to be
considered a good classic.'
The care and interest with which he looked to the well-being of his
humblest followers, made him eminently popular in the fleet. He was
always ready to hear complaints and to rectify grievances. When
wounded at the battle of Portland, and exhorted to go on shore for
repose and proper medical treatment, he refused to seek for himself
the relief which he had put in the way of his meanest comrade. Even at
the early period of his cruise against the Cavalier corsairs of
Kinsale, such was Blake's popularity, that numbers of men were
continually joining him from the enemy's fleet, although he offered
them less pay, and none of that licence which they had enjoyed under
Prince Rupert's flag. They gloried in following a leader _sans peur et
sans reproche_--one with whose renown the whole country speedily
rang--the renown of a man who had revived the traditional glories of
the English navy, and proved that its meteor flag could 'yet terrific
burn.'