range 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 count