d ever have undertaken it; and they could hardly
persuade themselves to believe what they had done; while the Spaniards
comforted themselves with the belief that they were devils and not men
who had destroyed them in such a manner." The English lost one ship and
200 men killed and wounded. The thanks of parliament were voted to
officers and men; and a very costly jewel (diamond ring) was presented
to Blake, "as a testimony," says Cromwell in his letter of 10th June,
"of our own and the parliament's good acceptance of your carriage in
this action." "This was the last action of the brave Blake."

After again cruising for a time off Cadiz, his health failing more and
more, he was compelled to make homewards before the summer was over. He
died at sea, but within sight of Plymouth, on the 17th of August 1657.
His body was brought to London and embalmed, and after lying in state at
Greenwich House was interred with great pomp and solemnity in
Westminster Abbey. In 1661 Charles II. ordered the exhumation of
Blake's body, with those of the mother and daughter of Cromwell and
several others. They were cast out of the abbey, and were reburied in
the churchyard of St Margaret's. "But that regard," says Johnson, "which
was denied his body has been paid to his better remains, his name and
his memory. Nor has any writer dared to deny him the praise of
intrepidity, honesty, contempt of wealth, and love of his country."
Clarendon bears the following testimony to his excellence as a
commander:--"He was the first man that declined the old track, and made
it apparent that the science might be attained in less time than was
imagined. He was the first man that brought ships to contemn castles on
the shore, which had ever been thought very formidable, but were
discovered by him to make a noise only, and to fright those who could be
rarely hurt by them."

A life of Blake is included in the work entitled _Lives, English and
Foreign_. Dr Johnson wrote a short life of him, and in 1852 appeared
Hepworth Dixon's fuller narrative, _Robert Blake, Admiral and General
at Sea_. Much new matter for the biography of Blake will be found in
the _Letters and Papers Relating to the First Dutch War_, edited by
S.R. Gardiner for the Navy Records Society (1898-1899.)

BLAKE, WILLIAM (1757-1827), English poet and painter, was born in
London, on the 28th of November 1757. His father, James Blake, kept a
hosier's shop in Broad Street, Golden Sq