liverianism, it appears, had
evaporated in the late debates about the Kingship and the new
constitution. Certain it is that he did not present himself at the
first meeting of the new Council, and that, after an interview with
Cromwell in consequence, he surrendered his two regimental
colonelcies, his major-generalship, and L10 a day which he had for
the last, and withdrew into private life. Still called "Lord
Lambert," and with a pension of L2000 a year granted him by Cromwell,
he retired to Wimbledon, where his chief amusement was the
cultivation of tulips.[1]

[Footnote 1: Council Order Books of July 13, 1657, and thenceforward;
Ludlow, 593-594; Godwin, IV. 446-447.]

The new Council having been constituted, and having begun to hold its
meetings twice or thrice a week, the administration of affairs, home
and foreign, was free to go on, in his Highness's hands and the
Council's, without farther Parliamentary interruption till Jan. 20,
1657-8. Foreign affairs may here have the precedence.

Blake's grand blow at the Spaniard in Santa Cruz Bay was still in all
people's minds, and they were looking for the return of that hero,
recalled as he had been, June 10, either for honourable repose in his
battered and enfeebled state after three years at sea, or for further
employment nearer home in connexion with the French-English alliance
and the Flanders expedition. He was never, alas! to set foot in
England. Off Plymouth, as his fleet was touching the shores, he died,
utterly worn out with scurvy and dropsy, Aug. 7, 1657, aged
fifty-eight. As the news spread, there was great sorrow; and on the
13th of August it was ordered by the Council, "That the Commissioners
for the Admiralty and Navy do forthwith give order for the interment
of General Blake in the Abbey Church at Westminster, and for all
things requisite to be prepared for the funeral of General Blake in
such sort as was done for the funeral of General Deane, and that they
give direction for the preparing of Greenwich House for the reception
of the body of General Blake, in order to his funeral." The body,
having been embalmed, lay at Greenwich till Sept. 4, when it was
brought up the Thames with all funereal pomp, mourning hangings on
the barges and the wherries all the way, and so buried in Henry the
Seventh's chapel, the Council, the great Army officers, the Lord
Mayor and Aldermen, and other dignitaries standing round, while a
multitude thronged outside. It was ob