easy circumstances. It is perhaps probable that at this time he himself made voyages to distant seas; to do so was almost the common course for a pushing merchant. It is said that once, when Humphrey, as churchwarden, was censured by the bishop for conniving at certain irregularities in the service of the church, Robert signed a remonstrance against the bishop’s conduct. The story is, however, vary vague and uncertain. He was returned as member for his native place in the short parliament of 1640, but in the election of the following autumn he was unsuccessful; he was not a member of the Long parliament till 1645, when, on the expulsion of Colonel Windham, he was again returned for Bridgwater. As a young man at Oxford he is said to have professed republican sentiments; he undoubtedly held republican opinions in his later years. But these were, in the main, theoretical preferences, which do not seem to have dictated his course of action; that was ruled by his judgement of passing events, which as he interpreted them, gave him but the choice between submission to arbitrary tyranny and a manly resistance. Even before the appeal to arms his mind was fully made up, and amongst the very first he joined the army raised by Sir John Horner in 1642. In July 1643 he commanded an important post in Bristol when it was besieged by the royalists; the town, however, was surrendered by Colonel Fiennes, the governor, after a very feeble defence, and though Blake, unwilling to believe this, held his post for twenty-four hours after the capitulation, he was at last compelled to accede to its terms. It is said, but without probability, that Rupert was with difficulty persuaded not to hang him. Blake’s resolute conduct was warmly approved by the parliamentary leaders; he was named one of the Somerset committee of ways and means, and was appointed lieutenant-colonel of Popham's regiment, fifteen hundred strong, in which also his brother Samuel, born 1608, had a company. With a detachment of this regiment he made a dash at Bridgwater, hoping to surprise the castle. He failed in doing so, and, being quite unprepared for a more formal attack, at once drew off. There had been no fighting in the town, but struggling down the river Samuel Blake was killed in an accidental skirmish. We are told that when the loss was reported to the colonel, be said calmly, ‘Sam had no business there;’ but presently, retiring to a private room, he wailed aloud in a transport of grief, crying ‘Died Abner as a fool dieth.’ Samuel left a son Robert, whose fortunes were afterwards very closely linked with those of his uncle and godfather.
After the fall of Bristol the royalists swept the west of England, and there were but few places which still held out for the parliament, One of these was Lyme in Dorsetshire, little more than a fishing village; and though it was protected by a few earthworks hastily thrown up, Prince Maurice had no expectation of resistance when, at the head of some five thousand men, he summoned it to surrender. It happened, however, that Blake had been stationed there with a detachment of about five hundred men, and had prepared himself as he best could to hold the post, had raised volunteers in the neighbourhood, and had strengthened the defences. The summons was rejected, and the assault which immediately followed was bloodily repulsed. Maurice found that the place could not be taken without attacking in form, and accordingly sat down before it; but the defences grew as the siege went on, and ‘after he had lain before it a month it was much more like to hold out than it was the first day he came before it’ (Clarendon); so that when, on 23 May 1644, the garrison was relieved by the fleet under Warwick, and Maurice had tidings of the near approach of the Earl of Essex, he hastily retired to Exeter, ‘with some loss of reputation for having lain so long, with such a strength, before so vile and untenable a place, without reducing it’ (ibid.)
The stand at Lyme had been of very great service to the parliamentary cause, and had given time for Essex to come into that part of the country. But Essex, by marching into Cornwall, lost the opportunity, and committed a mistake which, ad it not been for Blake’s prompt action, might have been fatal. Among the many places in Somersetshire held by the royalists Taunton was one ; it was quite unfortified, and the garrison was small; but it was the point on which all the main roads of the county converged, it commanded the lines of communication, and had thus a peculiar strategic importance, which Blake alone seems to have understood. He had been promoted after his brilliant defence of Lyme, and had an independent command, with which, 8 July 1644, he suddenly threw himself on Taunton. It was held by only eighty men, who made no opposition, and in Blake's hands the lace ‘became a sharp thorn in the sides of all that populous country.' The position was one of extreme peril, for it was quite isolated; and when Essex’s army was overwhelmed in August no relief could be expected. Blake, however, determined to hold his ground as long as possible ; the roads were barricaded, breastwork’s thrown up, guns planted, houses loopholed, and when the royalists advanced on the place, which they had
