very entrance of Plymouth Sound, 7 Aug. 1657. His body was embalmed; was carried round by sea to Greenwich, where it lay in state for some days; was taken in procession up the river on 4 Sept. and placed in a vault in Henry VII's chapel in Westminster Abbey. Out of this royal burial-place it was removed after the Restoration, and, with a score of others, was cast into a pit dug on the north side of the abbey (Stanley, Historical Memorials of Westminster, 5th edit., 209).
The peculiar and especial distinction which attaches to the name of Blake is by no means due solely to the brilliance of his achievements in the command of fleets, nor yet to that exceeding care and forethought in their organisation and government to which his constant success must be mainly attributed, Where he led or ordered them his men were willing and able to go; the work was done heartily and well; but the tactics of a fleet were still in their infancy, and in this respect Blake was unquestionably inferior to his great Dutch rival, Martin Tromp. But more even than by his glory and by his success, the memory of Blake is dear to the English people by the traditions of his chivalrous character and of his unselfish patriotism. These cannot be proved by historical evidence, but all indications tend to the same purpose, and compel us to believe that his object was, before everything, to uphold the honour and the interests of England. It is said that when urged to declare against Cromwell's assumption of supreme power, he replied, 'It is not for us to mind state affairs, but to keep foreigners from fooling us.' The reply is traditional; but its sentiment agrees with what he wrote on hearing of the dissolution of parliament, 22 Jan. 1654-5 : 'I cannot but exceedingly wonder that there should yet remain so strong a spirit of prejudice and animosity in the minds of men who profess themselves most affectionate patriots as to postpose the necessary ways and means for the preservation of the Commonwealth' (Thurloe, iii. 232). It is in this spirit that he commanded our fleets even to the end. Except by tradition we know nothing of his political bias; but if in truth opposed to the government and the usurpation of Cromwell he never allowed his opposition to become manifest, and, irrespective of party, devoted his life to the service of his country.
No undoubted portrait of Blake is known to exist. The portrait at Wadham College, and that formerly in the possession of Joseph Ames, are possibly originals; but the evidence is defective. The same must be said of the picture by Hanneman, which in 1866 was exhibited at South Kensington, lent by Mr. Fountaine of Narford Hall; it may be Blake, but proof is quite wanting. The picture in the Painted Hall at Greenwich is a work of modern imagination, based apparently on a memory of the Ames portrait.
[Calendars of State Papers, Domestic, 1649-1657; Granville Penn's Memorials of Sir William Penn; Thurloe's State Papers. There are many so-called lives of Blake: in Lives English and Foreign (1704), ii. 74—the author of which claims to have known some of the members of Blake's family; by Dr. Johnson—a paraphrase of the preceding; by Campbell, in Lives of the Admirals, ii. 62; History and Life, &c., by a Gentleman bred in his Family—an impudent and mendacious chap-book; and by Mr. Hepworth Dixon (1852). From the historian's point of view they are all utterly worthless. Mr. Dixon's notices of Blake's family, so far as they are drawn from parish and private records, may possibly be correct, but his account of Blake's public life is grossly inaccurate, and much of it is entirely false; he betrays throughout the most astonishing ignorance of naval matters, and a very curious incapability of appreciating or interpreting historical evidence.]
BLAKE, THOMAS (1597?–1657), puritan, was a native of Staffordshire. As he entered Christ Church College, Oxford, in 1616 in his nineteenth year, he must have been born about 1597. He proceeded B.A. and M. A., and having obtained orders, Wood tells us, he had 'some petit employment in the church bestowed on him.' 'At length,' continues the historian, 'when the presbyterians began to be dominant, he adhered to that party,' and 'subscribed to the lawfulness of the covenant in 1648 among the ministers of Shropshire, and soon after, showing himself a zealous brother while he was pastor of St. Alkmond's in Shrewsbury, he received a call to Tamworth in Staffordshire and Warwickshire, where also being a constant preacher up of the cause, he was thought fit by Oliver and his council to be nominated one of the assistants to the commissioners of Staffordshire for the ejecting of such whom they called ignorant and scandalous ministers and schoolmasters.'
Blake published a large number of books on puritan theology, but his attacks on Richard Baxter damaged his reputation with many nonconformists. His arguments indicate a narrow, if subtle, intellect. The following are his chief works: 1. 'Birth Privilege, or the Right of Infants to Baptism,' 1644. 2. 'Infant's Baptism freed from Antichristianisme. In a full Repulse given to Mr. Ch. Blackwood in his Assault of that Part of Christ's Possession which he holds in his Heritage of Infants, entitled "The Storming of
