Robert Blake Admiral And General At Sea

thout great military talents, barren in conception as he was slow in execution, had yet the good fortune to be every where popular. His name was a pledge of order. A regiment of raw levies is seldom kept under the strong curb of discipline, but the legions of Essex contrasted most favourably with Goring's crew and Maurice's marauders. Many of those who had hitherto been neutral in the quarrel, and comparatively indifferent to the issue, so that it should come to a speedy end and relieve their houses from pillage and their women from insult, received him with open arms. Hundreds flocked to his camp, anxious to serve under so chivalrous a leader, the knight without fear and without reproach. Thus, while the Royalists were wasting their strength to no purpose in an obscure corner of Dorsetshire, their enemies, recently broken and dispersed almost beyond hope, were rapidly gaining in moral and material power. Alarmed for his own safety,Maurice had watched the movements of this new army with great anxiety ; and as soon as he heard of the dexterous turn which restored Weymouth to the Roundheads without the loss of a single man, he drew to his tents a great part of the Taunton garrison, and abandoning to the enemy all the trophies of his former march, fled away with his reduced, but still magnificent army towards Exeter.1 This retreat of the Cavaliers enabled Blake, now advanced to the full rank of Colonel, to take the field with his heroic regiment and such other ...