Chapter IX: The Protectorate

AUTHORITIES.--Carlyle's _Letters and Speeches of Cromwell_ will of course be consulted for this period. Clarendon's intellectual greatness and his insight enable him to interpret the spirit of events even when he is wrong in his facts. Cromwell's instructions to Penn and Venables, the letters of all the officers concerned, and the journals of the proceedings in San Domingo, have been collected in the second volume of the Life of Penn. Blake's operations in the Mediterranean and the ocean are to be made out from the papers in Thurloe, his own letters, and the narratives of the capture of the Plate Ships and the battle at Santa Cruz, published by order of Cromwell's Parliament.

The Government of Oliver Cromwell was that of a usurper and, in the strict sense of the word, a tyrant. He did not indeed use his power with wilful cruelty, but by the very nature of the case he ruled by the sword, and not by law. Still, usurper and tyrant as he was, his aim was not the indulgence of any mere passion of his own. He was not only the greatest man of his time, and one of the greatest of all time, but he was thoroughly English in his wishes, his aims, and even prejudices. The desire to give the nation, in return for the subversion of its regular Government, a compensation which would take the form of an extension of its national grandeur and the promotion of its interests, had possibly something to do in framing his foreign policy. Yet there was a wide difference between the course he followed and that which commended itself, first to the Jacobins, and then to Napoleon. He did not plunge England into a succession of wars in pursuit of glory and an unattainable universal dominion, in order to divert it from discontent with his own rule. He aimed at the things which the great majority of Englishmen, whether Royalist or Puritan, knew to be consistent with the true interests of England, and could approve. These were three. In the first place, he undertook to teach foreign nations once more that they must respect England--a lesson they had too much forgotten during the weak rule of the Stuarts and the confusion of the Civil War. The old rhyme has it, that

"Though his government did a tyrant's resemble,
He made England great and her enemies tremble."

In so far, he was doing what every Royalist would have wished to see the king do. Then Oliver was resolved to obtain security for English commerce on the sea, and on that point there were no differences of opinion in the nation. Finally, he designed to obtain for England that extension of her trade and that expansion of her colonial empire after which the ambition of the nation was already straining. The criticism that his schemes were too great for his resources is perhaps well founded. Yet, had he lived to establish his Government firmly, it is probable that he would not have asked the nation for more than it could easily give. The sums spent by his Government on maritime expeditions were not greater than those pilfered and wasted during the reign of Charles II. But, however that may be, the fact remains that Oliver first pointed out to England the course she was to follow in the eighteenth century; and if he was wrong in practice, it was because the principles of his foreign policy were in advance of their time.

There were two ways by which the Protector could carry out his policy--by alliance with Spain or by alliance with France. The long war between these two nations was still in progress--with growing success and resources on the side of France, and daily increasing weakness on the side of Spain. There were reasons which might seem to make it the Protector's interest to ally himself with Spain. The growing strength of France at her very doors was a menace to England. The weakness of Spain would render her a dependent ally--that is to say, it would have that effect if Spain were capable of being influenced by ordinary considerations of policy. Then the close relationship between the families of Stuart and Bourbon must always give the French monarchy a leaning to the side of the opponents of the Protector's Government. But Spain was not to be influenced in the way desired by England. Before Cromwell could undertake to help the Spaniards against the French, there were two concessions he was bound to demand from them. The first was the exemption of Englishmen from the jurisdiction of the Inquisition. The second was the admission of English trade to the Spanish possessions in the New World. Pride and the blind obstinacy with which the Spaniards, to their ruin, have always clung to their most extreme pretensions, made it impossible for the King and Council of Castile to yield what Oliver demanded. It is a well-known story that when the Protector made these two concessions the price of his alliance against France, the Spanish ambassador, Don Alonso de Cárdenas, answered, "My master has but two eyes, and you ask him for both of them." Spain, in fact, would rather fight on in hopeless, contumacious obstinacy than yield up her right to protect the purity of her faith and her pretension to retain the monopoly of the New World. Since, then, Cromwell could not obtain his ends by treaty, he prepared to extort them from Spain by force. He turned to the French alliance, and made ready for war.

The attack on Spain was to be conducted on three lines. One does not concern us, except in so far as it is necessary to remember that unless England had possessed a superiority of strength at sea, she could not have followed it. At a later period English troops were sent to co-operate in the conquest of the Spanish Netherlands. But before this, Spain had been attacked on the sea. Two expeditions were fitted out in England. The first, under the command of Robert Blake, was to sail for the Mediterranean, and, after disposing of certain preliminary duties, was to attack Spain at home. The second, under the combined commands of William Penn as general-at-sea, and of Robert Venables as general of the land forces, was to fall upon the Spaniards in the New World. This second expedition marks a notable epoch in our colonial history, and, at the cost of somewhat forestalling the order of time, may be told as an episode by itself.

According to all modern notions, the policy of Cromwell in fitting out this expedition was eminently immoral. A great fleet carrying a force of soldiers was sent out with orders to attack the Spaniards before a declaration of war. But in the middle of the seventeenth century, and in the circumstances, there was nothing even irregular in what the Protector did. It is necessary to understand in their main lines the relations of European States to Spain in the New World, and to do that we must look back for a moment. At the close of the fifteenth century, the almost simultaneous voyages of Columbus across the Atlantic and of Vasco da Gama round the Cape of Good Hope had appeared to give the Crowns of Spain and Portugal the rights of previous discovery over the trade routes to the East. It must not be forgotten that Columbus was believed to have reached the eastern extremity of Asia. He himself died in the belief that this was what he had done. It was not until Vasco Nuñez de Balboa had crossed the Isthmus of Darien, and Magellan had sailed through the straits named after him, and had found a vast expanse of ocean between him and Asia, that it came to be understood that there was a continent of America. In 1494 it was thought that Asia had been reached, and it appeared not improbable that Spain and Portugal would come to blows over the limits of what we should now call their respective spheres of influence. The two States appealed to the Pope, Alexander VI., and he drew a line between them running from pole to pole 100 miles to the west of the Cape de Verd Islands. The decision of the arbitrator did not appear satisfactory to the Portuguese, who would have been confined too closely to the coast of Africa. They protested, and their protest was listened to by the Catholic sovereigns, Isabel of Castile and Ferdinand of Aragon. In the year after the Pope had given his decision, a conference was held at the town of Tordesillas, and it was then settled that the line of demarcation should run 300 leagues to the west of the Azores and in the corresponding meridian on the other side of the globe. In the course of time, it was found that this decision had thrown by very much the greater part of the two American continents into the share of Spain. Other nations refused, indeed, to allow that the bull "Inter cætera" gave Spain any exclusive rights. But the Spanish Government was of another opinion. It abstained, indeed, from interfering with the English settlements in New England and the French in Canada, which were poor and distant. Its own weakness forced it so far to acquiesce in what it could not prevent, but it never recognised the legitimacy of foreign settlements; and whenever any of them approached those regions where the Spanish rule was strong, they were liable to attack, even when peace prevailed in Europe. The Spaniards, in fact, recognised no peace beyond the line--that is to say, the line of demarcation from north to south, and not, as is sometimes supposed, the equator.

Hence there arose a permanent condition of lawless violence in the West Indies. By far the greater part of the islands, composing the Greater and the Lesser Antilles, were not occupied by the Spaniards at all. European adventurers were not to be debarred from settling in unoccupied lands, by a mere decision of the Pope which they did not recognise as valid. During the first half of the seventeenth century, English, French, and Dutch had swarmed in to dispute these islands with the Spaniard. The weakness of Spain made it impossible for her to keep them out altogether. The early history of these settlements is obscure. One very curious colony, founded by a Puritan company, of which Pym was one of the directors, in the island of Old Providence on the coast of Honduras, has left no trace except a few letter-books. Barbadoes was peacefully occupied by Englishmen, and became rapidly prosperous. Other English adventurers, some of them holding patents from the king and others without, had settled in Antigua, Montserrat, Nevis, and part of St. Kitts. The other part of St. Kitts was held by the French. The Dutch also were in the West Indies, less as settlers than as traders with the French and English. Yet, though these settlements had increased and prospered, they were never quite safe from Spanish attack. One great Spanish armament, under Don Fadrique de Toledo, had swept the West Indies in 1629; other and minor attacks had been common. The settlement in Old Providence, after many alarms and adventures, had been finally exterminated at some time in the earlier stages of our Civil War. It will be seen, then, that if the Spaniards were assailed by Cromwell without formal declaration of hostilities in the New World, the act was abundantly justified by Spanish precedents.

In 1654 the newly established Government was being urgently pressed to send out just such an armament as was finally despatched. An Englishman, of the name of Thomas Gage, the son of a family of English Roman Catholics and strong Royalists, had published an exhortation to his countrymen to fall upon Spanish America, and had revealed the real weakness of the land in a book called the _New Survey of the West Indies_, published in 1648, and very popular in the seventeenth century. Gage, who had been a priest, and who then became converted, and preached as a Puritan divine in England, was one of the very few Englishmen for whom it had been possible to visit the Spanish possessions. At the same time, some at least among the planters of Barbadoes were urging the English Government to adopt an aggressive policy, and were promising effectual support.

Under the stimulus of all these motives, the Protector's Government organised this expedition in the summer and autumn of 1654. It was to consist of 38 warships, carrying 1134 guns and 4380 seamen. A land force of 3000 soldiers, divided into five regiments of 600 each, was to be raised. The whole, when ready, was to sail for the West Indies, and to begin hostilities with the Spaniards from the day it crossed the tropic of Cancer. The orders given to the expedition, as was commonly the case with the Council of State and Cromwell, were perfect examples of what such things should be--at once absolutely precise in prescribing the aim, and wisely large in defining the means to be adopted. "We shall not," said the Protector, "tie you up to a method by any particular instructions." The generals, in fact, were deprived of every excuse for failure by being left free to choose the fittest means. As for the object of the cruise, on that point there was no doubt. They were to go over to the West Indies, firstly, to chastise the French, who had been guilty of excesses against English trade; secondly, to enforce the Navigation Laws against the Dutch, who had been carrying on an interloping commerce with the English islands; thirdly, and this was the main purpose of the armament, they were to effect a settlement among the Spanish possessions. Where it was to be made, they were themselves to judge on the spot, and according to circumstances. They might land on the islands, taking Hispaniola by preference, or, failing that, St. John, that is, San Juan de Puerto Rico. Or, again, they might pass the islands and fall upon the mainland somewhere between the mouth of the Orinoco and Porto Bello, that part of South America commonly called the Spanish Main. A third course was to attack both the islands and the mainland, but it was made abundantly clear that the hands of those who were to be responsible for doing the work were not to be tied by too precise instructions.

This was as it should have been, but all was not equally well with the expedition. The leaders selected by Cromwell did not do honour to his choice. Venables, the commander of the troops, must have done something to make the Protector think him fit for the place, but on this expedition he showed himself a feeble, pottering, uxorious man. He took his wife with him, and appears to have been miserable when separated from her company. Penn was undoubtedly a brave and skilful seaman, but he wanted the intellectual resources and strength of character required to make good the deficiencies of his colleague. The weakness of the usurping Government is revealed by the action which these two men, seemingly without any agreement with one another, took during the summer. They both wrote to the exiled king, offering him their services. At such a time, men who have not honour enough to stand aside from a usurping Government, and who cannot serve it with enthusiasm, are very likely to be found looking over their shoulders for a safe retreat, and making friends with the enemy of the Government of to-day, who may possibly be the ruler of to-morrow. Penn and Venables offered to bring the whole armament over to King Charles if he could find a port for them abroad. The king, who was totally unable to comply with the condition, declined the offer. It throws an unpleasant light on the character of Penn, that, immediately after he had been making this offer to betray the master who trusted in him, he was found appealing to the Protector for a grant of land in Ireland, which land, as a matter of fact, was the confiscated property of the supporters of the king. He and Venables did not work harmoniously together. They had a squabble in England before they sailed, which was made up by the exertions of friends, but probably left them on not very confidential terms with one another. It was not only the inferiority of, and want of harmony between, the leaders which was likely to militate against the efficiency of the expedition. The victualling was ill done, probably because of the poverty of the Government. A good part of the stores was not ready in time, and had to be sent on later. A large portion of the soldiers raised were of an inferior quality. Cromwell could not spare the choice troops who were the support of his rule. The five regiments were specially raised for the service, and they consisted mainly of discharged soldiers of the king as well as of the Parliament. These men had lost, or in many cases had never possessed, a true military character. The number of 3000 provided for by the scheme was never attained. The expedition did not carry more than 2500 men, of whom perhaps half were more likely to be a hindrance than a help where discipline was required.

On the 20th of December 1654 Rear-Admiral Dakins was sent on with fourteen ships in advance. The bulk of the expedition sailed on Christmas Day, which was probably chosen at least partly from a Puritan desire to show disrespect for the feast. In mid-ocean the heavier ships, which hampered the speed of the fleet, were left behind. Penn and Venables pressed on with the better sailers. By the 29th January 1655 the whole armament was assembled in Carlisle Bay in Barbadoes.

The disappointments of the expedition began at once. It was found that those planters who had been urging the Government to send a force into the West Indies, and had promised effectual help, had spoken without authority. The planters of Barbadoes were by no means generally pleased at the appearance of an expedition from England. The generals were authorised to raise a regiment in the island, and the planters were afraid that if the freemen enlisted in large numbers, their "servants" would revolt so soon as the armed force was gone. By servants must be understood both the black slaves and those white men, criminals and prisoners of war, who were bound to a term of service. Much pressure had to be exercised before this opposition was overcome. It was at last surmounted, and the regiment was raised. In the meantime the news spread through the English islands. The swarm of loose adventurers who filled them, the runaway "servants," sailors who had deserted from their ships,--all the raw material, in fact, out of which the formidable buccaneering body called the "Brethren of the Coast" was afterwards formed,--began to collect in regiments, and were burning to take part in the service, which seemed to promise plunder. Such men as these, the floating population of the frontier, valiant in pothouses, but feeble in battle, were of no real value for military purposes. Yet they were accepted to the number of several thousands. The expedition had unfortunately been put under the command of a committee. In this Cromwell followed the practice of the Parliament, and was perhaps influenced by the fear of putting too much power into the hands of a single man. Not only Penn and Venables, but Goodson the vice-admiral, Dakins the rear-admiral, two special Commissioners, Winslow and Gregory Butler, together with some others, were joined in the general command, and nothing was to be done without the consent of three of them. The opinion of the wiser few, who would willingly have dispensed with the riff-raff of the islands, was overborne, and the expedition was hampered by an ill-armed, worse-disciplined, and thoroughly untrustworthy mob. It is to be noted also that this distant and unhealthy service in the West Indies was not popular with the sailors. While at Carlisle Bay, the sea officers came in a body to Penn and represented to him their hope that the hardships of their service would be allowed for in their pay and prize-money. One good measure that had been decided upon in England was here perfected. A regiment of sailors was formed. It was put under the command of Admiral Goodson as colonel, with naval officers to lead the companies.

Two months were spent at Barbadoes, which might have incomparably better been employed in assailing the Spaniards before they were ready. At last, on the 31st of March, the expedition got under way. It proceeded by Antigua, Montserrat, Nevis, and St. Kitts to the south-eastern end of Hispaniola, and appeared before the town of San Domingo on the 13th of April. San Domingo stands on the western side of a little river called the Ozama. It is in the middle of a large bay, some twenty-eight miles broad and some ten miles deep. The coast is low, rocky, and beaten by a formidable surf. Looked at from the sea, the spray thrown up from the waves was like the smoke of cannon fringing the beach. Close to the town on the west side was a fort. To the west of the fort, and at a distance of some five miles from the town, another river, called by the Spaniards Jaina, and by us Hina, falls into the sea. When there is a dead calm, or a land breeze from the north, it is possible to land here, but at other times the surf is too dangerous for boats. These conditions made it necessary to disembark the soldiers to westward and leeward of the town at some distance. In the West Indies the trade wind, or true breeze, always blows from the east. Beyond Cape Nisao, the western extremity of San Domingo Bay, there are a few landing-places in the surf-beaten coast. At one of these, perhaps Catalina Bay, Venables disembarked with the bulk of the expedition on the 14th of April. In the meantime Penn remained, with the greater part of the fleet and two regiments of soldiers, in front of San Domingo. The object of retaining these two corps was to land them at the mouth of the Jaina, to co-operate with Venables when he had got so far. They had with them stores and scaling ladders for the purpose of attacking the town.

The story of what came of these imposing preparations is happily all but unparalleled in English history. Venables began his march on the day after landing, in circumstances of the most lamentable kind, if he is to be believed.

"Our men, the last fortnight at sea, had bad bread, and little of it or other victuals, notwithstanding General Penn's order, so that they were very weak at landing; and some, instead of three days' provision at landing, had but one, with which they marched five days, and therefore fell to eat limes, oranges, lemons, &c., which put them into fluxes and fevers. Of the former, I had my share for near a fortnight, with cruel gripings that I could scarce stand."

In this dismal condition they struggled through the narrow paths which traversed the dense tropical forest, without meeting more than a very trifling resistance from the Spaniards. By the 16th they had reached the Jaina. Here they remained until the 24th, engaged in what can only be called pottering. General Venables came back to the flagship, partly for the purpose of taking "a vomit," and partly in search of his wife, who went with him when he returned to his post. Every kind of difficulty as to provisions, scaling ladders, and powder united to hamper the attack on the Spaniards. It does not appear that the men were absolutely destitute of courage. On the 18th a portion of them were roughly handled in an ambush, but they rallied well, and beat the enemy back. The hardships of the service, of which the most intolerable was thirst, did something to depress their spirits, but what worked upon them most was unquestionably the discovery that they were being led without energy or intelligence. First, the army advanced from the Jaina to Fort Jerónimo. A vaunting attack, made without sufficient means, was followed by a retreat to the former position. When at last, on the 24th, the real attack was to be delivered, the troops, badly armed, badly disciplined, and mostly of bad quality to start with, were thoroughly ready for a panic.

On Wednesday the 25th the final attack on the Fort Jerónimo was to be made. The troops advanced and met at first with no opposition. They established themselves on the eastern side of the fort, where no guns were mounted. An advance guard, called in the language of the time a "Forlorn," was to open the attack, supported by a party of "Reformadoes"--that is to say, officers belonging to corps which had been suppressed or broken up and incorporated with others. Behind them were the other regiments of the expedition. When the Forlorn was close on the fort, and the attack just about to begin, a small body of Spanish lancers, put by all the witnesses at some forty or fifty men, fell suddenly upon the English. Their charge was directed against the Forlorn, which fell suddenly and shamefully into disorder, and fled headlong back on the Reformadoes. The Reformadoes, whose part it was to have set an example to the army, were seized with a no less ignoble spasm of terror. The Forlorn and the Reformadoes, mingled in confusion, retreated upon the supporting regiments, which they infected with their own cowardice. The whole mass gave way in flight, and retreated in all the hubbub of an utter rout. Some of the officers did indeed behave with the gallantry to be expected of English gentlemen. Haynes, the major-general, the same officer who had co-operated with Blake in the taking of the Channel Islands for the Parliament, broke out of the mob of runaways, and, armed only with a small walking-sword, threw himself in the path of a handful of Spanish lancers who were pressing the pursuit. He was accompanied by an ensign named Blagg, who showed the colours in the vain hope of rallying some support. But the example of these brave men was lost on the terror-stricken rabble. Haynes was borne to the ground and slain; Blagg tore his colours from the staff, and, wrapping them round his body, fell down, and there died, pierced with many wounds. The completeness of their success appears to have taken the Spaniards entirely by surprise. They were a mere handful, and, although they are said to have killed between three and four hundred, they were not supported, and were easily repulsed when some of the English were induced to make a stand. The corps to which belongs the honour of saving the expedition from extermination was the sailors' regiment commanded by Admiral Goodson. These men were no doubt veterans of the Dutch war, who were hardened to perils. They let the cowards pass, and then closed up to cover their retreat. So soon as they were resolutely faced, the forty or fifty Spanish lancers, who had hitherto "had the execution" of some thousands of Englishmen, fell back.

There were those among the English who believed that all was not lost, and that a second attempt might be made with a fair prospect of success. But the bulk of officers and men were completely cowed. They could think of nothing except of hurrying back with the utmost possible speed to the landing-place, and taking refuge in the ships. The officers would not trust themselves with such men, and indeed the spirit of the whole force was completely broken. While retreating during the night, they were terrified at the noise made by the land-crabs in the bush, and opened a wild fire right and left.

While the army was making this deplorable exhibition of itself, the ships were parading to and fro in front of San Domingo, engaging at odd moments in a languid artillery fire with the forts. Penn declared that he could have easily destroyed Fort Jerónimo, and have swept the sea-wall of the town. He excused his failure to act, by saying that his colleagues would not agree. Venables, in particular, was opposed to the destruction of Jerónimo, on the ground that it would be useful as a hospital. It is not obvious, however, that Penn need have been deterred by this from attacking the town. His conduct was certainly wanting in enterprise, and the difference between him and his colleague seems to be this, that whereas Venables did wrong, Penn did too little.

Having lost hundreds of men by the sword, and a still larger number by the tropical diseases which were now raging, the unlucky expedition cast about for some means of escaping the reproach of utter failure. Some of the more poor-spirited among them were ready to return to Barbadoes, and from thence to England. The majority, either because they possessed more courage, or because, however much they feared the enemy and the climate, they dreaded Oliver Cromwell still more, were resolved to make a last effort before returning empty-handed. A compensation which was easily to be secured lay ready to their hands. The island of Jamaica is almost due west of the west end of the island of San Domingo, at a distance of about a hundred miles. Gage, the author of the _Survey of the West Indies_, was with Venables, and he, with the English planters from Barbadoes and St. Kitts, could easily inform the generals that the island was almost uninhabited, and would be an easy prize. On the 4th of May, Penn and Venables left the bay of San Domingo, and on the 10th appeared before the Spanish town on the south side of Jamaica. Here, fortunately for them, perhaps, there was no opposition. The population, in fact, was very small, hardly able to beat off a considerable raid of pirates. The town was occupied after a mere show of resistance on the 9th, 10th, and 12th of May. The Spanish governor made his submission at once. His countrymen, with greater spirit, deserted the town and took refuge in the hills.

Having now at last done something, the English leaders hastened to deprive themselves personally of all credit by deserting their command and running back to England. The early history of Jamaica is a very painful one, and need not be told here. Perhaps the moral of it all is best given by a witness who wrote after the Restoration of Charles II. He reported that when the Spaniards saw how fast the English died, they were surprised, but that, when they learned how much they drank, they were surprised that any of them lived. The military and naval leaders squabbled, and the soldiers and sailors fought. At last it was decided that Penn should return to England with the bulk of the fleet, leaving Goodson with twelve of the lighter vessels. He sailed on the 25th of June, returning home by the western end of Cuba and the Florida Channel. One English vessel, the =Discovery=, had been blown up by accident at Jamaica. On the way another disaster occurred. The =Paragon=, which had been Badiley's ship in the Mediterranean, caught fire and blew up, with the loss of a hundred lives. Penn returned to England in a very intelligibly dismal state of mind. He was inclined to see the hand of the Lord visiting the sins of the expedition, and something he referred to mysteriously as the "sin in England," on the men of little faith about him. He was also visibly nervous as to the reception it was likely he would meet with from the Protector, and began garrulously excusing himself before he reached home. It was not without cause that he, and possibly his colleague Venables, of whom we have less evidence, looked forward to facing Oliver Cromwell. The old explanation of the Protector's anger, that he punished the generals for taking Jamaica when they were ordered to take San Domingo, was given in ignorance of their instructions; but he had good cause to be angry with them, both for the incapacity displayed at San Domingo, and for their hasty desertion of their conquest of Jamaica. As his spy service was both watchful and efficient, it is at least possible that Cromwell had warning of their letters to the king. They reached England on the 31st August, anchoring at Spithead. Within a fortnight they were both in the Tower, on the recommendation of the Protector's Council. They did not escape from this till they had made abject submission. Penn retired to the estate which he had begged for himself out of the confiscated property of the king's friends in Ireland, and was no more employed during Oliver Cromwell's life.

Goodson remained at Jamaica for nearly two years, prosecuting the war with Spain. The smallness of the force left under his command made it impossible for him to undertake operations on a great scale. In truth, what he did bore a very close resemblance to the piratical warfare afterwards carried on by the buccaneers. He sailed twice to the Spanish Main, burning and plundering small towns, taking water and provisions at unfortified places, but attempting nothing against the great port of Carthagena. To some among the English officers at Jamaica this method of conducting hostilities was not acceptable. They thought it piratical, and unworthy of a great State; but it was all Goodson could do, and it served a useful purpose. The first two years of our establishment in Jamaica were times of miserable weakness and suffering. The governors died one after the other, and the ranks of their followers were terribly thinned by fever. If during this interval a vigorous attack had been made by the Spaniards, who were acclimatised and expert in bush fighting, it is not impossible that we should have lost the island. The presence of Goodson's ships and his activity warded off this danger, and it is partly to him, therefore, that we must attribute the merit of retaining this colonial possession.

Before the fleet under Penn left to undergo its varied fortunes in the West Indies, another naval armament had sailed from England under the command of Robert Blake. It started somewhat earlier than the expedition directed against the West Indies--on the 29th September. Blake's orders were ultimately to attack the Spaniards, but the time for hostilities against them in Europe had not yet come. In the interval there was plenty for an English admiral to do in the Mediterranean. In the first place, he had, in the modern phrase, "to show the flag"--that is to say, to let foreign nations see that England was mistress of a naval force capable of extorting respect. Then the Protector had inherited from the Council of State a number of diplomatic disputes with the Italian princes. The presence of a powerful English fleet in the Mediterranean was likely to add material weight to the expostulations of his diplomatists. Blake worked his way slowly along the Spanish and Italian coasts of the Mediterranean, and was everywhere treated with deference. There is a story that at Malaga he gave the Spaniards a proof that the ruler of England did not bear the sword in vain for the defence of his subjects. It is said that an English sailor who was on shore on leave displayed his Puritan sentiments by insulting the host. For this he was maltreated by the mob, on the instigation of a friar. Blake, so the story goes, insisted on the punishment of the ecclesiastic, and was told by the governor that he had no power to punish churchmen, which, if it was ever said, was untrue. Upon this, the English admiral threatened to open fire unless the friar was given up to him. His threat and the ocular demonstration they had of his strength brought the Spanish authorities to reason. The friar was sent on board, presumably expecting and, if he was a fanatic, hoping for martyrdom. Blake, however, confined himself to rebuking the over-zealous friar, and declaring that he would make the English name as much respected as ever was that of a Roman citizen. There is nothing improbable in the story, which, however, rests solely on the authority of Bishop Burnet. Whatever may be the accuracy of this anecdote, it is beyond question that Blake's mission was to make the name of Englishmen respected in the Mediterranean, and that it was fulfilled. The Italian princes found that delay would no longer be tolerated. Their disputes with the English Government were wound up. A naval power is not limited in its influence, as the strongest of merely military powers must needs be. The States around the Mediterranean might have despised the menace of the New Model Army, which was no doubt capable of marching all through Italy, if only it could have got so far; but a fleet can make the power of the State felt wherever ships can go. Cromwell's menaces were formidable to the very extremities of the Mediterranean.

In that sea there was one duty to be discharged which the English Navy had been forced to neglect for too long. The pirates of the Barbary States had long been a pest and a menace to the commerce of Europe, and even to the coasts of Christian States. Within the Mediterranean nobody had yet seriously undertaken to break their power. It is true that they no longer operated in great fleets, as they had done in the days of Barbarossa. The age of the pirate admirals had been succeeded by that of the Raises, or pirate captains, but they were still formidable to commerce, if they attempted no longer to capture towns and conquer territory. The growing English trade in the Mediterranean suffered from them severely. When the Church of England included a prayer for prisoners and captives in her Litany, the words had a significance they no longer bear. In 1620 the ridiculously feeble effort already recorded, to check this disgraceful infliction, had been made with no better result than to convince these Mohammedan sea rovers that England was not formidable. It was necessary to bring them to a sounder view of the facts, and this was one part of the task entrusted to Blake.

After passing along the coasts of Spain and Italy, Blake went on to discharge this part of his duties. He first sailed over to Algiers in March and opened negotiations. It was his purpose to secure his object--the release of English captives and some security for the exemption of English ships from capture in future--without fighting, if possible. The Barbary States were still nominally part of the dominions of the Sultan, and there was always a chance that severe measures taken at their expense might provoke retaliation on the servants and property of the Levant Company at Smyrna and Scanderoon. At Algiers, then, Blake attempted peaceful negotiations with the Dey, and even exerted himself on his behalf with the Grand Master of the Knights of St. John. The Dey was obstinate, or, as he habitually lived in terror of the piratical portion of his subjects, it would perhaps be more accurate to say that he did not dare to make such an arrangement as Blake demanded. Still the English admiral held his hand. Before taking hostile measures at Algiers, he decided to pay a visit to the less formidable piratical town of Tunis. The Dey of this other town of plunderers was not less unreasonable, and by this time Blake's patience was exhausted. After returning for a few days to Trapani in Sicily, he came back and fell upon the pirate ships. Tunis was strong, and the Dey believed it to be unattackable. It lies at the very bottom of the deep gulf between Cape Farina and Cape Bon. The approach was protected by the forts of Farina and Goletta, famous in the wars of Charles V. and Philip II. The pirate galleys had been hauled under the guns of these fortifications, and their owners might with some show of reason believe them safe, but they had never yet been attacked in the style adopted by Blake. On the 4th of April 1655 (just one month, be it noted for purposes of comparison, before Penn and Venables sailed away from San Domingo shamefully beaten) the English admiral stood in and opened fire on the Tunisian ships. The forts proved very ineffectual, and the fire of the vessels was soon silenced. Then the English took to their boats and boarded. They were quickly masters of the prizes, and lost no time in burning them. From Tunis Blake went first to Tripoli, and then came back to Algiers. In these places satisfactory arrangements were at last made. The Orientals had, in fact, discovered that the moderation of the English admiral was not due to fear or weakness, and they at once bowed to force. Blake's conduct was approved by Cromwell, and he was now free to proceed to the execution of the last part of his duty.

The alliance with France was in the meantime maturing. There was no longer any reason for delaying an open declaration of hostilities against Spain. On the contrary, as Penn and Venables had had time to develop their attack on the West Indies, it was very desirable that the Spaniards should be prevented from sending reinforcements, and this could be most effectually done by compelling them to stand on guard at home. Blake was therefore ordered to cruise off Cadiz, for the double purpose of intercepting the treasure-ships on their way back from America and of preventing the despatch of a Spanish squadron to the West Indies. The blockade was so far successful that the Spaniards were paralysed, but no prizes were taken, and by the approach of autumn the English ships were severely strained. In October Blake returned to England. The war with Spain had not as yet been prosecuted with very triumphant success. The failure at San Domingo was a huge disgrace, hardly balanced in the opinion of the world by the capture of Jamaica. The successful blockade of Cadiz, though it must have caused great loss to the enemy, had not produced those visible results in the way of prizes and bullion which the nation could understand. But Cromwell was resolved to persevere.

In 1656 Blake returned to the coast of Spain. On this cruise he was accompanied by Edward Montagu, afterwards the first Earl of Sandwich, and their object was again to capture the much-desired Plate Fleet. This year they had a better chance of success. In 1655 the Spanish Government had stopped the vessels, but it was now in such dire need of money that it was compelled to run the risk of bringing them home. In summer a first detachment reached the neighbourhood of Cadiz, only to fall into the hands of the English blockading fleet. Blake and Montagu were not present at the capture, for they had retired to the friendly ports of Portugal to refit, but a squadron had been left to watch the port, under the command of Richard Stayner. It proved amply sufficient for the work to be done. The Spanish treasure-ships, though of great bulk for the time, were intrinsically very feeble, and their decks were hampered by merchandise. Stayner burned or captured nearly the whole, with a very trifling loss to himself. The bullion and goods taken amounted in value to nearly the revenue of England for a year--to over two millions sterling. Montagu returned to England with the booty, taking Stayner with him. Although the great sugar-loaves of silver were pillaged by the sailors, there was enough left to load thirty waggons, which were driven through London to the Tower, to the general gratification of the Protector's subjects.

Blake in the meanwhile remained outside of Cadiz during the autumn and winter, till the spring of 1657, waiting for the next instalment of the Plate Fleet. It was an unheard-of thing at that time to keep a fleet out for the winter. Even now the heavier vessels had been sent home with Montagu and Stayner, but the persistence of the others in remaining abroad shows that our navy was increasing in seaworthiness and hardihood. In the April of 1657 Blake was rewarded for his perseverance by learning that a large Spanish squadron carrying treasure had taken refuge at Santa Cruz de Tenerife.

To attack them in this port was in the general opinion an enterprise of the utmost hazard. The bay of Santa Cruz is deep and the island hilly, therefore the harbour is perpetually liable either to be in a dead calm, or to be swept by the violent gusts of wind off the land. These natural obstacles made entrance difficult for a fleet. And Santa Cruz was in addition very powerfully fortified. So strong, in fact, had art and nature made the harbour, that the Spaniards considered a successful attack impossible, and Blake's contemporaries looked upon his triumph as an unheard-of achievement of daring. Yet the Commonwealth admiral, like so many other men of strong mind, showed his strength by despising the vain appearance of force. He estimated the inefficiency of the Spaniards at its true value. Moreover, he saw that the forts, if attacked closely, would probably fail to stop the entry of a fleet running before a good breeze and borne on a rising tide. Once in the harbour, and in the midst of the Spanish vessels, he would be comparatively safe, since they would mask the fire of the guns on shore. With the turn of the tide, aided, as it was very likely to be, by one of the common winds off the land, he would be able to secure his retreat. No doubt there was an appreciable risk, as there always must be in the serious operations of war. But it was one a bold man commanding an effective fighting force could run without temerity.

The attack was made on the 20th of April, in the early hours of the morning. The fleet had sighted the harbour by daybreak, and the look-out frigates had reported that the Spanish ships were still in the bay. The decision to attack was taken at once, and the English fleet stood in. The result fully justified the calculations we may suppose Blake to have made. The English ships ran past the forts with little or no damage. They were in the midst of the Spanish ships and in hot action by eight o'clock. The Spanish galleons were as ill fitted for war as the vessels taken outside of Cadiz. Though the English remained in the bay while daylight lasted, they lost only 50 killed and 120 wounded, while none of the ships received more damage than could be made good at sea in a few days' work. The fate of the Spaniards was very different. By seven in the evening they were all sunk, driven on shore, or set on fire. When the work was thoroughly done, the English prepared to drift out on the ebb-tide. By this time daylight must have been over, and in the dusk and following darkness they would probably in any case have passed the forts with very little injury. But by one of those strokes of good fortune which commonly come to the help of a bold and skilfully conducted enterprise, the wind arose from the south-west, and they regained the sea swiftly, with no further injury.

The attack on the Spaniards at Santa Cruz de Tenerife was not only the most brilliant achievement of the navy during Cromwell's Government, but it was by far the finest single feat performed in the seventeenth century, and, though it has been equalled, it has never been greatly surpassed in later times. Even Nelson's attack on Copenhagen was not more intrepid. The delight felt by all Englishmen, without distinction of party, was unbounded. Cromwell sent Blake a "jewel" consisting of his portrait set in gold and diamonds, and the royal historian Clarendon has praised him without stint or qualification. Blake, indeed, deserved alike the jewel and the praise. Nothing quite of the same stamp as the attack on Santa Cruz had ever been done before, except his own bombardment of the forts of the Dey of Tunis. The captures of the Puntal Castle at Cadiz by the Earl of Essex in 1597, and then by his son in 1625, were small in comparison. In the Elizabethan time, ships had either shrunk from attacking forts, or, as in the case of Drake's attack on San Juan de Puerto Rico, had been beaten off. At the Ile de Rhé, our ships had shown no inclination to tackle the French fortifications. It is to Blake, as Clarendon justly pointed out, that the credit belongs of first showing what a fleet could do. But for Blake, his work was over. The destruction of the West India fleet had completed the task he was sent to do on the coast of Spain. He was therefore ordered to return home, but he never lived to reach his native country. He died, as it would seem, of scurvy, on board his flagship, the =George=, at the mouth of Plymouth Sound, on the 7th of August 1657. He was buried with his old fellow-admiral and general-at-sea, Richard Deane, in Henry the Seventh's Chapel, whence their bodies were taken with those of other Puritan leaders, at the Restoration, and thrown into a pit on the north side of the Abbey.

During the brief remainder of Cromwell's life, the navy had little to do except to assist the troops which were co-operating with Turenne in the siege of Dunkirk. With the death of the Protector the whole foundation of his Government was removed. It was based on his personal ascendency, and was supported by his immense superiority of faculty to all enemies. Englishmen submitted to it because the alternative was anarchy. When Oliver died, the anarchy which he had warded off came swiftly upon the nation. Between the end of 1658 and the beginning of 1660 power was snatched from one feeble hand by another, till at last Monk, at the head of the army in Scotland, imposed himself on all rivals. By this time the vast majority of Englishmen had come to the conclusion that their one means of escape from a succession of mere military tyrannies lay in the restoration of the ancient monarchy. Happily for England, no man saw that truth more clearly than Monk, and under his sagacious, phlegmatic guidance the restoration of the monarchy was effected in the May of 1660. A historian of the navy is strongly tempted to endeavour to prove that it helped materially towards attaining this result. I can, however, see no evidence that this was the case. A navy, though powerful to ward off foreign intervention in our affairs, was very little able to influence the nation. It could only apply pressure by intercepting trade and cruising outside ports,--in other words, by condemning itself to the hardships and tedium of blockade, and that, too, in circumstances which made effective blockade impossible, since the fleet could not draw supplies from abroad, and could only get them at home by the goodwill of their countrymen. The utter failure of the Royalist revolt in the fleet in 1648 even to check the triumph of the Independents is an example of the happy incapacity of a navy to take an influential part in civil strife. Throughout the war the navy had followed, not led, and this was its part during the fourteen months of confusion which intervened between the fall of the Protectorate and the Restoration of King Charles.