He died in
his ship at Portsmouth, and his body was taken to Greenwich and
afterwards embalmed and buried in Westminster Abbey. But Charles II
remembered the part Blake had taken in the defeat of the Royalist forces
at Lyme Regis, and ordered his ashes to be raked from the grave and
scattered to the winds.
As may be imagined, in the fights between the two parties the
country-people suffered from depredations and were extensively plundered
by both sides. This was referred to in a political song entitled "The
West Husbandman's Lamentations," which, in the dialect then prevailing,
voices the complaint of a farmer who lost six oxen and six horses:
Ich had zix Oxen t'other day,
And them the Roundheads vetcht away--
A mischief be their speed!
And chad zix Horses left me whole.
And them the Cabballeeroes stole,
Chee vore men be agreed.
We were rather disappointed when we arrived at Axminster, for, having
often heard of Axminster carpets, we expected to find factories there
where they made them, but we found that industry had been given up for
many years. We saw the factory where they were formerly made, and heard
a lot about Mr. Whitty, the proprietor.
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