When he returned to Bridgewater, in time to close his father's eyes, and superintend the arrangements of the family, he was already remarkable for that "iron will, that grave demeanor, that free and dauntless spirit," which so distinguished his after-course. His tastes were simple, his manners somewhat bluntly austere; a refined dignity of countenance, and a picturesque vigor of conversation, invested him with a social interest, to which his indignant invectives against court corruptions gave distinctive character. To the Short Parliament he was sent as member for his native town; and in 1645, was returned by Taunton to the Long Parliament. At the dissolution of the former, which he regarded as a signal for action, he began to prepare arms against the king; his being one of the first troops in the field, and engaged in almost every action of importance in the western counties. His superiority to the men about him lay in the "marvelous fertility, energy, and comprehensiveness of his military genius." Prince Rupert alone, in the Royalist camp, could rival him as a "partisan soldier." His first distinguished exploit was his defense of Prior's Hill fort, at the siege of Bristol--which contrasts so remarkably with the pusillanimity of his chief, Colonel Fiennes. Next comes his yet more brilliant defense of Lyme--then a little fishing-town, with some 900 inhabitants, of which the defenses were a dry ditch, a few hastily-formed earth-works, and three small batteries, but which the Cavalier host of Prince Maurice, trying storm, stratagem, blockade, day after day, and week after week, failed to reduce or dishearten. "At Oxford, where Charles then was, the affair was an inexplicable marvel and mystery: every hour the court expected to hear that the 'little vile fishing-town,' as Clarendon contemptuously calls it, had fallen, and that Maurice had marched away to enterprises of greater moment; but every post brought word to the wondering council, that Colonel Blake still held out, and that his spirited defense was rousing and rallying the dispersed adherents of Parliament in those parts." After the siege was raised, the Royalists found that more men of gentle blood had fallen under Blake's fire at Lyme, than in all other sieges and skirmishes in the western counties since the opening of the war.