At the battle of Portland the fleets met once more, and it was a terrible fight. Though Blake was badly wounded, the victory lay with the English. He followed up the advantages he had gained, and near the North Foreland took eleven Dutch ships and 1350 prisoners, with a small loss. His wound had by now so affected his health, that he was compelled to return to England, leaving Monk to fight the last great fight, in which Van Tromp was killed, 6000 Dutchmen killed, wounded, or made prisoners, and twenty-six of their ships sunk or taken. However, though the Dutch were settled, it was necessary to assert the English power in the Mediterranean, especially where Spain was concerned, and Blake was the name to conjure with. So, in spite of his painful illness, he set out once more, "the one man able to preserve the commonwealth," Cromwell told him. At Santa Cruz he met the Spanish fleet and conquered it. "To God be all the glory," he wrote in his simply worded despatch which told of this great and popular victory.
Then, feeling his increasing weakness, he asked leave to return home, as "the work was done and the chain complete." But he died at sea, in sight of Plymouth Sound. His funeral in Westminster Abbey was a splendid one, worthy of the splendid service he had rendered to England, Cromwell having ordered that "no pomp was to be spared, so as to encourage all officers to venture their lives." A lasting shame it is indeed that at the Restoration his remains, with those of Deane, one of his admirals, and other Parliamentary officers, were taken from their graves, and buried without any mark of respect in one common grave in St. Margaret's Churchyard. Within the Abbey no monument marks his grave, though he had held for England the supremacy of the seas against vigorous attacks, and had made a reputation for himself "very wonderful, which will never be forgotten in Spain."
The very name of Prince Rupert breathes of romance and adventure. His mother was the fascinating and high-spirited Princess Elizabeth, daughter of James I., who had married Frederick, Prince Palatine of the Rhine, and had persuaded him to accept the crown of Bohemia when it was offered to him by the people, who had just wrested their independence from the Emperor of Austria. But his reign at Prague was short, for the Emperor won back his own, and the Queen of Hearts, as Elizabeth was affectionately called, had to escape with her children as best she could, Rupert being but a few weeks old. Her father, afraid of Spain and the Roman Catholic powers, would do nothing to help her, so she would have fared badly had it not been for some faithful English friends, headed by Lord Craven, and the people of Holland, who looked on the king of Bohemia as a sufferer in the Protestant cause, and who therefore gave his family a home besides a generous allowance. Frederick was not only deprived of his new kingdom, but lost also his old possessions, for the Emperor seized his lands on the Rhine and spoiled his palaces. Many a brave attempt he made to win back the Palatinate, always to be baffled, and at last, after the death of his eldest son, he fell into such a low state of health that he died of a fever. Elizabeth was left with three sons and two daughters, Rupert being her idol, for she believed him born to be a hero. And truly he was a boy to be proud of, excelling in everything he undertook, and such a true soldier that, when he was only fourteen, his tutors declared he was worthy to command a regiment. When Charles I. became king, he invited two of his nephews to England, and, with the queen, at once lost his heart to Rupert, who was then about eighteen. He proposed making him a bishop or marrying him to an heiress, but Rupert would hear of neither plan. A soldier's life, with plenty of adventure, was the only life for him.