BLAKE, Alexander (1619-93), of Peterborough, Northants.

Blake’s grandfather, the scion of a minor gentry family that had settled in the Somerset parish of Over Stowey by the early sixteenth century, had made a prosperous life for himself in nearby Bridgwater by the 1570s. Blake’s father, a Bridgwater merchant and ship-owner, was involved in the lucrative Spanish trade and bequeathed his youngest son, Alexander, £100 ‘to be employed for his best benefit’.20Stott, ‘Humphrey Blake’, 87, 93-4, 204, 206.

Nothing is known about Blake’s upbringing and education or his activities and whereabouts before the civil war. He was probably the Alexander Blake who served as a lieutenant in the regiment of foot commanded by Colonel Henry Barclay that was raised late in 1642 to augment the earl of Essex’s army. By the autumn of 1644, he was a captain in the regiment of foot that served under Oliver Cromwell* and later under Colonel Francis Russell* as governors of the parliamentarian garrison on the Isle of Ely.21SP28/128, pt. 6, f. 4v; BHO, Cromwell Assoc. database.

The appointment of Blake’s elder brother Robert as a general-at-sea early in 1649 was very probably a factor in his own appointment, by the spring of 1650, as governor of the Norfolk port of Great Yarmouth: a command that Russell had briefly held in the mid-1640s.22Infra, ‘Robert Blake’; CSP Dom. 1650, p. 141. Blake may well have used his army salary to help fund his purchase of 1,000 acres in the Great (or Bedford) Level in November 1649.23Cambs. RO, R59/31/9/2, unfol. (entry for 19 Nov. 1649). As an active member of the Bedford Level Adventurers he would have rubbed shoulders with Sir Gilbert Gerard*, Sir Edward Partheriche*, William Jessop*, John Russell*, Oliver St John*, John Thurloe*, John Trenchard* and Valentine Wauton* among others.24Cambs. RO, R59/31/9/4, ff. 23v, 81, 85v; R59/31/9/6, ff. 159-60; Beds. RO, R3/10/6-7.

Blake’s connection with Northamptonshire appears to have commenced with his purchase of the lease of the sequestered deanery of Peterborough in about 1649.25Fenland N. and Q. iii. 331; iv. 17. In May 1651, he was appointed a magistrate for the liberty of Peterborough, and by mid-1654 he was a member of its commissions for oyer and terminer and gaol delivery – offices he retained until 1660.26C231/6, p. 215; C181/6, pp. 36, 368. In the elections to the first protectoral Parliament in the summer of 1654, he stood as a candidate for the city, but was defeated on a poll by Humphrey Orme*. In August, the Peterborough ‘well-affected’ petitioned the protectoral council, complaining that although they had elected Blake – ‘a person of known integrity, fearing God and of good conversation’ – a party of former royalists and other ‘disaffected’ persons had forcibly returned Orme instead, whom the petitioners denounced as a swearer, drinker and friend of the Cavaliers. Many of Blake’s supporters in the election had been inhabitants of the cathedral close, suggesting that his interest among the townsmen may have been both proprietorial and political in nature.27SP18/74/87, f. 184; CSP Dom. 1654, p. 313; Fenland N. and Q. iv. 99. The case was referred to the council’s committee for elections, but whether it was resolved during the life of this Parliament is not known.28CSP Dom. 1654, p. 313. There is certainly no evidence that either Blake or Orme attended the House. Blake was active during the mid-1650s in raising militia forces to help secure Northamptonshire against the threat of royalist insurrection and in assisting Major-general William Boteler* administer the decimation tax and suppress ‘profaneness’.29SP25/76A, f. 16; CSP Dom. 1655, p. 149; TSP iv. 235.

In the elections to the second protectoral Parliament in the summer of 1656, he was one of six men returned for Northamptonshire – allegedly as a result of sharp practice by Boteler on election day.30Supra, ‘Northamptonshire’; Bodl. Top. Northants. C.9, p. 109. Blake was named to 30 committees in this Parliament – beginning on 23 September, with his appointment to the House’s standing committee for Irish affairs.31CJ vii. 427a. Three days later (26 Sept.) he was named to a committee set up to provide for the safety of the protector and the peace of the nation.32CJ vii. 429a. The majority of the committees to which he was nominated in the next four months, however, concerned either relatively routine business or local issues. Thus he was put on committees for strengthening the laws against alehouses and drunkenness; on a bill for discovering and suppressing Catholic recusants; and for the maintenance of the ministry in Northampton.33CJ vii. 430a, 463b, 469a. Following the unsuccessful assassination attempt on Cromwell early in 1657, a day of national thanksgiving was appointed; and on 31 January, Blake was added to the committee for drafting and seeking protectoral approval of the necessary declaration.34CJ vii. 484a.

Blake’s next appointment was not until 6 March 1657, when he was named to a committee for amending a clause in the article of the Remonstrance – the projected protectoral settlement that became the Humble Petition and Advice – concerning the qualifications for membership of the Commons.35CJ vii. 499b. When this article was debated again four days later (10 Mar.), he was named to a committee for considering the appointment of the commissioners to ensure that the proper qualifications were met.36CJ vii. 501a. On 20 March, he was included on a committee to draft a clause in the Remonstrance for safeguarding the nation against the Cavalier interest.37CJ vii. 508b. What would prove his last two committee appointments in this Parliament came late in March and were concerned with private legislation.38CJ vii. 513b, 514b. Nevertheless, he did not abandon his seat thereafter, for on 12 June he served as a teller with Edward Neville on what seems to have been a non-partisan division concerning the assessment rates on Ireland. This vote had come after a debate provoked by Lord Deputy Charles Fleetwood’s presentation to the House of a petition, signed by several Irish MPs, for abatement of the assessment. The precedent of Members petitioning the House when, as Major-general Edward Whalley put it, ‘they have liberty here to speak for themselves’, was ‘disliked generally’, but Blake and Neville lost the division nonetheless.39CJ vii. 555b; Burton’s Diary, ii. 224-6.

A week or so before the end of the first session, on 18 June 1657, the House ordered that Blake be paid almost £4,000 from prize goods for his brother Robert’s arrears of military pay.40CJ vii. 561; Burton’s Diary, ii. 257. Robert would die at sea in August, and in his will he appointed four of his brothers, among them Alexander, his executors and divided part of his personal estate between them.41PROB11/267, f. 63v. Alexander received no appointments in the second session, and it is not clear that he attended the House. However, he was present at a meeting of the trustees for uniting parishes, on 26 January 1658, when he joined Whalley, Boteler, Hezekiah Haynes and John Weaver in supporting the merger of two parishes in Stamford.42Burton’s Diary, ii. 371-2.

Blake was returned for Peterborough in the elections to Richard Cromwell’s* Parliament of 1659. Shortly after his nomination to a committee set up on 2 March to consider a petition from a group of Lincolnshire fenlanders, he was granted three weeks’ leave of absence (8 Mar.) and left no further impression on the records of this Parliament.43CJ vii. 609a, 611b. That summer and autumn the restored Rump commissioned him first as a major and then as a colonel in the Northamptonhire militia.44CSP Dom. 1659-60, pp. 16, 283; CJ vii. 753a, 772b. On 12 January 1660, the Rump selected him for a captaincy in the regiment of Sir Arthur Hesilrige*. But the next day (13 Jan.), it was resolved that another officer be named in his place.45CJ vii. 810a, 811b. The basis for claims that he opposed the presentation of an address to General George Monck* from Peterborough’s inhabitants early in 1660, calling for a free Parliament, is not clear.46Fenland N. and Q. iv. 17. He was required to vacate the deanery of Peterborough at some point in the early 1660s, and it was perhaps in relation to his former lease that he had become embroiled by 1664 in a legal dispute with Humphrey Orme.47Peterborough Local Admin. 167. By about 1662, he had taken up residence at Tinwell, in Rutland.48E113/12. Little is heard of him thereafter, although it is clear that he acted as a patron of nonconformist ministers. In 1666, the ejected Congregationalist minister Samuel Winter appointed Blake, John Weaver*, Henry Markham* and a son of Andrew Broughton* as supervisors of his will.49PROB11/324, f. 327; Calamy Revised, 539. And in 1672, Blake’s house in St Martin’s, Northampton, was licensed as a place of Presbyterian worship.50CSP Dom. 1672, p. 293; Calamy Revised, 411.

Blake died in 1693 and was buried on 4 September of that year in the Bedfordshire parish of Eaton Socon.51Stott, ‘Humphrey Blake’, 210. In his will, written in 1684, he referred to himself as a resident of Tinwell.52PROB11/418, f. 11. He seems to have died childless and was the last member of his family to sit in Parliament.