The ceremony, it is clear, fell little short of a royal ceremony, with the exception of the crown and the anointing. Charles Stuart might have used the words of James of Scotland to Johnny Armstrong--"What lacks this knave that a king should have?" With the exception of the name of king, Cromwell, the farmer, was become the monarch of Great Britain and Ireland. He had all the power, and inhabited the palaces of kings. He had the right to place his son in the supreme seat after him; and one whole House of Parliament was of his own creation, while the other was purged to his express satisfaction. Cromwell had not enjoyed his new dignity more than about six weeks, when he received the news of the death of his great Admiral Blake. His health had been for some time decaying. Scurvy and dropsy were fast destroying him, yet to the last he kept his command at sea, and finished his career with one of the most brilliant victories which had ever been achieved. During the winter and spring he maintained the blockade of Cadiz, but learning that the Plate fleet had taken refuge in the harbour of Santa Cruz, in the Island of Teneriffe, he made sail thither. He found the fleet drawn up under the guns of seven batteries in the harbour, which was shaped like a horseshoe. The merchantmen, ten in number, were ranged close inshore, and the galleons, in number and of greater force than any of his own ships, placed in front of them. It was a sight--seven forts, a castle, and sixteen ships--to have daunted any man but Blake. Don Diego Darques, the Spanish admiral, was so confident of the impregnable nature of his position, that he sent Blake word to come and take his vessels. "But," says Clarendon, "the illustrious genius of Blake was admired even by the hostile faction of his countrymen. He was the first man that declined the old track, and made it manifest that the science might be obtained in less time than was imagined; and despised those rules which had been long in practice, to keep his ship and men out of danger, which had been held in former times a point of great ability and circumspection, as if the principal art requisite in the captain of a ship had been to be sure to come safe home again; the first man who brought the ships to contemn castles on shore, which had been thought ever very formidable; the first that infused that portion of courage into the seamen, by making them see what mighty things they could do if they were resolved, and taught them to fight in fire as well as upon water."