Grenville. Another, Thomas Grenville (1755–1846), who was, with one interval, a member of parliament from 1780 to 1818, and for a few months during 1806 and 1807 president of the board of control and first lord of the admiralty, is perhaps more famous as a book-collector than as a statesman; he bequeathed his large and valuable library to the British Museum.
The Grenville Papers, being the Correspondence of Richard Grenville, Earl Temple, K.G., and the Right Hon. George Grenville, their Friends and Contemporaries, were published at London in 1852, and afford the chief authority for his life. But see also H. Walpole’s Memoirs of the Reign of George II. (London, 1845); Lord Stanhope’s History of England (London, 1858); Lecky’s History of England (1885); and E. D. Adams, The Influence of Grenville on Pitt’s Foreign Policy (Washington, 1904).
GRENVILLE (or Greynvile), SIR RICHARD (c. 1541–1591), British naval commander, was born of an old Cornish family about 1541. His grandfather, Sir Richard, had been marshal of Calais in the time of Henry VIII., and his father commanded and was lost in the “Mary Rose” in 1545. At an early age Grenville is supposed to have served in Hungary under the emperor Maximilian against the Turks. In the years 1571 and
1584 he sat in parliament for Cornwall, and in 1583 and 1584 he was commissioner for the works at Dover harbour. He appears to have been a man of much pride and ambition. Of his bravery there can be no doubt. In 1585 he commanded the fleet of seven vessels by which the colonists sent out by his cousin, Sir Walter
Raleigh, were carried to Roanoke Island in the present North Carolina. Grenville himself soon returned with the fleet to England, capturing a Spanish vessel on his way, but in 1586 he carried provisions to Roanoke, and finding the colony deserted, left a few men to maintain possession. He then held an important post in charge of the defences of the western counties of England. When a squadron was despatched in 1591, under Lord
Thomas Howard, to intercept the homeward-bound treasure-fleet of Spain, Grenville was appointed as second in command on board the “Revenge,” a ship of 500 tons which had been commanded by Drake against the Armada in 1588. At the end of August Howard with 16 ships lay at anchor to the north of Flores in the Azores. On the last day of the month he received news from a pinnace, sent by the earl of Cumberland, who was then off the Portugal coast, that a Spanish fleet of 53 vessels was then bearing up to the Azores to meet the treasure-ships. Not being in a position to fight a fleet more than three times the size of his own, Howard gave orders to weigh anchor and stand out to sea. But, either from some misunderstanding of the order, or from some idea of Grenville’s that the Spanish vessels rapidly approaching were the ships for which they had been waiting, the “Revenge” was delayed and cut off from her consorts by the Spaniards. Grenville resolved to try to break through the middle of the Spanish line. His ship was becalmed under the lee of a huge galleon, and after a hand-to-hand fight lasting through fifteen hours against fifteen Spanish ships and a force of five thousand men, the “Revenge” with her hundred and fifty men
was captured. Grenville himself was carried on board the Spanish flag-ship “San Pablo,” and died a few days later. The incident is commemorated in Tennyson’s ballad of “The Revenge.”
The spelling of Sir Richard’s name has led to much controversy. Four different families, each of which claim to be descended from him, spell it Granville, Grenville, Grenfell and Greenfield. The spelling usually accepted is Grenville, but his own signature, in a bold clear handwriting, among the Tanner MSS. in the Bodleian library at Oxford, is Greynvile.
GRENVILLE (or Granville), SIR RICHARD (1600–1658), English royalist, was the third son of Sir Bernard Grenville (1559–1636), and a grandson of the famous seaman, Sir Richard Grenville. Having served in France, Germany and the Netherlands, Grenville gained the favour of the duke of Buckingham, took part in the expeditions to Cadiz, to the island of Rhé and
to La Rochelle, was knighted, and in 1628 was chosen member of parliament for Fowey. Having married Mary Fitz (1596–1671), widow of Sir Charles Howard (d. 1622) and a lady of fortune, Grenville was made a baronet in 1630; his violent temper, however, made the marriage an unhappy one, and he was ruined and imprisoned as the result of two lawsuits, one with his wife, and the other with her kinsman, the earl of Suffolk. In 1633 he
escaped from prison and went to Germany, returning to England six years later to join the army which Charles I. was collecting to march against the Scots. Early in 1641, just after the outbreak of the Irish rebellion, Sir Richard led some troops to Ireland, where he won some fame and became governor of Trim; then returning to England in 1643 he was arrested at Liverpool by an officer of the parliament, but was soon released and sent to join the parliamentary army. Having, however, secured men and money, he hurried to Charles I. at Oxford and was despatched to take part in the siege of Plymouth, quickly becoming the leader of the forces engaged in this enterprise. Compelled to raise the siege he retired into Cornwall, where he helped to resist the
advancing Parliamentarians; but he quickly showed signs of insubordination, and, whilst sharing in the siege of Taunton, he was wounded and obliged to resign his command. About this time loud complaints were brought against Grenville. He had behaved, it was said, in a very arbitrary fashion; he had hanged some men and imprisoned others; he had extorted money and had used the contributions towards the cost of the war for his own ends. Many of these charges were undoubtedly
true, but upon his recovery the councillors of the prince of Wales gave him a position under Lord Goring, whom, however, he refused to obey. Equally recalcitrant was his attitude towards Goring’s successor, Sir Ralph Hopton, and in January 1646 he was arrested. But he was soon released; he went to France and Italy, and after visiting England in disguise passed some time in
Holland. He was excepted by parliament from pardon in 1648, and after the king’s execution he was with Charles II. in France and elsewhere until some unfounded accusation which he brought against Edward Hyde, afterwards earl of Clarendon, led to his removal from court. He died in 1658, and was buried at Ghent. In 1644, when Grenville deserted the parliamentary party, a proclamation was put out against him; in this there were attached to his name several offensive epithets, among them being skellum, a word probably derived from the German Schelm, a scoundrel. Hence he is often called “skellum Grenville.”
Grenville wrote an account of affairs in the west of England, which was printed in T. Carte’s Original Letters (1739). To this partisan account Clarendon drew up an answer, the bulk of which he afterwards incorporated in his History. In 1654 Grenville wrote his Single defence against all aspersions of all malignant persons. This is printed in the Works of George Granville, Lord Lansdowne (London, 1736), where Lansdowne’s Vindication of his kinsman, Sir Richard, against Clarendon’s charges is also found. See also Clarendon, History of the Rebellion, edited by W. D. Macray (Oxford, 1888); and R. Granville, The King’s General in the West (1908).
GRENVILLE, WILLIAM WYNDHAM GRENVILLE, Baron (1759–1834), English statesman, youngest son of George Grenville, was born on the 25th of October 1759. He was educated at Eton and Christ Church, Oxford, gaining the chancellor’s prize for Latin verse in 1779. In February 1782 Grenville was returned to parliament as member for the borough of Buckingham, and in the following September he became secretary to the lord lieutenant of Ireland, who at this time was his brother, Earl Temple, afterwards marquess of Buckingham. He left office in June 1783, but in the following December he became paymaster-general of the forces under his cousin, William Pitt, and in 1786 vice-president of the committee of trade. In 1787 he was sent on an important mission to the Hague and Versailles with reference to the affairs of Holland. In January 1789 he was chosen speaker of the House of Commons, but he vacated the chair in the same year on being appointed secretary of state for the home department; about the same time he resigned his other offices, but he became president of the board of control, and in November 1790 was created a peer as Baron Grenville. In the House of Lords he was very active in directing the business of the government, and in 1791 he was transferred to the foreign office, retaining his post at the board of control until 1793. He was doubtless regarded by Pitt as the man best fitted to carry out his policy with reference to France, but in the succeeding years he and his chief were frequently at variance on important
