Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 23.djvu/130

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
Grenville
122
Grenville

that very same title: he even entered a caveat in January 1696-7 against the patent passing (ib. iv. 176). Bath died on 21 Aug. 1701, and was buried on 22 Sept. at Kilkhampton. By his marriage with Jane, daughter of Sir Peter Wyche, knt., he had two sons (Charles (1661-1701), second earl, who died a fortnight after his father by the discharge of his own pistol, and was buried on the same day at Kilkhampton ; and John (1665-1707), created, 9 March 1702, Baron Granville of Potheridge, Devonshire) and five daughters: Jane (b.1653), married Sir William Leveson-Gower, ancestor of the Duke of Sutherland ; Catherine, married Craven Peyton, warden of the mint: Grace (1654-1744), married Sir George Carteret, afterwards Lord Carteret ; surviving her husband she was herself elevated to the peerage as Viscountess Carteret and Countess Granville, 1 Jan. 1714; Mary (b. 1655), and Bridget (b. 1656). The Countess of Bath died on 3 Feb. 1691-2 (ib. ii. 349). The earldom became extinct by the death of William Henry Grenville, third earl, on 17 May 1711. In 1680 Bath pulled down the old house at Stowe, and built a magnificent mansion in its place, which was utterly demolished in 1720, and the materials disposed of by public auction. It has been said that almost every gentleman's seat in Cornwall received some embellishment from Stowe. The cedar wainscotting, which had been bought out of a Spanish prize, and used for fitting up the chapel, was purchased by Lord Cobham, and applied to the same purpose at Stowe, the seat of the Grenvilles in Buckinghamshire (Parochial Hist. of Cornwall, ii. 375-9). Burnet (i. 168) characterises Bath as ‘a mean-minded man, who thought of nothing but of getting and spending money.’ He got so much and apparently spent so little that the world was surprised to learn how poor he died. Both Burnet and Luttrell assert that the eldest son, on discovering the state of affairs, died not by accident but by his own hand.

[Burke's Extinct Peerage; Parochial Hist. of Cornwall, ii. 365, 368, 369, 375-9; Boase and Courtney's Bibl. Cornub. i. 192; Cal. State Papers, Treas. 1686-1708; will registered in P.C.C. 146, Dyer.]

G. G.

GRENVILLE or GREYNVILE, Sir RICHARD (1541?–1591), naval commander, of an old Cornish family, whose name has been spelt in a countless number of different ways, was the son of Sir Roger Greynvile, who commanded and was lost in the Mary Rose in 1545, and grandson of Sir Richard Greynvile (d. 1550), marshal of Calais under Henry VIII. There were other Rogers and Richards, as well as Johns and Diggorys, all closely related, and often confused one with the other (e.g. Froude, Hist. of England, cab. edit., iv. 436n.) In early youth Greynvile is said to have served in Hungary under the Emperor Maximilian against the Turks, and to have won special distinction (Arber, p. 10). On 28 April 1570 he made a declaration of his submission to the Act for Uniformity of Common Prayer and Service (Cal. State Papers, Dom.) In 1571, and again in 1584, he sat in parliament as one of the members for Cornwall, of which county he was also sheriff in 1577. He is said to have been knighted while holding this office, but it appears from a petition, 22 March 1573-4 (ib.), that he was already a knight at that date. He was then interesting himself, in company with Sir Humphrey Gilbert, in ‘an enterprize for the discovery of sundry rich and unknown lands,’ but it does not appear that he himself undertook any such voyage till in May 1585 he had command of a fleet of seven ships which sailed from England for the colonisation of Virginia, acting in this, it would seem, as the representative of his cousin, Sir Walter Ralegh [q. v.] On his return voyage in October he fell in with a Spanish ship, homeward bound from St. Domingo, which attacked him, but was herself overpowered and captured ; Greynvile and a party of his men, not having any boat, going on board her on a raft hastily made of some old chests, which fell to pieces just as they reached the Spaniard. In 1586 he returned to Virginia with stores for the colonists, who, however, had left before his arrival [see Drake, Sir Francis ; Lane, Ralph], and on his homeward voyage he landed at the Azores, where he pillaged the towns and carried off many Spaniards as prisoners. He had already, in 1583 and 1584, been employed as a commissioner for the works at Dover harbour, and from the time of his return from Virginia he was actively engaged in concerting measures for the defence of the western counties ; an important post, which he still held through the eventful summer of 1588 (Cal. State Papers, Dom. 8 March 1587, 14 Sept. 1588).

In 1591, when a squadron of queen's ships and private men-of-war, with some victuallers, under the command of Lord Thomas Howard [q. v.], was sent to the Azores to look out for the homeward-bound treasure fleet of Spain, Greynvile, as vice-admiral, or second in command, was appointed to the Revenge, a ship of 500 tons and 250 men, which had carried Drake's flag against the Armada in the Channel three years before. As