Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 23.djvu/118

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Grenfell
110
Grenville

navy, who on 13 Feb. 1882, while shooting in the neighbourhood of Artaki, in the Sea of Marmora, was severely wounded in a chance affray with some native shepherds; he narrowly escaped with his life, his companion, Commander Selby, being killed. An elder son, John Granville Grenfell, commissioner of crown lands in New South Wales, was killed while defending the mail against an attack of bushrangers on 7 Dec. 1866 (Sydney Morning Herald, 11, 21 Dec. 1866).

[Times, 22 March 1869; Illustrated London News, 4 Dec. 1852; Mulhall's English in South America, p. 210; Armitage's Hist. of Brazil; information from the family.]


GRENFELL, PASCOE (1761–1838), politician, was born at Marazion in Cornwall, and baptised at St. Hilary Church 24 Sept. 1761. His father, Pascoe Grenfell, born in 1729, after acting as a merchant in London, became commissary to the States of Holland, and died at Marazion 27 May 1810, having married Mary, third child of William Tremenheere, attorney, Penzance. The son went to the grammar school at Truro in 1777, where he was contemporary with Richard Polwhele, the historian, and Dr. John Cole, rector of Exeter College, Oxford. Afterwards proceeding to London he entered into business with his father and uncle, who were merchants and large dealers in tin and copper ores. In course of time he connected himself with Thomas Williams of Temple House, Gt. Marlow, then occupied with the development of the industries of Anglesey and Cornwall, and the largest manufacturer of the products of those districts in the kingdom. Grenfell soon became principal managing partner of these concerns, and having purchased Taplow House, was chosen parliamentary representative, on the death of Williams, in 1802 for Great Marlow, Buckinghamshire, for which place he sat from 14 Dec. 1802 to 29 Feb. 1820. He represented Penryn in Cornwall from 9 March 1820 to 2 June 1826. In parliament he was a zealous supporter of William Wilberforce in the debates on slavery, besides being a vigilant observer of the actions of the Bank of England in its dealings with the public, and a great authority on all matters connected with finance. On the latter subject he made many speeches, and it was chiefly through his efforts that the periodical publication of the accounts of the bank was commenced (Hansard, vols. xxii. xxx-xxxvii.) Two of his speeches were reprinted as pamphlets: (1) Substance of a speech, 28 April 1814, on applying the sinking fund towards loans raised for the public service, 1816; (2) Speech, 13 Feb. 1816, on certain transactions between the public and the Bank of England, 1816. He was governor of the Royal Exchange Insurance Company, and a commissioner of the lieutenancy for London. He died at 38 Belgrave Square, London, 23 Jan. 1838. He married, first, his cousin, Charlotte Granville, who died in 1790, and secondly, on 15 Jan. 1798, Georgiana St. Leger, seventh and youngest daughter of St. Leger St. Leger, first viscount Doneraile. She died 12 May 1818.

[Gent. Mag. April 1838, p. 429; D. Gilbert's Cornwall, ii. 216; Polwhele's Reminiscences (1836), i. 12, 110; Lipscombe's Buckinghamshire, i. 304; Boase and Courtney's Bibl. Cornub. pp. 189, 1205; Duke of Buckingham's Memoirs of Court of George IV (1859), i. 282-3.]


GRENVILLE. [See also Granville.]


GRENVILLE, Sir BEVIL (1596–1643), royalist, son of Sir Bernard Grenville and Elizabeth, daughter of Philip Bevil of Kellygarth, Cornwall, was born 23 March 1595-1596 at Brinn, in St. Withiel, Cornwall (Vivian, Visitation of Cornwall, p. 192; Bibliotheca Cornubiensis, iii. 1206), matriculated at Exeter College, Oxford, 14 June 1611, and took the degree of B.A. 17 Feb. 1613-14 (Boase, Exeter College Registers, p. xxx). In a letter to his son Richard, written in 1639, Grenville gives an account of his own studies: ‘I was left to my own little discretion when I was a youth in Oxford, and so fell upon the sweet delights of reading poetry and history in such sort as I troubled no other books, and do find myself so infinitely defective by it, when I come to manage any occasions of weight, as I would give a limb it were otherwise’ (Academy, 28 July 1877). Grenville represented Cornwall in the parliaments of 1621 and 1624, and Launceston in the first three parliaments of Charles I (Return of Names of Members of Parliament, 1878). During this period he sided with the popular party, and was the friend and follower of Sir John Eliot. Grenville's letters to his wife in 1626 show with what anxiety he regarded Eliot's brief imprisonment in that year (Forster, Life of Cromwell, p. 99). In 1628 Grenville was very active in securing the return of Eliot and other opposition candidates to parliament, in spite of the fact that his father, Sir Bernard, took the side of the government (Forster, Life of Eliot, 1865, i. 108, 110). During Eliot's final imprisonment he had no stauncher friend than Grenville; he signs himself to Eliot ‘one that will live and die your faithfullest friend and servant.’ When, in 1632, there were rumours of a fresh parliament, Grenville wrote an affectionate letter to Eliot asserting that he should ‘be sure of the first knight's place whensoever it happen’ (ib. ii. 529, 708). Grenville's reasons for abandoning the opposition are obscure. In 1639, when the king raised an army against the Scots, he manifested the greatest alacrity in his cause. ‘I go with joy and com-