not more than twenty were left alive, and those grievously wounded, the story, ‘memorable even beyond credit and to the height of some heroical fable’ (ib.), is not rendered more interesting, and scarcely more wondrous, by trebling the numbers of the host.
The circumstances of Greynvile's death correspond very exactly with what we are told of his character; a man he was ‘of intolerable pride and insatiable ambition’ (Lane to Walsyngham, 8 Sept. 1585; Cal. State Papers, Col.), a man ‘very unquiet in his mind and greatly affected to war,’ ‘of nature very severe, so that his own people hated him for his fierceness and spake very hardly of him’ (Linschoten, in Arber, p.91) but also a man of ‘great and stout courage,’ who ‘had performed many valiant acts, and was greatly feared in these islands,’ sc. the Azores. Greynvile married Mary, daughter and coheiress of Sir John St. Leger, and by her left issue four sons and three daughters. His eldest son, Sir Bernard Grenville (d. 1636), was father of Sir Bevil and Sir Richard (1600-1658) both of whom are separately noticed. The spelling of the name Greynvile is that of Sir Richard's own signature, in a bold and clear handwriting. None of his descendants seem to have kept to the same mode, and at the present time four different families claiming to be descended from him spell it Granville, Grenville, Grenfell, and Greenfield. A portrait, supposed to be of Sir Richard Greynvile—half-length, embossed armour, red trunk hose, dated 1571, set. 29—was exhibited at South Kensington in 1866, lent by the Rev. Lord John Thynne.
[Visitation of Cornwall, 1620 (Harl. Soc. Publications, ix. 85); Calendars of State Papers, Domestic and Colonial; Monson's Naval Tracts, in Churchill's Voyages, iii. 155; Hakluyts Principal Navigations, ii. 169, iii. 251; Linschotens Discours of Voyages. Many of these and other minor contemporary notices have been collected in one of Arber's English reprints, under the title ‘The Last Fight of the Revenge at Sea,’ also under the title ‘The Last Fight of the Revenge, and the Death of Sir Richard Grenville,’ in the Bibliotheca Curiosa of Messrs. Goldsmid. A poem by Gervase or Iervis Markham, ‘The most honorable Tragedie of Sir Richard Grenvile,’ appeared with a dedication to Lord Mountjoy, London, 1595, 4to. See also the bibliographical notice in Courtney and Boase's Bibl. Cornub. i. 193, iii. 1208; Notes and Queries, 5th ser. ix. 222; and an interesting and careful article in the Geographical Magazine, v. 233.]
GRENVILLE, Sir RICHARD (1600–1658), royalist, second son of Sir Bernard Grenville, and grandson of Sir Richard Grenvile (1541?-1591) [q. v.], was baptised 26 June 1600 at Kilkhampton, Cornwall (Vivian, Visitations of Cornwall, pp. 192, 639). In a tract in his own vindication, written in 1654, Grenville states that he left England in 1618 to take service in the wars in the Palatinate and the Netherlands (‘Sir Richard Grenville's Defence against all Aspersions of Malignant Persons,’ reprinted in the Works of George Grenville, Lord Lansdowne, 1732, i. 545). He served as a captain in the expedition to Cadiz, and as sergeant-major in that to the Isle of Rhé. Of the latter Grenville wrote an account, which is printed by Lord Lansdowne, who also assigns to him a share in the composition of Lord Wimbledon's defence ot his conduct during the Cadiz expedition (ib. ii. 247-337). Thanks to the favour of Buckingham, he was knighted on 20 June 1627, and obtained in the following year the command of one of the regiments destined for the relief of Rochelle (Cal. State Papers, Dom. p. 162; Metcalfe, Book of Knights, p. 187). Clarendon also attributes to Buckingham's ‘countenance and solicitation’ Grenville's marriage with a rich widow, Mary, daughter of Sir John Fitz of Fitzford, Devonshire, and widow of Sir Charles Howard, which took place in October 1629 (Cal. State Papers, Dom. 1639-40, p. 415). She had a fortune of 700l. a year, and Grenville, being now a man of wealth, was created a baronet on 9 April 1630 (Forty-seventh Report of the Deputy-keeper of the Public Records, p. 133). The marriage involved Grenville in a quarrel with the Earl of Suffolk, brother of his wife's last husband. According to Grenville, Suffolk refused to pay money due to Lady Grenville, and, when a chancery decree was obtained against him, trumped up false charges against his opponent. Grenville was accused of terming the Earl of Suffolk ‘a base lord,’ and sentenced by the Star-chamber to pay a fine of 4,000l. to the king, 4,000l. damages to the Earl of Suffolk, and to be imprisoned during the king's pleasure. Six days later (9 Feb. 1631) judgment was given in a suit brought against him by Lady Grenville, who proved that he had treated her with the greatest barbarity, and obtained a separation and alimony to the amount of 350l. per annum (Cases in the Courts of Star-chamber and High Commission, Camden Soc., pp. 108, 265; cf. Nelson, Reports of Special Cases in the Court of Chancery). These two sentences ruined Grenville. ‘I was necessitated,’ he says, ‘to sell my own estate, and to empawn my goods, which by it were quite lost’ (Lansdowne, i. 547). He was committed to the Fleet for the non-payment of his fine, whence he succeeded in escaping on 17 Oct. 1633 (ib.) In 1639 he came back to England with the intention of offering his services against the Scots,
