Richard Grenville

Sir Richard Grenville (June 6, 1542 – September 10, 1591) (sp. var: Greynvile, Greeneville, Greenfield, etc.) was an Elizabethan sailor, explorer, and soldier.

Early life

Grenville was born at Clifton House and brought up at Buckland Abbey in Devon, England. He was a cousin of both Sir Walter Raleigh and Sir Francis Drake, and was present when Theodore Palaeologus, last descendant of the Byzantine emperors, retired to Clifton. He went on to attend at the Inner Temple, aged seventeen years. In 1562, he was in an affray in the Strand in which he ran Robert Bannister through with his sword and left him to die, a crime for which he was pardoned.

Career

In pursuit of his military career, Grenville fought against the Turks in Hungary in 1566. In 1569, he arrived in Ireland with Sir Warham St Leger to arrange for the settlement of lands in the barony of Kerricurrihy, which had been mortgaged to St Leger by the Earl of Desmond. At about this time, Grenville also seized lands at Tracton, to the west of Cork harbour, for colonisation, after Sir Peter Carew had asserted his claim to lands in south Leinster. St Leger settled nearby, and Humphrey Gilbert pushed westward from Idrone along the Blackwater. All of these efforts to take land in the south of Ireland led to bitter disputes, which escalated into the first of the Desmond rebelllions, led by James Fitzmaurice Fitzgerald.

Grenville had been made sheriff of Cork, and had to stand by as Fitzmaurice, along with the Earl of Clancar, the Seneschal of Imokilly, the White Knight and others, appeared at Tracton and undermined the defences with pickaxes and killed the entire garrison, saving 3 English soldiers who were hanged the following day. Fitzmaurice was threatening the arrival of Spanish forces and swore on a book that it was imminent; having robbed the citizens of Cork, he boasted that he could also take the artillery of the city of Youghal.

Grenville had just sailed for England, when in June 1569 - around the same time as the detention of the Spanish treasure ships in England - Fitzmaurice camped outside the walls of Waterford and demanded that Grenville's wife and Lady St Leger be handed to him, as well as all the English and all prisoners; the citizens refused. Local English farmers were put to the sword, and while Cork was running low on provisions Youghal expected an attack at any minute. The rebellion continued, but Grenville remained in England.

Grenville sided with the Earl of Arundel and the Duke of Norfolk, against the queen's secretary, Sir William Cecil in 1569, but was "undeviatingly protestant" and went on to arrest the priest, Cuthbert Mayne, at the home of the Tregians in 1577, in consequence of which Mayne was martyred. During this period he played a major role in the transformation of the small fishing port of Bideford in north Devon into a significant trading centre.

New World

Grenville had once planned to enter the Pacific by the Magellan Straits, rather than by Labrador, a plan that was eventually executed by Sir Francis Drake in 1577, when he completed the circumnavigation of the world. In 1585, he was admiral of the seven-strong fleet that brought the English settlors to establish the plantation at Roanoke Island, off the coast of modern North Carolina in North America, but was heavily criticised by the governor of the plantation, Ralph Lane, who referred to his "intolerable pride and unsatiable ambition". The natives he encountered were hospitable; but when one stole a small silver cup, Grenville sacked and burned the whole native village.

In the following year he returned to Roanoke to find that the surviving colonists had shipped out with Drake, and on the return voyage he spoiled various towns in the Azores Islands. At about this time, a description was given of his behaviour while dining with Spanish captains:

He would carouse three or four glasses of wine, and in a bravery take the glasses between his teeth and crash them in pieces and swallow them down, so that often times the blood ran out of his mouth without any harm at all unto him.

Grenville was denied a command under Drake in the successful raid on Cadiz in 1587, and contented himself with organising the defences of Devon and Cornwall in preparation for the arrival of the Spanish Armada the following year. He was commissioned, with Sir Walter Raleigh to keep watch at sea on the approaches to Ireland, and after the repulse of the invasion attempt he returned to Munster to arrange the estate granted to him under the plantation of the province. After the suppression of the second of the Desmond rebellions in 1583, he had purchased land there - some 24,000 acres in Kinalmeaky - and brought settlors over, but his renewed efforts yielded little success and he returned to England late in 1590.

Final command

Grenville was appointed vice-admiral of the fleet under Thomas Howard, and was charged with maintaining a squadron at the Azores to waylay the treasure fleets of the Spanish. He took command of The Revenge, a galleon considered to be a masterpiece of naval construction.

At Flores the English fleet was surprised by a larger squadron, sent by Philip II of Spain. Howard retreated, but Grenville faced the fifty three ships with a crew depleted in number by 95, owing to sickness on shore; he may have had an opportunity of escape, but chose to confront the far superior force. For 12 hours his crew fought off the Spanish, causing heavy damage to fifteen galleons; ultimately, Grenville wished to blow up the ship, but the crew surrendered, and he died when the Revenge and 16 Spanish ships went down in a cyclone.

Legacy

Grenville was grandfather of Sir Richard Grenville, of English Civil War notoriety.

Trivia

Grenville had planned to circumnavigate the globe in the late 1570s, but Queen Elizabeth gave the honour to Sir Francis Drake instead.
The last and fatal fight of Grenville and the Revenge is commemorated in a poem by Alfred Tennyson ("The Revenge") and a song by Al Stewart ("Lord Grenville").
One of the four houses of British public school Churcher's College is named for Grenville.

Sources

Rowse, A. L.. Sir Richard Grenville of the Revenge (London, 1937).
Peter Earle The Last Fight of the Revenge (London, 2004) ISBN 0413774848
Richard Bagwell, Ireland under the Tudors 3 vols. (London, 1885–1890).
Nicholas P. Canny The Elizabethan Conquest of Ireland: a Pattern Established, 1565–76 (London, 1976). ISBN 0855270349.
Cyril Falls Elizabeth's Irish Wars (1950; reprint London, 1996). ISBN 0094772207.
Dictionary of National Biography 22 vols. (London, 1921–1922).

1542 births | 1591 deaths | British explorers | People of Elizabethan Ireland