Sir Richard Grenville | Born = June 6 1542 (1542--) (age 465)
(June 6, 1542 – September 10,
1591) (sp. var: Greynvile, Greeneville, Greenfield, etc.) was an
Elizabethan sailor, explorer, and soldier. He was the grandfather of Sir Richard Grenville, of English Civil
War notoriety.
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, James Fitzedmund Fitzgerald (the Seneschal of
Imokilly), Edmund Fitzgibbon (the White Knight) and
others, appeared at Tracton, overcame the English defence with pickaxes and killed the entire garrison, other than three English
soldiers who were hanged the following day. Fitzmaurice was threatening that Spanish forces would arrive, swearing that this 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, along with 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
when he circumnavigated the world in 1577. In 1585, Grenville was admiral of the
seven-strong fleet that brought English settlers to establish a colony on Roanoke Island,
off the coast of modern North Carolina in North America. He was heavily criticised by
Ralph Lane, the governor of the colony, who referred to Grenville's "intolerable pride and
unsatiable ambition". The natives he encountered were hospitable, but the colonists treatment of them was harsh; when one
stole a small silver cup, Grenville sacked and burned an entire village, killing its inhabitants.
In 1586 Grenville returned to Roanoke to find that the surviving colonists had shipped out with Drake, and on the return
voyage he raided 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 the blood ran out of his mouth without any harm at all unto him.[1]
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 Desmond Rebellion in 1583, he had purchased land there - some 24,000
acres (97 km²) in Kinalmeaky - and brought settlers 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 HMS 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 several days later of his wounds. Revenge along with 16 Spanish ships sank during a cyclone soon
after.
Trivia
References
- Rowse, A. L.. Sir Richard Grenville of the Revenge (London, 1937).
- Peter Earle The Last Fight of the Revenge (London, 2004) ISBN 0-413-77484-8
- 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
0-85527-034-9.
- Cyril Falls Elizabeth's Irish Wars (1950; reprint London, 1996). ISBN 0-09-477220-7.
- Dictionary of National Biography 22 vols. (London, 1921–1922).
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