0354
0354f
Sir Richard Grenville
SIR RICHARD GRENVILLE
OF THE ‘REVENGE’
THE BEDFORD HISTORICAL SERIES
I QUEEN ELIZABETH I. J. E. Neale
II THOMAS MORE. R. W. Chambers
VI TALLEYRAND. Duff Cooper
VII ENGLISH MONKS AND THE SUPPRESSION OF THE
MONASTERIES. Geoffrey Baskerville
VIII LIFE IN A NOBLE HOUSEHOLD. Gladys Scott Thomson
IX SIR RICH A RD GRENVILLE OF THE REVENGE.
A. L. Rowse
X THE THIRTY YEARS WAR. C. V. Wedgwood
XI CATHERINE OF ARAGON. Garrett Mattingly
XIII WILLIAM THE SILENT. C. V. Wedgwood
XIV TUDOR CORNWALL. A. L. Rowse
XV KING JAMES VI AND I. David Harris Willson
XVI THE MERCHANT OF PRATO. Iri.s Origo
XVII MR SECRETARY CECIL AND QUEEN ELIZABETH.
Conyers Read
XVIII RENAISSANCE DIPLOMACY. Garrett Mattingly
SIR RICHARD GRENVILLE
THE BEDFORD HISTORICAL SERIES
SIR
RICHARD GRENVILLE
OF THE ‘REVENGE’
by
A. L. ROWSE
JONATHAN CAPE
THIRTY BEDFORD SQUARE
LONDON
FIRSTT FUBI-ISHED, JUNE, I937
SECONO INIPRESSION, SEETTEMBER, 1937
KIRSTT PUBLISH EE> IN
THE BEnFORJD HISEaRJO^E SERIES
194*0
REPRINTEB 1 94.9, 196a
PRINTEr> XN GREAT BRITAIN BT
BUTLER 8 c TANNER LTD., LONIX 5 N ANO
FROlhlE
AND BOUND BY A. W. BAIN Sc CO. LTD.
TO
0 .,
A GREAT CORNISHMAN,
MY FIRST AND CONSTANT ADMIRATION,
WITH AFFECTION
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
PREFACE 9
I. THE GRENVILLES AND THEIR COUNTRY 1 5
II, THE MARSHAL OF CALAIS: FROM GRANDFATHER TO
GRANDSON 26
III. EARLY adventures: HUNGARY AND IRELAND 48
IV. THE WESTERN SEA-BOARD 7 1
V. THE GREAT SOUTH-SEA PROJECT: GRENVILLE AND
DRAKE 83
VI. WEST COUNTRY OCCUPATIONS: BIDEFORD, THE CASTLE
OF COMFORT, BUCKLAND 1 1 3
VII. GRENVILLE AS SHERIFF: THE ATTACK ON THE
CATHOLICS 130
Vm. CORNISH PIRACY AND LAW-BREAKING 1 57
IX. THE JUSTICE OF THE PEACE I 78
X. RALEGH AND VIRGINIA 1 93
XI. THE FIRST VIRGINIA VOYAGE 2O5
XII. THE FIRST ENGLISH COLONY IN AMERICA: VIRGINIA
1585-6 221
XIII. LATER VIRGINIA VOYAGES 231
XIV. THE ARMADA AND THE DEFENCE OF THE WEST 244
XV. GRENVILLE IN IRELAND I588-9O: THE PLANTATION
OF MUNSTER 267
XVI. IN THE AZORES 287
XVII. THE LAST FIGHT OF THE REVENGE 3OO
XVIII. CHARACTER AND MYTH 321
XIX. posterity: epilogue 337
INDEX 357
7
ILLUSTRATIONS
SIR RICHARD GRENVILLE Frontispiece
From a painting in th-c National Portrait Gallery
SIR FRANCIS DRAKE facing page 155
From a painting in the National Maritime Museum
SIR WALTER RALEGH
From a painting in the National Portrait Gallery
CHART OF VIRGINIA 215
From a drawing by John White in the British Museum
THE INDIAN VILLAGE OF SECOTON 226
From a drawing by John White in the British Museum
A NATIVE INDIAN OF VIRGINIA 239
From a drawing by John White in the British Museum
THE ARK ROYAL 244
From a print in the British Museum
MAP TO ILLUSTRATE THE BATTLE OF FLORES 304
SIR RICHARD GRENVILLE 33 1
From the print in Holland’s Heroobgia^ by courtesy of
the British Museum
8
PREFACE
A CURIOUS fate has befallen the memory of Sir Richard Gren-
ville. I suppose his is one of the best-known names, not only
among Elizabethan west-countrymen, but of all the great fight-
ing-men of that age, the heroic age in our history. He has be-
come, partly no doubt owing to Ralegh’s magnificent prose and
Tennyson’s ballad, but still more owing to some quality in the
man and in his death, a mythical figure in the tradition of the
English people. A household name; and yet, as is the way with
mythical figures, very little has been known about his life, ex-
cept for his manner of leaving it, the famous last fight of the
Revenge in the Azores, and not even for certain about that. Per-
haps this book may in part dispel the myth and make him more
real as a man.
But it is no accident that so little should have been known
about his life hitherto. For an extraordinary series of mischances
has destroyed, so far as one can gather, all the original docu-
ments of a personal and family character, which should have
remained in private hands. No doubt the end of the male-line
of Grenvilles in the eighteenth century, and the division of the
inheritance, had its elffect. Then the pulling down of the old
house at Stowe by the Earl of Bath in 1679, and the destruction
of the great new house he built, by the egregious Countess Gran-
ville in 1 720, must have meant a great dispersion and destruction
of documents. There is the curious story told by Baring-Gould
in his Hawker of Morwenstow, how Hawker found a chest of letters
remaining at Stowe farm and sent them up to Lord Carteret,
but somehow they got lost: Canon Granville says that he con-
signed them to the flames as the best thing to do with old docu-
ments. I found myself on going to Bideford, where there should
have been a great deal of Grenville material among the town
muniments, that they had been destroyed by some miserable
9
PREFACE
town clerk in the last century, A warning to leave old houses
and archives undisturbed!
The result is that to reconstruct the life of Gi'enville one is
thrown back upon such printed sources as there are, and the
documents in public archives, without the aid, the delicious aid,
of private and familiar correspondence. I remember Sir John
Squire, who once had the intention of writing the life of Gren-
ville, telling me that it could not be done.
But in the course of several years of research, I have had the
good fortune to make a number of new discoveries, some of them
exciting, and all of them helping to round out and present at
length a fairly full portrait of the man there was behind the
myth, A charming diary of an Elizabethan Cornish gentleman,
William Garnsew, lurking in a quiet corner of the Public Record
Office, has yielded several personal glimpses of Grenville. The
Patent Roll revealed a wholly unsuspected and most exciting
story that must have gone out of mind with Grenville’s own
generation, of the man he killed in an affray in the streets of
London, when still in his minority: his first appearance upon the
public scene. I have at last tracked down the date of Grenville’s
birth, which is of the more value since those of so many other
Elizabethan seamen, Drake among them, remain unknown.
Further new material from English sources adds to our know-
ledge at a good many points.
The yield from the Spanish archives has been even more ex-
citing. Hitherto wc have had to depend for our knowledge of
the action off Flores upon English sources, none of them first
hand. It is not surprising that the action has always remained
something of a mystery. But I have had the inestimable good
fortune to track down in Spanish archives an actual first-hand
account of the battle from on board one of the Spanish ships,
an official account, objective, reliable, matter of fact. This will,
I hope, go far to disperse the mystery that has always overhung
that famous fight.
Other Spanish documents brought to light give us new inibr-
mation about Grenville’s doings in the West Indies on his way
out to the planting of the first English colony in America, the
Virginia colony of 1585-6; and an account from the Spanish
10
PREFACE
side of his capture of a rich Spanish prize off the Bermudas on
his way home. We derive from this account of a captured Portu-
guese merchant a close-up of Grenville as captor: a great Eliza-
bethan gentleman at sea, served upon silver, who ate to the
sound of music, as Drake did upon his voyage round the world.
Other documents again, Spanish and English, throw light upon
Grenville’s great project for a Pacific voyage, four years before
Drake actually sailed upon his, and upon the curious state of
relations, half rivalry, half mutual-exclusion, that existed be-
tween Grenville and Drake.
It is a pleasure to acknowledge so many kindnesses and so
much help received on every hand. To the Dowager Lady
Seaton, the representative of the Drakes, I am indebted for much
kindness and help at Buckland Abbey, as also to Sir Hugh
Stucley and Miss E. F. Stucley who helped me greatly at
Bideford and at Stowe. From representatives of the Grenfells,
Miss Maud Grenfell and Mrs. W. H. Buckler, I have had
much kindness and encouragement. To Miss I. A. Wright, of
Seville, I am most indebted for tracing and having transcribed
a number of Spanish documents, and to Mrs. Charles Hender-
son for helping me with their translation.
I wish to thank Mr. R. Pcarse Ghope, whose articles in the
Transactions of the Devonshire Association (1917) laid the founda-
tion for subsequent study of Grenville, and Dr. J, A. Williamson,
whose studies have carried our knowledge a stage further, both
of whom have aided me much in discussion. Dr. V. T. Harlow
drew my attention to a new and important aspect of Grenville’s
projected Pacific Voyage and helped me with valuable sugges-
tions. I am much obliged to the Deputy Town Clerk of Ply-
mouth who permitted me to research among the admirably-
kept archives of che town; to the Rector of Kilkhampton, the
Rev. R. Dew, who kindly searched his early Register for me;
and to the Vicar of Buckland Monachorum who allowed me to
see his parish register. My debt to the tolerant and helpful
officials at the Record Office and at the British Museum is a very
great one; in particular I should like to acknowledge the aid I
have been given at every stage by Mr. J. R. Crompton of the
Record Office. I have reason to be very grateful to the Bodleian
u
PREFACE
and Godrington Libraries at Oxford, to the Institute of Histori-
cal Research in London and to Mr. J. Hirschfield who has helped
me over the Court of Wards. To Miss N. McN, O’Farrell and
Miss P. Schrader I am grateful for much help in transcribing
documents and for many helpful suggestions.
I cannot sufficiently acknowledge what I owe to Professor J.
E. Neale, who has read the whole of my manuscript with a
kindly severity, saved me from several errors and indicated in-
numerable improvements. All I can say is that if he should read
this book again, he will see something of what I owe to him. My
greatest obligation is to my college, w'hich has enabled me for
some years now to pursue my researches into west-country his-
tory in the sixteenth century, of which the fruit is in part this
book.
My best thanks are due to my friends Mr. K. B. McFarlane,
Fellow of Magdalen, and Mr. G. F. Hudson, Fellow of All Souls,
who have been so good as to read the proofs.
A. L. ROWSE
ALL SOULS COLLEGE,
OXFORD
12
SIR RICHARD GRENVILLE
OF THE REVENGE
AN ELIZABETHAN HERO
CHAPTER I
THE GRENVILLES AND THEIR COUNTRY
From the Conquest to the Restoration your Ancestors con-
stantly resided amongst their country men, except when the
public service called upon them to sacrifice their lives for it.
OEOROE GRANVILLE (later Lord Lansdowne)
to the third Earl of Bath, 1710
If you look at a map- of the West Country, by which I mean
especially Devon and Cornwall, and notice where the peninsula
thickens out to its broadest between the Bristol and the English
Channel, along the northern strip of coast between Bude and
Bideford, that great high tableland that thrusts out into the sea,
you will find what was once the Grenville country. For a short
time, too, for some forty years in the middle of the sixteenth cen-
tury, the Grenvilles possessed land in the south of the peninsula,
Buckland Abbey, and were very familiar with the country be-
tween Yelverton and the gates of Plymouth. But that was a
mere episode in the long story of their settlement on the northern
coast, going back perhaps to the Conquest and certainly to not
long after.
Their family life for centuries revolved round the twin centres
of Stowe, in the parish of Kilkhampton, across the Cornish
border, and the town of Bideford in Devon; the years, the ages
were filled with their comings and goings across the high ground
and the moors, along the lanes and in and out of the valleys,
between the one and the other. They are all -gone now, as the
Godolphins have gone from their lonely deserted house with the
granite colonnade and the overgrown terraces, not far from the
Land’s End, or their cousins the Eriseys from the charming
Caroline house near the Lizard, or the Killigrews from Arwen-
15
SIR RICHARD GRENVILLE OF THE REVENGE
nack overlooking Falmouth Haven. Of the Grenvilles, even less
remains. At Stowe there is only a farm-house, built on the site
of the old stables, and the level spaces where their successive
houses stood looking down upon the woods of Goombe, and be-
yond to the tower of Kilkhampton church upon the skyline, now
silver in the sun, now grey with the shadows of clouds passing
and re-passing; while at Bideford, men cannot tell you for sure
where it was that the Grenvilles’ town house stood upon the
quay. Only the country remains, not so very different in its
essential lines, having suffered less change than they.
To those who know it, it is a singularly impressive country,
having more a character of its own than, if possible, any other
tract in all the West Country. Some may think it a forbidding
character, as certainly the coast is savage in the extreme. For
forty miles those limestone and shale cliffs run, tortured into fan-
tastic shapes, with horizontal reefs pushing jagged-edged out to
sea, among which no boat could live with any sea running, the
cliffs going up to six and seven hundred feet high, the full beat
of the Atlantic upon them, and not a harbour from Padstow to
Bideford, except that cleft in the coast at Boscastle, the tortuous
snake-like entry, the jade-green waters. No wonder the old
couplet goes:
‘From Padstow Bar to Lundy Light
Is a sailor’s grave, by day or night:’
- so many hundreds of good men have found it so.
The interior, when it is not too high and windswept (for much
of it is a high tableland), is fertile and good corn-growing land,
with much pasture. Stowe itself, though not far in from the
coast, is well-placed upon just such a strip of good farming land,
turning its back to the sea and high up on the edge of the deep
valley of Coombe, which runs inwards from its mouth near
Steeple Point almost to Kilkhampton. These deep clefts are
very characteristic of the country; the high ground as it gets to-
wards the sea is broken into a number of transverse valleys,
each of them with its stream, a few narrow meadows rich with
grass, and in spring exquisite with the first and fullest primroses
and spring violets. There is Coombe, very narrow and steep,
6
THE GRENVILLES AND THEIR COUNTRY
which from the time of the Grenvilles seems to have been
wooded; then there are the valleys of Marsland Mouth and
Welcombe; next, Speke’s Mill Mouth, with its trout-stream and
waterfall to the sea; and lastly, Hartland the most fertile and
beautiful of them all, after which the coast from going due north
breaks away to the east and changes in character. It becomes
less severe; and so with the interior ~ as you move away from
the high ground near the western coast, you get on to the down-
ward slope of the tableland towards Woolfardis worthy and
Bradworthy, the vale of the Torridge, and so on to Parkham and
Abbotsham and into Bideford, country altogether more fertile,
more gracious and homely.
The origin of the family is, as these things often are, clothed
in obscurity. Not the less so, either, for the inflated and some-
what baroque story of their illustrious descent from the Norman
Earls of Corbeil, which became current in the days of their
triumph at the Restoration, served their advance in the peerage
under Charles II, and consoled the last days of Denis Granville
the Dean, in exile at St. Germains. Dr. J. H. Round concen-
trated all the resources of his scholarship upon what he des-
cribed as ‘the great Granville story.’ ^ He maintains the view
that the family derives not from that Richard de Grainville,
the founder of Neath Abbey about 1129, whom they looked
upon as the beginner of its fortunes in England, but from the
more obscure Robert, who witnessed the Abbey’s Foundation
charter. But not all Dr. Round’s erosive scholarship could deny
that the Grenvilles were Normans, and that they came raiding
out of Normandy very early on — earlier, for example, than the
Courtenays or the Arundells ~ if not with the Conqueror him-
self. What we do know for certain is that as early as Henry IPs
reign, a Grenville held half a knight’s fee in Bideford, and this
is the real starting-point of our knowledge of them in the west.^
They then held of the honour of Gloucester ; and, according
to Round, these Devonshire lands of that honour, Bideford,
Littleharn and Ash, had before been held by Mathilde, wife of
the Conqueror, and before that by the Saxon Briktric. By the
^ J. H. Round, Family Origins : ‘The Granvillcs and the Monks.*
^ Granville, History of the Granville Family, 31.
17 B
SIR RICHARD GRENVILLE OF THE REVENGE
twelfth year of Henry II, a Richard de Grenville is holding
three knights’ fees and a half in Devon and Cornwall ~ so, for
the first time extending across the border into Cornwall. From
that time onwards, for some five hundred years, there were
Grenvilles settled here. At Stowe throughout the later Middle
Ages they lived, in no spectacular fashion, cultivating their
lands, adding acre to acre and field to field, serving the King in
his wars, keeping the King’s peace as justices for Devon and
Cornwall, frequently being in the Commissions for both, some-
times breaking the peace themselves or resisting authority, for
the most part quiet enough in the labour of their lives, begetting
their children, providing for them, so that generation after
generation, whatever else might befall, the family should go on.
They were not a very distinguished lot, nor was the family
at all important outside the sphere of its immediate influence.
The highest flight that they attained to, was to produce an
Archbishop of York (William Grenville, Archbishop 1304-15).
The Grenvilles were very much the ordinary run of country
gentry of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, marrying into
western families of similar position. They married Courtenays
of Haccombe and of Powderham; Arundells of Lanherne and
Trerice (those two lovely Tudor houses yet remaining, again not
far from the sea on the north Cornish coast); Vyvyans and St.
Aubyns; Devonshire Gilberts and Bonvilles. But other western
families far surpassed them in wealth - the Courtenays, for in-
stance, who coming out of France rather later, among the court-
following of Eleanor of Aquitaine, married the Redvers heiress
and later entered the ranks of the nobility as Earls of
Devon; or the Cornish Arundells, who by a succession of provi-
dent marriages, became the first and wealthiest family in
Cornwall.
The Grenvilles remained of no great possessions, though they
retained their special relation to the town of Bideford, of which
they were overlords. Here also they added to their possession of
house-property, and the town’s trade must have been a source of
mobile wealth to them. In the fifteenth century, in the affairs
of the country at large, they were content to be followers of the
Earls of Devon and with them were adherents of the Lancas-
18
THE GRENVILLES AND THEIR COUNTRY
trian cause - as indeed most western families were. Thomas
Grenville and Richard Edgcumbe of Cotehele were involved
with the Courtenays in the conspiracy of Buckingham against
Richard III. The story of Edgcumbe’s hiding in the woods of
Cotehele, down the steep sides of the gorge of the Tamar, until
he could get away to Brittany and Henry of Richmond, is well
known. The Courtenays also fled, and Thomas Grenville,
being then very young, lay low for a time.
When the Lancastrian cause won at Bosworth and Henry
VII became king, the prospects of these faithful west-country
followers improved accordingly. The Courtenays were re-
stored to their wide lands and married into the Yorkist Royal
line: it proved, after a period of great splendour in the blaze of
royal favour, to be their undoing. Sir Richard Edgcumbe be-
came Comptroller of the Royal Household and, an intimate
friend of Henry’s, was rewarded with the large estates of the
Cornish Yorkist Sir Henry Bodrugaii: the foundation of their
greatness to this day in the west. Thomas Grenville gained
nothing like so much. He was made an Esquire of the Body to
Henry VII, a position of personal attendance which was not
without its opportunities; a similar position held at about the
same time by David Cecil, Burghley’s grandfather, made the
family fortunes of the Cecils.
Whether it was a reluctance to live away from the west, at
Court, or a premature appreciation of the joys of matrimony,
Thomas Grenville made no such career for himself- He lived on
in the west, twice married, begetting his children (no less than
ten of them lived to be provided for), serving as Sheriff for
Cornwall, coming up to the Court from time to time, once, we
know, on the occasion of the marriage of Prince Arthur with
Catherine of Aragon — a great event, harbinger of what later
troubles! It was then that he was made a Knight of the Bath.
But he soon returned to the west, where he died on March i8,
1513, and now lies buried in his fine tomb of white limestone
in the church of Bideford. He had bequeathed his ‘body to be
buried in the church earth of Bideford, in the south-east part of
the chancel door, where my mind is if I li^ e to make an altar
and a priest to sing there to pray for me and mine ancestors and
19
SIR RICHARD GRENVILLE OF THE REVENGE
heirs for ever.’ Alas, for man’s hopes to put a stay to time
passing!
There he is, looking down at us out of time, the first Grenville
whom we seem to hear and recognise across the centuries as a
person, for in those words we listen to his last wishes, face to face
with death.
II
We are now well over the threshold of the sixteenth century
- the formative period of modern England, in which English
society came to be constituted upon the foundations we know.
It was a time of the rise of the gentry as a class, of the lesser
landed interest as a dominating factor in the national life. Two
factors chiefly aided it. The value of land was increasing, as
again in the eighteenth century; so that those whose wealth was
in land and the cultivation of it for themselves, rather than in
money or fixed rents and services, were on the upgrade of power.
A second factor which enormously strengthened the trend in
favour of the landed classes was the Reformation, the dispersion
of church lands. The steady rain of Church-property which fell
upon the thirsty ground all through this century, in the end
benefited most, not the nobility or the Crown, so much as the
lesser landed gentry. Lands often slipped through the fingers
of the greater courtiers; when it was not by extravagance or in-
advertence there was the convenient process of attainder to help
it: some of the greatest collections of monastic property were
broken up in this way. But when an attractive manor, or some
morsels of a small religious house came into the hands of a family
living close to the soil itself, cultivating its own land, struggling
to keep its head above water and to provide for its all too
numerous progeny, property had a habit of remaining there.
This meant a tremendous afforcement of power to the gentry
as a class; for where in so many English villages before the
Reformation there were no lords but the distant monks in their
abbeys, the hours slipping lazily through their fingers over their
prayers or their provender, now every village came to have its
squire, greedy of power, having to make his way in the world,
energetic, hard, pushing. The Grenvilles were carried up on
THE GRENVILLES AND THEIR COUNTRY
this tide, like so many others, their cousins and friends; while
the Courtenays and the Cornish Arundells went down.
But personal factors were at work in the process as well.
Whatever the reason, and nothing is more mysterious in life
than this, a new and active strain, of immense and passionate
energy, came into the family in the sixteenth century. It may
be that the two things, the historical circumstances and the
psychological response, are functions of each other; for it is
striking, how in history an upward-moving cause elicits ability
and energy, while that on the downgrade is often accompanied
by stupidity and listlessness. Perhaps the family generates
energy as the opportunity is presented to it. Certain it is that
the Grenvilles, a family hitherto of no particular consequence,
suddenly throws up a number of remarkable and forceful
characters, who over several generations push the family into a
position of prominence, whence, after a time the energy lapses,
and it sinks back again.
Amid the diversity of their characteristics, a certain dominant
streak is observable: a harsh domineering note, proud in the
extreme, unyielding, betraying signs of overstrain and un-
balance, forceful, highly strung, bent on action, capable of the
uttermost devotion; above all, exciting. It comes out, though
not so harshly, in Sir Richard Grenville the elder. Marshal of
Calais, more noticeably in the case of his aunt. Honor Gren-
ville, Lady Lisle; it reaches its apex with the extraordinary
character and career of Sir Richard Grenville of the Revenge] it
is accentuated, but debased, in the person of the third Sir
Richard, of the Civil War, whose character may be said to have
gone to shipwreck on it.
Other characteristics there were too: a generous disregard of
consequences in any course that they embarked upon, that was
not incompatible with a practical hard-headed turn of mind in
matters of business; above all, fidelity and loyalty. In four
generations following each other, a Grenville died in the service
of his country: Roger, our Sir Richard’s father, drowned in the
Mary Rose at Portsmouth in 1545; Sir Richard himself mortally
wounded off Flores in the Azores in the last fight of the Revenge]
his son John died upon Ralegh’s famous expedition to Guiana
SIR RICHARD GRENVILLE OF THE REVENGE
in 1595;^ his grandson Sir Bevil, that Bayard of the Royalist
cause, killed at Lansdown in 1643. No wonder the old Cornish
proverb which says, ‘a Godolphin never wanted wit’ goes on to
add, ‘nor a Grenville loyalty.’
HI
Much then as our Richard owed to his family, which reached
the apex of its achievement and fame with him, his career owed
still more to his age and time. Indeed, the actual character of
his career, the precise shape that it traced upon the map of our
history, would be unthinkable outside the circumstances of the
Elizabethan age.
It was the heroic age in our history, when the nation saw
great opportunities of expansion and achievement opening be-
fore it. Young, fresh, vigorous, full of self-confidence and spirit,
it knew how to take them. For these very opportunities at the
same time imposed a test, a test of nerve, character, intelligence.
There were the complex dangers of the Reformation, a move-
ment full of eddies and shoals; there was the difficult role we
had to play in Europe, not without subtlety, in an exposed and
sometimes isolated position; there was finally the prolonged duel
with Spain that lasted all the latter part of the Queen’s reign.
It was the fact that the opportunities given were so triumphantly
taken, our difficulties surmounted in spite of the odds against us,
that made the Elizabethan the heroic age in our history. It is an
age to which in these less successful, more disillusioning times,
we may well look back for inspiration and renewal.
The very opportunities that were afforded, to Drake, Haw-
kins, Cavendish at sea, to the Cecils in politics, to Byrd, Mar-
lowe, Shakespeare no less in the realm of the arts or to Bacon in
that of the intellect, to Ralegh and Grenville in the field of
colonisation, gave the men of the time a supreme chance to
realise themselves and all their potentialities.
It is in the realm of action, at its most heightened and in-
tense moments, that the pure quality of the heroic emerges: that
^ Not, as Granville says (p. 123), while serving under Drake in the West
Indies.
22
THE GRENVILLES AND THEIR COUNTRY
sort of gesture by which a man goes down to posterity for
something not only memorable in itself, but in which subse-
quent ages find significance, inspiration in its defiance, strength
in its courage. It is some quality of the action in itself by which
it survives, like Falkland’s riding into the melee with Teace,
Peace’ upon his lips, or Nelson ignoring his superior’s orders at
Copenhagen, or walking the deck of the Victory at Trafalgar,
blazing with medals.
Of such was Grenville’s last action in the Revenge. There was
never any fight more famous in a nation’s history; never any
that was more purely heroic in quality - that mixture of dare-
devilry, defiance of fate, supreme indifference to consequences,
which men admire more than anything, because their own
ordinary lives are at every point so circumscribed by circum-
stance, from which there is, save in such moments, no emanci-
pation.
This book then has some contemporary significance. We shall
trace a career not hitherto fully recorded, of which little indeed
has been known, and of which now only the outline of its traces
upon the track of time remains. Too little evidence remains for
a portrait of the inner man; we can only build up our portrait
of that from his external actions and achievements such as they
are left. There are certain aspects of them, episodes in his life,
that are wholly new and are here brought to light after the
lapse of centuries. As regards the rest of his career, we shall
trace in Grenville himself, and by reference to his family before
and after, the emergence of those qualities, a creation out of
diverse elements, from which the heroic at the moment of crisis
sprang forth.
Nor ought we to leave altogether on one side the question of
what this heroic spirit meant for that age, why it was that the
Elizabethans surrounded its memory with fame. For there was
a raison d'^Stre in the legend which grew up about Grenville’s
name. The fame a man achieves is as much a function of his
time as it is his own creation or desert. So active and restless a
life, so heroic an end was what the Elizabethan admired and
thought of for himself. He saw himself as the fighter and hero.
Much as in our time Lawrence of Arabia - it is curious to think
23
SIR RICHARD GRENVILLE OF THE REVENGE
of Grenville as the Elizabethan Lawrence - expressed for so
many Englishmen that latent desire for the romance of action
which the conditions of contemporary life denied; though in
the latter there is more in the nature of escape than the natural
seeing of yourself in the mirror of a national hero.
This was the early Elizabethan Age, before disillusionment,
the disenchantments of long war and weariness came down
upon them. In the years spanned by Grenville’s active life,
the success of the voyages and the seamen opened up new
worlds of mind for their contemporaries, for ‘man’s imagination
is limited by the horizon of his experience.’ ^ It was this en-
largement of horizons, coinciding with the boundless confidence
brought to the nation by its success upon the sea, that made the
supreme triumph of the Elizabethan drama. The influence of
all this, the voyages, the discoveries, the exploits and victories,
upon the great literature of the time has, according to Professor
Raleigh, ‘been little recognised, because the reflection of con-
temporary events in thought and imagination is always in-
direct, difficult to outline, and utterly unlike common ex-
pectation.’
Yet the point can be made quite directly from Marlowe, who
expressed all the spirit of this earlier time - the lust for discovery,
for knowledge and power, a specific geographical excitement
even, before disillusionment had come to the Elizabethans,
that ‘kind of weariness of institutions which pervades Shake-
speare’s later plays.’ What is of extreme significance for us is
that Marlowe was a member of Ralegh’s circle no less than
Grenville was, in close intellectual sympathy with Ralegh, a
friend too of Harriot’s. Should we not expect to find in
Marlowe an expression of the common spirit in which Grenville
shared?
After all, it was Grenville, not Ralegh, who led the Voyage to
Virginia in 1585 which made so much impression in this im-
mediate circle; and all Marlowe’s journeying was done in those
‘realms of gold,’ his mind. Within the next two years Marlowe
wrote his Tamburlaine, the real subject of which is the excite-
ment, the lust for dominion and power which the new dis-
^ Professor Sir Waiter Raleigh, English Voyages of the Sixteenth Century, 152.
24
THE GRENVILLES AND THEIR COUNTRY
coveries and knowledge of the world were arousing in contem-
porary minds.
Look here, my boys; see what a world of ground
Lies westward from the midst of Cancer’s line
Unto the rising of this earthly globe,
Whereas the sun, declining from our sight.
Begins the day with our Antipodes!
And shall I die, and this unconquered?
Lo, here, my sons, are all the golden mines,
Inestimable drugs and precious stones,
More worth than Asia and the world beside;
And from th’ Antarctick Pole eastward behold
As much more land, which never was descried,
Wherein the rocks of pearl that shine as bright
As all the lamps that beautify the sky!
And shall I die, and this unconquered?
Here, lovely boys; what death forbids my life,
That let your lives command in spite of death.
It has a curious prophetic quality, when one thinks of the
end of both Marlowe and Grenville within so short a time.
There is no doubt of the sort of men Marlowe admired: the
fighting men, the men of action, restless, for ever spurred on by
passion and desire.
Nature that framed us of four elements
Warring within our breasts for regiment.
Doth teach us all to have aspiring minds:
Our souls, whose faculties can comprehend
The wondrous architecture of the world,
And measure every wandering planet’s course.
Still climbing after knowledge infinite,
And always moving as the restless spheres,
Will teach us to wear ourselves, and never rest . . .
There is the final expression of the character and spirit com-
mon to this circle, in which Grenville shared on the side of
action, if not intellectually: the spirit with which they inspired
the nation and for which the nation rewarded them by making
it its own.
25
CHAPTER II
THE MARSHAL OF CALAIS: FROM
GRANDFATHER TO GRANDSON
Who seeks the way to win renown,
Or flics with wings of high desire;
Who seeks to wear the laurel crown,
Or hath the mind that would aspire:
Tell him his native soil eschew,
Tell him go range and seek anew.
SIR RICHARD GRENVILLE: Ju Pram of Sea-faring
Men in Hopes of Good Fortune
i wo figures dominated the family history of the Grenvilles in
the first half of the sixteenth century. These were Sir Richard
Grenville the elder, Marshal of Calais, grandfather of our Sir
Richard, who succeeded him as a minor owing to the early
death of his father, Roger, the Marshal’s son; and Honor Gren-
ville, Lady Lisle, the Marshal’s aunt, whose marriage to Arthur
Plantagent, Lord Lisle, a natural son of Edward IV, and Lord
Deputy of Calais, made her much the most exalted member of
the family and brought the Grenvilles, so long as her good
fortune held, into close contact with the court circle. It was a
dazzling situation, not without its disappointments and its
dangers.
It was to this marriage that Sir Richard owed his office as
High Marshal of Calais, a military position of considerable
importance at the one outpost remaining of all our former pos-
sessions upon French soil. The position of the Lord Deputy
corresponded to that of a modem Viceroy or Governor-General;
it was one of great state and responsibility, more especially the
latter in these last years of English rule. So long as the Lisles
26
THE MARSHAL OF CALAIS
and their nephew Grenville remained at Calais *- Lisle was
Deputy from 1533 to 1540 -the effective centre of the family
was there and Stowe remained deserted, waiting for its master
to return.
Lady Lisle’s good fortune did not hold for long; for after
seven years in high office, a sudden blow descended upon her
husband, as upon so many other persons in the storms of Henry
VIII’s later years. Lisle was summoned from Calais, and sent
to the 1 ower, where he ended his days after two years of im-
prisonment. All his correspondence was impounded, and so we
come by the Lisle Papers^ which form a sort of Poston Letters for
the reign of Henry VIII, in many ways more intimate and
revealing than those. From it we derive a most detailed and
attractive picture of the life of that society; what is more im-
portant for us, it portrays the characters of members of the
family circle fully and personally, in a way not possible before,
nor for very long after.
But, first, for the family succession at Stowe. Lady Lisle’s
father, and the Marshal’s grandfather, was that Sir Thomas
with whom we crossed the threshold of the sixteenth century,
the first Grenville of whom we have a personal glimpse. He left
behind him a mass of children; among others, two sons, Roger
his heir and John who was destined for the Church. Of the
daughters, Katherine married Sir John Arundell ofLanherne, a
very successful match for her, the richest in the county. But we
do not hear anything more of her in connection with the family
at Stowe, and later there was not much love lost between the
Grenvilles and the Arundells. Jane, the eldest daughter, mar-
ried Sir John Arundell of Trerice, with whose family the Gren-
villes remained on the friendliest terms. Unlike the people at
Lanherne, who remained straightest and most unyielding of
Catholics, the Trcrice Arundells went hand-in-hand with the
Grenvilles in sympathy with the Reformation and with the new
trends in national policy. A third daughter, Agnes, married
John Roscarrock. Later we shall find that there was great
friendship between our Sir Richard, the younger, and his
cousins at Roscarrock, where we find him frequently paying
visits. Though the Roscarrocks have all gone now, something
27
SIR RICHARD GRENVILLE OF THE REVENGE
of their house remains, an oriel window high up under the roof,
a little cramped Tudor courtyard, hidden behind the Georgian
front of a farm-house, lying among the same wide placid fields,
the sea-gulls coming in from the coast, and from above the house,
the view away to Pentire Head and the mouth of Padstow
haven.
Sir Thomas had willed his son John, ‘if he be disposed to be a
priest, to have the next avoidance of one of the benefices of
Bideford or of Kilkhampton/ He was fortunately so disposed,
and thus Kilkhampton came by its Rector (1524-80) who
remained in possession throughout all the changes of the Re-
formation, under seven Bishops of Exeter, Catholic and Protest-
ant, under Henry VIII, Edward VI, Mary and well into the
reign of Elizabeth. While still a student at Oxford, he was
presented to the family living; he retained it, along with
Launcells from 1 533 to 1 545, then with Week St. Mary till his
death in 1580. Altogether he must have had a comfortable
time. A trusty servant of the great lady his sister, wrote to her
when Latimer and Shaxton resigned their bishoprics: ‘they be
not of the wisest sort methinks, for few nowadays will leave and
give over such promotions for keeping of opinion.’' ^ That must
have been much what John Grenville thought.
What he did with all his time we do not certainly know.
Perhaps he gave himself up to the pleasures of avuncularity, for
Richard Carew, that delightful antiquary, says: ‘Sir John
Chamond was uncle and great-uncle to at least 300, wherein
yet his uncle and neighbour. Master Grenville, Parson of Kilk-
hampton, did exceed him.’ ^ The Grenvilles were a prolific lot
at this time, but on the whole not long-lived. The Rector’s long
span must have meant that he came at the end to represent the
family’s continuity more than any other of its numerous figures.
Four generations of Grenvilles passed before him; he must have
been a very familiar figure, part of the landscape at Kilkhamp-
ton, to his great-great-nephew, our Sir Richard. When he came
at length to die, in 1580, most of the younger Sir Richard’s
career was over: it was only some eleven years away from that
fatal day in the Azores.
^ L, and P., XIV, part i, 220. ^ Carew, Survey of Cornwall (1811), 279.
28
THE MARSHAL OF CALAIS
Parson John’s elder brother. Sir Roger, did not reign long at
Stowe, only from 1513 to 1523 - so short a time, indeed, that
one wonders how he came by the title ‘the great housekeeper’
with which his descendant endows him.^ He seems to have
spent all his time in the west, taking more than his share of local
responsibilities, for he was three times Sheriff, in 1510, 1518, and
1522. Like his father he begot a large family of children. It
must have been something of a strain to settle them all, and the
marriages his children made were on a more homely level than
those of the previous generation. Nobody repeated the perilous
experiment in grandeur of their aunt, Lady Lisle. They married
Cornish Eriseys, Bevils and Tremaynes, Devonshire Fitzes and
Specotts. Sir Roger himself left home on one occasion for a
celebrated, a too celebrated event, since we find his name among
the Cornish gentlemen attending the King to the Field of the
Cloth of Gold. That was in 1520. On 2 1 July, 1 523, we find his
son Richard, Sewer of the Chamber, named as Sheriff of Corn-
wall in place of his father, who had died in his year of office,
evidently unexpectedly.^ He was only forty-six. And Richard
his son reigned in his stead.
Richard very early got down to the duties of his position.
The fact that he held the office of Sewer of the Chamber meant
that already as a young man he was acquainted with the Court;
his subsequent career brought him still more closely into con-
tact. But first he turned his attention to Cornwall. He was one
of the Commissioners to collect the subsidy there, next year; he
was Sheriff in 1526, and in 1529 was chosen knight of the shire.
Along with Sir Piers Edgcumbe, he was returned to that great
Parliament which carried through the breach with Rome and
with it the Reformation in England. These were years of
momentous consequence for the country: one after another the
cables were cut which throughout the ages had held this country
to the Catholic Church. The gentry of the shires and the bur-
gesses from the towns were consenting parties to every step that
was taken, from the abolition of appeals to Rome, to the Act of
Supremacy by which the process was consummated. Grenville
was in all this: he served throughout that Parliament and was in
^ Granville, 71. ^ L. and P., vol. 3, part 2, no. 3214.
29
SIR RICHARD GRENVILLE OF THE REVENGE
agreement with what it did; he helped to destroy what it
destroyed, the age-long independence of the Church, and to
set up what it set up, the supremacy of the Tudor monarchy.
In the early years, he passed his time partly in the west,
partly in attendance on Parliament. In 1522, there was an
interesting struggle between the Arundells and him for nomina-
tion as Sheriff of Devon: it is the first evidence we have of the
ill-feeling between them, which was to culminate so tragically in
the next generation. We find Thomas Arundell, the clever and
intriguing younger son of Sir John - he had been trained as a
lawyer and later married the sister of Queen Katherine Howard
-writing to Cromwell: Tray let not Sir Richard Grenville be
Sheriff of Devonshire; for sith I cannot have it myself, I am so
full of charity that I would be right glad that he should go
without it.’ ^ A regular Tudor sentiment, and one that is under-
standable at all times. However, Grenville had a powerful
friend at Court in Sir Francis Bryan, one of the Boleyn circle;
and these were the brief days of Anne Boleyn’s ascendancy.
Grenville was made Sheriff; and next year, at the splendid
ceremonies with which Anne’s coronation was celebrated (Anne
going in procession to Westminster, already big with the child
that was to be Elizabeth), Sir Richard was among the Knights
who served the Queen’s board in Westminster Hall.
On 24 March, 1533, Sir Richard’s uncle, Lord Lisle, was
appointed Lord Deputy of Calais. It was an event of great
importance for the family; for, from now on for the next seven
years, the life of the Grenvilles centres upon Calais, being drawn
there like a magnet by the position of its most exalted members.
It was not long before Sir Richard followed the Lisles. He had
set his heart upon the second post at Calais, after the Lord
Deputy, that of High Marshal. It was one that carried with it
a considerable establishment, but the getting of it cost him a
large expenditure of effort and money. He paid Sir Edward
Ringely some 3C400 for the reversion to the office, but even then
there were months of difficult negotiation before Grenville
could enter upon it, the path being carefully smoothed by the
all-powerful Cromwell.
and P., V, no. 1553.
THE MARSHAL OF CALAIS
At length Sir Richard arrived at Calais, and was welcomed
by the Lisles with open arms. As the result of an excessively
jubilant celebration of his accession to office Sir Richard was ill
all the early part of the New Year. There were rumours at
Court of his vacating the Marshalship, and to put a stop to them
he wrote to the King explaining his indisposition, ‘having drunk
something that troubled his stomach in my Lord Deputy's com-
pany and other of the Council at a tavern soon after Christmas.’
Perhaps it was too much to expect two such forceful person-
alities as Lady Lisle and her nephew to get on together; but
certain it is that not long after his arrival, they were on bad
terms. The native quarrelsomeness of the Grenville tempera-
ment asserted itself. Sir Richard wrote to Cromwell that he had
expected to find kindness at Calais, but had encountered the
contrary and ‘do find most in the feminine person.' ^
It is impossible not to sympathise with Lady Lisle, not so
much because she was a woman, but because she was such a
gallant, high-spirited one. One cannot but admire the vitality
and vigour of her personality. Through all the lapse of time,
she comes to us, as so rarely, a perfectly definite human person,
so ready-hearted, so busy and generous about life’s affairs, so
human in her affections, her troubles and sorrows. There was a
warmth about her nature that drew innumerable others to her,
so much so that one can read her character in the many facets of
their attitude to her. It is like seeing her image reflected in a
gallery of mirrors. We are fortunate to have so much of this
woman’s life preserved to us; we know more about her and her
ways of mind and heart than of any early Tudor character, save
only the greatest. She was, more than most great ladies of her
time, very devout; in fact, she was rather preyed upon by her
churchmen. She had a large clientele of them, from the humble
parson of St. Keverne in remotest Cornwall, to the saintly Hugh
Faringdon, last Abbot of Reading, and Bishop Gardiner, a fore-
most figure in the land.
She was very matriarchal, too, which was not to be wondered
at, considering all the little Bassets she had been left with by Sir
John, her first husband, and Lord Lisle’s children by his first
^ L. and P.. X, no. 755.
31
SIR RICHARD GRENVILLE OF THE REVENGE
wife, too, in addition to the wide fringe of Grenvilles extending
in every direction. To one of her daughters, Anne Basset, there
befell a curious momentary fate: she might have been Queen of
England. Lady Lisle had obtained for her daughter a place at
Court as maid-of-honour to Jane Seymour, and there she
remained under Katherine Howard. After the latter’s fall, it
was rumoured at Court that the King’s favour had fallen upon
Anne; the Imperial Ambassador wrote off to Charles V that the
King ‘is said to have a fancy for the daughter (by her first
marriage) of the wife of Lord Lisle’, and describing the great
banquet that he gave, with twenty-six ladies at his table, of
whom Anne was one. Somehow nothing came of it, but trouble
for the Lisles instead.
Lady Lisle had indeed more than her share of troubles. Her
marriage to Lisle remained fruitless in spite of the great love that
was between them and their fervent hopes of an heir. Lisle had
no son by his first marriage and this meant that his title would
become extinct with him. As against this, they were very happy
in the marriage of Lisle’s daughter Frances to John, Lady Lisle’s
eldest son, the Basset heir. John died not long after his marriage,
but he left a son called Arthur after Lord Lisle, a friend and
contemporary of our Sir Richard the younger, and partner in
some of his enterprises.
Difficulties, public as well as private, thickened round the
Lisles. Calais stood exposed to all the winds of doctrine that
blew, whether from France or the Netherlands, from Rome or
the obscure recesses of Germany. The place was a prey to
dreary preaching Protestants and to no less dreary, but fortun-
ately not preaching Catholics. The Council which governed
Calais could scarcely govern itself, for it was divided from top
to bottom between those who favoured the old and those who
leaned to the new. Even the Grenville interest was divided
against itself, for while Lady Lisle was a devout Catholic, Sir
Richard Grenville was an opportunist and supported the
Reformers. As Lisle grew older, his grip upon the administra-
tion, never very firm, grew slacker; an easy-going, good-
natured old person, it was evident that he was incompetent.
His position was not helped at such a time, when the religious
32
THE MARSHAL OF CALAIS
changes were going through in England, by his wife’s demon-
strative attachment to Catholic practices, upon which Cranmer
once and again remonstrated with her.
Things came to a head early in 1540 with an affair which
made Lisle’s incompetence, in such a dangerous time, look
more like treason. His chaplain had been to Rome, and there
had got into communication with Henry’s arch-enemy. Car-
dinal Pole. Lisle’s Yorkist blood told against him; at once
Henry and Cromwell scented a conspiracy. Lisle was sum-
moned to England and sent to the Tower, where he remained
for the next two years, and after surviving the imminent threat
of execution, died upon the rumour of his release. Lady Lisle
remained for a time in confinement, and then was allowed to
retire into the country, being driven to distraction, so Foxe the
martyrologist informs us, by her troubles.^ The circle at Calais
was broken for ever. Silence draws down upon them and their
doings. There are no more letters with their delicious revela-
tions of all the to and fro of that busy generous household. Yet
Lady Lisle lived on for many years, until in fact her infant
grandson, Arthur Basset, attained his majority; and that is the
last that we hear of her.
II
The downfall of the Lisles did not immediately affect Sir
Richard’s position at Calais. He remained on, performing his
duties as High Marshal which there is every reason to suppose
he had competently fulfilled. Moreover, he had been careful
to keep on friendly terms with Cromwell; we hear of him send-
ing a leash of falcons, or making other gifts to the Lord Privy
Seal. Only once was there a serious brush between them, and
that was over the marriage of Grenville’s daughter Margaret.
Sir Richard Lee, who had risen from the ranks as one of
CromwelFs agents to be Surveyor of Calais, wished to marry
into the Grenville family. But he offered nothing like such a
good jointure as Mr. Tregian, one of the wealthiest men in
Cornwall, had offered with his son and heir. It was an awkward
^ Foxe, Book of Martyrs, (ed. 1583), 1223.
33 G
SIR RICHARD GRENVILLE OF THE REVENGE
predicament, for the Marshal was very anxious not to offend
Cromwell, and yet these were not very good terms for a Gren-
ville to marry a Lee upon. Sir Richard hesitated; he thought
that the Surveyor was presuming. This drew a round declara-
tion from Cromwell that the lady would be marrying into as
good a house as her own. This, from such a quarter, was a
strong recommendation; the marriage took place, and Sir
Richard had to make the best of it. Tregian’s son married
instead, Katherine, eldest daughter of Sir John Arundell of
Lanherne. The son of this marriage was Francis Tregian, the
Catholic and recusant; and Grenville’s grandson, our Sir
Richard, was the instrument of the ruin of that family’s
fortunes. It is a curious tale which falls in due place.
In the last year of Lisle’s administration Sir Richard obtained
permission to come over to look to his affairs. It was a very
important juncture; it was just at this time that the full tide of
monastic lands began to flow into the market and had to be
taken advantage of by the provident husbandman. Grenville
had had an interview with the King, who asked about Calais
and then rode hunting. But it was not until he arrived in the
west and saw the opportunities afforded by the dissolution of the
monasteries, that he made up his mind for himself. From Stowe,
he addressed a long letter to Cromwell, a very significant his-
torical document which reveals as hardly any other what was
passing in the minds of so many of these country gentry con-
fronted with a unique opportunity. ^
When last he was with Cromwell, he wrote, he had said that
he had no suit to the King for land or fee; but since then he has
bethought him that if he has not some piece of the suppressed
land, by purchase or gift, T should stand out of the case of few
men of worship of this realm.’ He is as glad as any man in the
realm of the suppression of these orgulous persons and de-
vourers of God’s word and takers away of the glory of Christ,
who, he reckons, were also takers away of the wealth of the
realm and ‘spys to the devilish Bishop of Rome.’ Then follows
the most revealing passage, one which might have been taken
for their text by Henry and Cromwell in their dispersion of
^L. andP., XIV, uo. 133B.
34
THE MARSHAL OF CALAIS
church-property, so well does it express the social motive
behind it. He says that he would gladly buy some of the sup-
pressed lands in these parts, that his heirs may be of the same mind
for their own profit. He suggests the priory of Launceston, valued
at per annum, and the Manor of Norton at If the
King would make him a gift up to the value of per annum,
he will give twenty years purchase for the rest.
It was a cool suggestion, but he did not obtain it. Only those
who stood on terms of intimate favour with the King, such as
Cromwell himself, or in the west. Lord Russell, got gifts of land.
Others had to buy in the ordinary course of a compedtive
market. Launceston priory went in the end, not to Grenville,
but to Sir Gawen Carew. But the letter is a superb piece of
unconscious self-portraiture: the cool self-interest of it identified
with the greater glory of Christ; the candid and correct assump-
tion that the possession of church lands would commit later
generations to the Suppression. No wonder that Catholics, and
not they alone, have so hated the men of the Reformation. Sir
Richard Grenville was no exception; everybody else of his class,
or everybody who could, went and did likewise. He was rather
nicer and more candid than most.
That summer Grenville and his wife spent in the West Coun-
try, from the end of July to mid-October. No doubt there was
much business to be looked to, but it was also the season of
harvest, of visiting, and as autumn came on, of much merry-
making. They went on a round of visits to their friends and
kinsfolk, staying for a time with Lord Russell at Exeter, now
the greatest man in the west. After this Grenville returned to
Calais for the last year of his uncle’s administration; he took his
part in the elaborate ceremonies of welcome to Anne of Cleves
who passed through Calais to a reluctant spouse awaiting her in
England: her reception was the last official act of the Lisles.
Upon their recall, Grenville remained on for seven months
more, continuing to perform his duties as High Marshal until
October 1540. The King, however, was determined to have a
complete change in the administration, and on 3 October Sir
Thomas Poynings was appointed Marshal in his place.^ Sir
1 L. and P., XVI, no. 114.
35
SIR RICHARD GRENVILLE OF THE REVENGE
Richard was written to by the Privy Council to come over,
being assured that the King was ‘his good Lord as at his coming
hither (which he should accelerate) he should perceive.’ Henry
was as good as his word: Sir Richard was not implicated in the
suspicions regarding Lisle, but it was the end of his career in
office.
Some time before the Marshal’s return, we do not know pre-
cisely when, his son and heir Roger married ; it may be that
this was the purpose of Sir Richard’s long stay in the West
Country in 1 539. Of Roger, our Sir Richard’s father, we know
nothing except when he married, the names of his children, and
the manner of his end. His wife was Thomasine Cole of Slade,
a Devonshire family with whom the Grenvilles had married in
previous generations; and they seem to have had two sons,
Charles and John, before the young Richard, who survived
them, was born. On his return to England, Sir Richard bought
the reversion to Buckland Abbey in Devonshire, for which on
24 May 1541, he paid the sum of £ 2 ^^^ 3^. It seems likely
that he bought the estate upon which to settle his heir; for, from
the fact that his son’s child, Charles, was buried at the parish
church of Buckland Monachorum nearby 0028 August 1 544, - we
may surmise that the monastic house was being used as a residence
and Roger Grenville’s young family being brought up there.
Not much change in the buildings was effected at first, but
later when the young Richard grew up and lived for some years
here, he devoted himself to pulling clown and reconstructing.
The possession of Buckland gave the Grenvilles what they had
never had before, a footing in South Devon. The Abbey lies
some way up the charming and wooded valley of the Tavy, two
or three miles from the junction of Tavy and Tamar. Con-
siderably farther up lay, in those days, the great Abbey ol'
Tavistock. Buckland lies in a wooded hollow, the great Robor-
ough Down above it extending all along the ridge from Yclvcr-
ton to Plymouth. The proximity to Plymouth must have itself
been a considerable influence upon the young Richard as a lad,
for some part of his early years was probably spent at Buckland,
and much of his early manhood.
1 L. and P,, XVI, no. B78 (89).
36
Granville, 82.
THE MARSHAL OF CALAIS
But very little is known of his early years; in that respect he is
like practically all the great figures of the Tudor Age: we do not
know much of the childhood even of royal persons, of Elizabeth
herself. As regards many of the sea-captains, we do not know the
date of their birth. This has been the case hitherto with Gren-
villeA But a new document, the Inquisition taken after the
death of old Sir Richard the Marshal, informs us that his grand-
son and heir was eight years old on 15 June 1550.^ We may
take it then that he was born on or about 15 June 1542; and
some such date is borne out by the inscription on the portrait of
him painted in 1571, stating that he was then 29.^ Somewhere
about the same time, within a year or two, there was born upon
the barton of Crowndale, farther up the valley in the parish of
Tavistock, Francis Drake, greatest of Elizabethan sea-captains
and Grenville’s great rival.
The Marshal, having now retired to Stowe, went on gathering
desirable bits of church property: these years provided oppor-
tunities not to be missed. He bought the rectory and advowson
of Morwenstow, that loneliest and remotest of all Cornish
parishes in the north-eastern corner of the county, with its
Norman church perched in the throat of a gully, and beyond, a
four hundred feet drop to the sea. Four years later he carried
through his largest transaction of this kind; along with Roger
Blcwett of Holcombe Regis, he bought for igj*. the fat
manor of Tynyell in Landulph parish, on the banks of the
Tamar, which had belonged to St. German’s priory, and a
number of properties in Devonshire and other counties.'*
Later he sold off much of this property. In 1 547, for example,
he broke up the manor of Tynyell, and sold the barton of Clifton
in Landulph parish, with 100 acres of land and a fishery next
the seashore there, to Thomas Arundell of Leigh and Thoma-
sinc his wife. What makes this transaction interesting is that this
Thomasine was the young widow of Roger, Sir Richard’s son,
who after his death married Thomas Arundell; and it is prob-
able that the young Richard was partly brought up as a child
^ cf. the inadequate and unreliable article on Grenville in Diet Nat. Biog.
^ Inq. post-mortem, Chancery Series ii, vol. 90, no. 12.
3 See later, p. 79. * L. and P., XXI, part ii, 200 (19), 712 (15).
37
SIR RICHARD GRENVILLE OF THE REVENGE
with the Anindells at Clifton. What is more curious and excit-
ing, is that this is the Cornish farm to which one of the last
representatives of the Emperors at Constantinople, John Palaeo-
logus, came and settled down, who now lies buried here in the
little church at Landulph by a quiet reach of the river.
Sir Richard, gathering years now, yet not old, settled well
into the routine of his West-Country life once more: we find him
in the commissions of the Peace for both Devon and Cornwall in
1544 and 1545, and in the latter year he became Sheriff of
Cornwall for the third time. But he was not yet to rust in retire-
ment. On the outbreak of the French war in 1 543, the last and
fiercest of Henry’s reign, he was appointed with others a
collector of the moneys levied for the defence of the country.
The war - it was a peculiarly senseless one and waged for no par-
ticular object - waxed fiercer, more determined on both sides.
In 1546, when it became evident that it was to be a fight to
a finish between the English and the French, the Emperor
having withdrawn, orders were sent out for musters to be levied
in the counties. Devonshire was to provide 500 men for the war
in France and Cornwall 300. Sir Richard was appointed chief
captain to lead the Devonshire contingent, and we find him
paid conduct money for 200 soldiers, fife, drum and all, all the
way from Calstock to Dover. One imagines the straggling little
bands, brave in their new coats, marching up from the West
Country to fight in the fields of France: it is a perennial theme in
our histoiy. What they did in the war we do not know, except
that some of them died: there is so little record of the simple
inarticulate men upon whom the blank burden of history falls.
For Sir Richard, it was a renewal of his acquaintance with
French soil, his last term abroad.
Already, in 1545, he had suffered a heavy blow in the loss of
his son Roger. It was all the more bitter, because it happened
by an accident which should have been avoidable, the capsizing
of the Mary Rose, That summer the sea-warfare was at its
height, and there was a tremendous struggle for the mastery of
the Channel. The French gathered a great fleet together in the
Norman harbours: never had they been so powerful at sea -
this was the heyday of their maritime power. Along the English
38
THE MARSHAL OF CALAIS
coast and into the west there was consternation; preparations
for defence were hurriedly pushed forward. The English fleet
was concentrated at Portsmouth; by 17 July, some eighty sail
were there, ‘forty of the ships large and beautiful, ’ waiting to be
joined by sixty more from the west. The King himself went
down, ageing and swollen, but indomitable as ever; what hap-
pened, happened under his eye.
On Sunday, 19 July, while Henry was at dinner on his flag-
ship, the Great Harry, the French fleet suddenly appeared. It
was a hot, windless day; the English ships could not get out to
meet them and the French sent their galleys into the harbour.
Henry hurriedly left his ship, and all day there was fighting in
and around the harbour. The galleys were beaten off; but in
the evening about five o’clock, after the fighting was over, the
Mary Rose, the second largest of Henry’s ships, suddenly heeled
over and capsized. It was an accident like that which overtook
the Royal George in the same spot some two hundred years later.
It appears so the Imperial Ambassador was told by a Fleming
among the survivors - that after the firing and the heat, for
the Mary Rose was a heavily armed ship, the lowest row of gun-
ports was left open, and a sudden wind arising towards evening,
she heeled over and foundered with all aboard, some five hun-
dred men in all.^ Only twenty or thirty of them were picked up
and they ‘servants, sailors and the like.’ She was commanded
by the Vice-Admiral, Sir George Carew; young Roger Gren-
ville was her Captain; there must have been many western men
among all those who were drowned.
Peace was made in 1 546, leaving Boulogne in English hands,
and more of a nuisance than it was worth, as certainly it
could not be maintained in the weak grasp of Henry’s successor,
a child in his minority, under the government of the Protector
Somerset. One of the worst legacies of the war, most important
for the West Country, was the growth of piracy and disorder in
the Channel. Private depredations on commerce went on all
around these coasts to such an extent as to amount to open, if
unacknowledged, warfare. In August 1548, the Council sent
down a general Commission to the western counties permitting
^ L. and P., XX, part i, 1263.
39
SIR RICHARD GRENVILLE OF THE REVENGE
them to set forth ships to prey upon the French: license to take
the law into their own hands, to wage private war. Sir Richard
Grenville was appointed to the Commission for licences for
Devonshire; his brother John joyfully seized the opportunity to
fit out ships on his own and do a little- privateering off the coast
of France. But this was not the end of the trouble; in these
years, adventuring, privateering, piracy, flourished together.
This then was the atmosphere in which the grandson, young
Richard, grew up: the school of Elizabethan seamanship.
Nor were conditions inland any less disturbed. Henry VIIFs
government had prevented unrest in a backward county like
Cornwall, going through the disturbing process of the Reforma-
tion, from coming to a dangerous head. But there were disturb-
ances, natural enough in so primitive and raw a population,
very ignorant and all the more attached to its traditional
Catholic rites. The Cornish were an3dous to retain their holy-
days and feasts, which were far too numerous in the eyes of the
rising class of gentry, bent on speeding up the pace of work
under the stimulus of gain.
When Henry’s rule gave way to the weak benevolence of the
Protector Somerset, things grew to a storm. In the summer of
1548, the western parishes were in a flame, what with the Com-
mission for the survey of church goods, and the Injunctions for
the removal of images, the abolishing of the ancient ceremonies.
There were tumultuous assemblies at Penryn and Helston; at
the latter, William Body, Archdeacon of Cornwall, who had
bought his archdeaconry from Thomas Winter, Wolsey’s
natural son, was murdered by a pious but infuriated mob. All
this gave food for thought to the gentry who supported the new
dispensation, as it certainly filled their hands with work. Sir
Richard Grenville was appointed to head the special com-
mission of Oyer and Terminer, which assembled at Launceston
on 2 1 May to hear the indictment of some twenty-two prisoners,
six having already been sent up to stand their trial in Londond
Sir Martin Geoffrey, the priest who was the ring-leader, was
hanged at Smithfield; at Launceston some seven or eight were
condemned to the horrible penalties for high treason.
^ F. Rosc-Troup, The Western Rebellion of 84.
40
THE MARSHAL OF CALAIS
Next year, the whole of the west was in a blaze of rebellion.
The occasion was the introduction of the new Prayer Book, with
the service in English, in place of the old Latin mass: to the
Cornish, who knew little or no English at this time, the new
service was no better than the ‘Christmas mumming’ which
they called it in the Articles containing their demands. This
time it was a general movement: some thousands of men
swarmed together with the instinctive stirring of a hive of bees;
the gentry could make no head against them, could not even
resist. Some of them may have been sympathetic, certainly the
Arundells of Lanherne, who definitely leaned to the Catholic
side: it was the turning-point in that family’s long record of
prosperity. Humphrey Arundell of Holland, their cousin, be-
came the leader of the rebels.
They concentrated at Bodmin, whence they marched, joined
by the Devonshire contingents, .upon Exeter, which was be-
sieged by this army of ten thousand men from the end of June
to the beginning of August. Exeter held out, ever loyal to the
Tudors - though even more to itself: for its citizens well knew
the destruction of property which would ensue if the wild
Cornishmen were once admitted within those walls to plunder
the well-stocked shops, the wealthy merchants. Lord Russell
was sent to their relief, with an army of German mercenaries
and ordnance from the Tower; it was only after a series of hotly
contested actions that he succeeded in raising the siege. Ply-
mouth, which was not then fortified, had fallen to the rebels,
except for its castle.
It must have been at the hands of a contingent en route for
Plymouth that Sir Richard Grenville met with the misadven-
ture so charmingly told by Carew. Sir Richard was then in the
vicinity of Plymouth, and for safety threw himself into Trematon
Castle, now only a girdle of grey walls upon a high knoll, look-
ing down on one side upon Antony passage, and on the other
through the leaves of the trees, across the broad water of the
Hamoaze to Devonport. Carew relates:
‘At the last Cornish commotion, Sir Richard Grenville the
elder, with his Lady and followers, put themselves into this
4 *
SIR RICHARD GRENVILLE OF THE REVENGE
castle, and there for a while endured the Rebels" siege,
encamped in three places against it, who wanting great ordin-
ance, could have wrought the besieged small scathe, had his
friends or enemies, kept faith and promise: but some of those
within, slipping by night over the walls, with their bodies after
their hearts, and those without mingling humble entreatings
with rude menaces, he was hereby won, to issue forth at a
postern gate for parley. The while a part of those rakehells, not
knowing what honesty, and far less how much the word of a
soldier imported, stepped between him and home, laid hold on
his aged unwieldy body and threatened to leave it lifeless, if the
enclosed did not leave their resistance. So prosecuting their
first treachery against the Prince, with suitable actions towards
his subjects, they seized the Castle and exercised the uttermost
of their barbarous cruelties (death excepted) on the surprised
prisoners. The seely gentlewomen, without regard of sex or
shame, were stripped from their apparrel to their very smocks,
and some of their fingers broken, to pluck away their rings, and
Sir Richard himself made an exchange from Trematon Castle
to that of Launceston, with the gaol to boot." ^
It was a humiliating experience for an old warrior. Here he
remained, until in August, Humphrey Arundell returned
defeated from the fierce battles that had raged round Exeter.
There was some further resistance put up in the streets of
Launceston; and Russell wrote to the Council that Arundell
upon arriving there ‘immediately began to practice with the
townsmen and the keepers of Grenville and other gentlemen for
the murder of them that night." There is no other evidence to
corroborate this, and it is inherently improbable. Arundell
himself deposed, when in the Tower, that he had fled from the
rebels, over-riding them through the night, ‘and declared all
the matter to Sir Richard Grenville and there was stayed." He
was sent up to London, along with Sir Thomas Pomeroy, John
Winslade and other leaders, and there with them executed.
This rebellion, or the ‘Commotion" as it was most often called
in contemporary literature, was much the most important event
^ Garew, 265.
42
THE MARSHAL OF CALAIS
in Cornish history of the sixteenth century. It was the last
pathetic protest of the old Catholic medieval order. After its
defeat, the west settled down under the new regime; and with
the growth of hostility to Spain in western waters and with the
struggle opening out for command of the seaways to the New
World, the western sea-board was brought into the forefront of
the long battle-line. With this movement, it swung forward into
line with the rest of the nation, or rather, for the next fifty years,
into the vanguard of it; from being Catholic and backward, it
became aggressively Protestant ; at any rate, its leading families
were and recruited the forward school of action in Elizabeth’s
reign.
These exciting events must have been not without some in-
fluence upon the young Richard Grenville’s mind. We do not
know where he was at the time, but he may have been in
Trematon Castle with his grandfather; almost certainly, if
he were living then with his mother and his stepfather,
Thomas Arundell of Leigh, at Clifton. For Clifton lies out on a
low-lying neck of land, on the Tamar above Saltash, where the
river loops round to Halton Quay; and it would be the natural
thing for a family of gentry in time of ‘Commotion’ to seek
refuge in Trematon, the nearest stronghold. We know from a
Chancery case many years afterwards, when Richard Grenville
had run his life’s course and died a hero in a blaze of glory,
that he had grown up with Alexander Arundell his half-brother,
between whom throughout their lives ‘divers enterprises of
kindness and friendship did pass,’ and that they frequently lent
each other money, ‘being so linked in true and firm love each
to other that as the nearest in blood so in love none were more
sure and steadfast.’ ^
Not long after the rising, on 15 March 1550, old Sir Richard
died; and within a month after, his wife followed him. They
were buried together at Kilkhampton, the one on 24 March,
the other on 25 April 1 550. ^ It may be, as the earliest and best
biography of our Sir Richard suggests, with its aristocratic,
eighteenth-century prejudice, that it was the vexation and hard-
^ Ghanc. Proc. Eliz. G 8/34, July 1595.
® Dew, History of the Parish of Kilkhampton, 70.
43
SIR RICHARD GRENVILLE OF THE REVEJsfGE
ships this distinguished old couple endured at the hands of the
rebels, which brought them so soon afterwards to their graved
We may take leave to suppose that it was due rather to old age.
From his will, we can see that the family property, under Sir
Richard’s hands, had grown considerably.^ An entry in the
books of the Court of Wards gives us for the first time a state-
ment of the annual value of the estate; ^£'237 3^'. This was
no inconsiderable amount in those days: it was something
approaching one-half the value of the Earl of Devonshire’s large
estates in the west. It meant that with the exception of the
Arundells of Lanherne, the Grenvilles were about the richest
of Cornish landowners. Most of his property. Sir Richard’s will
left to his wife, during the minority of his grandson. She was
to have Buckland, which he names Buckland Grenville, for a
long period of years; and it appears from the provision that she
was to cut down as much timber as she pleased for ‘the building
of the mansion place,’ that the work of turning the abbey into a
house in which to dwell was either already started or in con-
templation. Dame Maude was also to have Stowe, according
to the will, during the minority. After various legacies, the
residue of the property and the entailed estate were demised
upon his grandson and heir, who was not yet eight years old.
The ink was hardly dry upon the will before its elaborate pro-
visions regarding Dame Maude lapsed with her death, and the
young Richard succeeded, a minor.
Except for the medieval Archbishop, old Sir Richard was the
most distinguished figure the family produced, until his grand-
son who out-distanced him. We have no such intimate a view
into his mind and heart as we have of Lady Lisle, perhaps
partly for the reason that he was a man, and she a woman.
Garew summed up his life objectively enough: ‘So did Sir
Richard Grenville the elder interlace his home magistracy with
^ Biographic Britannica (1757), IV, 2283: ‘It was the vexation, hardships
and fatigue, which this aged couple went through from the madness of this
insolent rabble, that brought them both soon after to their end.’
* Inq. post-mortem, Chancery Series ii, vol. 90, no. 12; and Court of
Wards, vol. 5, no. 109.
® Court of Wards, Misc. Books 154. For this reference I am indebted to
Mr. J. Hii-schfield.
44
THE MARSHAL OF CALAIS
martial employments abroad; whereof the King testified his
good liking by his liberality.’ But there was another side to him
than this. At the gay court of Henry VIII, where the young
peers the Earl of Surrey and Lord Vaux, and the brilliant Sir
Thomas Wyatt and Sir Francis Bryan, friend of the Lisles, were
writing in the dawn of that sweet new Italian style which was to
lead on to the splendid day of Spenser and Marlowe and
Shakespeare, Sir Richard had his part. There is very little of
his writing left, only two poems of his preserved in the British
Museum; ^ but they are sufficiently accomplished, and what is
more they are personal in tone, true to the man he was. When
others were singing, like Surrey, of his love :
"When raging love with extreme pain
Most cruelly distrains my heart’;
or with Wyatt, to his lute:
"My lute, awake! perform the last
Labour that thou and I shall waste.
And end that I have now begun’;
Sir Richard Grenville, going abroad to seek his fortune, wrote
a poem:
In Praise of Seafaring Men in Hopes of Good Fortune
Who seeks the way to win renown.
Or flies with wings of high desire;
Who seeks to wear the laurel crown,
Or hath the mind that would aspire:
Tell him his native soil eschew,
Tell him go range and seek anew.
To pass the seas some think a toil,
Some think it strange abroad to roam,
Some think it grief to leave their soil.
Their parents, kinsfolk and their home;
Think so who list, I like it not,
I must abroad to try my lot.
^ Sloane MSS. 2497.
45
SIR RICHARD GRENVILLE OF THE REVENGE
Who list at home at cart to trudge.
And cark and care for worldly trash,
With buckled shoes let him go trudge,
Instead of lance a whip to slash:
A mind that base his kind will show
Of carrion sweet to feed a crow.
If Jason of that mind had been
The Grecians when they came to Troy,
Had never so the Trojans fought,
Nor never put them to such annoy:
Wherefore who list to live at home,
To purchase fame I will go roam.
If it is a character of poetry to bring physical images to mind,
then this is not mere versifying:
Who list at home at cart to trudge . . .
Instead of lance a whip to slash:
One seems almost to see the carter trudging by his horses,
cracking his whip as he goes through the slush and mire of those
vacant fields around the vanished house at Stowe.
But there was another theme which prompted him, tossed to
and fro as he frequently was on the seas between this country
and France, or journeying from the far west up to Court, from
London to Calais and back again to the west:
Another of Sea Fardingers describing evil Fortunes
What pen can well report the plight
Of those that travel on the sea;
To pass the weary winter^s night
With stormy clouds, wishing for day;
With waves that toss them to and fro;
Their poor estate is hard to show.
We wander still from luff to lee
And find no steadfast winds to blow;
We still remain in jeopardy,
Each perilous point is hard to show;
In time we hope to find redress
That long have lived in heaviness . . .
46
THE MARSHAL OF CALAIS
When frets and states have had their fill,
The gentle calm the coast will clear,
The haughty hearts shall have their will,
That long hath wept with mourning cheer;
And leave the seas with their annoy,
At home at ease to live in joy.
Such was the voice of the old, the passing age: something of
geniality, of a care-free spirit, went with it. A new generation
sprang up, a new age: one more strenuous, even to the point of
communicating a certain strain to its choicest spirits, less given
to happy ease and enjoyment.
47
CHAPTER III
EARLY ADVENTURES: HUNGARY AND
IRELAND
Travel, in the younger sort, is a part of education.
bacon: Essays
Such were the years in which the young Sir Richard grew up;
such was his environment. Hardly anything is known of him
directly and personally in these years; but then that is a diffi-
culty common in writing the life of any Elizabethan. In his
case, one or two facts emerge regarding his wardship, which
give us a starting-point.
On old Sir Richard’s death, his widow at once preferred a
suit to the Court of Wards for the wardship of her grandson.^
This was according to custom; the heirs to estates of any extent,
who succeeded as minors, became wards of the Crown which
enjoyed the profits of their estates until they reached their
majority. It was the custom to sell these wardships, with the
right of marrying the heir, to suitable purchasers: a regular
source of revenue for the Crown. We learn that upon Dame
Maude’s death within a month of her husband, the wardship
of the young heir was granted to Nicholas Wadham, esquire,
‘who gave up his interest to Sir Hugh Paulet, Knight.’ Paulet
was granted custody of him on 21 November 1550, with the
usual right of marriage of the ward, and an annuity for his
maintenance out of the Grenville lands at Bideford, Buckland
and Stowe.^ It must have seemed a suitable appointment, for
Paulet was an old companion-in-arms of his grandfather in the
‘ Court of Wards, Misc. Books 1 54.
^ Cal. Pat. Rolls Edward VI, in, no. a 10.
48
EARLY ADVENTURES
French war, and had been Knight Marshal of the army under
Russell which beat down the Rising of 1549.
But Paulet’s wardship can have had little influence upon the
ward “ he was so much abroad, for some years as Governor of
Jersey, and then fighting in France on the Huguenot side under
Ambrose, Earl of Warwick. Indeed, there is no evidence of any
kind of Sir Hugh’s exerting himself in relation to his charge; and
it was quite usual in cases like this for arrangements to be made
for the ward to be brought up with his relatives, in this case his
mother. As we shall see from Grenville’s first appearance in
person upon the public scene, we derive the impression of a
young heir left to grow up as he chose, wayward and wilful.
This strain runs throughout his life; and no doubt it was an
essential characteristic of his heredity. It was left to experience
of the world, that harsh task-master, to discipline him; and
even to the end, though it is evident that he made efforts to
bring himself under control, the process was not complete.
Something of this, however, may have been due to the special
position that he would occupy in his stepfather’s household, the
only remaining child of his mother’s first marriage and the heir
to large estates. For, as we have seen, it is probable that he grew
up with the Arundells at Clifton, though he may have spent
some periods at Stowe and Buckland.
Thomas Arundell, his stepfather, was of the younger branch
of the Arundells of Trerice, a family with seafaring traditions.
Clifton was not far from Buckland; in fact down the Tamar and
round the next point, the high bluff above the junction of the
two rivers, and up the Tavy; or across the river at Weirquay,
and then by the road through Bere Alston to Buckland, over the
neck of the pretty wooded peninsula between Tavy and Tamar.
It was only a matter of a few miles; but the river, which
dominates all this country and hugs Clifton on two sides, with
the boats going down to Saltash and Plymouth, must have
played some part in his boyhood.
While Grenville was growing up here, the young Francis
Drake, an exile from home, was learning that mastery in hand-
ling a boat which singled him out among all the great sea-
captains of the age, upon the dull waters of the Medway, where
49 ^
SIR RICHARD GRENVILLE OF THE REVEXGE
his father read prayers on board the ships in the river. At the
same time, William and John Hawkins, by several years senior
to Drake and Grenville, were getting their experience of ocean-
going trade along the new routes to Bombay and Guinea from
Plymouth where their father, a Tavistock man too by origin,
had become the principal citizen of the town and amassed
considerable property thereA
But these were not born in the same station of life as Gren-
ville; they came from the middle-classes, Drake of yeoman
stock and the Hawkins’ merchants, while Grenville belonged
to the old county gentry and was very conscious of it. All the
country-side round was filled with his relatives and friends: lower
down the river there were the Edgcumbes, young Peter Edg-
cumbe the heir, his contemporary and friend growing up in the
newly built house in that magnificent situation overlooking the
Hamoaze, which the Duke of Medina Sidonia - so the West
Country said - singled out for his own before the Armada
sailed. At Collacombe, above Tavistock, there were the
Tremaynes, his cousins — Edmund Tremayne was destined to
become his brother-in-law: a numerous tribe. Old Thomas
Tremayne had married Philippa, daughter of Sir Thomas
Grenville, and by her had sixteen children. The most dis-
tinguished of them was Edmund, who later rose high in the
favour of Queen Elizabeth, became Clerk of the Privy Council
and a person of considerable importance in the Government.
His brothers Nicholas and Andrew, who were nearer Grenville’s
own age, went abroad to fight in the wars about the same time
as he did; and never came back. The same was true of Philip
Budockshide (or Butshed) of Butshed, an ancient barton on the
Devonshire side of the Tamar, by the creek going up to Tamer-
ton Foliot. Farther afield were the Champernownes, to whom
Grenville was related, and with them totheRaleghs and Gilberts:
all of them, like him later, concerned in the wars abroad
where they served their apprenticeship in the art of fighting.
Some such outlet for their high spirits and hot blood was
indeed necessary, not only personally, but politically. In
Mary’s reign there were two occasions of trouble in the west,
^ cf. Bracken, History of Plymouth, c. VIII.
50
EARLY ADVENTURES
the circumstances of which are very revealing of the new cur-
rents flowing. The trouble arose over her marriage with Philip
of Spain. As long as Mary was content to reign as Queen of
England, either single or married to an Englishman, her rule
was not unpopular. But when it became clear that her mind
was set on the marriage with Philip, things began to go wrong.
Intrigues and conspiracies thickened around her, special pre-
cautions had to be taken against demonstrations of anti-foreign
feeling in the west when Philip landed. The West Country
would have welcomed a marriage with Courtenay; and when
they realised that there was no hope of this, Sir Peter and Sir
Gawen Garew slipped away to Devon to raise the country. At
the crucial moment Courtenay’s nerve failed him. In Exeter it
was rumoured that the Earl was on the way, that he was even
now at Mohun’s Ottery with the Carews. The latter fortified
their house and put it in a state to stand a siege - it was in an
impregnable position. With Courtenay’s failure to appear their
hopes of support collapsed; the Chichesters and Champer-
nownes washed their hands of the affair; but fellow-feeling
among the Devonshire gentry was sufficient to allow the Carews
to get away to France in a bark brought round to Weymouth
by Walter Ralegh, the father of Sir Walter.^
This was in January and February of 1554. Wyatt’s Rebel-
lion, the most dangerous of the reign, was crushed; Mary
married her Philip; the Earl of Devonshire was given prolonged
leave of absence and went abroad, where he died at Padua,
unmarried and without an heir, the last of the elder branch of
the Courtenays. Within two years there was another conspiracy
against Mary’s rule. Here again the westerners were involved,
particularly the sea-board families, the Horseys of Dorset, the
Tremaynes and Killigrews of Devon and Cornwall. They had
joined the Carews in France, where Havre de Grace and the
Normandy ports were centres of emigre activities against
Mary’s government. The Killigrews’ ships kept the various
parties in touch with each other and with what was happening
in England, and this they combined with depredations upon
Spanish shipping in and out of the Channel.^
1 S.P. Dorn. Mary, ii, ij 2 “i 6 ; hi, 5. 2 ibid. 9, nos. 24-26.
51
SIR RICHARD GRENVILLE OF THE REVENGE
It is this aspect of their activities that is so significant for the
future. The importance for Spain of the alliance with England
was that it ensured the protection of the sea-route between
Spain and the Netherlands. Its consequence was such an in-
crease in Spanish power that the French were driven to aid and
abet all the enemies of Mary’s rule. The Carews, Tremaynes
and the rest were welcomed and encouraged by the French
King. Here is a main link in the chain of events which brought
about a complete change-over in the sea-politics of the Channel,
from the Channel warfare with France which was characteristic
of the Middle Ages and lasted up to Mary’s reign, to the open-
ing out of the struggle with Spain which developed as Elizabeth’s
reign progressed. There were other factors at work besides the
growth of Spain’s power, notably the weakening of French naval
power consequent upon the internal divisions of the religious
wars. But the process of changing over from one to the other
was not complete until well on in the reign of Elizabeth. In that
process Grenville was to play a part no less than other seamen
of the time, and to be no less affected by it.
So the years of childhood and youth passed, with their in-
fluences such as can only now be surmised. We can be sure only
of the routine of the seasons; inland, seed-time and harvest,
spring and autumn ploughing, on the coast, fair summer seas
and winter gales bringing in the wreckage. We are to imagine
him growing up, at work and at play, running and riding about
the country-side, bird-nesting, hawking, hunting, all the familiar
occupations of an Elizabethan boy brought up in the country.
In addition, there must have been lessons, not only in reading
and writing, conning one of those text-books so popular with
Tudor schoolmasters, Lily’s Grammar or Record’s Arithmetic-
but also in fencing, the use of sword and rapier, in the art of
fighting, occupations which were to lead him so soon into trouble
and only cease to excite him with his death.
Of his education in the strict sense we know hardly anything
specific. His earliest biographer says sedately, ‘We have no
distinct account of the place or manner of his breeding, which,
however, we have not the least cause to doubt, was in every
respect suitable to his family and fortune, both being as fair as
52
EARLY ADVENTURES
any gentleman could boast in the west of England,’ ^ We have
no evidence that he attended school; probably he was taught by
a tutor at home. He does not appear to have been at either
University; neither his interests nor his talents would lead him
in that direction. Moreover the times were disturbed, and the
universities greatly affected, by the religious changes; students
were falling off at Oxford in these years. By the time Grenville
reached the age to go to the university, Mary’s reign and the
Catholic revival in England were flickering to their end,
But it was usual for some coping-stone, either at the univer-
sity or at an Inn of Court, to be placed upon the education of a
young gentleman of family. And in the Michaelmas term of
1 559, Grenville was admitted as a student to the Inner Temple.^
Amid so much that is dark, it may be that one can detect the
influence of his sojourn there upon the later man. It was not a
question of shining as a lawyer; the sons of the gentry were sent
there rather for a general training in business and to equip them
with a sufficient knowledge of law and procedure to manage
their own affairs. And this Grenville gained: he emerged with
a distinct competence for affairs, clearness in stating his case
and an ability to present it himself- a plausibility even not
wholly to be dissociated from an early training at the law -
which we shall observe at work in later transactions. A good
man of business, he was in time to be used on committees of the
House of Commons, trusted by other people to manage their
affairs and by the government with much of the business of his
county.
For the rest, he must have lived the life of a young man about
town, as it was lived by numbers of other young men of his
class and time, by his west-country cousins Gilbert and Ralegh
for example. We know nothing of it, though it can be easily
imagined. For the country in general and London in particular,
it was a new dispensation. Elizabeth was Queen. A new spirit
reigned in Whitehall. No longer the fires burned at Smithfield;
no longer the lugubrious processions that marked the last years
of the catholic Queen, disappointed, prematurely ageing, ill,
^ Biographia Britannica, IV, 2283.
2 Students admitted to the Inner Temple^ ig4y-i66o.
53
SIR RICHARD GRENVILLE OF THE REVENGE
without earthly hope. A new spirit reigned, one of gaiety,
bravery, even of dare-devilry when one thinks of the risks
Elizabeth was prepared to take, with King Philip and his
Ambassador, with France, Scotland, for the future of her
people, a nation renewed and vigorous.
Of the vigour and high spirit there can be no doubt. And
of its overflow in Grenville’s case we have evidence from what
is at once the most surprising and least unexpected discovery
among the original documents remaining. Surprising, for the
story seems to have gone completely out of mind with Gren-
ville himself and perhaps a generation or two of the family after
him. There is no printed reference to it; nothing remains in
letters, correspondence, or documents relating to him; no one
for centuries would seem to have known the dark Elizabethan
story which lies behind the entry of a Pardon in the Patent Roll
of the fifth year of Elizabeth, 1563.^ Yet what it reveals of
Grenville is so true to what we know of him later, so corrobor-
ates the fragmentary glimpses which are all we have hitherto
had of him, that it may be said in a sense to be not unexpected.
The story that the Patent Roll reveals is by no means un-
common; it is that of a typical Elizabethan affray such as
Christopher Marlowe was frequently engaged in, of some such
affair as that in which he met his end. It appears that between
the hours of three and four in the afternoon, on 19 November
1562, there was an affray in the open street somewhere in the
parish of St. Clement Danes. We do not know where; one
imagines one of the narrow lanes running down to the river
from the Strand, where the great houses of the nobility stood,
Arundel House, Durham House, Essex House - or it may have
been in the Strand itself. What makes it remarkable were the
combatants: for on one side were Sir Edward Unton, Fulke
Greville, and Robert Bannester, with Thomas Allen yeoman,
and the servants of Sir Edward and Fulke Greville; on the
other were Richard Grenville and Nicholas Specott, with Lewis
Lloyd and Edward Horseman, yeomen, their attendants.
Unton belonged to the Oxfordshire family of that name, the
brother of Sir Henry Unton who was afterwards Ambassador
^ Pat. Rolls Eliz. 989.
54
EARLY ADVENTURES
to France. Fulke Greville was the father of Sir Philip Sidney’s
friend, the poet; Bannester was a Londoner, but a gentleman.
Grenville was accompanied by his cousin, a Devonshire
Specott.
Suddenly, according to the account on the Patent Roll, ‘they
ran together in an affray, and when they were all fighting
together, Grenville ran through Bannester with his sword, giv-
ing him a mortal wound, six inches in depth and one and a half
in breadth, of which he died within an hour afterwards.’
Thereupon the said Richard Grenville and Nicholas Specott
fled, so that their goods and chattels lay under sentence of out-
lawry. This was found by inquest held upon the body of
Bannester on 21 November, before Thomas Wente, Coroner
of the Household, and Robert Cooke, Coroner of Middlesex.
The Patent Roll then recites the pardon to Richard Grenville,
late of London, alias of Stowe in Cornwall, of his felony and
relieves him of all forfeitures, outlawries, etc., incurred thereby.
Thus far the Patent Roll; there is no more. We do not know
what lay behind it, nor whether Grenville knew the man whom
he had killed. He was young at the time, not having yet
attained his majority. It may be that the fact that he was a
minor contributed to the ease of his pardon. Certainly he was
let off lightly. There is an entry in the King’s Bench Control-
ment Roll for Middlesex of his and his fellows’ indictment on
the morrow of Holy Trinity, which would seem to imply that
they cooled their heels in prison for a time, if they were not
bailed out earlier; then follows the note of pardon in the
margin.^ To the Elizabethans, human life was rated more
cheaply; and it may be that one of the reasons for the silence of
our records concerning this event in Grenville’s life, why it had
lapsed out of all memory was just that it was considered unim-
portant. Every gentleman had his duels; at a time when it was
the regular thing for a gentleman to wear a sword and rapier,
many a quarrel that might have left no mark, ended fatally.
Did not Ben Jonson kill his man in Moorfields, or Marlowe’s
friend Thomas Watson, the poet, kill William Bradley in Hog
Lane? ^ It was not to be expected that the young bloods of
^ K.B. 29/196. 2 Eccles, Christopher Marlowe in London.
55
SIR RICHARD GRENVILLE OF THE REVENGE
Elizabethan society were any less high-spirited than the
poets.
That such an incident was not taken too seriously by Eliza-
bethans may be witnessed by the fact that a short time after,
in January of the New Year 1563, he was returned while still
a minor, if it is he, as Member of Parliament A There is a
possibility that it may have been another Richard Grenville,
a cousin of Penheale. But the fact of being a minor was no bar
apparently to election, for his cousin Arthur Basset who had not
yet attained his majority, was returned at the same time. The
chances are that it is our Richard who was returned this year as
one of the members for the borough of Dunheved (i.e. Laun-
ceston) .
Parliament had been called to help in financing the French
war, but from the first it displayed much more interest in the
question of the succession. The Queen had been ill that autumn
with small-pox, and for a few days her life had been despaired
of. It called very vividly to men’s minds the dangers of a dis-
puted succession; and Parliament met in an atmosphere of
fervent devotion to the Queen, combined with a determination
to see her well and safely married. In this last resolve they met
more than their match in Elizabeth, and after a few months of
petitions and speeches and mutual sparring they were sent away
unsatisfied.
Since this would be Grenville’s first Parliament, we are to
suppose him for the first time witnessing the splendid cere-
monial that attended the opening: the Queen coming in state
to Westminster, riding on horseback in crimson velvet and
ermine, glittering with jewels, Lord Robert Dudley riding
behind her, leading the spare horse. ^ So she proceeded to the
Abbey to hear a sermon, and afterwards into the Parliament
Chamber, the sword and cap of maintenance borne before her.
Among the large west-country contingent to witness these and
other ceremonies at the prorogation of Parliament were many
relatives and friends of Grenville, Bassets, Edgeumbes, Gham-
pernownes, Killigrews.
^ Official Return of Members of Parliament, i, p. 403.
® D’Ewes, Journal of the Lords and Commons (1693), 59 *
56
EARLY ADVENTURES
Within a month or two of the prorogation, Grenville attained
his majority; and on 28 June 1563, he obtained license to enter
upon his estates, with the usual grant of all the issues therefrom,
from the date when he reached the age of twenty-one A About
the same date, his cousin Arthur Basset attained his majority.-
Accession to his estates, and to a position of responsibility as
active head of the family, may have had some influence in
steadying him, as it certainly gave him more to occupy his
energies. We find him later in the same year alienating lands
in the parish of Landulph, to his stepfather Thomas Arundell
and his mother.^ In the next year, 12 September 1565, he
makes a more substantial grant to them, the manor of Tynyell
with its appurtenances in Cargreen and Landulph, also parcel
of the monastic property bought by his grandfather.^ Old Sir
Richard had previously granted the barton of Clifton with a
hundred acres of land to Arundell and his wife; so that these
subsequent grants served to round off the Clifton property
handsomely, and make all within that little peninsula of the
Tamar a substantial domain. It was off the main track of the
Grenville properties, so that the young heir can have had no
strong inducement to hold on to it; in all probability he was
carrying out the policy with regard to the estates indicated by
his grandfather. In the same year he made another grant of
lands, this time at Buckland Monachorum and Buckland Gren-
ville (i.e. Buckland Abbey) to Nicholas Spccott, his companion
in the adventure of two years before.®
What these arrangements indicate is Grenville’s settling
down, if the phrase may be used for one of his restless activity,
into family life. It was natural enough that upon succeeding to
his inheritance he should be employed in putting things in
order, selling off outlying land and putting the proceeds to use
nearer home. One or two of these documents describe him
simply as of Stowe; and by the time he had reached his majority
he was probably residing there, if he had not been before, set-
ting up his own household in the house of his fathers, directing
^ Pat. Rolls 5 Eliz. 28 June. ^ ibid. 10 March.
^ ibid., 6 Eliz., 29 December. ^ ibid., 7 Eliz. 12 September.
® Pat. Rolls 7 Eliz. 30 April.
57
SIR RICHARD GRENVILLE OF THE REVENGE
repairs, laying out his crops, gathering in his harvests. For
what lies behind these indications - there is now no doubt ~ is
his marriage, which must have taken place upon reaching his
majority. Hitherto it has remained obscure when Grenville
married; but the entry of the burial of a son, Roger, in the
parish Register at Kilkhampton on lo December 1565,1 gives
us a limiting date: Grenville could not have been married later
than early 1 565, and it may have been earlier than that. It is a
touching thought that he should have called his first son after his
father, whom he can hardly have known; he was so young, a
child of three only, when his father was drowned. This earlier
date for Grenville’s marriage is corroborated by the fact that
Bernard, his second son and heir, who succeeded him, was born
in 1567.^
Grenville married Mary St. Leger, the eldest daughter of Sir
John St. Leger of Annery, near Bideford. His succession to
Stowe threw him naturally into closer association with his
North Devon neighbours; and Annery is a charming place upon
a hill a mile or two up the Torridge from Bideford, looking
down upon the walls and battlements of Wear Giffard beside
the river. The St. Legers were a branch of the great Kentish
family who had a long-standing connection with Ireland, dating
from the great Lord-Deputy, Sir Anthony St. Leger, who was
the chief architect of Henry VIIFs rule there. His son was Sir
Warham St. Leger with whom Grenville was to be closely
associated in Munster, induced to take a hand in Irish affairs
by his marriage; and Sir John St. Leger, his wife’s father, was
Sir Warham’s cousin. This marriage in the end brought into
the family an intolerable deal of quarterings, including some
royal descents and a remote connection through the Ormondes
with Queen Elizabeth.^
Hardly anything is known of Grenville’s wife; partly, it may
be, because of the destruction of all his private letters and docu-
ments, but partly, it is to be feared, because the lady was a dull
soul and there is nothing much to be known. There was a soft
^ Vivian, Visitations of Cornwall, 192.
^ Inq. post-mortem. Chancery Series 1 1, vol. 2^3, no. i 19.
® Granville, 88-9.
58
EARLY ADVENTURES
spot in the St. Legers of Annery: one cannot help feeling that the
quiet contentment, the placidity of Sir Bernard, after the excite-
ments and ardours of his father, came from the mother. Sir
John St. Leger, by his marriage with an Ormonde heiress, had
come into possession of a large inheritance which he entirely
wasted; so that his son John, succeeding to little enough and
becoming a hopeless drunkard like his father, fell to Grenville’s
responsibility. He died unmarried, leaving his four sisters as
co-heiresses to nothing much: Grenville’s wife, Frances who
married a Stukely, Margaret, wife of Richard Bellew of Alver-
discott, and Eulalia, wife of Edmund Tremayne of Collacombe.
Such was the family circle. There is no evidence, either one
way or the other, as to any gallantry towards women in Gren-
ville’s nature. Marrying and carrying on the family was to a
man like him part of the natural order. Marriage was a busi-
ness, and this alliance a suitable one. It was one with any other
propertied arrangements incumbent upon the young head of a
house entering upon his responsibilities. The Elizabethan atti-
tude on this subject was a robuster one than ours. In this he was
like what we know of all the great sea-captains of the age. They
do not appear to have wasted much time or thought upon sex;
they were men of action. This is as true of Drake and Hawkins
as it is of Grenville. Nor did the family commitments retain him
at home when he wished to go abroad to see service in the wars
or undertake some enterprise at sea. Within a year or two of
marriage, the summer after his infant son’s death, 1566, he went
abroad with a band of his Devonshire cousins to the war in Hun-
gary. Three years later we find him engaged in Ireland, a new
field of enterprise, this time taking wife and children with him.
Meanwhile the merchants and sea-going folk, taking advan-
tage of the changed circumstances with Mary’s death and Eliza-
beth’s accession, were pressing forward along the outer sea-
routes, impelled by the passion to share the lucrative profits of
the Portuguese and the Spaniards in the African and American
trades. The French had already shown the way to these in-
truders into the Spanish monopoly of the southern hemisphere.
At Plymouth in these years, Hawkins was fitting out those slav-
ing voyages which were to make his name and fortune, and to
59
SIR RICHARD GRENVILLE OF THE REVENGE
have such consequences for the future of the New World. ^ Simi-
larly Drake in these years was undergoing his apprenticeship in
a harder school. According to Camden, his father
‘by reason of his poverty . . . put his son to the master of a bark,
his neighbour, who held him hard to his business in the bark,
with which he u^ed to coast along the shore, and sometimes to
carry merchandise into Zealand and France. The youth, being
painful and diligent, so pleased the old man by his industry,
that, being a bachelor, at his death he bequeathed the bark unto
him by will and testament.’ ^
It may have been in this bark that Drake made his suspected
early voyages to the West Indies in 1565 and 1566, before throw-
ing in his lot with Hawkins for the third great enterprise which
ended so disastrously at San Juan de Ulloa and gave so many
western seamen an undying determination to be revenged upon
the Spaniards.
Grenville’s attention was not as yet drawn to the sea. These
were men of a humbler station of life, whose fortunes were for
the most part yet to be made. It was natural that he should fol-
low the habit of his class and look to a military career, and, in
the peaceful conditions established by Elizabeth’s rule, by ser-
vice abroad. Already a number of his west-country cousins, a
few years older than himself, had had their baptism of fire, in
Scotland or in France. Some of them had already, in the ardour
of their youth, achieved the reward of fame with their lives.
There were Nicholas and Andrew Tremayne, the brothers who
had gone abroad with Sir Peter Carew under Mary. With Eliza-
beth’s accession they returned and entered her service. Andrew
led a brilliant cavalry charge against the French at Leith in
1560; while Nicholas, who was a special favourite of the Queen’s,
was employed in carrying dispatches to and from France. When
Elizabeth intervened on the side of the Protestants in the first
French War of Religion, the brothers served in the forces under
Ambrose Dudley, Earl of Warwick. Here they were both killed
in the flower of their youth, in the defence of Havre against the
^ Williamson: Sir John Hawkins^ IV-V.
^ Camden, History of the Reign of Elizabeth (1675), 248.
60
EARLY ADVENTURES
French; Nicholas on 26 May and Andrew on 18 July. What
made the story of the Tremaynes so affecting, and in its day
famous, was the perfect love that reigned between them; they
were twins, and inseparable.
It may easily be conceived how such events stirred the minds
of the younger men of the time, and among them Grenville. The
Tremaynes were Grenvilles on their mother’s side. But there
were others abroad, too; there was his cousin Humphrey Gilbert,
who like his half-brother Ralegh after him, was getting his first
experience of war in France (how it runs through the ages!),
where he had been wounded at the siege of Havre on 26 Septem-
ber 1563. Now, peace having been made, he was at home again,
in 1566, on his way to Ireland, the second great theatre of war
for Elizabethans.
Peace, of a sort, reigned in France from the Peace of Amboise
in 1564 to 1567, when the Second Religious War broke out; so
that in the interim, these young gallants who wanted to prove
themselves in the profession of war, had to look to another field
for the exercise of their valour. Quite another part of Europe
attracted their attention. In this year the uneasy peace between
the Emperor Maximilian II and the Ottoman Empire broke
down, and the armies began to march once more over the dis-
puted plains of Hungary. A great sensation was made in Europe
by the renewed march of the Turks towards Vienna, and by the
preparations being made for his thirteenth campaign by the great
Sultan, Solyman the Magnificent. The news determined Gren-
ville and a whole group of his friends; for what strikes one in Cam-
den’s account of their going abroad to the wars is that they were
obviously a band of friends and relatives, all west-countrymen.
‘But others of the English nation,’ he says by way of pointing
the contrast with the Earl of Arundel who left the realm that
year for foreign travel, ostensibly by reason of the gout, but
really out of pique with Elizabeth - ‘who, according to their
innate fortitude thought themselves born to arms, not to idle-
ness, when gentlemen out of all parts of Europe were excited
upon the fame of the Turks, went into Hungary. Amongst
whom those of the better note were Sir John Smith, cousin-
61
SIR RICHARD GRENVILLE OF THE REVENGE
german to King Edward the Sixth, being son to the sister of
Jane Seymour, the King’s mother, Henry Champernowne,
Philip Budockshide, Richard Grenville, William Gorges,
Thomas Cotton and others.’ ^
These young men can hardly have been in time for the open-
ing of the great campaign by the Sultan, who, leaving Con-
stantinople on I May marched rapidly by Sofia and Nish to
Belgrade and then sat down with his army of a hundred thou-
sand men before the strongly-fortified town of Szigeth. In the
middle of the siege, the Sultan died; but his death was kept
secret until the town fell. After this, the war lost something of
its concentration of purpose and degenerated into desultory
fighting and raiding across the plains of Hungary; but it went
on for a year or more. It must have been an exotic scene for
these young west-countrymen, all contracted by family ties to
within a few miles of Devonshire countryside. Smith was a
nephew of Protector Somerset and the Seymours were connected
by marriage with the Champernownes. Henry Champernowne,
four years senior to Grenville, was the son of John Champer-
nowne of Modbury and the nephew of Sir Arthur of Dartington.
Grenville himself was related to the Champernownes through
his mother, whose brother had married a sister of Sir Arthur
Champernowne. Yet another sister of the last had married
Roger Budockshide, and their only son was this Philip now
abroad on campaign with his cousins. It was this Philip too who
played such a delightful game of bluff with a large fleet of
Flemish hulks in Plymouth Sound in the critical year 1 569 when
war threatened with Spain. William Gorges, of a Somersetshire
family, married Philip Budockshide’s eldest sister and afterwards
succeeded to the property.^
Within a year of their return from the Hungarian war, Cham-
pernowne and Budockshide went abroad again to the renewed
war in France, taking with them yet another young west-coun-
try cousin who was destined to leave a greater mark on history
1 Camden, 82.
* R. P. Chope: ‘New Light on Sir Richard Grenville,* in Trans. Devon
Assoc. (1917), 211-12.
6a
EARLY ADVENTURES
than any of them: Walter Ralegh. It was his first acquaintance
with war. Camden relates how in the year 1 569, the Protestant
cause in France being ^now in a distressed and almost desperate
condition,’ Queen Elizabeth sent them supplies of money and
‘permitted Henry Champernowne (whose cousin-german
Gawen had married the Earl of Montgomery’s daughter) to
carry into France a troup of a hundred volunteer gentlemen on
horseback, who had in his colours this motto, Finem det mihi
Virtiis^ that is, let Virtue give me my end. Amongst these volun-
teer gentlemen were Philip Budockshide, Francis Berkely, and
Walter Ralegh, a very young man, who now first began to be of
any note.’ ^
From this expedition, Champernowne and Budockshide came
home no more to Devonshire; they died in the next year, it
is not known how. A year or two more, in 1573, the father
died, last of the Budockshides, and the Gorges family reigned
in their stead. In the next generation they placed a lovely
painted altar-tomb of slate over them all in the little church of
St. Budeaux on the hill outside Plymouth overlooking the
Tamar - the church in which Drake married Mary Newman
of Saltash.
By the summer of 1567 peace negotiations were on foot be-
tween the Emperor and the new Sultan, who was weary of the
Hungarian war and anxious to press forward the attack on
Venice and to expand Turkish sea-power in the Mediterranean.
In February 1568, peace was signed and there was no longer
any point in the little band of west-countrymen remaining in
Hungary. We do not know how they acquitted themselves: the
only reference that has come down to us is to Grenville; for his
contemporary, Richard Carew, in the Survey of Cornwall men-
tions his ‘following the wars under the Emperor Maximilian
against the great Turk, for which his name is recorded by sundry
foreign writers.’ Who these writers were has never been speci-
fied; it is likely enough that this episode was remembered more
on account of his subsequent fame than because of any signal
achievement by it. It may be noted here that the later tradition
^ Camden, 1 37. ® Carew, 1 76.
63
SIR RICHARD GRENVILLE OF THE REVENGE
that Grenville fought at the battle of Lepanto is unlikely in itself
and is probably explained by his taking part in the fighting
against the Turks in Hungary, which, to the mind of later cen-
turies, coloured as it was by the fame of his sea-exploits, would
tend to become confused with the great naval battle of Lepanto.
But by that time - it was fought in October 1571 - Grenville
had subscribed the oath according to the Act of Uniformity and
was a Member of the Parliament of that year.
That Grenville was at home again in 1568 we know from his
granting to John Raise of Efford in that year, "all these lands in
East Buckland, sometime the property of my grandfather.’ ^
The property had come into the hands of the Grenyilles by the
marriage of his great-grandfather. Sir Roger, to the co-heiress
of Richard Whitley of Efford. ^ The real interest of this grant,
however, is not genealogical, but in what it suggests of the next
phase in Grenville’s career, which was connected with Ireland;
here we find him selling off still more of the Buckland property,
without doubt to raise money for his next venture.
Ireland was an obvious field for Elizabethan adventurers. It
was their earlier America - or at least so they hoped; but in fact,
for one who made his fortune out of it, many more lost theirs;
for one or two who gained an estate, hundreds found a grave.
The country was in great disorder; in these years more than
usually so. It was not so much that Ireland had not been effec-
tively brought under the Reformation system, which was con-
temporaneously making the fortunes of England; but that its
whole social system, based upon the clans and customary rights,
with an altogether more primitive mode of life and outlook,
Celtic and pre-medieval in character, was breaking up under
the pressure of the new social forces of the age, and among them,
that of the integrated power-state which the English had
achieved as the result of Renaissance and Reformation.^ Over
large areas of Ireland civilised order was in dissolution, con-
tested by contrary systems of society, while the lot of the people
went from bad to worse, lapsing from misery into savagery. The
English were not strong enough to tackle the gigantic problem
^ Granville, 86. ® Court of Wards 15/1. Pleadings.
® Mathew, Celtic Peoples and Renaissance Europe.
64
EARLY ADVENTURES
as a whole, and impose a solution which would have been in the
best interests of the country.
Sir Henry Sidney, the Lord Deputy of Ireland, on returning
to his charge in 1 568, made a tour throughout the whole of the
south and wrote a long and terrible account of its misery and
devastation to the Queen. Of Munster he wrote:
‘as touching the estate of the whole country, for so much as I saw
of it, having travelled from Youghal to Cork, from Cork to Kin-
sale, and from thence to the uttermost bounds of it towards
Limerick: like as I never was in a more pleasant country in all
my life, so never saw I a more waste and desolate land, no, not
in the confines of other countries where actual war hath con-
tinually been kept by the greatest princes of Christendom; and
never heard I such lamentable cries and doleful complaints
made by that small remain of poor people which yet are left.’ '
He goes on in a well-known passage to describe the scenes of
desolation he saw and to indict the Earl of Desmond,
‘who enjoy eth under his rule, or rather tyranny, the third part
of this great country, which I assure your Majesty, I know to be
greater than Yorkshire. In all which his limits neither is your
name reverenced, or your laws obeyed. Neither dare my Sheriff
execute any part of his office therein.’
Sidney’s remedy for this disorder was the introduction of a
local system of government after the English model. ‘But surely
it will never be thoroughly well, till the same be made shire
ground, and your Highness’ writ current there as in your other
countries.’ He was in favour of Munster being erected into a
Presidency on its own and given in charge to Sir Warham St.
Lcger as President.
St. Leger had had many years experience of Irish affairs. His
relations with Desmond, the chief native ruler in Munster, were
not unfriendly; Desmond had mortgaged to him several estates
in Cork for certain large sums which he had received from him.
These lands included the castle-abbey of Traghton, the castle of
* Sidney Letters and Memorials (cd. Collins) 1, 24.
65 K
SIR RICHARD GRENVILLE OF THE REVENGE
Carrigaline on the shores of Cork harbour, the whole district
of Kerrycurrihy. Old Irish maps show the Kerrycurrihy coun-
try as lying to the west of Cork harbour, the best and most fertile
park and ploughland. St. Leger no doubt was glad to bring
Grenville, a relative by marriage and a man of property, into
partnership with him in the occupation and cultivation of these
lands. Grenville, on his return from Hungary in 1568, was free
for another sphere of enterprise in which to invest money and
energy: we hear later of a ‘tall ship’ of his in Cork harbour and
he certainly took across with him a number of followers with the
idea of settling them.
This fell in with the ideas of the Lord Deputy for introducing
English administration into Munster, and Grenville was ap-
pointed Sheriff of Cork, we learn, during royal pleasure.’- But
St. Leger failed to be appointed President of Munster. He had
a powerful enemy at Court in the Earl of Ormonde, a great fav-
ourite with the Queen; and he was thought by the English gov-
ernment too sympathetic to Desmond for Munster to be trusted
to his hands. This had a paralysing effect upon St. Leger’s and
Grenville’s efforts to administer and settle the country, just at
the moment of greatest danger.
For James Fitzmaurice of Desmond, cousin of the Earl and
the militant leader of his people, was just at this moment plan-
ning a large outbreak in the west with the connivance of Spain.
Munster had been reduced to order by the visit of the Lord
Deputy in 1 568, and by the presence of St. Leger and Grenville.
What added to James Fitzmaurice’s determination to attack
them was the fact that he had claims upon the country of Kerry-
currihy himself. The imprisonment of Desmond in London dis-
turbed the whole province and gave Fitzmaurice the chance he
was waiting for, to exert his own leadership. He saw his oppor-
tunity of linking up his Geraldine forces with the restive Mac-
Carthies of the extreme western fastnesses and with the Butlers,
who were in revolt against the decision to give Sir Peter Carew
the barony of I drone, in Leinster.
It was an extremely dangerous situation. The revolt might
easily spread over the whole south of Ireland. The Lord Deputy
^ Biographia Britannica, IV, 2284.
66
EARLY ADVENTURES
was out of the country; so also were Ormonde and Desmond, the
two most powerful nobles whose presence might quell the gather-
ing storm. St. Leger was in England about the Presidency, try-
ing to get the powers which, if granted in time, would have fore-
stalled the trouble. The Government, too late, appointed a
Lord President, but not St. Leger; they nominated another
Devonshire man. Sir John Pollard, to the office.
Grenville was left, virtually alone and without resources, to
face this threatening situation. He decided to cross over to Eng-
land himself to aid St. Leger’s representations at Court, to press
upon the dilatory government the urgency of the position and
demand immediate reinforcements. Lady St. Leger and Mrs.
Grenville with her children were left behind in Cork. He can
hardly have known how near the Irish were to breaking out,
though he realised the danger. He left Cork on 15 June, and the
very day after he sailed Fitzmauiice and MacCarthy More, the
head of the MacCarthies, broke out into the plains and de-
scended upon Kerrycurrihy.
The first news we have of them is from Andrew ' Skiddy, a
loyal citizen of Cork with whom Grenville was on friendly terms,
who wrote to the Lord Deputy on 1 7 June, that the rebels were
even now spoiling all the inhabitants of Kerrycurrihy and lay-
ing siege to the abbey of Traghton; ‘they have continued in
camp all this last night . . . the abbey is seven miles hence.’ ^
The same day the Mayor of Cork reported that Fitzmaurice and
MacCarthy More had with them ‘a great host of horsemen,
kerne, and gallowglass to the number of two thousand’; that
they were bent on spoiling the whole of the country in the occu-
pation of St. Leger and Grenville; that they were cutting off
such citizens of Cork as were without the walls and threatening
Kinsale as well as Cork; and desiring corn to be sent them from
Waterford to provision the city against siege.^
Lady St. Leger and Mrs. Grenville shut themselves up in the
city, drawing in what outposts they could; but the descent had
been so sudden, they were evidently taken by surprise and with-
out preparations. Next day, Lady &t. Leger wrote to the Lord
Deputy of the rapid progress the rebels were making:
^ S.P. Ireland, 28, no. 35. ^ ibid. no. 36.
67
SIR RICHARD GRENVILLE OF THE REVENGE
‘On Wednesday last the Sheriff went into England; on the
morrow after, James Fitzmaurice with four thousand people,
was in Kerrycurrihy by seven of the clock. Warning we had
none, so that our houses were not so well furnished as they
ought to have been. So, my Lord, they have taken Traghton
and all that I had there and killed all my men. All this they did
on Friday. My men kept the house until they had gotten pick-
axes and then they undermined the house and came in. The
first man they killed was John Enchedon and all that was in the
house. Then the next morning, being Saturday, they came to
the castle of Carrigaline. In the meantime I caused them to
come away, for they had neither meat nor drink, nor powder for
to keep it one day. The enemies were informed by the tenants
what victual and provision was in the castle; they understand-
ing their want, were determined to tarry the famishing of them.
So that Saturday morning before James’s coming there I sent a
boat for them and had not time to carry away my stuff. So, my
good Lord, the best and the greatest store of my stuff is gone,
and all our horses that we and the Sheriff had. James hath con-
fessed and showed your Lordship’s letters that you sent to the
Sheriff. Good my Lord, take pity on me; they say plainly that
they will never leave the town of Cork till they have me and the
Sheriff’s wife.’ ^
Lady St. Leger’s letter gives the impression of a high-spirited
and courageous woman, capable of taking the initiative in
her husband’s absence. She certainly needed to be, in the
frontier conditions prevailing west of Cork, and particularly at
a moment like this with James Fitzmaurice and his hordes
clamouring at the gates for her and Mrs. Grenville’s surrender
~ a surrender which the citizens began to consider as hope of
succour was delayed. What would have happened to them if
they had fallen into the hands of the natives, we may imagine
from what happened to the various ladies who fell into Shane
O’Neill’s hands later on.
A fuller report of Jasper Horsey’s informs us that within
Traghton Abbey there were six English arquebusiers with John
^ S.P. Ireland, no. 37.
68
EARLY ADVENTURES
Enchedon and sixteen kerne, all of whom were slain. Fitz-
maurice had shown intercepted letters from the Lord Deputy to
Grenville ordering the apprehension and detention of Lords
Roche and Barry, so that they were making no resistance to the
rebels. Horsey reported that in the far west the galleys were
being manned to spoil along the coast; ^and here is a tall ship of
Sir Warham St. Leger and of Mr. Grenville’s, very well
appointed and all unrigged, and no more keeping her than four
men, who is daily threatened to be burned by James Fitz-
maurice and his wicked company.’ He adds that if he could get
mariners enough to sail her and victual to feed them, he would
gladly go and meet the western galleys.^
While Cork held out, the newly-appointed President of Mun-
ster was detained by contrary winds and an attack of gout, at
Ilfracombe. St. Leger, consumed with anxiety and impatience,
bombarded Cecil with letters from his Southwark house; he
wrote that it would be better for the Queen to spend ^{^40,000
than that Cork should be lost. Towards the middle of July,
Fitzmaurice addressed a demand to the Mayor and citizens ‘to
abolish out of the city that old heresy newly raised and invented,
and namely Barnaby Daly and all therein that be Huguenots
both men and women and Grenville’s wife and children,’ and
that they should restore Catholicism.^ It is evident that the
Rising was nationalist in character, a revolt of the native Irish
against both Protestantism and the English.
But relief was now at hand. It must have been the result of
Grenville’s importunity that within a fortnight of his leaving
Cork, the Council sent orders down to the south-western
counties to levy soldiers immediately for service in Ireland.
Before the end of the month, a relief force of some four hundred
men had arrived,^ and the Lord Deputy was on the way with
six hundred more from Dublin. Lady St. Leger was fully re-
lieved at Cork; Carrigaline Castle re- taken and garrisoned; the
local chiefs submitted after some wasting of the country;
Ormonde arrived and restored order in Leinster. Hard on the
heels of the Lord Deputy, there followed the young Humphrey
^ S.P. Ireland, no. 38. * ibid. 29, no. 8.
® S.P. Dom. Eliz. 54, nos. 1-3.
69
SIR RICHARD GRENVILLE OF THE REVENGE
Gilbert, to whom was entrusted the task of pacifying Munster.
It was in this campaign that he first won fame; his progress
through the province was characterised by extraordinary dash
and a foolhardy bravery which paralysed his opponents. James
Fitzmaurice was driven once more into the wilds of the forest of
Aherlow in the far west.^
"Grenville returned with St. Leger to take part in the sub-
jugation of the rebels and remained there for another year
engaged in the heartrending task of erecting order out of the
chaos of Munster. The Lord Deputy wrote a handsome testi-
mony to their part in staying the insurrection from engulfing
the whole of the south of Ireland. MacCarthy More, he wrote
to Cecil, had the intention of making himself * King of the south
part of this Realm; and I find good proof by letters from her
Majesty’s good subjects of those parts, that Sir Warham hath
been the greatest stay, without whom and Grenville, they sup-
pose the most of the Irishry had revolted.’ ^
But neither did this move the Government in St. Leger’s
favour; in justifiable resentment, he withdrew to England where
he spent the next ten years. Grenville had embarked upon the
Irish enterprise under St. Leger’s aegis; he was a young man and
St. Leger fifteen years his senior. He now withdrew with St.
Leger. It had been an unfortunate venture; everything he had
put into it, he had lost; the country he had hoped to cultivate,
lay waste; nothing of it all remained save his claims upon the
land. Before the year 1 569 was out, or at latest, early in 1 570,
he brought his family back to Stowe. He did not see Ireland
again for twenty years.
^ Bagwell, c. xxvi. ^ Sidney Letters and Memorials^ I, 39.
70
CHAPTER IV
THE WESTERN SEA-BOARD
During this time in which Grenville was occupied in Ireland,
momentous things were happening on the western sea-board and
to the minds of the western seamen. And not their minds only;
there was the actual disaster that overtook the third and most
important of Hawkins’ slaving voyages at San Juan de Ulloa
and brought him struggling home across the Atlantic through
the winter of 1568, to arrive in Mount’s Bay in the Minion with
a handful of starving sailors.
Hawkins had set out on 2 October 1567 from Plymouth with
a little fleet of four trading vessels and two old Queen’s ships, the
Jem of LUbeck and the Minion’, there sailed with him, his kins-
man the young Francis Drake. They made a good voyage
along the coast of Guinea collecting slaves, and with the new
year crossed over to the Caribbean to dispose of them. Here
they had good trade, especially, after some forcible persuasion,
at Rio de la Hacha, ‘from whence come all the pearls.’ They
were about to leave the Caribbean by the Florida channel
when they were driven back by storms to the coast of Mexico
and were forced to enter the harbour of San Juan de Ulloa to
refit. Here the plate fleet from Spain, bringing Don Martin
Enriquez, the new Viceroy of Mexico, bore down upon them.
They could have resisted and prevented him from entering the
harbour; but that would have been an overt act of war and
Hawkins’ whole case was that his was peaceable and lawful
trading. He took the risk; and the Spaniards made a surprise
attack upon the English. A regular, or rather irregular, action
developed in which Hawkins lost most of his men and ships;
only the Minion and the Judith succeeded in making good their
escape, the latter under Drake parting company in the night
71
SIR RICHARD GRENVILLE OF THE REVENGE
and making straight for home - ‘which bark/ as Hawkins wrote
with severity afterwards, ‘the same night forsook us in our great
misery.’
It was a turning-point in the relations between England and
Spain, which had hitherto, in spite of Elizabeth’s Protestantism,
been those of amity. The disastrous consequences for Spain of a
breakdown of the friendship with England were to be forcibly
brought home to Philip before the old year was out. The break-
down, when it came, was the result of several factors operating
together. There was Philip’s decision to send his ablest and
most ruthless soldier, Alva, with the pick of the Spanish veterans
from Italy, to crush the Protestant resistance in the Netherlands.
This, England could never afford to allow; a great power
dominant in the Netherlands, particularly Catholic Spain,
would have been a threat to her national security. It was vital
to keep the resistance in the Netherlands alive by some means or
other. Happily it was the good fortune of the western ports to
provide the means.
In the autumn of 1568 Philip had raised a large loan from the
Italian bankers for the payment of Alva’s troops, restive for lack
of pay; and at the end of November he despatched it up the
Channel, a large mass of treasure, in a fleet of small ships,
unarmed merchantmen and pinnaces. He was evidently re-
lying on the English alliance — or assuming the same state of
affairs to prevail as when he had been King in England; for
the Channel was swarming with the privateers which the re-
sumption of the wars in France had brought out, most of them
Huguenot, belonging to the port of Rochelle, flying under the
flag of the Prince of Conde or William of Orange, but many of
them English and west-countrymen. The autumn storms and
the ubiquitous privateers, drove Philip’s treasure-ships to take
refuge in English ports; one with fifty-nine chests of specie, fled
into Southampton to avoid her pursuers, others with still more
aboard were driven in to shelter at Saltash and at Fowey.
Already as the year wore on and there was no news of Haw-
kins, his friends and backers in the voyage began to be anxious.
On 3 December his brother William heard a report that he had
been killed by the Spaniards and at once wrote to Cecil suggest-
72
THE WESTERN SEA-BOARD
ing reprisals on the Spanish treasure-ships. Perhaps Cecil did
not need the hint; the general posture of affairs was so critical,
with Mary Queen of Scots now on his hands, and a threat of
a most formidable combination of the northern Catholic Lords
with the aristocratic conservatives headed by Norfolk and
Arundel. He acted with decision and at once wrote to Sir
Arthur Champernowne to put through the delicate operation.
What precisely Elizabeth meant by her action, whether to
annex the treasure or no, was a matter for much discussion and
diplomatic finessing over the next few months; but one cannot
have much doubt what Champernowne understood it to be
from the first, if one attends to his own words:
T have so devised,’ he wrote, ‘that neither these of Saltash,
nor the others of Fowey shall depart, having in such sort per-
suaded with them for their abode there until the departure of
the French fleet which lay in wait for them, that they seemed to
take my said persuasions in good part, although the favour
which I show to Monsieur Chatclicr might give them some
occasion to suspect my dealings . . . The whole treasure in both
places is such that it is supposed to be worth ^(^400,000 sterling,
and therefore most fit for her majesty, and not to be enterprised
of any subject . . . Wherefore if it shall seem good to your
Honour that I with others shall give the attempt for the re-
covery of it to her majesty’s use, which cannot be without
blood, I will not only take it in hand to be brought to good
effect, but also receive the blame thereof unto myself to the end
so great a commodity should redound to her grace, hoping that
after bitter storms of her displeasure showed at the beginning to
colour the fact, I shall find the calm of her favour in such sort
as I am most willing to hazard myself to serve her majesty,’ ^
Of such were the servants of Elizabeth made; it was the same
terms on which Drake later roamed the seas. The goodly, not
to say godly, enterprise went through and Philip’s treasure, for
lack of which the troops in the Netherlands turned mutinous,
found its way to the Tower of London. It was as pretty a piece
of Machiavellianism as had been seen out of Italy; but it kept
1 S.P. Dom. Eliz. 49, no. i.
73
SIR RICHARD GRENVILLE OF THE REVENGE
Alva employed on the other side of the water when he might
have been aiding the Rising of the Northern Earls and it greatly
hindered the forward advance of Catholicism at a moment of
great danger.
These years from 1569 to 1571 were perhaps the most critical
in all Elizabeth’s reign. The Armada year was more specta-
cular, but it is doubtful if it offered such a combination of
dangers as the earlier crisis. For at this time there were wide-
spread and powerful forces in opposition to the Queen and
Cecil, which might have formed an overmastering combination
with foreign powers; whereas by 1588 the country was ready to
face the great challenge from Spain unitedly. These forces were
the Catholic opposition now raising its head after ten years of
Elizabeth’s rule, and the feudal aristocracy which hated Cecil’s
government. What made the situation dangerous was that the
conservative lords were at times a majority of the Council and
only the Queen’s unwavering support brought Cecil safely
through. Their leaders were the Duke of Norfolk and the in-
sufferably aristocratic Earl of Arundel, the twelfth of his line.
Norfolk’s first wife was his daughter and heiress, and the plan
was now to marry Norfolk to Mary as a step to the English
throne. The crisis lasted for two years during which intrigue
and counter-intrigue went on. The rising of the Northern Earls
in the autumn of 1 569 and Pius V’s excommunication of Eliza-
beth in February 1570 were but incidents in it. Norfolk and
Arundel were in and out of the Tower or in confinement in their
town houses; sometimes Cecil’s power seemed to fail and he had
to buy over the Duke to divide his opponents. Finally the
threads of the conspiracy, as brought together by Ridolfi, an
Italian agent in England, were unravelled and evidence
obtained by which the Duke was brought to the block.
Such was the excitement in 1569 that orders went forth for
musters to be taken throughout the country and for the coasts
to be put in a state of defence. In Cornwall the Catholic Sir
John Arundell of Lanherne appeared in his place along with
Sir William Godolphin at the head of the Commission for
mustering the county - men, horses, armour and weapons.
74
THE WESTERN SEA-BOARD
Grenville was absent in Ireland; and in his place in the Returns
from the parishes, we find Diggory Tremayne as the chief per-
son at Kilkhampton, returning ‘one light gelding able and meet
for a light horseman with harness and weapons requisite for the
same/ ^
Next year the Government made up its mind to impose the
Oath subscribing to the Act of Uniformity, as the test of loyalty
to the Elizabethan Establishment, upon all Justices of the Peace
throughout the country. It had come to the parting of the
ways; hitherto there had been a rough toleration extended to
Catholics under Elizabeth’s government. From now on, since
the Pope had thrown down his challenge to her title, GathoKcs
were to be confronted with the direct choice; either to conform
to the established forms in religion and go forward in agreement
with Elizabeth’s regime, or to be dropped from all place and
responsibility under it and to tread the path that led to isolation,
fines, imprisonment and, not impossibly, death.
In Cornwall, the first victim of the new test was Sir John
ArundelL At December Quarter Sessions 1569, the Cornish
Justices met at Bodmin to make their subscription to the Oath.
Sir John did not appear, although, as his fellow-justices wrote to
the Council, ‘at our last assembly Sir John Arundell did then
forbear to subscribe, but (as we thought) not with other pur-
pose than the accomplishment of his duty at this day of our new
assembly, which was by him specially appointed and he is now
absent for what cause we are ignorant.’ Apparently Sir John
had had difficulties with his conscience in the interval; nor did
he subscribe, when several months later at the April Quarter
Sessions at Helston, Sir William Godolphin, who had previously
been absent upon his government of the Scilly Isles, gave in his
adhesion. The Justices, thereupon, according to the tenor of
the council’s letters, required a recognisance from Arundell to
appear before the Council when required. On 28 April 1570,
at Bodmin, Grenville subscribed the Oath; its tenor was to
observe the Act for Uniformity of common prayer and service in
church and the administration of the sacraments. He promised
that his family should repair to the parish church for divine
^ S.P. Dom. Eliz., 52, no. 3.
75
SIR RICHARD GRENVILLE OF THE REVEXGE
service and receive the sacraments ‘from time to time according
to the tenor of the act of Parliament’ - in its way, a nice
epitome of the Elizabethan settlement.^
Next year, the crisis still continuing, though tension was some-
what relaxed, Elizabeth summoned a Parliament, the third of
her reign. She had had such a disillusioning experience with-
her previous Parliament, perpetually pestering her on the sub-
ject of marriage and the succession — a question which she was
by no means so sure of solving by marriage as they were - that
she told the French Ambassador that three Parliaments were
enough for any reign and she would have no more of them.
But the alarms of the past two years had cost money and she
wanted legislation passed in reply to the Bulls of the Pope; so
that when the time came, she was as gracious as ever to her
faithful Commons. Parliament was summoned for 2 April
1571, and Grenville was returned to it as Knight of the shire
for Cornwall. 2 Among the west-country contingent that went
up to Westminster were his father-in-law. Sir John St. Leger,
who sat, with Peter Edgcumbe, as Knight of the shire for Devon.
His cousin George Grenville was returned for one of the
Launceston seats; Henry and John Killigrew v^ere there, and
Sir Humphrey Gilbert, fresh from his triumphs in Ireland, for
which he had been knighted by the Lord Deputy. He and John
Hawkins were members for Plymouth.
Grenville was at once brought into the committee- work of the
House, a circumstance which lends additional support to the
view that this was not his first Parliament. It seems possible that
he was a member, if D’Ewes’s name Greithfield is a misprint for
Greenfield, of the important Committee of supply which was set
up at the beginning of the Parliament ‘to consider of the propor-
tion, and time of yielding some relief unto her Majesty.’® But
he was indubitably member of a small, though important com-
mittee, to which was committed the second of the several bills
brought forward for ecclesiastical reform. We read that on
Saturday 28 April,
1 S.P. Dom. Eliz., 67, no. 9.
* Browne Willis, Notitia Parliammtaria, 79.
® D’Ewes, Journal^ 1 59.
76
THE WESTERN SEA-BOARD
‘the second Bill for Religion was read the second time, and com-
mitted unto the Lord President of the Marches of Wales, Sir
Thomas Smith, Sir Thomas Scott, Mr. Attorney of the Wards,
Mr. Norton, Mr. Greenfield, Mr. Grimston, Mr. Smith, Mr.
Fenner and Mr. Agmondsham, who were appointed to meet
this Afternoon at three of the Clock in the Star-Chamber.’ ^
There was a strong Protestant tide running and the Com-
mons were determined to press forward the work of reformation,
by abolishing pluralities, non-residence, licences and dispensa-
tions; they wanted to make changes in the Thirty-nine Articles
and in the Book of Common Prayer. A number of Bills dealing
with religion were brought forward from previous Parliaments;
the second of them, which Grenville was to consider on his
committee, dealt with the order of ministers and doubtless con-
templated a departure from strict episcopacy. By what in-
fluence he was appointed to the committee, whether by these
Protestant members like Strickland and Peter Wentworth, the
irrepressible member for Barnstaple, or by the Privy Councillors
as likely to support the Queen, we do not know. It is hardly
likely to have been the former, especially when we consider that
Sir Humphrey Gilbert came forward conspicuously in the
debates as an exponent and defender of the Queen’s preroga-
tive. But the Queen was in no mind to have the Reformation
carried forward a stage further under the asgis of the Commons;
and desirable as many of the reforms would have been, she pre-
ferred that they should not be made at all, rather than have
Parliament interfering in the sphere of her prerogative, the
Church. On 29 May, Parliament was dissolved and the mem-
bers were free to return to their respective counties.
Next year, a new Parliament was summoned, to meet on
8 May; chiefly to strengthen the Government’s hands in dealing
with Mary Queen of Scots and in bringing Norfolk to execution.
For the classes from which the Commons drew their strength,
the country gentry and the merchants of the towns, were pre-
pared to go much further than the Government in the attack
on Catholicism, the Queen of Scots and the old aristocracy.
^ ibid. 180.
77
SIR RICHARD GRENVILLE OF THE REVENGE
Grenville was returned, this time for Dunheved; and his
young cousin, George Grenville, for Camelford. Peter Edg-
cumbe and Richard Chamond were Knights of the Shire for
Cornwall, as Sir John St. Leger and Arthur Basset, another of
Grenville’s cousins, for Devon. For Plymouth, the members
were again John Hawkins and Edmund Tremayne, who
counted as one of the official members, in close touch with the
Government. Among the Cornish members were William Killi-
grew for Helston, another oflScial person, since he was Groom
of the Chamber to the Queen, a life-long servant; and Henry
Killigrew, for Truro, employed on many diplomatic missions
by the Crown, envoy in turn to Scotland, France and the
German Princes. But these West Country members were no
mere royal nominees as is sometimes thought; it happened that
they agreed with the Government, or where they disagreed it
was in wishing to go farther and faster; was there not among
them, for example, the notorious Peter Wentworth, member for
Tregony, or his brother Paul, member for Liskeard? ^
The Government lost no time in consulting Parliament about
the business of the Queen of Scots. On 12 May, Lord Keeper
Bacon signified to the Lords and Commons the Queen’s pleas-
ure that twenty-one of the Upper House and forty-four of the
Lower should meet on the morrow ^in the Morning at eight of
the Clock in the Star-Chamber, then and there to consult and
deliberate upon matters concerning the Queen of Scots.’ The
most influential members of the Commons were chosen, both of
the official and unofficial elements; among them were the
Treasurer, the Comptroller, the Lord Deputy of Ireland and Sir
Hugh Paulet, Grenville’s old guardian; Henry Killigrew, Peter
Wentworth and ‘Mr. Greenfield Sen.,’ who must be Grenville
so described to distinguish him from his younger cousin, George,
the only other Grenville in the House.^
The House was almost entirely taken up with its proceedings
against Mary Queen of Scots - in its way an advantage, for it
meant that there was the less time for it to badger the Govern-
ment with its protestantising proposals. A ‘Bill for the Continua-
^ Official Return of Members of Parliament^ i, 408.
2 D’Ewes, Journal, 206.
78
THE WESTERN SEA-BOARD
tion of certain Statutes’ was read on 25 June and committed
to a small Committee of whom Grenville was one; next day he
was among a larger number who were appointed to confer with
the Lords on the same matter.^ In the end, Elizabeth did not
proceed to extremes against Mary; it was enough to inculpate
her and hold her under the perpetual threat of proceedings for
high treason. Parliament was more than willing, and had given
Cecil enthusiastic support in bringing Norfolk to book, proceed-
ings which, in the case of the highest peer of the realm, were so
repugnant to the Queen that she could hardly bring herself to
sign his death-warrant. However, after many hesitations she
yielded, and the Duke was executed on 2 June. On the last day
of the month, Parliament was dissolved.
It is to the year 1571 that we owe the one portrait-painting of
Grenville which we possess, that which now hangs in the
National Portrait Gallery. Elizabethan portraits are apt to be
not good; and the portrait of Grenville is only a fair specimen
of its class. Fortunately, however, the head is the best part of
it and carries conviction. The lettering upon it says: an. dni.
1571. AETATis. SUAE. 29. This too is convincing: the inscrip-
tion is undoubtedly contemporary and, what is interesting,
agrees with 1542 as the year of his birth.^ It is a handsome
young man that is portrayed, of a very recognisable Devonshire
type: oval head, fair hair and blue eyes. The hair is brushed
well back from the forehead, where it is already beginning to
thin at the temples, while it is full and thick round the ears
and at the back. The moustaches and beard are those of a
young man, not very full or thick, and revealing a noticeably
prominent underlip. The real interest of the portrait is in the
eyes, which are full and expressive, beneath beautifully curved
brows, rather low upon the eyes and so exposing a fine and lofty
forehead. But the impression of the character they give is
curious and arresting: the eyes are intense, watchful, giving the
impression of a man very much on the alert, a quick and in-
flammable temperament.
It is an effective portrait, in its way. One does not have to
^ ibid. 224. 2 V. ante p. 37,
79
SIR RICHARD GRENVILLE OF THE REVENGE
attach too much credence to the colouring; yet the high colour
in the cheeks goes with the fair Devonshire type. The whole
personality is that of a man of action on the qui vive. Moreover,
one can see how it is possible that this handsome man in the late
twenties might become the person portrayed in the later engrav-
ing in Holland’s Heroologia,
Drake’s first portrait, the little miniature done by Isaac Oliver
some time after the voyage to Nombre dc Dios, affords a curious
contrast; for though Grenville and Drake were much the same
age, it portrays Drake as yet so very immature: a round babyish
face with no beard and only incipient moustaches, but with the
high arched eyebrows which all the portraits of him show. Yet
they were both of the Devonshire type, high-coloured and fair-
haired; unlike Gilbert and Ralegh, who were dark and black-
haired like Cornishmen.
Drake was now employed in getting his own back on the
Spaniards for the losses of San Juan de Ulloa. The circum-
stances of these years of crisis were favourable; and in 1570 he
fitted out two ships, the Dragon and the Swan with which he went
out again to the West Indies, the beginning of his daring career
of private war on the Spaniards. Next year while Grenville was
occupied with his duties as member of Parliament, Drake went
out in the Swan alone. These were rather reconnoitring expedi-
tions, but the latter was successful in more ways than one. For
one thing it paid handsomely; from Carthagena harbour he
succeeded in cutting out a ship of 180 tons. There were other
prizes too which he made and carried off to his hiding-place, a
pleasant natural harbour aboundii>g with fish and game, wliich
he named Port Pheasant, in the recesses of the Gulf of Darien.
More than this, it was on this expedition that he conceived the
scheme of a raid on Nombre de Dios, got his information about
the mule- trains crossing the Isthmus from Panama with the
treasure, and took all his soundings for the next expedition.
He set sail again from Plymouth at Whitsun 1572, in the
Pascoe of 70 tons and the little Swan, on the voyage which made
his name and fame; his brothers John and Joseph were with
him, as also John Oxenham. It was very much the character
of a family enterprise; but no voyage ever made from Plymouth
80
THE WESTERN SEA-BOARD
achieved such a height of daring and adventure, not even his
own later voyage round the world. From his lair in the Gulf,
which despite the Spaniards’ discovery of it he continued to
use as his base, he made his attack on Nombre de Dios; with
only seventy men he made himself master of the town and was
only forced to retire from the very ‘mouth of the Treasure-
House of the World’ because, severely wounded, he was carried
off by his men. But undaunted he went on collecting prizes and
plunder, and in the New Year planned his raid into the interior
of the country in alliance with the revolted cimaroons, which
was intended as an attack upon Panama itself, but turned into
a coup against the treasure-train at the very gates of Nombre de
Dios. Leaving his men loaded with treasure upon the coast, he
got off in a raft to look for his pinnaces, promising them ‘if it
pleased God he should put his foot in safety aboard his frigate,
he would, God willing, by one means or other, get them all
aboard in despite of all the Spaniards in the Indies.’ Rich and
successful beyond their expectations, they sailed home from
Cape Florida to the Isles of Scilly in twenty-three days ~
‘and so arrived at Plymouth on Sunday about sermon-time
August 9, 1573; at which time the news of our captain’s return
did so speedily pass over all the Church, and surpass their minds
with desire and delight to see him, that very few or none re-
mained with the preacher, all hastening to see the evidence of
God’s love and blessing towards our gracious Queen and
country, by the fruit of our captain’s labour and success.’
Meanwhile, Hawkins at home was engaged in his own more
devious way of inflicting revenge upon Spain; a typical Eliza-
bethan piece of double-dealing by which the new Spanish
Ambassador, Don Guerau dc Spes, a fool and filled with a
fanatical hatred of England, was inveigled into supposing that
Hawkins would aid Philip and Alva’s plans for an invasion by
going over at the critical moment with his whole western
squadron guarding the entrance to the Channel. Burghlcy, of
course, was privy to the scheme; the price Philip paid for
services never intended to be rendered was the return of Haw
kins’ men who had been taken at San Juan and imprisoned in
81 F
SIR RICHARD GRENVILLE OF THE REVENGE
Spain, with a considerable sum of money in addition. When the
moment was ripe, and Burghley had unravelled the Ridolfi plot,
the plan was blown into the air and Don Guerau, shown up for
the fool he was, sent packing from the country. For a time, it
looked as though there would be war between England and
Spain; certainly these things accounted in part for the exacerba-
tion of the Parliament of 1572 against Mary Queen of Scots,
upon whom these designs pivoted.
But both England and Spain were too much occupied other-
wise, and the fundamental antagonism between them not yet
sufficiently apparent, for them to embark on war. The mercan-
tile interest, particularly in London, was in favour of peace;
and an effort was made to patch things up. With the beginning
of 1573 a new temporising policy, to the confusion of her friends,
was observable on Elizabeth’s part. A convention was arrived
at by which the mutual embargoes on trade with each other
were removed; and the Queen sent a few warships down-
Channel, taking some twenty sail of the Huguenot privateers
and some eight hundred of their men. It was a very profitable
proceeding; Elizabeth, having gained at the expense of her
enemies, was now profiting at the expense of her friends; so
winning on both scores and, as usual, making the best of both
worlds.
82
CHAPTER V
THE GREAT SOUTH-SEA PROJECT;
GRENVILLE AND DRAKE
To seek new worlds, for gold, for praise, for glory . . .
SIR WALTER RALEGH: Book of the
Ouan to Cinthia
The restiveness of these years, the signs of a new orientation
of English policy, the uncertainty of our future relations with
Spain were the symptoms of new forces at work, driving the
country irresistibly forward along new untried paths. These
men of the western ports, but not they alone, felt that it was on
the seas that the destiny of their country lay. ‘For discovery of
sundry rich and unknown lands, fatally (and as it seemeth by
God’s providence) reserved for England, and for the honour of
your majesty’ - such were Grenville’s words in petitioning the
Queen to allow the great enterprise he planned in 1573-4. For
he was at length affected by the new currents flowing, some-
what later than the seamen of the West Country, his con-
temporaries, the Hawkins’ and Drake, or than his cousin
Humphrey Gilbert. But his position was rather different from
theirs; he was younger than the rest of them, except for Drake;
to the Hawkins’ it was their business. Gilbert was a younger
son, while Grenville was the head of his family, whose tradition
in any case was martial rather than maritime.
In the early seventies, as a concomitant of these sea-changes,
there was a great growth of interest in geographical matters.
It was, as these things are, confined to a small circle; but it was
an influential one. There was great interest, for example,
among the men at Court who were directing the country’s
destiny; Burghley was much alive to the new tendencies and
83
SIR RICHARD GRENVILLE OF THE REVEMGE
lent his support to the Hakluyts, to the elder and younger
Digges, the mathematicians, and to the universally learned Dr.
Dee. It became the fashion - though in some cases it was more,
a real enthusiasm - among the leading spirits at Court, Leices-
ter, Walter Earl of Essex, Sir Christopher Hatton, as later with
Ralegh.^
The real significance of this interest in geography was the
passionate excitement aroused in the question of a North-East
or a North-West Passage to Cathay. It was a matter of the
greatest importance for the future of English expansion. The
riches of the trade with the Far East had been revealed by the
Portuguese voyages via the Gape of Good Hope; but southward
expansion up to the time of the Hawkins’ voyages was blocked
by the Portuguese and Spanish monopoly, and it was now
being made abundantly evident that any attempts to penetrate
their privileged sphere would mean fighting. The Govern-
ment’s attitude towards open war beyond the line was an
equivocal one; they did not recognise the monopoly, but those
who fought their own way into it, did so at their own risk and
were liable to be disclaimed at any time. And so the question
of a northern Passage to the Far East was a vital one; if there
were one at all, and most geographical opinion agreed that
there was, it would fall naturally into the sphere of English
control, and being nearer than the Gape of Good Hope, give this
country the larger control of the trade in Far Eastern com-
modities at cheaper rates.
Opinion was divided into two schools; those who favoured the
North-Eastern Passage and those who supported the idea of a
North-Western. The former had a first innings, with the bril-
liant navigator Richard Chancellor, and the brothers Stephen
and William Borough. Humphrey Gilbert made himself the
exponent of the North-Western school, collected a great deal of
material on the subject and in the winter of 1565-6 debated the
project against Anthony Jenkinson before the Privy Council.
He then started to put this material into shape, the ‘Discourse to
prove a Passage by the North-West to Cathay and the East
Indies’; but service in Ireland and in the Netherlands inter-
^ cf. Taylor, Tudor Geography, 1485-1383.
84
THE GREAT SOUTH-SEA PROJECT
venedj and it was not published till 1576, having been prepared
for the press by the poet George Gascoigne. Meanwhile, the
‘Discourse’ circulated in manuscript and had a considerable
influence on opinion; for it was a brilliant piece of work, having
all Gilbert’s vigour and inventiveness, and seemed convincing.
Ortelius and Mercator were agreed, by about 1569, that
America was an island, and that between it and the continent
of Asia there was a strait; this contemporaries mostiy called
the Strait of Anian. This strait, if it existed and was at all pass-
able, would obviously be a quicker route than that by the
north-east along the Arctic coast of Asia. Gilbert took his stand
upon this and upon the argument, which men were by no means
all convinced of yet, that the New World of America was separ-
ated from Asia and not merely an extension of it.
‘When I gave myself to the study of geography,’ he wrote,
‘after I had perused and diligently scanned the descriptions of
Europe, Asia and Africa, and conferred [i.e. compared] them
with the maps and globes both antique and modern: I came in
fine to the fourth part of the world, commonly called America,
which by all descriptions I found to be an island environed
round about with sea, having on the south side of it the fret or
straight of Magellan, on the west side Mar del Sur, which sea
runneth towards the north, separating it from the east parts of
Asia, where the dominions of the Cathaians are: on the east
part our West Ocean, and on the north side the sea that severeth
it from Greenland, through which northern seas the Passage
lieth, which I take now in hand to discover.’ ^
He argued, Elizabethan-like, from a variegated collection of
authorities, from Plato’s views of Atlantis in the Timaeus and the
Critias and from Marinaeus Siculus to the Spanish gentleman
from the West Indies, who in Ireland affirmed before the Lord
Deputy and himself that Urdaneta had told him only eight
years before that he had come from the Pacific into Germany
through this North-West passage. This story was current in
Spanish America at the time;^ and neither the Enghsh nor the
1 Hakluyt, Principal Navigations, VII, 160.
* Taylor, Writings and Correspondence of the Hakluyts, I, 80.
85
SIR RICHARD GRENVILLE OF THE REVENGE
Spaniards had means of knowing whether it might not be true.
Amid the rather fantastic medley of authorities, there do emerge
some sound critical points. If America were not an island, but
a part of the continent adjoining Asia, he argues, the people of
the latter would by now have made some inroad into it, or at
least have established contact. But the peoples of Tartary and
Cathay and those of America ‘have not had any traffic with
each other." He cites the information that came to Jaques
Cartier of ‘a great Sea at Saguinay, whereof the end was not
known: which they pre-supposed to be the passage to Cathay’ -
probably a rumour of the great lakes of the American interior.
Through the tract there runs the imperial idea that England
might control the northern route to the east, as Spain and
Portugal controlled the southern; and that
‘through the shortness of the voyage, we should be able to sell
all manner of merchandise, brought from thence, far better
cheap than either the Portugal or Spaniard doth or may do.
And further, we should share with the Portugal in the East, and
the Spaniard in the West, by trading to any part of America,
through Mar del Sur [i.e. the Pacific], where they can no
manner of way offend us.’
It was a brilliant tract and Gilbert had a distinct literary gift.
The only thing that was wanting was the strait itself; the new
continent interposed an altogether insurmountable obstacle
between England and the riches of Cathay. Hardly anyone,
until Ralegh and the younger Hakluyt, conceived that the real
colonial future of England lay in the far less exciting and less
profitable way of settling the American continent. In this
Grenville was to bear an important part.
Bound up with the question of the passage to Cathay was a
second problem, even more obscure and no less exciting: what
was there in the unknown spaces of the great South Sea, the
Pacific?^ This was the question which haunted the minds of
Spanish and Portuguese seamen since the marvellous voyage of
^ In the following paragraphs I am indebted to Dr. J. A. Williamson’s
Introduction to his edition of Sir Richard Hawkins’s Observations (Argonaut
Press, 1933).
86
THE GREAT SOUTH-SEA PROJECT
Magellan in 1519, and of the geographers like Mercator and
Ortelius. It occupied the thoughts of Dr. Dee in his study at
Mortlake in the early seventies, and investigation into it was the
primary object of the great voyage Grenville was planning in
these years. At the beginning of the century, the South Sea was
by no means so great in men’s minds; for all that they knew it
did not even exist, and the same sea that surrounded the Por-
tuguese Moluccas in the East washed the western shores of
Europe and was the Atlantic, So Columbus believed and to his
death refused to face the truth that various indications were
forcing upon him. In 1513 Balboa first saw the new ocean; but
until Magellan’s voyage no one knew how wide it was. After
that, the problem became, what was it that filled those
vast untraversed spaces to the south and east of his diagonal
tract from the South Atlantic across the Pacific to the
Philippines?
The answer that contemporary thought in the sixties and
seventies gave was that there was a great Pacific continent
stretching from Java and the Spice Islands in a south-easterly
direction through the temperate zone to the Antarctic, Terra
Australis began to appear upon the maps. From the time of
Marco Polo the fabulous wealth of those imagined lands had
stirred men’s wondering curiosity; for he was understood to
have reported that to the south-east of Asia there lay other rich
countries, in particular the Kingdom of Lochac, or Beach, ruled
by an independent monarch, with abundance of gold and brazil
wood, of elephants and rare fruits, and seldom visited Tor that it
standeth out of the way.’ Beyond Lochac was the island of
Pentain, abounding in aromatic trees, and southward again was
the Kingdom of Malaim, remote but rich in spices and drugs.
Marco Polo was, of course, speaking of the Malay peninsula;
but the Elizabethans identified these lands with the unknown
continent in the South Sea.
It does not so much matter that much of what they thought
was incorrect; this was
‘the geography accepted by the Elizabethans and the basis of
their expeditions into the South Sea. With the identification of
87
SIR RICHARD GRENVILLE OF THE REVENGE
Terris Australis with the fabled Lochac and Malaim the system
was almost complete. One had but to traverse the Straits of
Magellan and follow the Fuegian shore. It would stretch in a
long sweep north-westwards to the tropics embracing all lati-
tudes from 52° to 20° or even nearer to the Equator. So placed,
it must contain a variety of useful products, and of peoples and
kingdoms worth discovering. To its explorers and exploiters
there would fall an Empire of the South no whit inferior to the
Spanish Empire of the West and the Portuguese Empire of the
East. Moreover, having discovered this long coast and estab-
lished bases upon it, a goal in the region of established know-
ledge was in sight - the Moluccas, which had shipped priceless
cargoes to Lisbon for half a century past. That was the dream of
the speculators of the 1570’s.’ ^
Just at this moment, amid the excitement of so much theoreti-
cal speculation, two contributions of the first importance were
made by the Spaniards to the real knowledge of the region. In
1564 Legazpi sailing west from New Spain rediscovered the
Philippines, and next year Urdaneta made the passage back
from the islands to the Mexican coast. In 1567 Mcndaha sailed
out of Callao and steered west-south-west for a great distance in
search of the hidden continent; but baffled by the vastness of
this ocean, he finally turned north-westwards and instead of
finding New Zealand or Australia, he reached the Solomon
Islands. He thought them to be the fringe of a continental coast,
as indeed they are not far from Australia; and the Spanish
expectations of what they would yield stand expressed in the
name he gave them.
The news of the discovery reached England not long after,
perhaps through Spaniards as well as through the English mer-
chants in Seville. But one source of information wc know for
certain. Henry Hawks, one of the Seville colony, was in Mexico
from 1567 to 1571, the very year of these voyages; and when,
escaping from the arms of the Inquisition, he reached England
in 1572, he brought with him all the latest information. In
Mexico he had known the younger Diego Gutierrez, who had
* Williamson, p, xxi.
m
THE GREAT SOUTH^SEA PROJECT
been with Urdaneta on the Philippines voyage. He knew too of
the discovery of the Solomon Islands - the Isles of Gold. And
he mentions in his report a voyage of exploration sent out from
Mexico to seek the western end of the Straits of Anian (i.c. the
North-West Passage) ‘which they call the Englishman’s strait’ -
perhaps because of Cabot’s entry into Hudson’s bay, its supposed
eastern end. ‘They say,’ he wrote, ‘that strait lieth not far from
the main land of China, which the Spaniards account to be
marvellous rich.’ ^
Here we have brought together the two main themes - the
twin secrets of the Pacific - which Grenville’s Project was in-
tended to elucidate and which appear again among the objects
of Drake’s voyage round the world in 1 577-80. Whether there
was any contact between Henry Hawks and Grenville we do not
know, and are not likely to know now; it is a region of obscure
inference and fascinating surmise that we are working in. But
it is worth noting that Hawks’s view regarding the Straits of
Anian is that expressed in the Grenville Project.
This Project, upon which Grenville must have been working
for some time previously, first comes into the light of day with
the Petitions which he presented in his own name and those of
his partners to the Queen and the Lord Admiral on 22 March
1574.^ This means that preparations must have been going on
at least through the winter of 1573-4. There can be no doubt
what the objective was: it was the unknown Pacific continent,
the fourth part of the world yet to be discovered, reserved (by
God’s Providence) for England. Amongst the arguments for
the voyage enumerated amongst the Articles presented to the
Lord Admiral, we find:
‘The aptness and as it were a fatal convenience that since the
Portugal hath attained one part of the new found world to the
cast, the Spaniard another to the west, the French the third to
the north, now the fourth to the south is by God’s providence
left for England, to whom the others in times past have been
first offered.’ ^
1 Taylor, Tudor Geography 1485-T5S3, 113-17.
* S.P. Dora. Eiiz. 95, nos. 63-4.
89
* ibid. no. 65.
SIR RICHARD GRENVILLE OF THE REVENGE
The point is made doubly sure by the description of the pur-
pose of the voyage:
'The discovery, traffic and enjoying for the Queen’s Majesty
and her subjects, of all or any lands, islands and countries south-
ward beyond the equinoctial or where the Pole Antarctic hath
any elevation above the horizon; and which lands, islands and
countries be not already possessed or subdued by or to the use of
any Christian Prince in Europe, as by the charts and descrip-
tions shall appear.’
It was a matter of the utmost importance, if the voyage into the
South Seas were to be permitted, that the Government should
be assured that no attack upon the Spanish dominions was
intended. At any time from 1569 to 1572, Elizabeth would
probably not have minded - her relations with Spain could
hardly be worse. But beginning with 1573, negotiations were
entered upon to clear up all outstanding problems between the
two countries and to achieve a basis for improved relations.
This was arrived at in 1574 with the Convention of Bristol, an
ominous event for the forward school of western seamen. It
was in effect the reef upon which Grenville’s Project foundered,
for Elizabeth could hardly afford to risk the new agreement by
permitting an expedition, led by a prominent subject, to sail
into the closed Southern Sea, regarded by the Spaniards as their
monopoly; while an attack upon the Spanish treasure-ships
between Peru and Panama, the standing temptation of such an
expedition (Drake later succumbed to it, or, more probably,
intended it from the first), might have brought the whole might
of the Spanish Empire down upon her before she was ready for it.
So, in the Petition to the Queen, to incline her mind favour-
ably towards the enterprise, and tempering their purpose to the
new winds of policy, the adventurers underline the point that
their scheme would incur no offence or injury to any other
Christian prince. Of their enterprise, they say, 'we have good
and probable reasons to assure us, easy and feasible means to
attain it, and the commodities be large, without injury or just
offence to any Prince of Christendom.’ Perhaps they assured
the Queen a little too eagerly!
90
THE GREAT SOUTH-SEA PROJECT
With the Lord Admiral, they were more specific as to the
business side of their plans and their means of carrying them
into effect. They describe themselves as
‘certain gentlemen of the West Country desirous to adventure
ourselves and our goods in matter of service honourable and
profitable to the Queen’s Majesty and the Realm, with like hope
of benefit to arise unto such as shall be adventurers therein, and
having sundry ways good and probable causes to lead us, both
by our own understanding and the help of such whose skill and
experience we have used, have thought upon and conceived a
means by discovery of certain new trades of navigation and
traffic to advance the honour of our sovereign Lady and
Country, with enlarging the bounds of Christian religion, the
beneficial utterance of the commodities of England, the increase
and maintenance of seamen, the relief of the people at home,
and sundry other commodities such as your wisdom can easily
see to ensue thereof.’
They then go on to argue that the voyage is feasible. We have
to remember that up to this time English navigation was almost
exclusively confined to northern waters. It was mainly the
Hawkins circle, the West Country seamen, who had only
recently launched into equatorial waters with the voyages to
Guinea and into the Caribbean; and to Elizabethan ships with
their uncoppered bottoms, the warm waters of these regions
offered special problems. In answer to these difficulties, the
Articles state that Magellan had crossed the torrid zone six
times, and that in the yearly voyage of the Portuguese around the
Cape of Good Hope to the Moluccas it is passed four times, and
on every voyage by the Spaniards to Brazil twice. Moreover,
‘sundry of our own nation and some such as are to go in these
voyages have passed it to Guinea, Brazil and other places’ - a
most interesting hint, where so much is dark, that support for
this voyage was forthcoming from the Plymouth circle, that
among the men who were to go were some who had been on the
Hawkins’ voyage to the south. Besides, they argue, ‘the coun-
tries that we seek, so lie, that our course continueth not near the
line but, crossing the same, still hasteth directly to the tempera-
91
SIR RICHARD GRENVILLE OF THE REVENGE
ture of our own regions’; that is. Terra Australis. Here in these
temperate climes, similar to England, there should be good vent
for English commodities, particularly of cloth, ‘wherein we most
abound and the transportation whereof is most necessary for
our people at home.’
As for the means which they have for accomplishing the
voyage, they put "forward the following considerations: ‘Ships of
our own well prepared. The West Country being the aptest of
all parts of England for navigation southward. Mariners and
sailors to whom the passage almost thither is known.’ And
those who are backing the enterprise propose to equip it at their
own charges, setting forth four good ships, upon which they will
spend some ;^5,ooo; £ 2^000 in shipping and equipment, ;^ 2 ,ooo
in victuals and necessaries for the company, and £ 1 ,000 in cloth
and merchandise for trading. Among the advantages of the
enterprise which they enumerate is ‘the enlarging of Christian
faith which those naked barbarous people are most apt to
receive and especially when it shall not carry with it the
unnatural and incredible absurdities of papistry.’ This was
more or less common form in all these early ventures in imperial-
ism; or perhaps not merely common form, for nothing is more
surprising than the devoutness of these sea-marauders and
pioneers of empire, Hawkins, Drake, Gilbert. The farther they
went and the more they ravaged, the more pious they became.
Did not Elizabeth on one occasion protest of Hawkins that
he had gone away a seaman and returned home a prating
divine?
More substantial are the economic objectives, mercantilist in
character;
‘the abating of the prices of spices and such commodities that we
now have at the Portugals and Spaniards hands, whereby they
increase their riches upon our loss, when much spices and such
like here spent, and bought dear of them, do with the less
quantity consume the value of our cloths that they receive. The
increase of the quantity of gold and silver that shall be brought
out of Spain itself into England when the commodities coming
out of Spain becoming this way cheaper,’ etc.
9 ^*
THE GREAT SOUTH-SEA PROJECT
There remains the danger of conflict with the Portuguese or the
Spaniards. To this they answer:
‘Our strength shall be such as we fear it not, besides that we
mean to keep the ocean, and not to enter in or near any their
ports or places kept by their force ... In the places already
subdued and inhabited by the Spaniard or Portugal we seek no
possession nor interest; but only, if occasion be free, to traffic
with them and their subjects which is as lawful and as much
without injury as for the merchants in Portugal or Spain
itself.*
Here was the rub; here they were treading on dangerous
ground: the fact was that neither Spain nor Portugal regarded
trading with their empires in the same light as trade with them-
selves: to them it was an incursion into forbidden territory. The
more the adventurers argued, the more it raised awkward
memories. They appealed to the Hawkins’s voyages to Guinea
and their trafficking in Mexico as a precedent, since they have
‘been defended by her Majesty and Council, as friendly and
lawful doing: much more this, which is but passing in the open
sea by them to places that they neither hold nor know.* And
they go on to claim that not only traffic, ‘but also possession,
planting of people and habitation hath been already judged
lawful for other nations in such places as the Spaniards or
Portugals have not already added to their possession.’ They
cite the grant made by the Queen, back in 1563, to Thomas
Stukeley - who was a connection of Grenville’s - for the dis-
covery and occupation of Florida.
In conclusion, therefore, they asked that Letters Patent might
be conferred upon them, constituting them into a corporation,
and establishing ‘some form of governance and authority in
some persons of the Company of this adventure, so as by some
regiment, obedience, quiet, unity and order may be preserved.’
They prayed further that rules for the conduct of the voyage
might be confirmed by the Queen’s authority, as also
‘for the agreement and obedience of the parties, for the contribu-
tion and charge, for the equality and partition: and severally
orders to be appointed by her Majesty for the stablishing of her
93
SIR RICHARD GRENVILLE OF THE REVEKGE
Majesty’s dominion and amity in such places as she shall assign
unto: and for the rate and true answering of her Majesty’s
portion.’
This last shows that it was contemplated that the Queen herself
should have a share in the enterprise^ as she had had in
Hawkins’s voyages and was to have in Drake’s. It was this
factor of her own contribution to such ventures which gave her
all the more power of calling them off, if for political reasons it
became necessary.
Until recently it was not known what response, if any, this
request for Letters Patent had. Owing to a mistaken endorse-
ment upon the Petition, in a later hand, it was connected with
the names of Sir George Peckham and others, with whom Gren-
ville was never in association. While the draft of this very
Patent in answer to the Petition, giving the names of Grenville
and his associates, being misdated to the year 1590 in the
Calendar of State Papers^ failed ever to be connected, where it
properly belongs, to the Grenville voyage.^ In consequence,
no one had realised how near the voyage came to being tried
out three years before Drake set out upon its tracks and so was
led on to the circumnavigation of the world. Nor was its
importance grasped, even as a project. For it gave a new and
original direction to EngHsh plans for expansion and was the
first to put into shape the idea of an English empire in the
southern seas. In the fuller and more complete form it took in
the following year, it combined this idea with that of an attack
upon the problem of the North-West Passage from the Pacific
end, sailing up the west coast of America from the Straits of
Magellan to the supposed Straits of Anian which were to be
discovered somewhere in the latitude of California.
Just as the news of Spanish attempts upon these two problems
had been brought home to England by Henry Hawks in 1572,
so some attempt was made, if perfunctorily, by Drake on the
great voyage of 1577 to 1580 to throw light upon them both.
It was fortunate for him that when he got into the South Sea,
^ These two mistakes were first cleared up by R, P. Ghope in Trans. Devon.
Assoc., iQiy.
94
THE GREAT SOUTH-SEA PROJECT
he did not make either of them a main objective, but made for
the gold coast of Peru. How do we know that Grenville would
not have done the same if he had been allowed by the Queen
to set sail? The very fact that he was not permitted to go, her
relations with Spain in these years being amicable, shows what
the Government must have suspected. In practically every
respect, therefore, as far as intentions go - no doubt the empha-
sis on different purposes would differ with the man - Drake’s
voyage followed the Grenville Project. It is impossible not to
conclude that Drake was acquainted with this earlier plan.
Though there is no evidence that he knew Grenville at this
time - there were others among the adventurers whom he did
know, for example, William Hawkins. At this time, after his
notorious triumphs in the Isthmus, he was lying low in Ireland
and when he sailed in 1577, it was as his own master, to reap
where Grenville had sown.
The draft Patent gives us the names of the adventurers:
‘Richard Grenville, of Stowe in the county of Cornwall,
Esquire, Piers Edgcumbe, Arthur Basset, John Fitz, Edmund
Tremayne, William Hawkins, Alexander Arundell, Thomas
Digges, Martyn Dare, Esquires, Dominic Chester of Bristol,
Merchant, and divers other of our good and loving subjects.’ ^
There they all are: it is almost a muster of Grenville’s family
circle. Many of them have already appeared in these pages and
do not need explanation. But it is clear from the special position
which is assigned to Grenville throughout the document that he
is the prime mover and the leading spirit of the enterprise. Not
in the sense that he had more experience than the rest, but that
he was the chief adventurer and had put more capital into it.
His capital resources were considerable, probably larger than
any single co-adventurer’s, even Edgcumbe’s or Hawkins’s; and
he could always raise money by selling some outlying property,
such as the tenement in Launceston which he sold in April
1572 2 _ there may have been other sales we have now lost
track of.
^ S.P. Dom. Eliz. 235, no, x.
* Peter, Histories of Launceston and Dunheved, 204.
95
SIR RICHARD GRENVILLE OF THE REVEJ^GE
Edgcumbe too was a man of considerable landed estates, and
we find him interested in the contemporary developments of
tin-mining and the search for other metals going on in Corn-
wall. Hawkins was wealthy and had inherited the position of
the leading citizen in Plymouth. Out of a list of ships owned
there in 1570, thirteen out of the sixteen named, including all
the larger vessels, are listed under his name;^ in addition he
owned more property in the town than any other citizen. To
him, the Grenville voyage ~ though he was closely associated
with Grenville later in the ownership of the Castle of Comfort,
which was to have been the flagship of it - was one in which he
had but a subordinate interest, as compared with numerous
ventures of his own. Of the others interested, Arthur Basset, son
of John Basset and grandson of Lady Lisle, we know; and the
ubiquitous and competent Edmund Tremayne. Alexander
Arundell was Grenville’s half-brother, some eight years junior
to him, to whom he was very much attached; we hear of them
together later on, associated in various other undertakings.
John Fitz of Fitzford was a cousin, the son of Agnes, daughter of
Roger Grenville of Stowe. Thomas Digges, the mathematician
and geographer, who was evidently designed to accompany the
expedition as its scientific expert, much as Thomas Harriot
accompanied Grenville’s Virginia voyage in 1585, though not
himself a Devonshire man, was also connected with the circle by
marriage, for his wife was a daughter of Sir Warham St. Lcger.
Dominic Chester was a well-known Bristol merchant who had
lost heavily by the embargoes on trade in Spain and Portugal;
perhaps his motive in supporting the enterprise was not unlike
Hawkins’s. Only Martin Dare remains unidentified; but the
Dares were associated with Virginian exploration from 15B7;
Virginia Dare was the first English child to be born in America.
The Patent was drawn in very wide terms, granting them full
licence
‘to discover lands, territories, islands, dominions, peoples and
places unknown which are not possessed by nor subject to any
Christian prince . . . and specially such as have the Pole
^ S.P. Dom. Eliz. 71, no. 75.
96
THE GREAT SOUTH-SEA PROJECT
Antarctic elevate and the dominions of the great prince com-
monly called the great Cham of Cathay . . • and with the
peoples so by them discovered to traffic, and the lands and
peoples to join to the Christian faith and also to our dominion
and amity so far as the same may be done . . /
What could be fuller or more comprehensive as a grant for
exploration or for settlement and possession? It is to be
observed that their powers included the joining of lands dis-
covered, if need be, to our dominion or amity - an objective
which stands out clearly among the purposes of the expedition
in the light of later information.
That the actual preparations for the voyage were now well
advanced we know from the report of the Spanish Agent in
London to Don Luis de Requesens, Governor of the Nether-
lands, as well as from the information sent by the French
Ambassador to his home government. The interest aroused
was significant. Antonio de Guaras, for it was probably he,
wrote to Requesens on 17 May 1574:
‘An English gentleman named Grenfield, a great pirate, and
another called Champernowne, Vice-Admiral of the West, a
co-father-in-law with Montgomeri, with others recently armed
seven ships, four large and three small, with the advowed
intention of going on a voyage of discovery to Labrador, but
the real intention was to help Montgomeri in Normandy, which
is very near the west coast. Since Montgomeri’s defeat, it is
said they will be too late to help him, and they consequently
assert that they are going to the straits of M[agelian], their
fleet being increased by three sail making ten ships in all,
amongst which is the Castle of Comfort, a celebrated ship of 240
tons, the largest of them. The fleet is very well fitted and found,
and will carry 1,500 men, soldiers and sailors, 500 of them being
gentlemen. The real design is not yet known, as there are so
many plans afoot, but, as they are going in this guise, they
probably mean to sack some of the islands and lie in wait for
the ships from the Indies and other merchantmen. They say
they are taking with them a store hulk of 600 tons, with pro-
visions, but I believe it is more likely to carry their plunder than
97
SIR RICHARD GRENVILLE OF THE REVENGE
to take stores. They sail this month. It is to be hoped that
measures of precaution will be taken in the Canaries and else-
where, as so many ships are leaving and it is very necessary that
some remedy should be provided. Whilst things remain as they
are these people will continue their present proceedings, which
are the accursed result of their false religion. I have already
written at length as to what the remedy should be, as these raids
are increasing so greatly in consequence of the immunity they
enjoy, and bye-and-bye it will be too late for redress.’ ^
It is evident from de Guaras’ report that a good deal of acti-
vity was on foot, and that he had not yet penetrated fully what
the South Sea scheme was. But the alarm was certainly given in
Spain. A copy of his report was sent to Martin Enriquez, the
Viceroy of Mexico - the same whose arrival at San Juan de
Ulloa had so discomfited Hawkins. The upshot was an investi-
gation in December of that year by the Audiencia in Guadala-
jara as to how Grenville could get into the South Sea, and in
particular whether he could enter it by some strait to the north.®
They took the testimony of the famous navigator Juan Fer-
nandez de Ladrillero, who had gone out to New Spain with
Mendoza in 1535, had conducted an expedition to explore the
Straits of Magellan in 1558-9 and whose experience of the
South Sea now extended over some thirty-five years.
From the French Ambassador, La Mothe Fenelon, writing on
June 4 to Charles IX, we derive further information, some cor-
roborating the Spanish agent, some entirely new. To the
Spaniard, Grenville, though a gentleman, was also ‘a great
pirate.’ Probably all the West-Country gentry were pirates to
him; he did not distinguish. In point of fact, there is no evidence
that Grenville had been engaged in piracy -- this was his first
sea-venture; nor even later is there evidence of piracy, his acti-
vities in this kind come under the heading of legitimate pri-
vateering. The distinction between privateering and piracy
was a clear one. To the French Ambassador, who was in a
^ Cal. S.P. Spanish 1 568-1 481.
^ H. R. Wagner, Spanish Voyages to the JSf.W. Coast of America in the Sixteenth
Century^ 63.
98
THE GREAT SOUTH-SEA PROJECT
much better position to know, Grenville was a "gentilhomme
tenu en tr^s bon compte en ceste court.’
He reports that since the beginning of the winter, Grenville
has been engaged in setting forth and arming seven ships, with
the intention of discovering some passage towards the north;
but that having let the season for such a voyage pass, he never-
theless continues to prepare at this very moment, with all haste,
to put to sea with these seven ships and three more which have
newly joined him. He has already left court to make embarka-
tion in divers places, for the above ships are distributed in dif-
ferent ports of the kingdom, where many gentlemen are to be of
the company with some fifteen hundred soldiers and mariners.
In short, La Mothe says, ‘I hold the said equipage to be very
suspect; the more so because I was told that the said Grenville
has associated Sir Arthur Ghampernowne with him.’ In conse-
quence, he had at once set on foot inquiries in every direction
where he might gather the intent of the enterprise. And this is
what has been reported to him:
‘That the said Grenville, having for long time solicited per-
mission to make this voyage of discovery, and having been held
back, up to the present, by those who support the cause of the
King of Spain and the King of Portugal, has at last so well
demonstrated the utility which will arise from his voyage to the
whole kingdom if he is allowed to achieve it, that with the
favour of his friends he has obtained permission to go, on con-
dition that before undertaking it he renders some service which
has been prescribed for him, to the Earl of Essex in Ireland.
And from there he will afterwards take his journey to where he
intends, without its being permissible for him nevertheless to
enter upon places which the Spaniards and Portuguese have
already discovered, and without his being able to attempt any-
thing against the friends of this kingdom, particularly against
your Majesty. So that my advertisements are that I need take no
alarm, nor give you any, from the said Grenville’s enterprise.’ ^
This corroborates the main outline of the preparations that
were taking place for the voyage, such as we know them-
^ La Mothe Fenelon, Correspondance Diplomatique, VI, 127-8.
99
SIR RICHARD GRENVILLE OF THE REVEMGE
though here too its secret destination was unknown to La
Mothers informants. But he takes us a stage further; apparently
by now, June, Grenville had got permission to go — infor-
mation which is supported by later evidence from a remote
and unsuspected source.^ But the permission was contingent
upon his rendering some service to the Earl of Essex in diffi-
culties in Ireland.
The Irish situation was again disturbed; the Earl of Desmond
had escaped, or rather ridden away into Munster from his easy
confinement in Dublin and was now ranging the province, at-
tired in native Irish dress, the acknowledged leader of his people
stirring up trouble along with his cousin James Fitzmaurice.
The latter was again in correspondence with foreign powers.
Simultaneously Philip was collecting a large fleet in his Biscayan
ports to carry reinforcements to the Netherlands and his troops
on the Rhine. There was instant alarm in England at the pros-
pect of a Spanish fleet in the Channel and preparations were
made for setting the Queen’s ships to sea. There was no ques-
tion of allowing a small squadron of ships such as Grenville’s to
depart the country at such a time.
Moreover there was work for him to do at home in the west.
The Government decided to send down the Earl of Bedford, on
I June, to his Lieutenancy of Devon and Cornwall to put the
whole force of that country in readiness, to take general musters
of men, horses and arms, and to make preparations for their
defence.^ The Justices of the Peace were to aid as his subordi-
nate officers in the work. On 14 June, commissions were sent to
the Earl in the West and to the Lord President of Wales, to
raise 1,000 men for service in Ireland.® On 1 7 July, a letter was
sent to Bedford 'commending his Lordship’s diligence and the
rest of the gentlemen of those counties under his charge for the
accomplishment of such services as were committed unto them
by her Majesty’s commandment.’ ^ The Irish situation looked
less threatening, and the soldiers levied for service there were to
be stayed for the time, though still kept under arms 'in case there
^ See below, pp. 106—7. ® S.P. Dom. Eliz. 97, nos. 1-2.
® ibid. no. 12. * Acts of the Privy Council^ VIII, 270.
100
THE GREAT SOUTH-SEA PROJECT
shall be any occasion to employ them hereafter.’ There was
still anxiety on the score of the Spanish fleet, and on 1 2 July, the
Earl was directed ‘to consult with Sir Arthur Champernowne,
or some others thought meet, to send forth to the seas some bark
under some skilful man to learn the coming forth of the
Spanish fleet, and to give understanding thereof with all
diligence.’ ^
In August, 200 of the men still under arms, 100 from Wales
and 100 from Cornwall, were ordered to be sent to Ireland. ^
But the crisis passed; Desmond made his submission, and the
Spaniards sent their reinforcements from Italy up the Rhine.
In the autumn, when the danger was over, the Council sent its
letters of thanks to the Deputy-lieutenants of the western shires.
Tor their forwardness, diligence and good conformity to her
Majesty’s service when the Earl of Bedford was among them as
Lieutenant; they are required to continue their good doings, and
promised that it shall be holden in remembrance to their com-
fort upon all good occasions offered.’ The Deputy-Lieutenants
named for Cornwall were Sir John Arundell, Mr. Edgcumbe,
Mr. Grenville, Mr. Arundell of Trerice and Mr. Mohun.®
The excitement and activity of that summer meant that it
was now too late to start on the voyage: a whole year had been
lost. Moreover, following the Treaty of Bristol in August there
was a diplomatic detente; and the lessening tension meant that
the motive not to give offence to Spain moved once more into
the foreground of Elizabeth’s calculations. The atmosphere
was distinctly less favourable for the voyage, or indeed for any
southward voyage now; and this gave an opportunity for those
who favoured a direct attack upon the North-West Passage
through the northern seas to the coast of Labrador, the chance
of raising their head. They would be greeted with favour,
for it promised a peaceful approach to the great problem.
Frobisher, backed by the Earl of Warwick, seized his chance
and gained the ear of the Council; in February 1575 he was
granted his licence and set on foot his first voyage to the North-
West. In the next year, Gilbert’s ‘Discourse,’ the classic state-
ment of the North-Western school, was published.
^ ibid. 272. ^ ibid. 282. ® ibid. 304.
lOI
SIR RICHARD GRENVILLE OF THE REVEJ^GE
Grenville does not appear to have given up all hope of
carrying out his plans; for it must be to this time that we have
to date the 'Discourse’ which he presented to Burghley.i
Burghley endorsed it in his own hand 'Mr. Grenville’s voyage’;
it is undated, but its heading gives one to suppose that it was
written before Frobisher’s departure. The tract is distinctly
polemical: 'A discourse concerning a Strait to be discovered
toward the north-west passing to Cathay, and the oriental
Indians, with a confutation of their error that think the dis-
covery thereof to be most conveniently attempted to the north
of Baccalaos’ (i.e. Labrador). Another impression that the
tract gives, is that it was written in reply to Sir Humphrey
Gilbert’s. That might indeed well be, since there were copies
of the latter circulating in manuscript before it was printed; and
it would not be difficult for Grenville, Gilbert’s cousin, to come
by one. But Grenville’s ‘Discourse’ is a remarkable document
in itself; its importance has been totally overlooked, most prob-
ably for the reason that it was never printed in Hakluyt. The
younger Hakluyt, as a skilful and staunch upholder of main-
land plantation in North America, was not much interested in
southward projects, though one wonders on the other hand
whether the elder Hakluyt, the lawyer, whose geographical in-
terests were much more widely scattered and diverse than his
young cousin’s, may not have had some hand in drafting the
‘Discourse’ for Grenville’s project; the economic ideas put for-
ward, though perhaps common enough at the time, are so very
like his expression of them in other connections.
The ‘Discourse’ had as its purpose to show the superiority of
a southward voyage for an attack on the problem of the North-
West Passage and from the Pacific side. Very little is said about
the lands that might be discovered in the Pacific, though they
are not forgotten; any argumentation about Spain’s possessions
there would now have been tactless. It is the question of the
Passage itself which has moved into the centre of interest and
the tract is concerned almost entirely with that. It starts with
the position that the seas to the north of Labrador are open, so
that the Strait cannot be there, and since America is known to
^ Lansdowne MSS., no. loo, f. 4.
102
THE GREAT SOUTH-SEA PROJECT
be an island, unless it is joined to Cathay, then the Strait must
be there in the north-west of America. So much is agreed with
Gilbert’s 'Discourse.’ The question that he poses then, is
'which were the more convenient way to discover the said
strait, either passing under the congealed Arctic circle, for so
high the main of America reacheth; or by passing the Strait
of Magellan, so ascend from the equinoctial along the western
course of that Atlantical Island, as Plato seemeth in his Timueus
to term it.’
He admits that the way round into the Pacific by the Straits
of Magellan and up the west coast is longer; but considers that
the advantage of sailing in mostly temperate zones, along a
route to a great extent known, outweighs that disadvantage.
‘But considering that in discovery of new unknown seas I
must neither bear stiff sail by night, nor yet in the day when fog
or mist shall happen (which in these parts are almost continu-
ally) ; whereas contrary wise, in the other, passing altogether by
seas known and already discovered even till we come to the
Strait sought, I need not refuse night or day to pack on sail
for my most speed, being no less clear in those whole and tem-
perate zones than dark and misty in the other. And, therefore,
albeit in quantity the grades differ, yet, all circumstances duly
weighed, I may well affirm, that in one natural day, and so
consequently in one week or month, I will pass more grades of
my southern voyage than can be passed of the other.’
He then proceeds to outline the scheme of the voyage.
Leaving England in the summer, he reckoned to reach the
Straits of Magellan before the autumn equinox and to ‘bestow
three weeks at the least in platting and discovering the islands
and other commodities for fortification of the said Straits (if
need were).’ By Christmas, coasting northwards along the
Pacific coast of America, he expected -
T may with facility arrive to the Straits of Anian. So have I
now one whole quarter of a year to discover (i.e. explore) the
said straits, and to make plats of every bay, road, port, or chan-
nel therein; and to sound all such places as in that passage may
cause peril. In which time the summer will be arrived again to
103
SIR RICHARD GRENVILLE OF THE REVENGE
the equinoctial, approaching to the congealed Arctic circle. And
so have I the whole summer to return from the Northern Seas,
and the first three months to employ in traffic with Cathay or
any other islands to the said strait adjoining, which may suf-
ficiently occupy the fleet till the seas be resolved/
The conception of the Strait underlying this, was that it
ran south-west to north-east, so that its supposed Pacific end,
which would be in the latitude of California, was in a tem-
perate clime, while its eastern end would be in Arctic waters and
would need to be navigated, if discovered, in late summer.
The disadvantages of the Southern voyage, namely its greater
length and the double crossing of the Equator, he considers not
to be compared with the difficulties arising from cold in the
north - an argument in its way sound enough.
Tn the north, both day and night being freezing cold, not
only men’s bodies but also the lines and tacklings are so frozen,
that with very great difficulty mariners can handle their sails. I
omit the rages of the seas and tempestuous weather wherewith
we shall be far more oft endangered in the north than in the
south.’
Further, he advances the objection that from any northern
island that may be discovered, no gold or precious metals could
be expected, but merely the same commodities as the Muscovy
Company brings from Russia, ‘seeing they are both subject to
the Arctic circle.’ This was the view generally held, until the
excitement over the supposed gold ore brought back by Frobi-
sher, which caused Philip Sidney to write to his friend Languet
that a new Peru had been discovered. This objection in itself
is proof that the ‘Discourse’ must have been written before
Frobisher’s return in 1 576.
On the other hand, ‘from any land that shall in the other
voyage be found, we are assured to expect gold, silver, pearls,
spice, with grain, and such most precious merchandize, besides
countries of most excellent temperature to be inhabited’ - a
glancing reference to that other object of the voyage, the un-
known lands of the South Sea.
104
THE GREAT SOUTH-SEA PROJECT
He concludes that once the Straits in the north are found, and
all the channels and currents charted,
^that both day and night in the clear and fog, a man need not
fear to pack on sail with all celerity to exploit his voyage without
any doubt or scruple, but that this way he may safely, com-
modiously and most speedily pass into that rich and bountiful
sea abounding with innumerable islands of incomparable riches
and unknown treasure. But whosoever shall before such exact
discovery made that way attempt the same, I aver he shall pro-
ceed to the shame and dishonour of himself, to the destruction
and ruin of his company and to the utter discouragement of this
nation, further to adventure in this gainful, honest, honourable
enterprise. And report me to the judgment of the wise, these
reasons before alleged well weighed.’
The tone of personal vexation in these concluding words point
to something more than theoretical polemics; they can only be
intended against the Frobisher enterprise now going speedily
forward.
Such was the defence of the project. It was a conception of
the greatest importance for English power. The idea was to gain
control both of the Straits of Magellan and of the Straits of
Anian in the north, and so to gain a counterweight to Spanish
power in Central America. As it was conceived, it should lead
to English control of the Pacific at both the northern and south-
ern entrances into it. There was this implicit in it, it is clear, no
less than the personal desire of the Elizabethan, so well ex-
pressed by Ralegh, Grenville’s junior, who must have been
influenced by the elder man:
‘To seek new worlds, for gold, for praise, for glory.’
For the next three years, public attention w^as directed to the
attempts Frobisher was making to force the Passage in the north.
In each of the years 1576, ^577 and 1578 he made a voyage to
the Labrador-Greenland region; and after bringing home the
sample of ore which they thought to be auriferous, on his first
voyage, he had very influential and extensive backing. He him-
self thought too, in 1576, that he had found the Passage through
105
SIR RICHARD GRENVILLE OF THE REVENGE
the broken lands north of Labrador, and that he had only to
follow it through to get to Cathay. It promised a peaceful sur-
mounting of the greatest barrier to English expansion.
But there were other minds which had not given up the possi-
bilities of the southward route ~ notably Drake and his comrade
at Nombre de Dios, John Oxenham. There was another way of
getting into the South Sea besides the strait but narrow path
through the Straits of Magellan ~ that was, a smash-and-grab
run upon the Isthmus of Panama. It offered no chance for a
permanent English route, but only the opportunity for a raid
upon the treasure-ships coming up the coast from Peru. This
was the plan which Oxenham, conceiving it after the pattern of
Drake's exploit of 1572, now proposed to carry out as a private
venture of his own, after Grenville's failure to get permission to
go through with his. Oxenham, there is no doubt, was to have
served under Grenville; and it is possible that when Grenville
sold some of the ships he had preparing, Oxenham bought one
of them and sailed in her to the Isthmus.
The story of Oxenham’s venture is well known and there is no
need to repeat it; it has all the excitement and the astonishing
adventurousness of Drake's exploits in 1 572. Oxenham fitted
out a ship of 140 tons, with a company of seventy men, and
slipped away some time in 1 576 to the Spanish Main. Arrived
there, he crossed the Isthmus, built himself a pinnace on the
Pacific coast that he had so longed to see, and with this tiny
craft captured two Spanish treasure-ships. With the treasure he
tried to get back to his ship on the other coast, but it had been
discovered and destroyed by the Spaniards. Meanwhile a strong
force was scouring the Isthmus for him, and in the end tracked
down his camp in the wilds and captured him. Most of his men
were hanged as pirates at Panama; but Captain John, his ship’s
master and his pilot, were reserved to grace an auto-da-J'e at
Lima.
While in the prison of the Inquisition there, they were ex-
amined as to what they knew about English designs upon the
Straits of Magellan and the South Sea. The recent find of their
very depositions, taken on 20 February 1579, just at the time
when their former comrade Drake, having at last broken through
106
THE GREAT SOUTH-SEA PROJECT
into the Pacific was hovering off the coast of Callao (so little a
distance away and yet so incapable of helping them) - is one of
the romances of historical research^ Its importance to us is that
it gives the last information we have on the Grenville voyage,
and since Oxenham was in Grenville’s confidence about it, it
sheds a little further light into its darkness.
We have to remember the motive that would be strong, for
his own sake, not to say too much on the subject. For example,
Oxenham confessed that Grenville had many times spoken to
him about it, and tried to persuade him to accompany him, but
that he was unwilling to go. But John Butler, the pilot, deposed
outright that Oxenham had agreed to go with Grenville on the
expedition. On most other points, the three Englishmen, all of
whom knew about the intended voyage, were at one in their
evidence. Let us take Oxenham’s:
^Questioned whether, while in England or since he had left
there, he had heard or understood that Queen Elizabeth or any
other person had entertained the project to arm a certain num-
ber of vessels for the purpose of establishing settlements, or for
other purposes, on the coast of the North Sea [i.e. the Atlantic],
or in the region of the Strait of Magellan or on the coast of the
South Sea, he answered that four years ago an English gentle-
man named Richard Grenville, who lives at a distance of a
league and a half from Plymouth, [i.e. at Buckland], and is very
rich, applied to the Queen for a licence to come to the Strait of
Magellan and to pass to the South Sea, in order to search for
land or some islands where to found settlements, because in
England there are many inhabitants and but little land. The
Queen gave him the licence and witness saw it. It was very
large. The said Grenville bought two ships, and was about to
buy two or three more, when the Queen revoked the licence,
because she had learnt that beyond the Strait of Magellan there
were settlements made by Spaniards, who might do them harm.
The said Grenville sold the ships after the licence had been
taken from him . . . Grenville’s project was to come and found
^ Mrs. Zelia Nuttall, J^ew Light on Drake (Hakluyt Society, 1914), Intro-
duction and pp. I -1 2.
107
SIR RICHARD GRENVILLE OF THE REVENGE
a settlement on the River Plate and then pass the Strait and
establish settlements wherever a good country for such could be
found.’
The desire to be politic is unmistakable: Oxenham puts Gren-
ville’s intentions in the most favourable light, even then dis-
sociating himself from any part in them; while the purity of the
Queen’s attitude is a charmingly loyal trait in his account. What
he goes on to say is equally revealing and important; it shows
that before he left England, Drake was meditating plans on the
same line as Grenville’s. Oxenham was known to both, though
on more equal terms with Drake: he could not fail to be a chan-
nel of information between the one and the other.
‘The witness thinks that if the Queen were to give a licence
to Captain Francis Drake he would certainly come and pass
through the Strait, because he is a very good mariner and pilot,
and there is no better one in England than he who could accom-
plish this . . . Witness thinks that the Queen will not, as long
as she lives, grant the licence, but that after her death, there
will certainly be some-one who will come to that strait. The
said Captain Francis Drake had often spoken to witness say-
ing that if the Queen would grant him licence he would pass
through the Strait of Magellan and found settlements over
here in some good country . . . Questioned whether they
had discussed how and by what route they were to return to
England after having passed through the Strait, he said that it
seemed to him that some said that it was to be by the same
Strait, but others said that there was a route through another
Strait that passed into the North Sea [i.e. the Strait of
Anian], but nobody knows this for a certainty or has passed
through it.’
To this information, the deposition of John Butler, the pilot,
adds a few more touches. He says that Grenville had bought
four ships; but that ‘the Queen had demanded that they were to
give a security of thirty to forty thousand pounds that they
would not touch the lands belonging to King Philip, and on this
account the expedition was frustrated.’ Butler was not ac-
quainted with the full design of Grenville’s voyage, as Oxenham
io8
THE GREAT SOUTH-SEA PROJECT
was; but he adds something to our knowledge of Drake’s posi-
tion in regard to it.
‘Questioned whether he had understood or known whether
the said Captain Francis Drake had agreed with Captain John
Oxenham to come and explore the Strait of Magellan or any
other seas, and to pass into the South Sea, he answered that he
did not know about this and that the said Captain Francis
Drake was a poor man who did not have the means for doing
this, for he owns nothing more than what he had taken in the
Indies, and all this he had spent on certain islands over there
towards Ireland. Only a man having great power could pos-
sibly come here.’
This about describes the position so far as Drake was concerned,
regarding such an enterprise; it would have to be backed finan-
cially by others, for he could not possibly have raised the money
himself. Whereas Grenville was rich enough to finance it mostly
himself.
The third Englishman, the ship’s-master whose name is given
as Thomas Xerores or Xervel ^ adds nothing to our knowledge
of Grenville’s voyage; but he knew of it and knew also that it
was intended to pass through the Straits. Only one thing else
he adds, but in it we seem to see the brave spirit of this unknown
man revealed as in a lightning-flash before going down into the
darkness. When asked if he knew Captain Francis, he replied
fearlessly, ‘Yes, he knew him and had been with him on the
voyage when they robbed the mule-train on the road to Nombre
de Dios.’ So much for the depositions: the men who made them
were led out to be hanged, a few days after the auto-da-fe at
Lima, a year later.
So Grenville’s hopes of his great scheme were frustrated,
mainly because he was too early; he suffered the fate that all too
frequently attends upon the first originators of projects, of being
beforehand with time. As we have seen, it was more than a pro-
ject that he advanced; he had actually gone far with the pre-
parations for the voyage, and had obtained the Queen’s licence,
^ Mrs. Nuttall was not able to identify this name; but I would suggest
Sherwell, a name well known in Plymouth at this time.
log
SIR RICHARD GRENVILLE OF THE REVEMGE
only to find it withdrawn at the last moment. Many others,
among them Drake, were to suffer a like chagrin in later years;
but with none of them was it a matter of such overwhelming im-
portance, or so decisive as in Grenville’s case. For the oppor-
tunity that should have been his, at the least, of achieving fame
as the first Englishman to pass through the Straits of Magellan
fell to another,
Drake, during these years when Grenville’s voyage was being
prepared, was mostly in Ireland, aiding the Earl of Essex with
his ships: it was a convenient way of employing himself in ob-
scurity after the excessive light that the exploits of 1 572-3 had
concentrated on him. Moreover, the Queen’s desire to be at
peace with Spain, for the time at least, upon which Grenville’s
scheme had broken, also kept Drake from any important
venture, Grenville, so far as we know, sold most of his ships, ex-
cept for the most powerful of them, the Castle of Comfort^ which
in this year 1575 ran up a series of charges against her for doubt-
ful doings in and about the Channel: exploits which will be
dealt with later. By the end of 1575, Elizabeth began to veer
again in her relations with Spain - the Netherlands were be-
coming more disturbed; and Drake, through the intermediary
of Essex, was in touch with Walsingham and through him with
the forward school of policy.^ Drake’s ideas for his southward
voyage began to take shape.
The recent discovery of the missing draft project for the great
voyage,^ has thrown a good deal of light upon its intended de-
signs, which had hitherto remained obscure; it enables us to see
that Drake’s voyage was in origin a continuation of Grenville’s
plans. The draft shows that the lands in the south to be ex-
plored and occupied were not the South American coast, which
was already under Spanish obedience as far as 40° S,, nor the
unoccupied parts of South America, Patagonia and South Chile,
which offered no attractions. The inference is that the lands to
^ Corbett, Drake and the Tudor Jhfavy^ i , 213.
2 V. E. G. R. Taylor, ‘The Missing Draft Project of Drake’s Voyage of
1577-80,* Geographical Journal 1930; ‘John Dee, Drake and the Straits
of Anian,’ Mariner'^ s Mirror^ 1929; and ‘More Light on Drake, 1577--80,’
Mar inerts Mirror, 1930.
1 10
THE GREAT SOUTH-SEA PROJECT
be sought for were those of Terra Australis, which were de-
picted on Mercator’s map of 1569 and Ortelius’ of 1570, now in
the hands of every English cosmographer, and which were re-
garded by Dr. Dee as the main objective of British enterprise.
The official plan then became that of visiting Terra Australis
and so making for the Moluccas along its supposed coast; and
failing this, to make for the Straits of Anian by which he might
return. That is, the two main elements in the Grenville Plan
reappear in Drake’s first draft.
But the objectives were flexible as they had been with Gren-
ville; it was necessary to have alternatives since some of the
objectives were yet to be discovered and not known certainly to
exist. Moreover the emphasis laid on them varied with political
circumstances. While in March 1 576, everything looked promis-
ing for Drake, by the autumn and throughout the winter of
1576-7, it seemed as if he would not be allowed to go after all.
Grenville had now retired to the West Country, doubtless in bit-
ter disappointment - the doings of the Castle of Comfort may have
been an expression of it; he occupied himself in building at
Buckland Abbey, and in local affairs as a Justice of the Peace;
at the end of the year he became Sheriff of Cornwall.
Then in the spring of the New Year, the political atmosphere
changed again. Elizabeth disliked Don John of Austria’s pro-
gress in the Netherlands and was suspicious of his designs in
English affairs in association with Mary Queen of Scots; in con-
sequence, she became ready and willing to see some damage
inflicted upon Philip in a totally unexpected and vulnerable
quarter. So that the central design of Drake’s voyage when he
came to set sail - a design which was kept a close secret in con-
nivance with Elizabeth herself, not even Burghley was to be
told - was the attack upon the treasure-trade upon the coast of
Peru. When Drake got through the Straits of Magellan, he did
make an attempt in a westerly direction as if to find the coast of
Terra Australis; but the belt of the Brave West Winds, which he
here encountered and which blew him back well to the south
towards Cape Horn, gave him the excuse to turn northwards
and make for Peru. After his exploits upon that coast he ran up
to California, evidently in an attempt to search for the entry to
SIR RICHARD GRENVILLE OF THE REVENGE
the Straits of Anian, though he could not have entertained much
hope of returning through it. He beat up in stormy weather to
48° N.j beyond the New Albion to which he returned to re-fit,
being driven back by the north-westerly winds and discouraged
by the icy cold. So he made for the Moluccas and completed his
circumnavigation of the world. But these two attempts, even if
they were no more than feints, may be regarded as passing
tributes to Grenville’s scheme, the salutes of the greater, more
fortunate captain.
On 1 5 November 1577, Drake put to sea: and one day at the
end of September 1580 he returned, the most famous English-
man of his day. The laurels that might have been Grenville’s
were his.
CHAPTER VI
WEST COUNTRY OCCUPATIONS: BIDEFORD,
THE CASTLE OF COMFORT, BUCKLAND
The sea of Fortune doth not ever flow,
She draws her favours to the lowest ebb,
Her tides hath equal times to come and go,
Her loom doth weave the fine and coarsest web:
No joy so great but runneth to an end,
No hap so hard but may in fine amend.
ROBERT SOUTHWELL
So these years, 1 573 to 1575, had been mainly taken up by the
projected voyage; making ground for it with the Queen, carry-
ing through the preparations for it, stating the case, in the end
in vain. Then there were the various occupations of a local
character which fell to his lot as a Justice of the Peace and a
large landowner in the west; in addition to his private concerns
of which we know so little, and his family life, of which we know
nothing. But in these same years, though living at Buckland
when he was not in London, where he lived at St. Leger house
in Southwark, he was also busily engaged upon the affairs of his
town of Bideford, getting a charter of incorporation for it and
setting the town on the path to a more vigorous corporate and
trading life.
Bideford, along with Kilkhampton, was the earliest possession
of the Grenvilles in the west, going right back to the second
generation after the Conquest. But the town was of no con-
sequence, it had no trade; its only importance was, as its name
shows, that it was the lowest ford over the Torridge near the sea
and so the main thoroughfare along the coast passed through it.
As a ford, it must always have been dangerous: the waters arc
swift here, as they come round the loop from Wear Giffard to
113 11
SIR RICHARD GRENVILLE OF THE REVENGE
the sea. The importance that the ford had, was continued in
and centred upon the bridge, which was built, mainly by the
efforts of the Grenvilles fortified by episcopal indulgences, in the
fourteenth century. It was often repaired and rebuilt, with
great lamentations by the inhabitants; but in its sixteenth-
century shape, a long stone bridge of twenty-four arches, it was
the pride of the town, and in a sense, the centre of its life.
Nevertheless, its trade did not prosper; right on into the reign
of Elizabeth it made no progress: all the more mortifying
because of the close proximity of Barnstaple, with its long tradi-
tion of civic life - it is one of the most ancient boroughs in the
country: one of the Wessex burghs before Domesday, and the
hub of a thriving trade. Whether Bideford’s backwardness was
due to its dependence upon its lord, and a consequent lack of
corporate institutions, we can now hardly tell. But Grenville
determined to put it to the test and to infuse new life into the
town, something of his own energetic spirit.
In 1574 he took up the question with the leading men in the
town, prepared to give up something of his own rights over it,
for the sake of seeing a more thriving, active existence develop.
Having no doubt settled the terms himself, he pressed the
Government to grant a charter, incorporating the town, upon
the agreed basis. The charter was granted on 10 December
in the same year.^
By it Bideford was constituted a free corporate town - a
‘politic body and one commonalty of itself in deed, fact and
name for ever having perpetual succession,’ governed by a
Mayor, five Aldermen and seven capital burgesses. The five
Aldermen were for the first time to be chosen by the inhabit-
ants; the former were then to elect the seven chief burgesses.
Together they formed the Common Council and were to elect a
Mayor annually from among the Aldermen. Whenever an
Alderman died or was removed from office. Common Council
was to elect one of the chief burgesses into his place; and when-
ever there was a vacancy in the place of a chief burgess, Council
was similarly to elect another from among the most worthy and
discreet inhabitants. Jt must have been settled beforehand who
^ Chancery Warrants, File 1268; J. Watkins, History of Bideford, 19-28.
114
WEST COUNTRY OCCUPATIONS
most of the five Aldermen and seven burgesses were to be; the
leaders of a community’s life, then as now, in spite of the
difference of forms, indicate themselves. Grenville himself was
chosen as first Alderman,
The town was granted the usual privileges, a weekly market
and three fairs a year, in February, July and November, with
the customary right to hold court of pie-powder and the
tolls and other dues arising from them. The Mayor, Aldermen
and burgesses obtained the right of holding a court of record in
their Guild Hall every three weeks, and to have cognisance of a
number of civil pleas, such as debt, trespass, contract and con-
tempt, One Alderman each year was to be a Justice of the
Peace for the borough; and the borough was to enjoy the usual
profits arising from felon’s goods, outlaws, waifs and strays, and
the assizes of bread, wine and ale. These privileges followed
very much the usual run of such grants, but they were restricted
in character. In spite of its new-found corporate status, there
was no doubt whose was the guiding hand in Bideford. Upon
receipt of the charter, a meeting was held at which Grenville
was present, which chose the five aldermen, who elected the
seven burgesses, who together elected John Salteme, merchant
adventurer, to be their first Mayor,
Next year, in order more clearly to define the respective rights
of the new corporation and Grenville’s, they entered into an
agreement with each other, on 4 September 1575. By this the
corporation covenanted that Grenville was to enjoy all the
revenues, issues and profits within the manor and town of Bide-
ford which he and his family had enjoyed before the town’s
incorporation, with the exception of the fee-farm rent of lor. 6rf.
per annum, together with the office of portreeve - signs of the
town’s previous subjection to the lord of the manor -which
Grenville now released to the mayor, aldermen and burgesses
and their successors for ever. In return, of any increase in the
town’s revenues from fairs and markets and other sources, over
and above the necessary charges for maintenance and wages,
Grenville and his heirs and assigns were to have half.
The borough agreed not to erect any house or building upon
the premises of the fairs or markets, nor to pay any wages
SIR RICHARD GRENVILLE OF THE REVENGE
without the advice and consent of the Grenvilles. Finally, Gren-
ville grants the borough, for stallage and standings for the
markets and fairs, and for the use of their guildhall, prison or
any other corporation purpose, the use of the chapel standing
near the west end of the bridge, and of ground "whereon certain
limekilns sometime stood, and where a quay, or wharf, is now
lately builded; and also of all the streets, lanes, ways, and waste
soil within the said manor, borough and town of Bideford.’
In the following year, on 19 June 1576, a writ of quo warranto
was brought into the court of Queen’s bench, a formal process
by which the borough’s new privileges were legally confirmed.
It was a very important stage in the history of Bideford; in
fact it may be regarded as the beginning of its civic life.
Not that the liberties granted by this first Charter were at all
excessive; on the contrary, they were considerably restricted:
so much so that, in the next generation, application was made
for a new charter, which was granted by the Crown in 1610.
Nevertheless, this first impulse given to the town’s active corpor-
ate life, was Grenville’s work. Still more important was the way
in which he followed it up, particularly in the eighties, by push-
ing forward its shipping and trading connections abroad. From
that anchorage in front of his town house upon the quay, there
departed his expeditions to Virginia and upon the high seas;
here he brought home his prizes, his Indian native, from here
he set forth against the Armada.
In the next century were to be seen the fruits of his enterprise,
for Bideford prospered greatly from being first-comer in the
trade with Newfoundland and Virginia. A number of local
fortunes were made in the tobacco trade with Virginia and
Maryland; till the middle of the eighteenth century, more
tobacco was imported into Bidefbrd than into any other English
port except London. Then, with the revolt of the colonies, all was
at an end, and Bideford became a shadow of its former self. But
a charming eighteenth-century shadow it is, with the mark of an
even earlier age and hand upon it. For though the old chapel
which stood at the west-end of the bridge is gone, the guildhall,
though it has been re-built, still stands in the same place that
Grenville granted, looking across the bridge to East-the-Water.
1 16
WEST COUNTRY OCCUPATIONS
In his time, particularly after he sold Buckland and shifted
his main centre of interest to his North Devon affairs, there was
much coming and going from that house on the town quay,
which has now vanished - ‘my house of Bideford’ he calls it in
his letters. As early as 1 573, we find him interested in shipping;
for in that year, he agreed with Philip Corsini and Acerbo
Velutelli, two of the chief Florentine merchants in London, to
transport certain goods to Newhaven in France (Havre). He
had entered into a bond in £2,500 on 7 May, that before i June
he would ‘lade or cause to be laden in one ship, crayer or vessel
for the port of Newhaven (Havre) in the realm of France, all
such goods, wares or merchandizes as lately were discharged
in Cornwall out of the ship called the Marie whereof was master
John Mouton D’Anyon,’ except such goods as were remaining
in London and ‘one bag of ginger being lacking’; and ‘with so
much speed as conveniently may be, after shipping and lading
thereof as wind and weather will serve . . . transport and con-
vey the same to Newhaven/ where the goods were to be
delivered into the hands of the Florentine merchants. After this
arrangement was made and the bond entered into, it was
decided between the parties that the goods should be trans-
ported to Calais and not to Havre. Grenville apparently sent
the ship to Calais, and the Florentines threatened to sue him
for breaking the original agreement. He therefore initiated a
Chancery action against them to protect himself. We do not
know what happened; presumably all was welL^
This is only one piece of evidence as to his shipping concerns
at this time. The ship or crayer in which he was to transport
the merchandise may well have been one of the smaller craft
which he had gathered for the South Seas Voyage. But there is
rather more evidence about the activities of the largest and most
powerful of them, the Castle of Comfort - a pretty name for a
ship with such a privateering record as she had! She was a
ship of some 24.0 tons, and in the sixties when she was built, of
a new type, being a private warship with a pow'erful armament.
Her type was called into existence by the exigencies of the
Guinea Coast trade, after which the Portuguese took to arming
^ Chanc. Proc. Eliz. G 14/9.
SIR RICHARD GRENVILLE OF THE REVENGE
themselves heavily against intruders. The secret of her success
was her overmastering gunfire, and she had a long record of
exploits to her name; for, frequent as is her appearance in the
maritime papers of the time, she is ‘never once found engaged in
peaceful trade.’ ^
She was based mainly upon Plymouth; she was there in the
spring of 1570, when she was to be sold by her owners, a London
syndicate. A few years later, Grenville bought her for the
expedition to the South Seas; the very fact that it was the
Castle of Comfort which was to lead it cannot have given the
government much confidence in his pacific intentions. Once
within that closed sea, with the Castle of Comfort he could have
inflicted even greater damage upon Spanish shipping than
Drake’s Golden Hind, which was only of a burden of 180 tons
and less heavily armed. It is curious to think it might have been
the Castle of Comfort, instead of the Golden Hind, which might
have garnered all that fame.
On the collapse of the South Sea scheme, and having been
jointly owned for a time by Grenville and William Hawkins in
partnership, she was at sea again in the spring of 1575. For in
May, serving under licence from Huguenot Rochelle, she cap-
tured a ship of Catholic St. Malo, belonging to one Guillaume
Le Fer and worth some ^£5,000. Sir Arthur Champernowne,
Vice-Admiral of Devon, wrote to Burghley in September that
she was then riding in Cawsand Bay (the red cliffs of Cawsand),
having taken a ship of Queenborough which she refused to
deliver. ^ He asks for a special Commission from Burghley and the
Lord Admiral against her - in itself some indication that by
now, Grenville and Hawkins, a relative and a friend, had
ceased to be responsible for her. Such was in fact their plea
when the case brought by the St. Malo merchant was brought
before the Court of Admiralty. Le Fer had gone on with his
^efforts to obtain redress; it appears that the ship, Le Sauveur of
St. Malo, was taken off the coast of Ireland, when coming from
the Levant; that her crew were set on land at Baltimore and
the ship brought into Chepstow,® They valued her goods at
1 Williamson, Hawkins, 159. * Hatfield Papers, ii, 113.
® Cal. S.P. Foreign 215.
WEST COUNTRY OCCUPATIONS
60,000 crowns. But nothing was done until next year; mean-
while the Castle of Comfort^ under her captain Anthony Garew,
went merrily on collecting fresh charges against her.
On 29 April 1576, the Privy Council summoned Grenville
and Hawkins ‘to make their appearance here with as conven-
ient speed as they might, for the answering of certain goods and
merchandizes taken by a ship called the Castle of Comfort from a
ship of St. Male’s, the particularities whereof they shall more
fully understand at their coming.’ ^ We do not know whether
they made their appearance then or sent written answers;
probably one of them attended and it appears to have been
Grenville upon whom rested the burden of the defence. On
27 May, the Council wrote to the Judge of the Admiralty
‘committing to him the consideration of the cause betwixt the
Frenchman of St. Malo and Mr. Grenville, for which purpose
there is sent unto him certain examinations taken in the behalf
of the Frenchmen and Mr. Grenville’s answer to the same; he
is required to consider thereof by conference with the parties if
he shall so think good, and to return his opinion thereof by
Friday next in the Star Chamber/ *
When Friday came, the report of the Judge on the issues in dis-
pute was by no means clear; and, on i June,
‘for so much as it appeared that sundry points stood upon proof
so as the very truth could not be discerned, it was ordered by
their Lordships that the said Judge should with all expedition
proceed to the further examination thereof according to the due
course of the law, that thereupon the matter might be deter-
mined according to justice.’ ®
In consequence, we have the deposition of 19 July 1576,
entered into one of the large parchment-bound books of the
Court of Admiralty * - one of the few personal appearances that
Grenville makes before us, in which we can hear him, as if in
the flesh, answering in his own words. Almost one imagines the
large paper volume with its clasp being handled by Mr. Doctor
^ A,P.C. IX, III. 2 j^o. ’ibid. 132.
* H.G.A. Examinations, vol. 22, 19 July 1576.
”9
SIR RICHARD GRENVILLE OF THE REVENGE
Lewis or Mr. Doctor Caesar, Judges of the Admiralty, the broad
pages smacking, not unlike ship’s canvas, the scratching pen of
the scribe on that summer’s day. We derive a very definite and
convincing impression of Grenville on this occasion of his
appearance; his behaviour and his replies are uncompromising.
He denies the content of the first four articles - ‘non credit
eosdem articulos esse veros in aliquo.’ On the fifth, he is more
informative and replies that
‘the captain and owner of the Castle of Comfort^ being a French-
man, and the mariners and soldiers of that ship having licence
from the Prince of Conde, and being first assaulted and shot at,
by the articulate ship called The Saviour^ and after a number of
the Castle of Comfort were hurt and one slain, did prevail against
the said ship, and boarded and apprehended the same, and
brought her to the ports mentioned in this article. Et aliter non
credit articulum esse verum in aliquo, saving that he believeth,
that the said captain and company did by the way of sale and
otherwise dispose of the said goods, as they thought good.’
To the sixth article he replies that he
‘was not owner of the said ship called the Castle of Comfort^ at the
time of the apprehension and taking of The Saviour ^ for that he
had made full sale thereof to the said French captain called
Jolliffe, when she was furnished and before she did go to the
seas.’
The next three articles he denies according to the formula.
To the tenth, he makes a characteristic reply; he says that ‘he
believeth that he is not bound to answer to these particular
values for that he cannot being no merchant esteem the values
of the commodities mentioned in the schedule.’ To the eleventh,
he will not reply at all; but he has next to admit that ‘the vic-
tuals and furnitures mentioned . . . came, before the said sale
made to Joliffe, from the houses of this respondent and Mr.
Hawkins, by their consents and with their knowledge.’ The
next articles also he refuses, and then again admits ‘that this re-
spondent, having then an intent to make a lawful voyage to the
Newfoundland, did before the said sale appoint such officers,
120
WEST COUNTRY OCCUPATIONS
masters and persons in the said ships as are mentioned . , . who
after, were wholly at the direction of the said Joliife.’ The six-
teenth and seventeenth he denies, ‘saving that this respondent
had two of his servants in the said ship, appointed by this
respondent to receive money for the said ship and furniture
according to the covenant made between this respondent and
JoliflFe/
Such was his story. It is impossible not to conclude that the
sale of the ship to Jolis was a put-up job. Here was the ship
victualled and furnished by Hawkins and Grenville, manned
entirely by Englishmen engaged by him, though under a French
captain, and with two servants of Grenville aboard as re-
ceivers. It is permissible to suppose that if Jolis really had pur-
chased the ship, the purchase-money was to be raised as they
went along from the prizes they took - only another way of
Grenville’s receiving the profits from her privateering. Of
course, the sale was a fiction, and more than likely was thought
of after the lucrative capture of The Saviour, Grenville and Haw-
kins were determined not to lose their hold upon the prize; and
the fiction provided them with an ingenious defence. But such a
coup could not be repeated; and it is probable that having made
their gain, they did then sell the ship, for we do not hear of her
again in their ownership. The St. Malo merchants received no
redress; for two years later we find the French King writing to
Elizabeth, drawing her attention to their grievance, ‘neither our
letters in their behalf nor their own suit having so far profited
them.’ ^ So the Castle oj Comfort^ in spite of remonstrances,
arrests, executions of writs, went sailing on out of our ken,
beyond all remembrance.
The week before his appearance in the Court of Admiralty,
Grenville had obtained licence to alienate his London house. ^
Evidently he had determined to return to the West Country,
upon the failure of his great project, and to make that the main
centre of his activities henceforward. The house where he had
been living of late years when in London, was the great St.
^ Cal. S.P. Foreign 1377-8^ 479.
^12 July 1576. Pat. Rolls Eliz. 1145, mem. 36.
121
SIR RICHARD GRENVILLE OF THE REVENGE
Leger house in the parish of St. Olave’s, Southwark. It looked
out upon the water between the quay next St. Olave’s Church
on the west and the bridge-house on the east; on the south was
the lane leading up to it. The house then was in the shadow of
London Bridge. It was a great house of stone and timber, ‘an
ancient piece of work and seemeth to be one of the first built
houses on that side the river over against the city.’i It had
formerly been the town house of the abbot of St. Augustine’s,
Canterbury, had passed to Sir Anthony St. Leger, the Lord
Deputy, then to Warham St. Leger and from him to Grenville.
There are other indications which point to Grenville’s in-
terests turning permanently to the West Country. A series of
entries upon the Close Roll at this time dealing with his finan-
cial and business transactions, reveals that he was buying land
there.® It would seem that the capital he had hoped to employ
more spectacularly in the South Sea Voyage, was now free for
domestic investment. At the end of May he entered into a
number of indentures, mainly with his cousins the Bassets, by
which they released to him for certain sums of money, the manor
of Lancras in Devon. George Basset of Tehidy in Cornwall, the
head of the Cornish branch of the Bassets, sold his interest in
the manor for ^*1,300, with the proviso that if within two years
from then (28 May 1576) he should repay Grenville that sum
‘at or in the mansion house of the said Richard Grenville where-
in he now dwelleth in Stowe,’ the bargain should be void. Sir
Arthur Basset of Umberleigh sold Grenville his interest in the
manor, and, for £200, the little hamlet called Upcott Snelard
by Bideford.® From Edward Hungerford, the heir of the Hun-
gerfords, who had held considerable estates in Cornwall, he
bought the manors of Wolston and Widemouth, properties con-
veniently near Stowe. This purchase was spread over a year.^
On 10 July 1576, Hungerford acknowledged that he had
received 200 marks from Grenville according to his bond ‘be-
tween the hours of one and four of the clock in the afternoon of
^ of London, 155. * Close Rolls Eliz. 987, 18 May 1576.
* ibid. Roll 990, 12 May 1576.
^ ibid. Roll 990, 28 May; Roll 1007, 2 February 1577; Roll 1013, 10 July
1577 -
122
WEST COUNTRY OCCUPATIONS
the same day, in the Temple Church in London, at the font
stone there’; and on 2 February 1577, between two and four
in the afternoon at the same place he received the remaining
sum of ;f^300. Probably in order to raise these sums conveniently
and speedily, he entered into two recognisances with George
Fletcher, hosier, of Southwark - evidently a near neighbour to
St. Leger house - the first for 1,000 marks, the second for £ 500 ,
to be paid on the Feast of St. Bartholomew next, 24 August
1576.1
In these same years he was spending largely upon the build-
ing operations at Buckland. He was engaged, as were so many
others of his class, in transforming the Abbey into a comfortable
and up-to-date Elizabethan mansion. But where others were
taking the obvious line “ like his northern neighbour William
Abbot at Hartland, or the Eliots at St. Germans - making
their house out of the existing domestic buildings and leaving
the monastic church to go to ruin or become a parish church,
Grenville was making his house out of the church and leaving
the cloister and domestic buildings. It was certainly very queer,
but in the result, extraordinarily successful.
Amicia, Countess of Devon, had lighted upon an attractive
spot for her foundation in 1278 of a Cistercian house at Buck-
land. The Abbey stands protected from the blasts that blow
upon the high downs above: a green sheltered nook fed by the
streams running down to the Tavy, doubly secured among its
walls, the same that the monks built confirming the narrow
closes, some of which are gardens, another Sir Richard’s bowl-
ing green, shadowed by the yews the monks planted and which
yet stand sentinel there. From the south side of the house, the
silver streak of the Tamar is visible in the distance; on the slopes
around are the woods of the Abbey - the park is now beauti-
fully treed with beeches - and in the middle distance, hiding
the Tavy are the woods still belonging to the Edgcumbes. All
about are the little winding lanes running down to Bere Alston,
and around to Milton Combe and such places. From the slopes
higher up, above the hollow in which the house lies, all the
country is within sight of the Cornish hills on the further side of
1 ibid. Roll 1000, 18 July 1576.
123
SIR RICHARD GRENVILLE OF THE REVEJ^GE
the Tamar valley. From Buckland Monachorum, the attendant
village about a mile away, the whole distance to the south-west
is dominated by the lovely rounded form of Kit Hill, above
Callington, where in those days the tinners held their assem-
blies. So that this little cut-off patch of Devonshire, between
the great Roborough Down and the junction of Tavy and
Tamar, gives the impression of being singularly in touch with
Cornwall, as indeed it looks westward towards it. But in addi-
tion, it is very well placed in relation to Plymouth, near to it
though itself remaining withheld from it, not too accessible. It
was an ideal position for the Grenvilles, if they wanted to re-
main close at hand to a town growing so rapidly in trade and in
maritime importance. No doubt, if they had remained there,
they would have come in time to exercise a great influence
over it.
From the time of Grenville’s grandfather, Sir Richard the
Marshal, little or nothing had been done at Buckland. If his
son Roger had lived to succeed him, almost certainly the altera-
tions, the transformation of the Abbey into a habitable man-
sion, would have come earlier. For it appears that Roger lived
here a little, since the year before he was drowned, his eldest
child Charles was buried at Buckland Monachorum, on 28
August 1544.^ Then, for the remainder of old Sir Richard’s
life and during the long minority of the grandson, it is not
likely that there was much family life there. But in these years
after the South Seas project, particularly the later seventies,
Grenville chiefly resided here. On i November 1578, his
daughter Bridget was baptised at Buckland Monachorum;
and on 19 September 1579, Cecil Grenville, son of John,
Grenville’s uncle.^
The transformation of the Abbey church into a mansion was
complete by 1576 - at least that is the date given on the frieze
of the great fire-place in the hall. On the whole it is remarkable
how conservative Grenville was in the changes he made: per-
haps that was the point of the plan he adopted, it enabled the
change to be carried through at a minimum of cost. He left the
external arrangements of the monastic buildings virtually un-
^ Buckland Monachorum Parish Register.
124
WEST COUNTRY OCCUPATIONS
touched; the great tithe-barn of superb proportions - it is the
finest in the West Country, remained with the farm-buildings as
they were ; so also with the gate-house and its little tower, and
the girdle of walls with the screen of yews, around the inner
precinct of the monastery. The external structure of the church,
with its central tower, he kept almost intact, contenting him-
self with pulling down the two transepts so as to straighten the
line of the building and to enable his great hall within to be
lighted from without.
Within, the changes were more drastic; three floor-levels
were inserted throughout the building, keeping the ceilings low
in accordance with Elizabethan taste. The nave of the church
was divided up into three reception rooms, with bedrooms and
a withdrawing room above. A floor was inserted over the whole
space and carried through the choir, which then became the
hall. This, as may be expected with an Elizabethan house, is
the finest and most elaborately decorated room of all. Its pro-
portions are beautifully simple; it is a regular rectangle, broad
in relation to its length, so that with the low-pitched ceiling, it
subtly conveys the impression of being more a square than it is.
Its chief decoration is the plaster ceiling, with exquisite rib-
work and pendants, and with great brackets in the form of
caryatids. At the west end is a decorative frieze portraying a
scene which, being allegorical, such as the Elizabethans loved,
may throw some light on the mood, at the time, of him who
had it made. Under a vine, there is a knight resting, his arm
against the tree, upon which he has hung up his shield. All his
harness and armour lie in a heap away from him alongside his
war-horse at rest; beside the knight are an hour-glass and a
skull. It is a mood of retirement and reflection.
It is curious to think how little the house has changed since
then - how what it is now we owe to him, not to his great suc-
cessor who needed not to change anything; still more, this being
so, how little memory of that association remains. For Gren-
ville’s name at Buckland has entirely gone out of mind; there
are only those few entries in the early Register at Buckland
Monachorum, so carefully written in by the Elizabethan vicar.
To most people who are attracted by the historic memories of
125
SIR RICHARD GRENVILLE OF THE REVENGE
the place, it is not Grenville they think of: his name counts for
nothing in the story of the house. And yet he made it what it is;
it is the one indubitable thing he did that still remains to us.
The house is his memorial; his mark is on everything there: the
lay-out of it is his, his is the great hall and its frieze, the Gren-
ville clarion is his signature upon the stone fire-places of the
house. Here then, where everything at Stowe and at Bideford
has perished, we move among the things amid which years of his
life passed; occupied about his business, making his plans for
the future, begetting his children, carrying out his duties to his
family and to the state.
The latter, in the nature of things, became more weighty as
time went on; particularly after he became Sheriff of Cornwall,
to which oflBice he was appointed at the end of this year. It is to
this time too that we owe another of the very few occasions
upon which we can, through the documents that remain, come
into any personal touch with him; even so, it is tantalisingly im-
personal in character. We know from the delightful Richard
Carew of Antony how sociable was the life of the Cornish gentry
at this time. Because they lived in an out-of-the-way corner of
the land and were driven back upon their own society, they
were even more hospitable and given to visiting each other’s
homes than elsewhere:
‘They converse familiarly together, and often visit one an-
other. A gentleman and his wife will ride to make merry with
his next neighbour; and after a day or twain, those two coupjies
go to a third; in which progress they increase like snowballs till
through their burdensome weight they break again.’ ^
Grenville, with his many interests, his houses in South Devon
near the Cornish border, and at Stowe and Bideford, and with
relations everywhere, had extended opportunities.
So it is that we have notes of some of the visits that he made,
chiefly to his friends and relations at Roscarrock, or to his
cousin George Grenville at Penheale, in whom he had great
trust and liking, from a curious and interesting diary kept in
this year by a fellow Cornish gentleman who knew him well.^
1 Carew, i79--i8o. 2 S.P. Supplementary, vol. 16.
126
WEST COUNTRY OCCUPATIONS
Elizabethan diaries are few and far between, so that the man
who kept this one must have been interesting and in his way
remarkable. He was William Carnsew, of Bokelly in St. Kew.
His family came from Carnsew in the parish of Mabe, where
they still had property.^ He was a man of substance, having a
good deal of property in several parishes; and with Peter
Edgcumbe he was among the small group of Cornish land-
owners who were interested in mining speculation.
The Diary gives us what is so rare to find, a picture of the
man himself, his interests, what he did with his time, what he
thought about and speculated and read. It is somewhat sur-
prising to find, a country gentleman of no importance living
in a remote corner of the land, how interested he was in con-
temporary affairs, and what an impression they made on him.
It is clear how concerned he and his friends were in what was
happening abroad, in the struggle between Catholics and Pro-
testants, Spaniards and Netherlanders on the continent. On
4 November 1576, the Spanish soldiery sacked Antwerp, the
richest city of the north; some seven thousand lives were lost in
the ‘Spanish Fury.’ On 29 November, Carnsew heard of it at
home in Cornwall: ‘this month the Antwerp was sacked and
burnt by the Spaniards, the 4 day as I have been informed.’ A
few days later, after noting the great storm which blew some
of his house away and the large number of shipwrecks brought
in upon the coast, he has the tell-tale entry: ‘at home all day,
talked of the burning of Antwerp.’ At the very end of December,
the last day of the old year, he notes: ‘rain, mists, read the des-
truction of Antwerp.’ It made an impression upon his mind
much like that made by the events in Spain upon ours.
In addition to these high matters, and such reading as Calvin’s
Institute and his Epistles, there were the ordinary country pur-
suits, planting trees, shearing sheep, harvesting, walking about
his grounds, administering a potion to the vicar who was sick
(he soon after died), paying and receiving visits. It is upon
these that we get occasional glimpses, all too few, of Grenville
at ease among his friends. On 13 March, we read: ‘Went to
Roscarrock, whereat I met Mr. Richard Grenville and Mr.
^ G. Henderson, History of the Parish of Mabe.
IQ7
SIR RICHARD GRENVILLE OF THE REVENGE
Arundell Trerice; lay there.’ Next day: ‘at Roscarrock all day
playing and trifling the time away; lay at Roscarrock; a gray
horse fell down and would not stand.’ On the isth, they were
evidently up early and away: ‘breakfast at Cannys house: rode
to Tintagel with Mr. Grenville.’ In August, which was very
wet and stormy this year, Grenville was again at Roscarrock,
this time with Sir Arthur Basset and others, where Carnsew
joined them. Again in October, on the 1 7th, another rainy day,
Carnsew rode over to meet ‘Mr. Basset, Mr. Grenville, Mr,
Monk and Mr. Alexander Arundell, which all rode away gan
we rode to Fowey.’ The Roscarrocks would seem to have been
very hospitable, or else Grenville very much liked their com-
pany. Thomas Roscarrock, who was living there then, was a
man of forty-five; he had a numerous family and a large num-
ber of brothers, two of whom were Catholics, Nicholas who
was afterwards racked, a man of antiquarian pursuits, who re-
tired to the shelter of Lord William Howard’s house at Naworth,
where he compiled his large volume on the lives of the Saints;
and Trevennor, whom we hear of in prison later for the Faith.^
But these divisions had not yet attained their later acute form,
dividing and embittering the relations of families. However,
the time was not far distant: the sack of Antwerp which so
excited Carnsew was a portent.
In the second week of November, he has a note in the margin
to say ‘Mr, Richard Grenville buyeth the manor of Stratton of
Mr. Danvers,’ which seems to be our only reference to the trans-
action. But it shows Grenville going on with the process of
adding to his properties in that area around Stowe. December
brought dry weather and on the 12th, Carnsew ‘rode to Pen-
heale: met Mr. Edgcumbe there, with whom I charged Mr.
Richard Grenville for the Sheriffwick of Cornwall. George
Grenville was sworn commissioner of the peace.’ In January of
the new year, Carnsew himself was entertaining at Bokelly: ‘6:
Many hawked with me. George Grenville, Richard Carew,
Richard Champernowne, their brethren.’ On the i8th, he had
a visit from Grenville:
^ Sir John Maclean, History of Trigg Minor, i, 556-63; The Household Books
of Lord William Howard (Surtees Society 1877); Catholic Record Society, vol. i.
128
WEST COUNTRY OCCUPATIONS
‘Walked about my ground, Mr. Sheriff with me, who rode to
William Vyell’s to make a marriage for George Grenville with
Jill VyelL 19: rode to Camelford with the Sheriff: met George
Grenville there. The Queen’s or Council’s letters were con-
sidered there. 21: At Trevorder: met Mr. Arundell Trerice,
Mr. Carew, George Grenville who promised to marry Jill
VyelL’
It looks as if the Sheriff were the prime mover in the marriage
of his cousin George, who had remained unduly long un-
matched; the latter very dutifully obeyed, for before long we
find him duly married to Julyan, daughter and a co-heiress of
William VyelL
Grenville now as Sheriff for the year 1577 ~ he had been ap-
pointed in November 1576 - had a good deal of public business
to attend to. Much of the correspondence between the Govern-
ment and the county relating to local or to public affairs
passed through the hands of the Sheriff; he stood at the head of
the Justiciary, the gentlemen of the county. In later medieval
times the office had lost something of its earlier importance, but
it was still an onerous responsibility - so much so that men did
not seek it and many hoped to avoid it. Nevertheless it was a
position of honour which the leading gentry knew must come
round to them once in their lives. Moreover, its actual im-
portance varied with the stress of the times; a year of threatened
invasion, of internal crisis — and it was an important matter
who the Sheriff was, whether he were capable of giving a firm
lead: the emergency brought out the character of the man.
It is well to bear this in mind, for Grenville’s year of office
was made memorable by a course of action which left its mark
in the history of the country.
129
CHAPTER VII
GRENVILLE AS SHERIFF: THE ATTACK
ON THE CATHOLICS
The outstanding problem within the country was that of the
Catholics. In Europe the issue between Catholicism and Pro-
testantism was being fought out in sanguinary civil wars; only
the integration and strong cohesion of the English state pre-
vented the same thing happening here. That good fortune we
owed to the nature of the Elizabethan settlement - a political
arrangement if ever there was one — and to Elizabeth’s sensible
pursuit of purely political objectives. She was, providentially,
no religious believer. All the same, her government was in a
quandary - the Established Church aroused no one’s ardour or
belief. It was a political compromise and most minds were in-
capable of the subtlety necessary to appreciate the inner reason
of compromise. Spiritual fervour and devotion were to be
found either on the side of the Catholics or of the Puritans. It
is fair to say that the finest minds, those most refined and philo-
sophical, though at the same time most unyielding and selfless,
men like Edmund Campion or Robert Southwell, the poet,
were Catholics. Hardly anyone cared for the Anglican church
- it was filled with time-servers; the Queen herself did not care
for it and had a well-merited contempt for most of its ministers.
However, it was politically necessary: that was her attitude;
and, given time, it would develop an ethos of its own and a case
for itself. That happens; since men are so easily moulded, any
regime, given long enough, will mould them to its pattern -
they have so little capacity by which to resist. After Elizabeth
was dead, men began to discover, as they would, beauty in the
English church, satisfaction in its formularies.
In the seventies the problem of Catholicism became acute:
130
GRENVILLE AS SHERIFF
twelve years of Elizabeth’s sceptical compromising and men
began to lapse back into the old Faith, which was at any rate a
faith. The Papal Bull of Excommunication had marked the
dividing line; the issue could not be left in doubt any longer;
one side or the other must win. Catholicism was making great
progress, particularly at the universities, where minds were most
sensitive to the winds of doctrine and had least judgment of
political realities. A considerable number of young Fellows of
colleges went over to Catholicism. How could they help it? - it
had so much greater appeal to the sincere than the new State-
made Church. Besides, there was a nucleus of able exiles
abroad, of whom the centre was Dr. William Allen, later
Cardinal, who founded the Catholic seminary at Douai, which
drew them as a magnet. Oxford was especially susceptible to
its impulse - the seminary had been created by Oxford men.
When the time came to make martyrs of them - if they were
to be held in check - of the first thirteen seminarists to be
martyred, ten were Oxford men.
In Cornwall, the situation was not dangerous, for after the
lesson of 1549, when Comishmen had been killed in their
numbers on the heath outside Exeter, the county accepted
tranquilly the religious forms the Government, in its greater
wisdom, thought fit to impose. But it was awkward that the
richest and most powerful family, the Arundells of Lanheme,
had not accepted the new Establishment and continued in their
old ways, devout Catholics. For this meant a certain radius of
Catholic influence, where they held their property and where
they had relatives. Their influence in the county had become
less in late years by the very fact of their Catholicism; but also
because in recent generations they had been making very
exalted marriages, which carried them beyond the ranks of the
other Cornish gentry. The eleventh Sir John Arundell, of
Henry VIII’s reign, who refused the offer of a peerage at the
time of the Field of the Cloth of Gold, married the sister and
SIR RICHARD GRENVILLE OF THE REVEJ^GE
co-heiress of Thomas Grey, first Marquis of Dorset and half-
brother to Elizabeth of York, Henry VII’s Queen. His son, Sir
Thomas Arundell, married Lady Margaret Howard, sister of
Queen Catherine Howard. In the third generation, the grand-
son, the thirteenth knight, married a daughter of the Earl of
Derby and widow of Lord Stourton. These marriages perhaps
aroused the jealousy of the other Cornish gentry; in spite of
an occasional alliance, the Arundells did not move on a footing
with the others: there was not the same friendly equality as
among the Grenvilles, the Edgcumbes, the Arundells of
Trerice, the Godolphins. And their Catholic and Spanish sym-
pathies provided an opening for their enemies. At the time of
the taking of the Spanish treasure at Saltash, Sir Arthur
Champernowne wrote to Cecil that there were only three
people in the town who favoured the cause of the Spaniards
and of these one was ‘Glowborowe, servant to Sir John
Arundell.’ ^
But in the affairs of the county at large, the Arundells, though
unsympathetic to their direction, were discreet; they were in-
dubitably loyal and they lay low. They were extremely popular
with the people in Cornwall, in their own neighbourhood
greatly beloved, and they remained so until they left Cornwall
at the beginning of the eighteenth century for Wardour. But
there was a prominent connection of theirs who was altogether
less discreet, and perhaps not even loyal.
This was Francis Tregian of Golden, a charming Tudor house
not greatly changed, though now it has descended to being a
farm-house, lost among the winding lanes off the main road to
Truro, in the rich farming lands between Probus and the sea-
coast. Francis was the son of that John Tregian, whom Gren-
ville’s grandfather, old Sir Richard, might have had as the
husband of his daughter Margaret, with a good jointure to
boot. 2 Sir John Arundell, the twelfth, took advantage of the
lost opportunity and married his daughter Katherine to Tre-
gian. The Tregians, though a new family, were among the
richest in Cornwall. They had made a fifteenth-century fortune
in commerce, then married an heiress of the Wolvedon family
^ S.P. Dom. Eliz. 48, no. 60. 2 v. ante p. 33““4‘
132
GRENVILLE AS SHERIFF
who brought Golden with her, and now were possessed of a
large number of goodly manors in the Roseland country and
in other parts of the county. Francis Tregian was the child of
this Arundell marriage; and, completing his assimilation to the
old aristocracy, he married the daughter of Lord Stourton,
whose widow, we have seen, became the wife of the thirteenth
Sir John Arundell, Tregian's uncle. This made them a closed
circle, Catholic, devout, self-consciously aristocratic.
All that we know of Francis Tregian reveals him as an obstin-
ate though ineffectual ievot^ but a man of culture and taste ~
something of the type of the Venerable Philip, Earl of Arundel,
who followed the Court gaily in his young days and then either
through disappointment or marriage fell out of temper with
it and took to religion. We find that in 1570, shortly after his
marriage and at the height of the struggle with the Catholic
aristocracy, Tregian was 'upon causes of great importance
enforced by the space of almost ten months suppliantly to follow
the Lords of the Council.’ ^ Some years later, after Norfolk had
been brought to the block and the Catholic opposition reduced,
Tregian’s name appears with several other well-known Catho-
lics on a list headed ‘Fugitives from England,’ begging for the
Queen’s favour and pardon to return to England, ‘and desiring
to spend their lives in her Majesty’s service . . . and they will
discover themselves upon her Majesty’s good acceptance of their
dutiful affection and zeal.’ ^ From an altogether less reputable
source, a silly seventeenth-century life of Tregian by his grand-
son Francis Plunkett, a very low example of Catholic hagio-
graphy,^ we learn that several attempts were made upon his
virtue while at Court by no less a person than the Queen, who
developed a passion for him and sent to him in the night. But
he was a miracle of chastity: no less than sixty-five crosses (we do
not learn the significance of the number) appeared upon the
sheets of his bed, as the providential traces of his virtue; and to
avoid such embarrassing attentions, even though stimulating in
^ Quoted from the Oscott MSS- in Morris, Troubles of our Catholic Fare-
fathers, vol. i.
2 Hatfield Papers, XIII, 117.
® Boyaii, Plunkett’s ‘Life of Francis Tregian , Record Society, vol. 32.
133
SIR RICHARD GRENVILLE OF THE REVENGE
grace, he fled from the Court, and Elizabeth out of vexation
ordered the laws against Catholics to proceed!
So much for hagiography. But there is nothing inherently
improbable in the story that Elizabeth took favour on him and
offered to make him Vice-Gomes ~ for the grandson, being an
Irish exile living abroad, did not know that all that meant was
to be Sheriff of the county; nor in the information that at Court
he encouraged Catholics not to yield and was a proselytiser.
Whatever the reason, thwarted and fanatically believing, he
retired to his Cornish estates where he could enjoy the private
consolations of religion, thereby endangering the safety and
well-being of all those who joined in them and the very life of
the poor misguided priest who administered them.
The priest, Cuthbert Mayne, was a Devonshire man, coming
not far from Grenville’s part of the country, for he was born
in the parish of Sherwell, near Barnstaple, in 1544, so that he
was three years younger than Grenville.^ Mayne’s uncle, who
had conformed and was the holder of a fat parsonage, had sent
him to Oxford, where he entered St. John’s College. Oxford,
we have seen, was at this time under the influence of the
Catholic revival; some of her most distinguished sons were
already abroad working, and many of her best men remaining
felt the impulse. Certain colleges were particularly affected by
it, notably Exeter, where the Rector himself was a Catholic and
went into exile with several of his Fellows, and St. John’s, where
the brilliant Edmund Campion became a convert and went to
Douai in 1571. At Trinity the Devonshireman Thomas Ford,
also afterwards martyr, was converted in 1 570 and went abroad.
These events, for Ford was his friend and he must have known
Campion well, had their influence upon Mayne; two years
before he left Oxford, his sympathies were already Catholic.
Some letters from his friends overseas came into the hands of the
Bishop of London, who sent a pursuivant to Oxford to arrest
him and others of his circle. Mayne happened to be in the West
Country^ and warned by his friend Ford, did not again return
to Oxford. Early in the year 1573, he ‘took shipping on the
coast of Cornwall, and so went to Douai when the seminary
^ McElroy, Blessed Cuthbert Mayne, 29.
134
GRENVILLE AS SHERIFF
there was but newly erected.’ ^ Here he remained for three
years, studying theology; he was ordained priest in the Jubilee
year 1575, in February 1576 took his degree as Bachelor of
Divinity and in April left with another priest, John Payne, for
England.^
Arriving in England, the two priests separated and Mayne
made for his own West Country. On the night before he died,
in his final examination, he said that
‘coming from beyond seas to London, about a two years hence,
he had a desire to place himself in the west country. Moving
certain of his friends thereof they procured him unto Mr.
Tregian, but what his friends’ names were he will not utter lest
they should be troubled therefore.’ ®
In the next article, he admits to having brought in letters for
Tregian, so that it may be that the arrangement was already
made by which Tregian was to receive him into his household,
and that Mayne was concealing it for his benefit. It was not
long before the authorities were aware that the two priests had
sKpped into the country; for apparently their papers had been
seized on landing. And there is a curious entry in June in the
Diary at Douai of news of their death arriving at the college;
either it is wrongly dated, or more probably it was due to a
rumour that the authorities had captured them.
Anyhow, Mayne reached Cornwall safely and lived in the
household at Golden for a year before anything happened.
Ostensibly he went about the country as Tregian’s steward; and
since the latter’s estates reached as far as Tremolla near Laun-
ceston, this gave Mayne an opportunity of travelling about,
visiting Catholic families, reconciling the lapsed and adminis-
tering the sacraments. He admitted in his last examination to
having said mass, but would not say where or who were present.
All this was, of course, contrary to the laws, and there were
heavy penalties attached to the breach of them, though sub-
^ Allen, A Brief e Historie of the Glorious Martyrdom of XII Reverend Priests
(ed. Pollen, 1908), 106.
* Knox, First and Second Douai Diaries^ 100,
® S.P. Dom. Eliz. vol. 1 18, no. 46.
135
SIR RICHARD GRENVILLE OF THE REVENGE
sequently they became still heavier. For the Government was
really alarmed at the progress Catholicism was making; and the
threatened subversion of the established religion by the filtering
in of Alien’s seminary priests, impossible as it seemed to stop
them, threw the authorities into a panic. Cuthbert Mayne and
John Fayne were only the first; from now on a regular supply
flowed into the country, and from Rome, Louvain, Valladolid,
as well as from Douai. Orders were issued to keep stricter
watch on recusants, and pressure was put on the secular and
ecclesiastical officials to certify them.
The authorities in Cornwall could not be unaware of the fact
that there was a priest at work in the Tregian household, for his
ministrations went beyond to a wider circle. Catholic recusants
had not yet learned the technique of secrecy, of hiding-places,
and of keeping strict watch such as later enabled the Arundells
in London and at Ghideock in Dorset to retain Fr. John Corne-
lius as their chaplain for thirteen years. Mayne later admitted
that ‘he hath often been at Sir John ArundelFs at Lanherne
with his master, where he hath sometimes remained sevennight
or fortnight together, and that he went not otherwise thither
unless he were sent in some message of his master’s.’ ^
It was not to be expected that what was going on in the
county could continue unnoticed or that the authorities should
not intervene. The difficulty was on what authority could a
Justice of the Peace intervene without a writ, and how was he
to obtain a writ without evidence. It needed someone of deter-
mination to deal with the situation; several of the Cornish
Justices were not without the will, and some of them exhibited
a most unpleasant vindictiveness throughout the proceedings
against Mayne and his fellow Catholics. The Sheriff for the
year 1576, however, made no move: he was George Kekewich,
a courteous and easy-going old person. What was character-
istic of Grenville when he came to face the situation left by his
predecessor was his determination to force the position.
From the exactness of his movements when he determined to
strike, it is clear that he had been carefully informed about the
interior arrangements of the Tregian household; he knew
^ S.P. Dom, Eliz. no. 47.
136
GRENVILLE AS SHERIFF
exactly where to find Mayne: someone must have turned in-
former. In June, the Bishop of Exeter was holding his visitation
at Truro, some half a dozen miles away from Golden; Grenville
with some other Justices sought him out there and requested
him to aid and assist him in searching Golden for the seminary
priest who was lying there. After some deliberation it was
agreed that not the Bishop, but the Bishop’s Chancellor, a legal
official, should accompany the Sheriff and his company: a nice
distinction such as the Inquisition was accustomed to make
between the condemnation of a heretic and handing him over to
the lay arm for execution.
When they reached Golden, there was an altercation between
Grenville and Tregian as to the right of entry and search.
Tregian being weak allowed himself to be overborne: he might
at least, if he had been at all effective, instead of being a passive
devote have barricaded the house and enabled the priest to get
away. To quote Cardinal Allen’s informant, who may have
been an eye-witness of the scene:
"As soon as they came to Mr. Tregian’s house the Sheriff first
spake unto him saying, that he and his company were come to
search for one Bourne, which had committed a fault in London,
and so fled to Cornwall, and was in his house as he was in-
formed. [Anthony Bourne was a fugitive from justice, who had
fled into Cornwall and later across the seas.] Mr. Tregian
answering that he was not there, and swearing by his faith that
he did not know where he was, further telling him that to have
his house searched he thought it great discourtesy, for that he
was a gentleman as he was, for that he did account his house as
his castle: also stoutly denying them, for that they had no
commission from the Prince.
"The Sheriff being very bold, because he had a great company
with him, sware by all the oaths he could devise, that he would
search his house or else he would kill or be killed, holding his
hand upon his dagger as though he would have stabbed it into
the gentleman. This violence being used he had leave to search
the house.’ ^
^ Allen, 1 04-5.
137
SIR RICHARD GRENVILLE OF THE REVENGE
All this, one cannot but think, was very tame on Tregian’s part,
first to have allowed himself to be caught napping, to have had
no one on guard of all his servants; and secondly, to have put
up no resistance to give Mayne the alarm. For the account goes
on to say that, just before, Mayne had been in the garden ‘where
he might have gone from them.’ He had now returned to his
room and shut it fast. Grenville made straight for it and beat
upon the door, which the priest then opened,
‘As soon as the Sheriff came into the chamber,’ the account
relates, ‘he took Mr. Mayne by the bosom and said unto him
“What art thou?” and he answered “I am a man.” Whereat the
Sheriff being very hot, asked whether he had a coat of mail
under his doublet, and so unbuttoned it, and found an Agnus
Dei case about his neck, which he took from him and called him
a traitor and rebel with many other opprobrious names.’
Grenville now had his evidence; it was characteristic of him
that by carrying himself with a high hand he should have
obtained justification for his proceeding after the event. For to
possess an Agnus Dei (it was a little wax imprint of a figure of a
lamb made from the Paschal candles), or beads blessed by the
Pope, was a penal offence under the Act of 157 1, punishable by
imprisonment and confiscation of goods. Anyhow, Mayne was a
fool to be wearing it - perhaps he thought it might be efficacious
as a protection; that was not the sort of mistake made by the
subtle, eel-like Jesuit, Parsons, when he came into the country
three years later disguised as a soldier: he got away again.
Mayne’s books and papers were seized and himself haled off to
Truro, where he was examined by the Bishop. Then in the
custody of the Sheriff he was taken ‘from one gentleman’s house
to another’ across the eastern part of the county to Launceston,
where he was lodged in close confinement in the gaol within the
Castle. Tregian, meanwhile, as a gentleman of standing, was
given bail.
These proceedings were at once reported to the Council, for
on 19 June they wrote to Grenville and his fellow Justices thank-
ing them ‘as well for their pains taken in the diligent search for
Bourne as for the apprehension of Mr. Tregian and others for
138
GRENVILLE AS SHERIFF
matters of religion/ ^ The various papers and things found at
Golden were sent up to the Council; for on i July, at a session
at which the Earl of Bedford, the Lord Lieutenant of Devon and
Cornwall, was present, a letter was sent to the Judges of Assize
for Cornwall, enclosing the Bull of Indulgence taken at Golden
‘and divers other relics used in popery, with some declaration
of lewd matter prejudicial to the present state, with a special
treatise against the Book of Common Prayer,’ and directing
them to proceed in their examination of the matter and ‘admin-
istering of justice according to the desert of their facts.’ ^
The hunt was up. Grenville’s independent and forceful
action had set in motion the machinery of government; from
now on the Council was to take the main burden of responsi-
bility and to order the steps taken. They were grateful for so
active and energetic a drive as Grenville was making against
Papists throughout the county. The trouble in some parts of
the country was that the local Justices could not be got to move,
as in Lancashire: hence the survival of Catholicism there. Some
trace of what was happening in Cornwall this summer remains
in the Borough Accounts of Launceston, where we read: ‘To
Mr. Sheriff when he searched St. Katherine’s for papist books,
a potell of sack, and a potell of claret wine, 22<5?.’ ® No doubt it
was hot work! St. Katherine’s was one of the chapels attached
to the old buildings of the ruinous priory: one wonders if it was
among the remnants of its library that Grenville was doing
destruction.
The Council was very encouraging: on 4 August, they wrote
again to the Judges requiring them to examine Mayne and
others at the next assizes, ‘and also to understand what others
there are of that condition lurking in this realm, and in what
place.’ ^ Already as the result of the investigations proceeding,
a number of Catholic gentlemen had been sought out; for the
Bishop of Exeter was ordered to take bonds of Robert Becket, a
gentleman of a very good Cornish family and of considerable
property, living at Cartuther near Liskeard, and of Richard
Tremayne and Francis Ermyn, for their appearance before the
1 A,P,a, IX, 364. 2 ibid. 375.
® Peter: Histories of Launceston and Dtmheved, 212.
* A,P.a, X, 6-7.
SIR RICHARD GRENVILLE OF THE REVENGE
Council. A number of others too were being indicted along
with Mayne and Tregian. In fact, there was proceeding a
general round-up of the Catholic elements in Cornwall, all
except the Arundells themselves, who were too important to
touch and against whom there was not as yet any evidence.
Mayne waited for his trial in close imprisonment until the
Michaelmas Sessions, when the Judges of the Western Circuit,
Manwood and Jefferys, came to Launceston. It was Grenville’s
duty as Sheriff to impanel the grand and petty juries. It is not
necessary to suppose that they were packed,^ except in a sense
in which all sixteenth-century juries were packed; that is to say,
that the authorities did not choose to nominate those whom
they thought would show favour to the accused. The grand
jury was representative of the Cornish gentry, who supported
the established order: there were on it, among others, Richard
Carew of Antony, Peter Courtenay, John Arundell of Tolverne,
Hannibal Vyvyan, Diggory Tremayne, Peter Killigrew, John
Kempthorne, George Carnsew. They returned a true bill
against the accused. The petty jury were impanelled from
among the bourgeois of the towns, shopkeepers and traders:
Sampson Piper who was Mayor of Launceston for this year,
Thomas Hicks who had been Mayor the previous year, John
Wills, a well-known resident of Saltash. They came from a class
even more hostile to Catholicism than the gentry.
Cardinal Allen’s account tells us that the Earl of Bedford was
‘present at Mr. Mayne’s arraignment and did deal most in the
matter.’ There is no other evidence for this, but Bedford was in
the west this summer and at his house at Tavistock would be
conveniently placed for the proceedings at Launceston. Mayne
was tried upon several indictments, for saying mass, for bringing
in and delivering an Agnus Dei^ for upholding the Pope’s author-
ity within the realm; upon each of these he was condemned and
sentenced to various penalties amounting to perpetual loss of
lands, goods and liberty. But it was upon the charges of
obtaining a Bull of absolution from the see of Rome, and
of publishing it, that he was condemned of treason and
sentenced to be hanged, drawn and quartered. Tregian,
^ McElroy, 65-8.
X40
GRENVILLE AS SHERIFF
as his accessory, was condemned to loss of lands and goods,
and imprisonment for life. On the charges of aiding Mayne
upon each of these counts, a varying number of persons of
Tregian’s Catholic circle, from ten to fifteen on each indict-
ment, were condemned: theirs are the names given above.^
Upon a seventh indictment, that for simple recusancy and
not coming to the church, several new names appear in
addition to Tregian and those we know: they were Sir John
Arundell, Nicholas Roscarrock (a cousinof Grenville’s), Joanna,
the wife of Richard Tremayne, Mary Hame, Margaret, Wini-
fred and David Kemp, Philip and Jane Tremayne, Robert and
Jane Smith, Thomas Becket and Thomas Pickford. These were
all persons of substance and sentenced to fines for the luxury of
not attending Church.
There was some disagreement between the Judges over the
point made in Mayne’s defence that the Bull of Absolution
made out for the Jubilee Year 1575 had expired: was it there-
fore executable? Manwood, the Chief Justice, over-rode his
dissentient colleague and gave the death sentence. But it was
respited until the pleasure of the Council should be known.
Allen says, ^after the twelve had given the verdict Guilty, the
Judges gave sentence on him that he should be executed within
XV days, but it was deferred until St. Andrew’s day, upon what
occasion I know not.’ Meanwhile Grenville rode to London to
inform the Council of the issue; for on 28 October, the Bishop
of Exeter, who had been ordered to make a return of all the
recusants in his diocese, wrote to the Council,
‘for the Cornish travail, where are the greatest number of
papists, and where I proposed first to begin, knowing that Mr.
Richard Grenville was then ridden to London, I sent to Mr.
Edmund Tremayne, praying him to supply his place, which he
gladly did accomplish, and brought with him Mr. George Gren-
ville, a very earnest and learned Justice of Cornwall, and in the
mean season, sent also for Sir John Killigrew who readily
came.’ ^
They were all ready for the work, and as the result of their
^ V. ante p. 139. ® S.P. Dom. Eliz. 117, no. 25.
SIR RICHARD GRENVILLE OF THE REVENGE
joint labours, a schedule was sent up containing the names of
all the chief recusants, including several new ones.
On 12 November, the Council sent down their orders that
the execution of Mayne was to go forward:
‘the place of his execution to be at Launceston upon a market
day; where after he shall be dead and quartered, his head to
be set upon a post and placed in some eminent place within
the said town of Launceston, and his four quarters to be likewise
set upon four posts and placed the one at Bodmin, the second
at Tregony, the third at Barnstaple and the fourth at Wade-
bridge.’ ^
And so it happened that when the last ghastly rites were per-
formed in the market-place at Launceston, upon a market-day
for the better edification of the people, Grenville was not there,
and his place was taken by his deputy, the Under-Sheriff.
Mayne will always continue to be somewhat impersonal to
us, we know so little about this first of the Douai martyrs. Far
less, for example, than we know of Fr. John Cornelius, a Bodmin
lad who came in his time too to be martyred: he was the clear
type of the mystic, with whom the inner life was so strong that
the life of this world seemed uncertain in comparison. ^ But on
the night before Mayne suffered there was a final examination
of him taken, which enables us to see something of what sort of
man this was who resisted all their force and their persuasions
alike.® Nothing could move him: he had the whole intellectual
position worked out, from which he answered all their questions:
his was the mind of the complete Counter-Reformation type.
He told them, now that he was past all hope, that ^any that
is a Catholic may not in any wise receive the Sacrament, come
to the Church or hear the schismatical service, which is estab-
lished in the same here in England.’ It must have been gall
and wormwood to those who heard, for their first memories
5
2 Martyred at Dorchester, 4 July 1594, having been taken at Chideock
Castle, the Dorsetshire house of the Arundells. Records of the Society of JesuSy
vol. 3.
® S.P. Dom. Eliz. 118, no. 46.
142
GRENVILLE AS SHERIFF
were those of the Catholic Faith. Further, he gave them his
belief
^that the people of England may be won unto the Catholic re-
ligion of the see of Rome, by such secret instructors as either are
or may be within the realm. But what these secret instructors
are he will not utter, but hopeth when time serv^eth they shall
do therein as pleaseth God ; and that those with others use secret
conference to withdraw the minds of the subjects of this realm
from the religion established in the same.’
He explained to them that the text of the Lateran Council
found in a book of his, ‘signifying that though Catholics did now
serve, swear and obey, yet if occasion were offered they should
be ready to help the execution etc.,’ had been ratified by the
Council of Trent, and that it meant ‘that if any Catholic prince
took in hand to invade any Realm to reform the same to the
authority of the see of Rome, that then the Catholics in that
Realm invaded by foreigners should be ready to assist and help
them and this was the meaning of the execution.’
It was a declaration of war: it was this theory of Papal
absolutism overriding national sovereignty which justified the
Elizabethan government in its harsh repression of Catholics;
and if only Mayne knew it, or rather his superiors, Allen and
Parsons, it was this setting of themselves against the trend of
national feeling which made the position of the Catholic
Church hopeless in England. No wonder the Justices who heard
it were provoked to fury by it.
Next day, St, Andrew’s day, 30 November, Mayne was
dragged on a hurdle through the streets of Launceston from the
castle to the market-place. At the gibbet, he would have spoken
to the assembled crowd, but was prevented; and one of them
made a last attempt to incriminate Sir John Arundell, probably
for the benefit of the mob. He called out, ‘Now, villain and
traitor, you are at the moment of death; tell us then truly
whether Mr. Tregian and Sir John Arundell knew of the things
you are to die for.’ Mayne was not to be caught by this, and
took all the charges home to himself, as being ‘known only to
me and no others.’ A moment later he was cast off the ladder,
SIR RICHARD GRENVILLE OF THE REVENGE
saying In mams tuas, Demine^ the words which so many others
were to say after him in years to come, and as much in vain.
It is a mistake to treat this chapter of events, as previously it
has been treated, in all hagiographical literature, as a personal
matter between Grenville and Mayne, or even between Gren-
ville and the Arundells. It was much more important than
that. We have seen that, from a personal point of view, it was
at least the whole ruling gentry of Cornwall that accepted the
Elizabethan system against those who did not. The poor Douai
priest, the proto-martyr of the seminarists, was but the occasion
for the destruction of the Catholic remnant in Cornwall. It
was a very considerable remnant, much greater and more in-
fluential than what remained in Devonshire; and if left to itself
it would have grown, for there must have been some under-
ground sympathy for Catholicism among the simplest people. It
was Grenville’s great service to the Elizabethan government,
during his year of office as Sheriff, to have seized his oppor-
tunity to strike at this influential minority, and as might be
expected, he struck hard and passionately. The result of it was
the virtual end of Catholicism in the west.
For his services in this hectic year of office, Grenville was
awarded his knighthood: in itself no great matter, for his family
was a knightly one and the head of it in each generation was
accustomed to receive the honour. It would have come to him
some time in any case; the occasion upon which he received it,
the services for which it was conferred, were much more im-
portant.^
II
In addition to the main business of his term, there was a
miscellany of other matters belonging to the routine of the
office, of which the most burdensome, though perhaps to Gren-
ville, since he was a martial man, the most congenial, was the
taking of Musters. These were as yet early days to what the
Musters, and the duties attendant upon them, subsequently
^ He was knighted at Windsor in October. Shaw, Knights of England, 1 1 ,
78.
144
GRENVILLE AS SHERIFF
became. Though there had been a war-scare in 1569-70, there
was not yet the insistent pressure for defence which led Carew
to claim with justice that Cornwall was burdened out of all
proportion to Devon and the neighbouring counties. Training
the able-bodied men of the shire had rather fallen behind with
the early peaceful years of Elizabeth’s reign; and as yet, the
authorities were content to draw out and train, if it could be
called training, a number of men each year, mustering what
weapons the country and themselves could provide, mainly
pikes and bills, with a few arquebuses and muskets. Perhaps
it partook more of a holiday, when the men were drawn to-
gether from their fields and woods and pastures to some central
place, to undergo a few summer days’ training, in those years
when the danger of war was but a cloud upon their pastoral
horizon.
On 20 April, the Commissioners for Musters, Grenville
among them, wrote that they had received the Council’s orders
for levying, furnishing and training 200 soldiers, and that they
had ordered the exercises to begin on St. George’s Even and
to end on St. Mark’s DayA But by 26 September, the Council’s
orders had still not been put into execution.- A new and
terrible factor had intervened: now "considering the general in-
fection of the plague, which presently is very great in divers
places in this shire and that the assembly of the people might be
a great occasion of the farther spreading thereof’ they have
with the advice of the Judges of Assize postponed general
musters till its mitigation. Meanwhile they had given com-
mandment to the constables to view and take order of the
parishioners in every parish to see that they were furnished with
weapons.
There is something affecting in these simple measures which
it was the habit of our forefathers to take for defence of hearth
and home. If the training in arms that they received was per-
haps perfunctory, no doubt an amiable sociability was encour-
aged, particularly in the towns, by the occasions it afforded.
We read, for instance, in the accounts of the towm of Plymouth,
where Sir Richard was this year upon the same business: Tteni
^ S.P. Dom. Eliz. 112, no. 22. ^ ibid. 115, n(j. 26,
SIR RICHARD GRENVILLE OF THE REVENGE
paid to Mr. Westlake for sugar when Sir Richard Grenville did
muster upon the Hoe vid.’ ^ In 1580, when John Blitheman
was Mayor, there was paid Tor a dinner and a supper bestowed
upon Sir Richard Grenville Knight, Mr. Paget and others,
XLS,’ and Tor their horse meat vns vid.’ Mr. Paget was the
parson whom Grenville this year presented to the living of Kilk-
hampton, upon the death (at last!) of his old great-uncle, John
Grenville. Probably the two were on their way to Kilkhampton,
where Paget was to be inducted. The appointment was not a
success: Paget was a Puritan hot-gospeller, whose eventual
eviction from the living led to another turbulent, though in this
instance rather comic, episode in Grenville’s life. Such was the
simple but deferential hospitality bestowed by the town of
Plymouth, at Walter PeperelFs or Martin White’s or Chris.
Harris’s, upon the neighbouring notables who happened to be
passing through.
Still more of his time was taken up, at the orders of
the Council, by investigations into piracy with which the
Channel was again rife and with which many persons living
on the sea-board of Cornwall were connected. There were in
particular two notorious pirates. Captain Hicks of Saltash, and
Captain Hammond, whose deeds filled the Channel ports with
lamentations. It needed persons like Grenville and William
Hawkins, who were already sufficiently familiar with the more
exalted art of privateering, to deal with these smaller fry. In
August 1577, in the midst of the Mayne business, he was
appointed to a commission, to inquire into the taking of a ship
called Our Lady of Aransusia, which, laden with iron, was cap-
tured off the coast of Galicia by Captain Hicks, and, it was
thought, brought into the Helford River.^ They were to search
there and find out into whose hands her lading had come. By
October, Hammond had been caught and a serjeant of the Lord
Admiral sent down to bring him up; Grenville was ordered to
see Hammond safely guarded through Cornwall under the
Serjeant’s conduction, ‘forasmuch as it is doubted lest there may
be some practise used for the rescuing of the said Hammond
^ Plymouth Muniments: Widey Court Book.
2 A.P.C, 1577-8, 14.
146
GRENVILLE AS SHERIFF
within that shire.’ ^ At the end of the year, as the result of the
activities of a Commission of Piracy which had been appointed,
a number of dealers in pirates’ goods were brought to light.
They were for the most part persons of substance, such as
Thomas St. Aubyn of Clowance, John Reskymmer, John Pen-
rose and Peter Killigrew. Grenville was to take bonds of them
for their appearance before the Council.^
Among other matters that fell to him was the job of inquiring
into the quarrels of his choleric relation, Sir John Killigrew,
whose differences first with Ambrose Digby and then with
Henry Farnaby led to much disturbance of the peace in Corn-
wall. We learn from the invaluable Carnsew' that Killigrew
and Digby fought a duel at Truro this summer. It appears that
the quarrel was over the matter of Anthony Bourne who had
escaped from Pendennis Castle overseas. Since Digby was Vice-
Admiral, he may have charged Sir John wdth being privy to it.
This indeed seems to have been likely since Killigrew was in
debt to Bourne.® Grenville and Edgcumbe were appointed to a
Special Commission of inquiry, which found that Bourne had
left the country without license at Falmouth on 2 June in the
previous year.^ Sir John, having meanwhile repaired to the
Council to answer the charges and lay others of his own against
Digby, the whole matter was committed to Grenville and
Edgcumbe and others to inquire into. They did their best to
smooth things over; certainly nothing incriminating transpired
as regards Killigrew’s relations with Bourne. Later on both
Killigrew and Digby were sworn to abide by the arbitration of
Bedford; in the end Bedford awarded a sum of money to be paid
as compensation to Digby, so that it is clear Sir John w^as, as
usual, in the wrong.®
The dispute between Killigrew and Farnaby was even more
tiresome and took longer; it is only of any interest now since it
provides one of the few notices remaining of the Truro family
of Farnabys, which produced in the next generation the charm-
ing Caroline musician, Giles Farnaby. Over some matter of
1 A.P C. 67. ^ ibid. 82.
^ Exchequer K.R. Special Com., 3017. ^ ibid. 542.
s A.P.C, 1577-^^ 142, 175, 210, 215; A.P.C. 1578-80, 339.
147
SIR RICHARD GRENVILLE OF THE REVENGE
debt. Sir John took the law into his own hands and seized some
of Farnaby’s property - with all the more gusto because he
knew Farnaby was too poor to go to law about it. The matter
had been committed by the Council, at the end of 1578, to
Richard Trevanion and Robert Trencreek to inquire into.
They did nothing about it, it is easy to see why: they clearly did
not want to embroil themselves with a powerful old ruffian like
Sir John, nor would they want to find a neighbour and connec-
tion in the wrong. Someone more powerful was needed. So
on 31 May, the Council wrote to Grenville placing him at the
head of Trevanion and Trencreek in the Commission and, since
nothing was returned from them, requiring him
‘to signify unto them that they have forgotten their duty, and to
require them to send up such examinations under both their
hands as they have taken; or if the matter be not examined,
then the said Sir Richard to join with them, and so to end the
matter between them by both their consents if they can, or else
to make certificate of their doings unto their Lordships.’
It is clear that the Council had confidence in Grenville as a
competent servant of the Government; a confidence which, in
spite of certain turbulent passages in the past and others which
were yet to come, was not misplaced. Forceful, too forceful, as
he was, he was a man to get things done; and as time went on,
he came more and more to emancipate himself from the pull
of his own private interests, and became more of a public
servant, accepting his own disappointments without complaint
and sacrificing his own course at the call of duty. In a month’s
time, the Council received the report they had desired, and
they were able to commit the case to the Justices of Assize where
it went on its lumbering way, in the manner of Elizabethan
justice.^
This was not the last time that Grenville, at a word from the
higher command, had to descend upon his kinsman, Sir John.
The family at Arwennack, in spite of their high connections at
Court, were going a rake’s progress to the fate that overtook Sir
John’s son, disgrace and imprisonment in the Gatehouse at
^ A.P.C, j 577-(9/ £246, 355; AP.C. isySSoy 148, S20i, 331.
14B
GRENVILLE AS SHERIFF
Westminster. Grenville seems to have dealt justly by them,
without fear or favour.
His own private affairs, in marked contrast to the Killigrews
and the St. Legers, were fortunately prospering, though as they
prospered, they became increasingly complex. The St. Legers
of Annery, his wife’s family, were pursuing a headlong down-
ward course; it is not difficult to see, even through the imper-
sonality of these documents, that they were an easy-going,
good-for-nothing, hard-drinking lot. In October 1574, John
St. Leger, the son, was one of a band of three who committed a
highway robbery on Hounslow Heath: they set upon a certain
Thomas Phillpott, robbed him of a gold chain worth 100 marks,
beat him and left him wounded there. ^ Next year, Sir John St.
Leger was borrowing a large sum, ;;(^500, from a London mer-
chant- taylor, at an exorbitant rate of interest: he was to repay
the capital with a sum ot £100 as interest, within a year! This
was contrary to the Statute of Usury, which only permitted up
to 10 per cent.®
But Sir John was by this time far gone and could not stop: he
could only sell off his lands bit by bit, until he had made away
with all his inheritance. Grenville came to his aid once and
again, but being a man of business, upon good landed security.
By 1577 he had advanced ;,{^8oo to him. Against that and for a
further sum of ;^2O0, a debt of Sir John to Hugh Jones, a Lon-
don mercer, for which Grenville made himself responsible, St.
Leger granted away to him the fee-simple of the island of
Lundy. It is a very complicated and involved document by
which the transaction takes place; ^ and it makes pathetic read-
ing, for behind its legal complexities may be discerned the very
human hope of the St. Legers some day to regain this strip of
their patrimony. It is provided that if they perform their agree-
ments to pay the sums of money owing, then they might re-
enter into possession of the Island and Manor. But they never
did; and this is how Lundy came into the hands of the Gren-
villes. It is curious to reflect as one looks out to sea from the
high ground between Kilkhampton and Bideford, to that fine
^ Middlesex Sessions Rolls, i. 89. ^ ibid. 93.
^ Close Roll a® 20 Eliz. part i (G 54/1024).
149
SIR RICHARD GRENVILLE OF THE REVEJ^GE
formal shape upon the horizon, sometimes clear, more often
withheld in mist, that this was the manner of its passing.
A little more information about Grenville’s father-in-law
may be gathered from a Star Chamber case a few years later.i
One Thomas Hilling of Bodmin brought a bill of complaint
against Grenville, Christopher Walker and others on the ground
that Grenville had brought a suit against him for slander, in
the name of Sir John St. Leger, in the Stannary Court of
Blackmore. He pleaded that this had been done intentionally
and corruptly, without the knowledge or consent of St. Leger,
when neither himself nor Sir John were tinners or liable to the
jurisdiction of this Court, and that he was condemned "by a
partial jury corruptly returned at the nomination’ of Grenville
and his creature Walker, who was clerk of the Court. Having
been found guilty, he "was like to have been spoiled and undone
if the said Sir John St. Leger being a gentleman of good con-
science’ had not remitted the heavy damages - further testi-
mony to Sir John’s good nature.
No less revealing was what Hilling had said. Sir Richard
testified that his wife had complained to him of the Various
abuses’ offered to her father; and that Sir John "being his father-
in-law in whose house and lineage the defendant’s posterity is to
continue,’ he wrote to inquire into the matter. Sir John replied
that Hilling "in words and otherwise had to his face used him
very proudly and disdainfully,’ and that he said in public to one
of St. Leger’s servants "thy master is an old drunken bankrupt
knave, a rogue, and a raskally villain - and so go tell him.’ It
was Hilling’s misfortune that some part of what he said was
true; but having the temerity to say it is another matter: per-
haps he was an unsatisfied creditor. At any rate Grenville had
him arrested within one of the Stannary Courts near his
dwelling, and here he was imprisoned. These smaller prero-
gative jurisdictions were the source of great discontent to the
middle-class townsmen, as they afforded such opportunities
to the gentry to enforce their will. The attack upon them in the
next century was part of the general attack upon the preroga-
tives of the Crown which led to the Civil War.
^ Star Chamber Proc. Eliz., Hilary 1582 (H 6/16).
150
GRENVILLE AS SHERIFF
As the St. Legers went down, so the fortunes of the Grenvilles
under the husbanding hand of their present head went up.
As one after the other the St. Leger estates were dispersed, the
manor of Canonleigh, the Isle of Lundy, the manor of Gullomp-
ton and Upton Weaver, then the site of the priory at Ganon-
leigh,^ so Grenville added to his domains. Two years after ac-
quiring Lundy, he bought the fifth part of the manors of Tre-
nant, Manely Colshill, St. Ewe, and of the advowson of St. Ewe,
from Thomas Bodenham for, apparently, £1,500; but this was
probably for the purpose of some family settlement, perhaps
providing dowers for his daughters. ^ In 1577 he brought an
action in Ghancery, and in 1 578 one in Star Chamber against
three tenants of his manor of Lancras who claimed to hold for
three lives by copy of court-roll; he was bent upon reducing
them to the status of tenants at will.®
His experience of business meant that he was entrusted with
other people’s ajBTairs, as, for example, the sale of the manor
of Golquite, a Cornish property of Lord Thomas Howard,
Viscount Bindon. The latter was troubled by an ill-disciplined
and irrepressible son, Henry Howard, who ran himself and his
father into a mountain of debts, so that his father was driven to
sell land to meet them. To Grenville and Sir Arthur Basset
was committed the sale of Golquite, a goodly manor of the clear
yearly value of £50 los. 8 d, But they could not get an offer of
more than £1,500 for it, for the manor was assured to Mr.
Thomas Howard and his wife for their lives. Grenville wrote on
10 January 1580 that
T and others in whom the trust for the said sale to have been
made was reposed, have done our best endeavours and practised
as well with the tenants who manure the same, as with others for
purchase thereof. But with all our travails could not make the
price (the land being as it is so assured unto Mr. Thomas
Howard and his wife as they are to receive all the lands, rents,
fines, etc., so long as they live) . . . But if it might be freed of
^ Pat. Rolls Eliz., 1181, 1194, 1252.
® ibid. no. 1194; and Close Roils Eliz. no. 1073.
® Star Chamber Proc. Eliz., g February 1578.
SIR RICHARD GRENVILLE OF THE REVENGE
that estate of Mr. Thomas Howard, your Lordship’s son and his
wife, then was there a far greater offer made, of which I thought
good to advertise your Honour, praying you to accept our good
minds who were the dealers herein and ready to be employed in
this or any other like service/ ^
It seems that Grenville was on terms of personal acquaintance
with Lord Bindon, which was natural enough since he was the
person of chief authority in Dorset, as Grenville was by now in
Cornwall, What adds interest to the connection is that Bindon,
a cousin of the Queen, was great-uncle of Lord Thomas
Howard, under whose command Grenville was killed.
Ill
So much for his private affairs in these years: it is all that re-
mains to us. To return to his public occupations: the Council
continued to use his services in all manner of business. They
came in this period chiefly to depend upon him in Cornwall,
and continued to do so as long as he remained in the west.
In December 1 579, the Judges of the western circuit returned
their certificate of the Cornish Justices of the Peace who had
sworn the Oath of Supremacy.^ Grenville’s name appears at
the head along with Sir John Killigrew, in place of Sir John
Arundell now in London, answering to the Council for the
images and pictures of Christ and the Virgin Mary found in his
house at Lanherne.® In March in the New Year, a commission
for General Musters had been sent down, to him and others,
under the command of Bedford.^ They made an expeditious re-
turn of the forces of the county in May. ® The fact was that the
military organisation of che county was becoming better or-
ganised. The hundreds of the shire were grouped into four
larger districts, under the command respectively of Grenville,
Edgcumbe, William Mohun and John Arundell of Tolverne.
Altogether there were some 6,968 able-bodied men to be drawn
upon, of whom they selected 4,000, in addition to the garrisons
^ S.P. Dom. Eliz. 136, no. 3. ® ibid. 133, no. 12.
* A.P .C. 1578-80^ 265, 345. * S.P. Dom. Eliz. 136, no. 52.
* ibid. 138, nos. 5, 6.
GRENVILLE AS SHERIFF
of Pendennis, St. Mawes and the Mount; 2,000 were appointed
for supply into Devonshire in case of necessity, as in Devon
4,000 men were to re-inforce the Cornish forces in similar case.
It all reads like a rehearsal for 1588.
For affairs were becoming critical again, especially in Ireland,
the weak spot in the English defences. For two years and more,
Thomas Stukeley and James Fitzmaurice had been abroad in
the courts of Rome and Madrid, and in the sea-ports of Brit-
tany and the northern coast of Spain, preparing their wildcap
schemes for a foreign descent upon Ireland. Stukeley in the end
deflected himself to serve the King of Portugal in his African
campaign, where he perished with the flower of the Portuguese
nobility in the fatal battle of Alcazar. Fitzmaurice came home
to Ireland to raise the standard of that rebellion which brought
untold suffering upon Munster and ruined the house of Des-
mond. In the summer of 1578, 1,000 men had been levied in
the four western counties and transported to southern Ireland
from Bristol and Barnstaple; 200 of them were Cornish and
some of the shipping provided may have been Grenville’s.^
It was necessary to think of the defence of the sea-coasts. In
Spain, it was rumoured, there was an armada preparing and no
one knew what its destination might be. At the beginning of
the year 1580, the Council sent out general orders to all the
maritime counties of the south from Norfolk to Cornwall to
put 'in a readiness such numbers of men as have heretofore been
allotted to repair unto the sea coasts for the defence of the places
of descent.’ On the Channel coast each county was to survey
its forts and castles to see that they were in a state of defence:
in Cornwall, the duty was committed to Grenville, William
Mohun, John Treffry, John Godolophin and John Arundell of
Trerice.'^ In the autumn, the careful Burghley, making his pre-
parations for what he hoped would not eventuate, drew up a list
of the martial men in each county, men who had had experience
of war; for Cornwall he notes, relying on who knows what
memory of their past association, 'Sir Richard Grenville, Mr.
Specott.’^
^ A.P.C, J577-S, 240-1. ® A.P.C. 1^78-80, 381-2.
3 S.P. Dom. Eliz. 143, no. 46.
153
SIR RICHARD GRENVILLE OF THE REVEJ{GE
IV
For three years now, Drake had been absent upon his Pacific
voyage; for more than a year he had been overdue. During that
time (he was engaged upon the long journey across the Pacific
from North America, exploring th.e Spice Islands, returning
home across the Indian Ocean and round the Cape of Good
Hope) there had been no news of him whatever. A year before,
when he was already in mid-Pacific, a report had come home
that he had been captured and hanged: it may have arisen
from Oxenham’s execution at Lima. Soon after came the dis-
patches from the Viceroys of Peru and New Spain, telling the
full tale of Drake’s depredations on their coasts. In August, an
express from Seville reported that Drake had captured
200,000 ducats of the King’s property and 400,000 of private
owners in his break-through into the South Sea. The forward
party at Court, particularly those who had invested iri the
enterprise, were according to the Spanish Ambassador, Men-
doza, ‘beside themselves with joy.’ In the city there was great
anxiety at what might happen to the trade with Seville and the
English merchants there. Then there was quietness; the Gov-
ernment deliberately reassured the commercial interests, and
there was a tacit agreement to say nothing until the great
depredator returned.
Suddenly, without a word of warning, at the end of Septem-
ber, he was there. He did not dare as yet set foot on shore;
his wife put out to see him, and the Mayor, John Blitheman,
who must have told him of the curious posture of affairs: the
war-party prepared to welcome him with open arms, the peace-
party ready to sacrifice him for the sake of peace with Spain.
He took warning, warped out of harbour and anchored behind
St. Nicholas Island. Word, meanwhile, was sent to the Queen,
who, as we now know, unknown to Burghley, was an adven-
turer in the voyage. Soon her assurance arrived that he had
nothing to fear and that he was to come to court; after some
hesitation, as over the Spanish treasure of 1569, and after the
strongest representations from the insistent Mendoza, the
Queen threw in her lot with the forward party. Her warrant
154
SIR FRANCIS DRAKE
GRENVILLE AS SHERIFF
was sent down to the faithful Edmund Tremayne, to assist
Drake in sending up certain bullion that he had brought into
the realm (the little ship was literally ballasted with silver), but
‘to leave 10,000 worth in his hands, which sum is to be kept
most secret to himself’ It was a pledge of her approval. The
bullion was stored for the time under guard in Trematon
Castle, across the water. Drake, having seen that all was set
fair for him at Court, came down again to escort the treasure
by a train of pack-horses (memento of the road to Nombre de
Dios!), which the country people flocked to see on its way to
Sion House and thence into the Tower.
In London, Drake was the hero of the hour.
‘The Queen,’ complained Mendoza bitterly, ‘shows extra-
ordinary favour to Drake and never fails to speak to him when
she goes out in public, conversing with him a long time. She
says that she will knight him on the day she goes to see his ship.’
‘The people generally,’ wrote Stowe, ‘applauded his wonder-
ful long adventure and rich prizes. His name and fame became
admirable in all places, the people swarming daily in the streets
to behold him, vowing hatred to all that misliked him.’
He had become at a blow not only the most famous man in the
country, but the darling of the nation.
What Grenville thought of it all, we do not know; there is
utter and absolute silence: no word that we know ever escaped
him on the subject. But his actions are revealing. Not much
more than two months after Drake came into harbour, Gren-
ville sold Buckland, which he had made what it was and which
gave him such a favourable position in relation to Plymouth, to
two intermediaries, John Hele and Christopher Harris, who
paid him ^^3,400 for it.^ That money, so large a sum at once,
could only have come from Drake, to whom, within six months,
they passed the property over. So Drake reigned at Buckland
in his stead. There needed nothing to be done to the house, it
was now in such finished perfect state: so it comes that there was
^ Pat. Roll Eliz, 1209; Lady Eiliott-Drake, The Family and Heirs of Sir
F, Drake.
155
SIR RICHARD GRENVILLE OF THE REVEMGE
nothing added at Drake’s hand, save only a fine plaster mantel-
piece in the Tower room, on which are his arms, the two pole
stars granted him by the Queen, and the lovely crest of a ship in
full sail upon the globe.
For Grenville, it was in a way, a confession of defeat: some-
body else had made his South Sea Voyage, and made history
by it. Grenville withdrew from Plymouth, making way for
Drake who henceforward took first place there. The entries in
the town’s accounts relating to Grenville come to an end; the
messages go to and fro between Buckland and the town as much
as ever, but not to Grenville. It is Sir Francis and his lady whom
the town entertains to supper or to a banquet.^ As the years go
on, and we approach nearer to the crisis of 1588, the relations
between Plymouth and the house at Buckland becomes ever
closer and more intimate. From that time the Drakes have been
there ever since.
^ Worth, Calendar of Plymouth Municipal Records, for many entries, pp.
124-37.
156
CHAPTER VIII
CORNISH PIRACY AND LAW-BREAKING
As England swung into the eighties, the country moved for-
ward gradually, yet not imperceptibly, into the leading place
in the alignment of European forces against Spain. It was in-
deed high time. While Drake was marauding on the other side
of the world, the independence of the Kingdom of Portugal was
at its last gasp with the life of the old King Cardinal Henry,
last of his line; and inmiense preparations were being pushed
forward in Spain for Philip to enter upon his inheritance, the
farfiung Portuguese Empire. It was not only within the Iberian
Peninsula and upon the outer oceans that Spanish power
moved forward, but at the heart of Northern Europe, in the
Netherlands.
Here Don John of Austria had been succeeded by Alexander,
Prince of Parma, as diplomatic a politician as he was brilliant
in the field. Within a short time of his arrival he had succeeded
in dividing the Netherlands and setting the southern provinces
against the north. The States in despair were reduced to
offering their sovereignty to Anjou, the French candidate for
their overlordship. But the situation in France as between the
Catholic Guises, supporters now of Philip, and the Huguenot
party of Navarre, with the miserable Henry III in a precarious
equilibrium between them, kept France immobihsed so that no
support could be given to Anjou. This meant that the Nether-
lands were forced back upon the surreptitious aid that Elixa-
beth alone could give. It was an exposed and hazardous situa-
tion for this country; but fortunately it was one to which the
abilities of Elizabeth conspicuously rose, and for which her
wits were peculiarly adapted.
On 31 January 1580 the King-Cardinal died; Alva was
SIR RICHARD GRENVILLE OF THE REVENGE
placed in command of the large Spanish army which moved
upon the Portuguese frontier, as the great Admiral, Santa Cruz,
was of the fleet which blocked the Tagus. Within a few months
Philip was in possession of his new Kingdom, and Don An-
tonio, the claimant of the throne, an illegitimate son of a pre-
vious king and the candidate of the Portuguese people-™ for
what that was worth - a refugee in France. The whole of the
Portuguese dominions, with the singular and important ex-
ception of the Azores, were ready to accept Philip as King. Of
these islands, which occupied the most important strategic
position in the Atlantic in those days of sailing ships, for they
were the rendezvous of ships coming and going from the West
Indies and South America as well as from the East Indies, only
the largest, San Miguel, had accepted Philip and a Spanish
garrison. All the rest, Terceira, Graciosa, San Jorje, Pico,
Fayal, and at the extreme north-west, Flores (a name eloquent
of the future) held out for Don Antonio.
The Pretender had got away with some of the Grown jewels,
and in 1581 he was in England trying to induce Elizabeth to
support an expedition under his flag to seize the Azores as a
basis for future operations. Drake, at a loose-end after his tri-
umphant home-coming, was strongly in favour of it; and Wal-
singham, who was now sole Secretary and wishing to drive the
Queen into a forward policy, drew up a scheme under which
Drake, with six ships, eight pinnaces and a thousand men, was
to establish himself at Terceira under Don Antonio’s flag, thence
to operate against Spain’s sea-communications with the Indies
and to intercept the Plate Fleet. ^ It was an audacious scheme;
but it would have meant war, and Elizabeth had no mind for
embarking on a war single-handed against Spain, and without
a French alliance. Upon this the project foundered; France,
hopelessly divided against itself, was in no position to contem-
plate a war with Spain. The project of an English conquest of
the Azores was abandoned and Don Antonio went back to
France.
In the next year, however, he succeeded in getting together,
with French aid, a large armament under the command of
Corbett, Drake and the Tudor Navy, i , 347.
158
CORNISH PIRACY AND LAW-BREAKING
Philip Strozzi. It was badly organised and worse led; Strozzi,
under the influence of the old Mediterranean ideas of naval
tactics, had committed his fleet to grappling with a superior
force — the Spaniards being ably commanded by Santa Cruz.
The expedition was annihilated and Don Antonio’s shadow-
realm in the Azores collapsed. A curious consequence of the
battle was that the Spaniards conceived a very low opinion of
the fighting qualities of English ships; for they were convinced
that an English contingent had taken part — there could not
have been more than two or three merchant-ships of the smallest
size, if that — and that they had fled at the onset of the action. A
reverberating reversal of this opinion was one day to be de-
livered in the Azores! Santa Cruz advised an attack upon
England as not only feasible, but not to be feared; while in 1580,
Mendoza had written from London that the English fleet could
not withstand a quarter of the Spanish maritime forces. The
Prince of Parma was of the same opinion; it was known, he said,
that the Queen of England could not arm more than forty
ships; and as for the boasts of the English captains, he made
little of them, since at the battle of the Azores their ships were
the first to run away.^ So that this earlier action in the Azores
was not without its influence in bringing about that invasion of
England on the grand scale, whose defeat was a smashing blow
to the power and prestige of the Spanish Empire.
It was in this year 1580-1 that the first Jesuit mission reached
and was at work in this country. Campion and Parsons had
landed in June 1580, the most powerful combination of per-
sonalities of all that the Catholic Church sent into the country
throughout the reign; for Campion was an exquisite and saintly
character, of brilliant and persuasive gifts, while Parsons was
the very idea of a Jesuit, a subtle politician, intriguing and
pertinacious, a born controversialist, wary, impossible to lay
hand upon. These two remained at work in the country for a
^ Merriman, The Rise of the Spanish Empire, IV^, 516.
SIR RICHARD GRENVILLE OF THE REVEJVGE
year, reconciling people to the Church, secretly printing and
distributing literature. The very secrecy, and the success of it,
was what was frightening; nobody knew how many they were or
what effect they were having; there was a widespread conster-
nation. So it went on till Campion was captured in July 1581,
and Parsons escaped to the continent.
To arm itself with further measures of severity against
Catholics, the Government summoned Parliament in January
1581. It was the third and last session of the Parliament which
had been returned in 1572. The second session had been held in
1 575. There is nothing to show that Grenville took part in its
business, at any rate by serving on committees as he had done
in 1572; though his friends Edgcumbe and Sir Arthur Basset
were active enough in this way. Probably he was too much oc-
cupied with the preparations for the South Seas Voyage and
with the Castle of Corrforfs proceedings, to give much attention
to Parliamentary business in that year. Nor is there any record
either of his serving on committee in the 1580 session. Parlia-
ment passed an act greatly increasing the penalties for recu-
sancy; fines for non-attendance at church were raised to £20 a
month — a sum which the Arundells of Lanherne regularly paid
from this time onwards, lesser people who could not raise the
money frequently languished in prison; a year’s imprisonment
with a large fine was the penalty for saying mass; while anyone
who sought to withdraw men from the established church and
so from their allegiance was to be adjudged liable to the penal-
ties of treason. Having passed this, along with some lesser
legislation. Parliament was dissolved.
In Ireland, the Desmond Rebellion had become a war of
attrition; the Irish were holding out in the hope of foreign aid.
At length, in August 1580, when the rebellion had already
lasted a year, it came: a miserable contingent of 600 men,
mostly Italians with a company from North Spain, under the
Papal banner. They took up a position at Smerwick and en-
trenched themselves. As the weeks passed and no more rein-
forcements reached them from abroad, while the English forces
blockaded them in their hopeless position, it was obvious that
they could not hold out. They surrendered and to a man were
160
CORNISH PIRACY AND LAW-BREAKING
put to the sword, save for the officers, who were held to ransom.
This was at the order of the ferocious Lord Grey de Wilton,^ who
was in command.
Just immediately before, the order had been sent down to
Cornwall to raise another lOo men for service in Ireland; they
were to be embarked at Padstow or Ilfracombe, upon warning
being given from Ireland. At the same time, on 5 July, the
Council appointed Grenville and Godolphin to make provision
within Cornwall and Devon for certain quantities of grain,
butter and cheese for the English garrisons in Ireland.^ Gren-
ville and his fellow Justices performed their duty; but they felt it
necessary to register a protest: only two years before, 200 men
had been levied from Cornwall for Ireland; the brunt not only
of the Irish war but of the increasing necessity for defence of the
sea-coasts fell upon the south-western counties, and particu-
larly hard upon Cornwall.®
The deterioration in the European situation was reflected
once more in the increase of piracy on the high seas. Sir Julian
Corbett says:*
‘Ever since the Treaty of Bristol had cleared the air, the
English rovers had been growing more and more active. So en-
tirely were they in command of the Narrow Seas, so powerless
was Philip to protect his commerce even on his own coasts, that
the dangers of the northern navigation had come to be re-
garded in the counting-houses of Seville and Cadiz as an ordi-
nary trade-risk, and the practice had grown up amongst mer-
chants and under-writers of concealing their losses from their
ambassador in London in order to make terms behind his back
with the pirate’s agents. This impunity only increased their
daring and their profits.’ ^
Where the larger fish could so play about, there was plenty of
scope for the smaller fry. It meant a great deal of work for local
justices, particularly for those like Grenville who were qualified
for such matters. On 12 May 1580, we find the Council direct-
ing the Masters of the Court of Requests to make out a Com-
iv. Diet Nat. Biog. sub Arthur, Lord Grey. 1580-1, 7 ^- 9 *
® S.P. Dom. Ehz. 140, no. 21, ^ Corbett i, 327-fe.
SIR RICHARD GRENVILLE OF THE REVENGE
mission to Grenville and Richard Edgcumbe to take the oath of
Peter Edgcumbe and his answers to certain charges made
against him by William Hawkins.^ It appears that a ship of Sir
Henry RatclifFe’s had been stayed at Plymouth by Hawkins,
but upon information given to Edgcumbe that she was sus-
pected of piracy he had had her removed from Plymouth to
Stonehouse, where she had perished upon the rocks. Grenville
was to examine into the matter and report to the Council,
Two further piracy cases which it fell to Grenville to examine
into, in autumn 1581 and spring 1582, and of which the de-
tailed examinations remain, enable us to see with extraordi-
nary and sudden clarity the pathetic human figures engaged in
this business against that dark background of barbarity. After
Captain Hicks of Saltash, of great fame as a pirate. Captain
Piers of Padstow, who was no less renowned. He had had a
long run, the success of which was attributed to his mother being
a witch. It was just before his capture that he had his greatest
triumph; with his small bark of 35 tons and his consort of 18
tons, he blockaded the harbour of Rye so that, according to the
lamenting Mayor and jurats of the town, ‘none can go forth or
come in.’ A month later, he was taken ‘by chance’ in Stud-
land Bay, a favourite haunt; and the Council wrote to inform
Bedford of the apprehension of this ‘very notorious pirate born
in Cornwall, who hath an old mother dwelling at Padstow,
noted to be a witch, to whom by report the said Piers hath con-
veyed all such goods and spoils as he hath wickedly gotten at
the seas.’ ® Bedford was to make choice of someone to examine
Piers’s mother and ‘to discover whether she be a witch indeed,
and what spoils and goods she hath received from her son.’
Bedford made choice of Grenville and his cousins George
Grenville and Thomas Roscarrock to probe into the matter.
One can imagine them all stopping at Roscarrock, as Carnsew
depicted them in his Diary, ‘playing and trifling the time away’
- alas that what we have left of his Diary should stop short so
soon! But the examinations which they produced are a no less
human document, not without its element of silent tragedy.^
^ A.P.C. XII, 112. 2 Victoria County History of Cornwall^ 490.
® A,P.C. XIII, 227-9. ^ S.P. Dom. Eliz. 150, no. 49.
162
CORNISH PIRACY AND LAW-BREAKING
Piers William, Captain Johns’s old father, when examined,
confessed to having been aboard his son’s bark at Padstow with
the vicar of St. Merryn and one William Amy, but only for the
sake of procuring payment of a debt oi which his son owed
the latter; and he ‘saith that he never was more aboard his said
son, nor that he ever after did speak with his son . . . for it is
well known that he had renounced his said son for his lewdness.’
The mother, however, was made of sterner stuff, and admitted
that ‘she was often on shipboard with her said son.’ In spite of
denials, she was driven to admit that she had received a great
coverlet or rug from him which she had fetched from the water-
side at twelve o’clock one night and left in a bam at Padstow.
One John Bath deposed that ‘he being upon the shore, fast by
where Piers rode, saw Piers come a land with ten of his com-
pany with their swords, every man having a caliver; but he
saith he had no talk with him other than that Piers asked him
for some of the town’ - a friendly endearing touch.
‘The same night about xn of the clock he went to the water
side again and there met with Piers’s mother sitting by a mow
of com; and there he saw two men bringing a great rag fardled
up upon a staff between them . . . And this examinate did help
the said Piers’s mother to bring the same to the town and at the
town’s end he left the same in a bam with her and went his way.’
What a picture it is! - the water-side at Padstow, midnight,
and the old woman sitting in the shadow of a mow of corn
waiting to receive her son the pirate’s stolen goods.
John Pentire, searcher of Padstow, deposed that, aboard,
Piers had shown him
‘a purse where he thinks there was fifty pounds or thereabout in
gold, and that the said Piers had also a bag about him of silver
containing by estimation £20: Also he saw in a chest that Piers
opened before him by chance, a bag containing by estimation
£60. And he saith he saw no plate there saving one silver bowl
wherein they drank.’
Henry Horn’s wife gave evidence that her husband coming
from Bristol was aboard Piers at Lundy, and ‘had of him a
163
SIR RICHARD GRENVILLE OF THE REVEKGE
parrot, a little firkin of soap and two calivers. The parrot, the
Vice-Admiral had; the calivers she hath in her house.’ Finally
the vicar of Padstow testified that ‘the young Piers’s mother was
at Bodmin at the time of the last Sessions, and there had with
her XV ounces of plate and sold the same there to a goldsmith
being one of Plymouth’; - but before she received the money a
seizure of the plate was made in the Queen’s name, though the
cover of a double gilt cup was restored to her, it being her
property apparently. The vicar also deposed to Piers’s de-
livering calico to certain persons while in the roads, ^ among
others to the vicar of St. Merryn, which vicar was aboard the
said Piers’s ship’ - a scandalous betrayal of one parson by
another.
It is pleasant to record that when Grenville and his fellow
Justices inquired of ‘some of the better sort and of most credit
of the town of Padstow and of the said parish . . . whether they
know or ever heard that Anne Piers of Padstow did practise
witchcraft or had the name to be a witch,’ they answered in the
negative; for one knows what might have happened to the poor
woman if it had been otherwise. Meanwhile the son had been
taken to Dorchester gaol to await trial; whence he escaped ‘by
the corruption of the keeper,’ but before he could embark was
taken ‘by the great pains and industry’ of that scapegrace
Henry Howard, Lord Howard of Bindon’s son - a very suitable
occupation for him.^ Piers was put on trial and afterwards, it
appears, executed.
The investigations at Padstow must have made their own
small sensation at the time, but nothing compared to that of the
next piracy-case Grenville was called into, for it concerned no
less a person than the chief Commissioner for Piracy himself.
Sir John Killigrew of Arwennack, Captain of Pendennis Castle,
had been appointed at the head of the Commission for Piracy
in Cornwall in September 1577. At Court he was very well
placed for influence, since his brother William was Groom of
the Chamber to the Queen and Henry, another brother, was a
leading diplomat constantly sent on missions to France, Scot-
land, the Netherlands and the Empire. At Arwennack, by the
^ A.P.C, isSi-s, 272, 355.
164
CORNISH PIRACY AND LAW-BREAKING
water-side within the crook of the headland of Pendennis, Sir
John was very conveniently, too conveniently, placed in relation
to the sea. It was, alas, his temptation and the cause of his
downfall. For Sir John at home in Cornwall, whatever he may
have been in the presence of his grand (if Puritan) relatives at
Court, was a genial old ruffian, fast degenerating into an un-
mitigated nuisance. He kept up a large establishment and
spent freely; he alternately terrorised and cajoled the countiy-
side and bullied his lesser neighbours; he had got badly into
debt and took more and more to dubious courses. He had long
had a hand in trafficking with the pirates around the coast,
himself the responsible authority for putting them down. Now,
Sir John, driven to desperate straits, took to a little piracy on his
own.
On New Year’s Day 1582, a Spanish ship the Marie of San
Sebastian, 140 tons burden, was driven on her way down Chan-
nel by stress of weather into Falmouth Haven. ^ When she ar-
rived her masts were cut down, and what with repairs and then
lack of wind, she was forced to remain some six days. On the
seventh, at midnight, she was entered by a number of Killi-
grew’s servants and other Penryn men, her goods rifled and the
ship carried out to sea. The pinnace which had carried the men
out to her, so it was said, was Sir John’s own. Upon hearing
the protest of de Chavis, the merchant-owner, and de Orio, the
ship’s master, the Council at once wrote to Sir John to come up.
He went up to London, remained there in cover for a while, and
when he thought it safe, returned home to Cornwall.
Sir John must have thought that in London the coast was
clear; certainly he had taken what steps he could as regards the
regrettable occurrence, before leaving home. There had been a
very speedy investigation of the affair by the Commissioners for
Piracy, with himself at the head.^ It was perhaps not surprising
that the story they elicited was hard to make out; but still it
looked suspicious. As regards the whereabouts of Sir John’s
servants that Sunday night, they were oddly innocent. Henry
Kendall and John Hawldns, two of them, agreed that they had
spent from nine o’clock at night to midnight at Penryn, in the
1 A.P.C., XIII, 315, 356. ^ S.P. Doin. Eliz. 152, no. 5.
165
SIR RICHARD GRENVILLE OF THE REVENGE
house of one Bess Moore; they were there so long, because the
lady was 'a drying one of their shirts’ : the lady agreed with this,
though she did not remember whose. Then they went straight
home to Arwennack ‘without any man calling of them.’ Before
leaving Arwennack that evening, they had tied the pinnace to
the stake outside the house, it being then half-ebb. But Am-
brose Cox when examined, said that one Timothy Duncalsc’s
boy knew who carried the boat to and fro the Spanish ship in the
harbour the night she was taken away, and that he had named
two of Sir John’s servants, Bewse and Kendall.
It was evidently necessary to probe further into the affair.
Sir John who had ridden from Falmouth immediately before the
capture and stayed away while the ship was carried off to Balti-
more in Ireland and there disposed of, now returned to the
West but remained in hiding. The Council wrote in March to
Bedford as Lord Lieutenant in the West, either to go into the
affair himself or to appoint his deputies to inquire thoroughly
into it, ‘to do their best endeavour to come by Sir John him-
self’ and to take bonds of him in a thousand pounds to make ap-
pearance before the Council. Bedford transferred his authority
to Grenville and Edmund Tremayne, both of them experienced
in such matters. They held their inquiry at Penryn on 27 and
28 April; it was a very full story, with many picturesque details
that they elicited in the end.^
Ambrose Cox, the keeper of the tavern in Penryn to which
the Spaniards resorted the night before the capture, deposed
that two servants of Sir John’s had come to him at nine o’clock
that night, requiring him ‘as so commanded by their master,
that the Spaniards should go presently aboard, alleging the
cause to be, for that there was sickness in the ship.’ Henry
Piper of Penryn, to whose inn they that carried the ship away
often resorted, had come to him that night and required the
return of the boat which he had lent to the Spaniards for a
groat a day; ‘for if the Spaniards happen to be robbed and
carried away,’ he said, ‘it will be said that my boat doth put
them aboard that shall do it. And so shall I forfeit my boat to
the Vice-Admiral.’ Henry Piper could not be called himself, for,
^ S.P. Dom. Eliz. 153, no. 37.
CORNISH PIRACY AND LAW-BREAKING
as a note in the margin has it - ‘Nota that this Piper is now
gone to the sea with Don Antonio’ - a tiny tell-tale bit of evi-
dence which shows that there were at any rate some English-
men with Don Antonio in his expedition this year to the Azores,
One wonders whether this Gornishman ever came back again;
or whether he was one of the hundreds of sailors hanged by
Santa Cruz after his victory.
Next there came evidence that considerable parcels of holland
cloth had been handed about the district. One John Bailie of
Mawnan had had twenty yards sent to him by Mistress Wolver-
ston, Sir John’s daughter, in part payment of a debt. Then it
was found that various persons, including one of the constables,
had become sureties for Sir John’s servants, Henry Kendall and
John Hawkins, who were chiefly implicated; and that it was
Lady Killigrew who had entreated them to it, by her son Mr.
Knyvett who gave them his word to discharge them. Armed
with these promises, Kendall and Hawkins had previously de-
nied all knowledge of the affair. But being brought face to face
with Mrs. Wolverston, who had deposed to receiving a bolt of
holland cloth from Kendall and two leather chairs, Kendall
confessed all.
He admitted
‘tiiat he and John Hawkins did carry aboard about a dozen
persons that went away with the Spanish ship, who met alto-
gether at the lime kiln. And after the setting of them aboard,
this examinate and the said Hawkins came back with the boat
and moored her unto the stake by the smith’s bridge near Sir
John Killigrew’s house.’
Then came the tale of cloth which had been rifled from the
ship; four bolts each for Lady Killigrew, himself and Hawkins,
one bolt each for the maids of the house, ‘old Renodon and
long William, servants of that house,’ young Mistress Killigrew,
Mrs. Wolverston, Mr. Knyvett and eighteen yards for Piper’s
wife. He had also brought ashore six leather chairs, one each
for Lady Killigrew, and Mrs. Killigrew, two each for Mrs.
Wolverston and Mr. Knyvett. The false evidence of the poor
folk was breaking down: Bess Moore now denied her former
167
SIR RICHARD GRENVILLE OF THE REVENGE
Story protecting Kendall and Hawkins, while Mrs. Piper ad-
mitted to receiving a parcel of holland cloth, which Hawkins
Tetched out of a ditch ... by the way as they went’ and which
she was to keep safe for her Ladyship.
John Hawkins thereupon made a full confession, from which
it appeared that
‘he was not made privy to this enterprise of taking the ship till
the same Sunday at night, after that he came from the Road.
Then my Lady Killigrew brake it unto him . . . And when
they came aboard the ship they bound the Spaniards. But two
of the Flemings that were aboard the ship were agreed before to
go with this company and help to bind the Spaniards and had
put away all their weapons before’.
“ an interesting indication of how national feeling could be
worked upon in such cases. There were some thirteen or four-
teen Spaniards aboard, whom they carried out to sea beyond
the bar, before they began to cut open the packs of holland. It
appeared that Lady Killigrew was the leading spirit in the
undertaking, led on by the report which the Flemings put about
of the ship’s great wealth; when the stuff came in ‘she found
herself very ill contented that it was of no more value.’ Haw-
kins confessed that she
‘did often deal with him to keep this matter secret, and took an
oath of him to that purpose, saying for her own part she would
never confess it. And she, misliking that any of the chairs should
be brought into her house, gave order to this examinate to put
them in a cask and bury them in the garden.’
What a picture of the times it affords! - it is not very often
that the documents which remain permit such a view into the
heart of an affair like that and the motives and feelings of those
who took part in it.
II
This period in Grenville’s life - he was now, in 1581, in his
fortieth year - was one of a peaceable and uneventful enough
activity. He was kept busy, and increasingly so, by all sorts of
168
CORNISH PIRACY AND LAW-BREAKING
private and public affairs. He was an active and hard-working
man, the leading figure in his county, a public servant who came
more and more to be relied upon by the Government in the
west. Soon we shall find him called in to give his advice in a
wider sphere. All the same, to a man of Grenville’s ambition
and temper, we cannot but think it must have been a source
of disappointment to him that so far no opportunity of render-
ing a first-class service, of making a great name, had yet pre-
sented itself. It may not be fanciful to suppose that something
of the passionate outbursts that were characteristic of him may
be due to the effects of disappointment working upon a natur-
ally impatient temper. The one great opportunity he had
forged for himself, the projected South Seas Voyage, had been
denied him and its fruits had fallen to another; there is evidence
later that he bore no good will to Drake, who was more fortun-
ate. Very curiously, Grenville’s great chance came when Drake
was in disgrace and retirement; it was almost too late, so that
no wonder Grenville snatched at it so avidly, and in the event
achieved death and fame together.
These middle years were full of the ordinary business of a
country gentleman of the time, private responsibilities, public
duties, law-suits, disputes, attendance at sessions and in Parlia-
ment, things which in themselves give us a picture of the life of
the time. On 15 September 1580, his friend John Arundell of
Trerice died: that delightful mansion of Cornish elvan, of which
something still remains, time- and weather-beaten, near Newlyn
East in the church of which Arundell was buried. He left a
large family of children by his two wives; and by his will he
appointed Grenville, with Sir John Arundell of Lanherne, Sir
John Chichester and others as overseers. ^ Since Sir John
Arundell could hardly act now, as he was a recusant and much
away from the county, while Chichester lived in Devon, the
responsibility fell mainly upon Grenville. The young Arundells,
John, Dorothy and Mary, became his wards. ^
Various law-cases at this period, though it is hard to come at
the truth of them, portray Grenville in a less favourable, though
no less characteristic attitude. At Michaelmas 1580, one
1 P.G.C. 40 Arundell 2 Pat. Rolls Eliz. 1 198, 1200.
169
SIR RICHARD GRENVILLE OF THE REVENGE
William Spencer sued Grenville in the Exchequer. Spencer was
the lessee of some of the extensive woods attached to Launceston
Castle; he had assigned his lease to Anthony Garew, who some
five or six years before, had conveyed it to Grenville. That
would be about 1574-55 when we found Grenville much
engaged with property transactions, no doubt to raise money
for his voyage. At any rate he had cut down and sold the trees,
on those slopes on the steep hill going out of Launceston by the
Castle gate, and so taken, as the plaintiff said, the whole benefit
of the lease without paying any rent. Grenville’s answer was
that he had bought the lease from Carew discharged of the rent,
and that it was by ‘the folly of the said complainant’ that he got
no assurance beforehand from Carew.’- It seems to have been
sufficient.
We have already seen how, in the case of Thomas Hilling of
Bodmin v. Grenville and Christopher Walker in the Star Cham-
ber, Grenville was not averse to using the Stannary jurisdiction
to serve his turn.^ Whether technically right or no, Grenville
seems to have been justified in bringing Hilling to book. He was
a noisy braggart; in addition to his insulting remarks about Sir
John St. Leger, he stirred up trouble at the tavern in Bodmin
kept by George Mapowder, a tenant of Walker’s. This gave
Walker his opportunity, who took him to various justices in
the neighbourhood to make out a warrant against him. When
this failed, according to Hilling, ‘the said Walker then called to
mind that the said Sir Richard Grenville was capital enemy of
your said subject and was the likeliest man in that country to
favour and farther any action against your said subject,’ took
horse and rode off to Stowe to procure a warrant. Sir Richard,
being at home, made out the order and appointed a number of
persons to execute it in as public a manner as possible and to
bring Hilling ‘strongly guarded as if he were a felon before the
said Sir Richard at his house.’
Next day, when they all arrived at Stowe, Sir Richard ‘mind-
ing to prevent the testimony of Malachias Mallett who came
as a witness on Hilling’s behalf, ‘sent forth one of his servants to
^ Exchequer Bills and Answers Eliz. Cornwall, no. 24.
® V. ante p. 150; and Star Chamber Proceedings, Eliz. H 6/16.
170
CORNISH PIRACY AND LAW-BREAKING
command the said Malachias Mailett to stay without the doors
and not to come into the said house until he was sent for.’ When
Hilling was brought in, he was ‘so threatened, taunted, and re-
viled, the said Sir Richard calling him rascal” “rogue” and
other opprobrious names and threatening him to make him flee
his country, that your said subject a good space might not be
suffered to speak or answer one word.’ One can imagine the
scene: it sounds veracious enough, when one considers Gren-
ville’s temper and Hilling’s previous provocation. On Hilling’s
refusal to find sureties for good behaviour, he was committed to
Launceston gaol where he cooled his heels for three weeks. At
the end of March the Council wrote to Bedford committing the
whole affair to his judgment,^ The judgment went entirely
against Hilling; and on receiving Bedford’s report, the Council
called the pertinacious man before them and committed him to
the Marshalsea until he had put in his bonds for good be-
haviour. 2 Moreover, since it was considered he had demeaned
himself ill towards the Justices of the Peace in Cornwall, at
which they had written their protest to the Council, he was
ordered upon release to make open submission before the Bench
there at the next Assizes,. So was law and order vindicated, and
authority in the person of Grenville backed up by the Lord
Lieutenant whose good opinion of him we know, and by the
Council no less.
Two years later, in June 1584, we find another Star Chamber
case in which Grenville and some of his supporters were defend-
ants; this time a conflict about property, which had led as usual
to some disorder.® In sixteenth-century society, which was even
more primitive than our own and where human beings acted
and reacted more spontaneously, more vigorously and with
a still more infantile unself-consciousness, no dispute seems to
have been capable of being settled without disorder. This was
a dispute between one Richard Taverner of St. Teath, a gentle-
man, and John Stidson, a retainer of Grenville’s, over some
property in the parishes of St. Teath, Advent and Blisland.
Grenville had naturally, but according to Taverner by undue
^ A,P.C. r^8i~2, 367. ^ ibid. 416.
® Star Chamber Proceedings, Eliz. 5T 13/21, and 19 39-
171
SIR RICHARD GRENVILLE OF THE REVEMGE
means, supported his retainer. Taverner had leased the pre-
mises to one Saunders, and to try his title had served a process
upon Stidson, which was to be tried at the next Assizes, 1583.
According to Taverner, Stidson had held up the due course of
law and was backed by Grenville in so doing;
‘the said Stidson, being a retained servant with one Sir Eichard
Grenville, Knight, a man of great countenance and power in
these parts, and having received the badge and livery of the
said Sir Richard Grenville and usually ever since weareth the
same, being neither his domestical servant, nor any way toler-
ated nor allowed by your Majesty’s laws or statutes to take any
such badge or livery.’
He complained that Sir Richard had influenced the sheriff and
under-sheriff to return among the jury persons favourable to
Stidson’s cause and even ‘hath conferred and instructed the said
jurors or some or one of them ... to think well of the cause.’
Knowing what we do of Elizabethan justice, and of Gren-
ville’s behaviour in the Mayne case, it does not sound at all
unlikely. Taverner pleaded that the judgment had gone in his
favour, but that Grenville had dealt with Richard Carew, the
sheriff, not to execute the writ. Then Stidson had been advised
to take away the doors of the house in dispute and to expel the
plaintiff, so that if he resisted he would be indicted under the
Statute of 8 Henry VI; Grenville was to be present as a Justice
of the Peace, consenting unto the same. This was accordingly
done in April last; Sir Eichard was present ‘with a great multi-
tude all armed,’ and requiring the plaintiff to yield possession,
had read the Riot Act. Sir Richard had ‘brought an hourglass
with him and did hang the same up in the view of your said
subject upon a pole’; while Stidson on the feast of St. Philip and
St. James, ‘in the time of divine service came to the parish
churches of St. Teath and Michaelstowe and willed the persons
there assembled to leave off service and prepare themselves in
armour to expel your subject giving out that the said Sir
Richard should bear them out therein.’ And so he, the plaintiff,
was ejected.
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CORNISH PIRACY AND LAW-BREAKING
Grenville’s answer was that Stidson
‘was one of the first men that served this defendant in his youth,
which was about six and twenty years past . . . And so con-
tinued in his service until he married; since which time because
this defendant found the said Stidson a trusty and faithful serv’ant,
he appointed Stidson bailiff of some of his lands and tenements.’
He declared that as a Justice of the Peace, he had been present
at sessions at Bodmin when an indictment was found against
the plaintiff upon the Statute of 8 Henry VI, for forcing an
entry and disseizing Stidson of the land. The Justices awarded
Stidson a writ of restitution, but the under-sheriff wrote to
Grenville that when he went to execute it, ‘certain of the persons
who kept the said tenements with force did shoot guns at him
and made great resistance’; he had therefore called upon Gren-
ville as a Justice to assist him. ‘Coming thither they found the
said messuage farded and defended with a multitude of people
in warlike manner in such sort as the like hath seldom been seen
in these parts.’ Grenville had accordingly
‘caused the statute of rebellion to be read . . . and the more to
terrify the said lawless and rude people, the said defendant hav-
ing a. dial about him and the sun there shining, took forth his
dial and showed to them by the same what the hour of the day
then was, advising them not to continue in their riotous and
rebellious manner more hours than the statute required.’
He thought this wise, for if he and the under-sheriff ‘upon their
first coming had used violence or force in putting forth the said
unruly persons, this defendant feareth lest some inconvenience
would have happened.’ This apparently was enough; after a
little they quickly laid down their arms and allowed the writ to
be executed. One cannot but admire the gesture and its effec-
tiveness; Grenville evidently understood how to handle people.
But it is the gesture that remains to us long after, the centuries
passing: certain persons of great force have the gift of expressing
themselves in so immediate and memorable a way, leaving the
imprint of their personality upon time and circumstance in their
action. It is not different in kind, though less memorable, than
SIR RICHARD GRENVILLE OF THE REVENGE
Grenville's refusing to leave the Revenge^ it isonly a little more cir-
cumscribed: an unruly mob in a Cornish parish, armed and pre-
pared to resist, while Grenville takes out Ms dial, shows them what
hour of the day it then was, "the sun there shining,’ until quietened
they go home. What children, what fools, human beings are!
The Council Registers are missing from this time, 1582 to
1586, years which cover a very important period in Grenville’s
life, the first voyage to Virginia. A good deal that might throw
light on both his public and private activities is therefore miss-
ing. He seems to have been involved, in his private capacity,
in more trouble in this last year before the Virginia voyage, this
time over the case of the parson of Kilkhampton and the ejection
of his wife from the parsonage. It led to some disorder and
riotous assembly, with Grenville at the centre of it. Again wefind
him resorting conveniently to the Stannary jurisdiction in deal-
ing with his opponents, and again having to exculpate himself,
which as usual he doesvery plausibly, with thehigher authorities.
The person whom Grenville had presented to the rectory of
Kilkhampton on the death of his great-uncle in 1 580, was Euse-
bius Paget, already well-known as a Puritan. We heard of him
first in the company of Grenville, supping very pleasantly at
the expense of the town of Plymouth.^ Paget had begun in the
world as a chorister at Christ Church, Oxford, where according
to Fuller, "he broke his right arm with carrying the pax’; so
that in later years he was in the habit of signing himself "lame
Eusebius Paget’ ~ clearly a suitable subject for Puritanism. At
the time of his presentation, he had informed Grenville, as
patron, and Woottpn, the Bishop of Exeter, that "he could not
with quietness of conscience use some rites, ceremonies and
orders appointed in the service-book’; on this understanding
he accepted the charge and was inducted.^ No doubt he was
godly, and his ministrations were apparently popular; he was a
preacher, travelling indefatigably up and down the neighbour-
ing country. But there was, as always with such devout persons,
a vein of self-righteousness in him which roused others of his
clerical brethren to fury.
^ V. ante p, 146. 2 Neal, History of the Puritans ^ i, 297.
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CORNISH PIRACY AND LAW-BREAKING
The Cornish clergy were certainly in an interesting condition
at this time: many of them were pluralists and most were ignor-
ant. The Rector of Philleigh, so the Puritans said, was ‘a good
dicer and carder both night and day’ ; the vicar of Lanteglos-by-
Fowey was ‘a common gamester and the best wrastler in Corn-
wall’; the vicar of St. Issey was ‘a common dicer and burnt in
the hand for felony and full of all iniquity’; the vicar of Gulval
was 'a drunkard and hath lately married a common harlot.’
Of the Rector of Week St. Mary it was said, ‘he keepeth his
house for debt; he payed so much for it (i.e. the living) to Sir
Richard Grenville.’ Such were the Cornish clergy according to
the brethren in Christ, the Puritans.^
A person such as Paget who set himself up for righteousness,
rendered himself a conspicuous target, and he opened himself
to his enemies by not conforming to the Prayer Book, omitting
to use certain portions of the prescribed services, and objecting
to the surplice and the sign of the cross in baptism. Just at this
time, the Queen who had no love for the Puritans appointed
Whitgift as Archbishop, a strong disciplinarian, to reduce them
to order. Paget was informed against and brought before the
High Commission; on refusing to follow the prescribed forms in
every particular and appealing to his bishop’s promise to refrain
from urging him, he was suspended. Paget proceeded to show
the stuff these fanatics were made of, by producing a list of
articles against Wootton, the Bishop of Exeter, charging him
with never visiting the whole diocese in person, nor attending
at preachings, ‘yea he will be in his bed, or be in his stable
among his horses, or in his kitchen among his serv’ants, when
there are sermons in the Church hard by his house, and he not
come at them’ (unpardonable offence!); and winding up by
charging him with nepotism, and that ‘he had two harlots
begotten with child in his own house, which accused two of his
men, and none of them brought to penance, yea the men do yet
wait upon him,’ ^ It was perhaps a pity that he could not accuse
the Bishop of begetting them himself; but there was something
in his charge. The Bishop was under the unfortunate necessity
^ T/t^ Seconde Parte of a Register (ed. Peel), j i, 98-1 10.
2 Lansdowne MSS. 45, no. 412.
175
SIR RICHARD GRENVILLE OF THE REVENGE
of making a lengthy explanation. But to Paget it was of no
avail; he was put out of his living.
Grenville must have been sympathetic to Paget in the first
instance to have presented him to it. But there is no evidence
that he was actively Puritan in his sympathies, as Drake and
Hawkins were. He was a Protestant, and by now probably a
convinced one; but he was a supporter of the Grown and of the
Church as by law established. He was probably the less reluct-
ant to see Paget put out of his rectory, since he had now another
candidate of his own, a cousin, a certain William Tucker. But
though Eusebius had gone, Mrs. Paget was by no means so
easily disposed of. She had but recently recovered from child-
birth - the minister’s quiver was full of arrows - and filling the
parsonage-house with her friends and connections, including
two Scots, David Black and his wife, and one Fullerton, she
determined to remain on. She had a whole party of sym-
pathisers in the country-side, headed by John Kempthorne (of
the delightful manor of Tonacombe) —
‘one John Kempthorne,’ Grenville wrote scornfully, ‘whom Mr.
Paget called his Justice of peace, otherwise a mean person, came
thither, who not only advised them to stay there, but further
offered himself to assist them with his authority, which he hath
only almost used as an engine of small account to oppugn me
in these causes with Mr. Paget.’ ^
One day in the winter of 1584-5 Grenville arrived at Stowe
from his house at Bideford; the day before being Sunday, there
had been a sermon in the parish church, and Fullerton and the
inhabitants of the parsonage not coming, the churchwardens
sent to ask them why not. Mrs. Paget’s supporters barricaded
themselves in, put the house into a state of defence and appealed
to Kempthorne as a Justice to help them. Grenville upon this
warned them to depart, and procured a precept from the Stan-
nary Court to arrest them as trespassers. Under this he arrested
Kempthorne and Black’s wife, and himself went - so he put it -
with a company of gentlemen to reason with Mrs. Paget, who
was in no mood for reasoning and challenged him to throw her
^ S.P. Dom. Eliz. 176, no. 58.
176
CORNISH PIRACY AND LAW-BREAKING
out of the house. Grenville stated afterwards that he had offered
her to remain there for a month or two or three, pro\ ided she
gave up some room to the incoming incumbent, Ivir. Tucker,
and would accept the same at his hand.
The account of these proceedings we derive from Grenville
himself; for the rumour of them reached the Court - somebody
had been busy reporting them - and he thought it necessaiy^ for
his credit with Walsingham and other Puritan sympathisers
who were his friends, to make a full explanation. He was just
about to depart on his voyage to Virginia, and would certainly
need Walsingham’s support and good opinion in the future, as
he had had it in the past. Untrue reports had been put about
to lower his credit with sundry honourable personages, he wrote
to Walsingham:
‘whereas I being now prepared to commit myself to the plea-
sure of God on the seas, having a desire not to leave so great
an infamy as this laid on my poor name unanswered before my
departure, have thought it convenient even in plain sort to set
down to your honour and other my honourable friends the
whole and true course of all my dealings in this behalf.’
He wrote out a full account of his proceedings, claiming that
he was entirely within his rights, since Paget had been lawfully
deprived, and in the vacancy the living lapsed to him as lord
of the manor and patron of the parish; and protesting that he
had acted with courtesy and politeness to Mrs. Paget. His
account was subscribed by various persons, Richard Prideaux,
Richard Bellew, Arthur and Diggory Tremayne, John Harris -
almost all of them his relatives. Having cleared his conscience,
or, what was more important, re-established his credit with his
friends at Court, he was free to depart for Virginia.
Perhaps Grenville protested too much, for in all the affairs of
these years there is an element of violence which one cannot
fail to observe. It was not entirely due to the rawness and
crudity of the time; Francis Godolphin for instance managed his
affairs in the westernmost part of the county with smoothness
and ease. It was Grenville’s way of doing things; we cannot but
regard it as in part the character of the man.
177
M
CHAPTER IX
THE JUSTICE OF THE PEACE
In spite of the absence of Council Registers for these years, and
with them information about many of Grenville’s activities,
there is evidence to show a constant increase in the pressure of
public business upon him. Nor is it so miscellaneous in char-
acter. As the years move on to the great crisis of the war with
Spain, we find him more and more caught up into the work of
organising the defence of the country, overlooking the annual
musters in Cornwall, surveying forts and likely places of descent
upon the sea-coast, superintending the building and repair of
fortifications, in which last sphere he had come to be regarded
as an expert. Evidence of his private avocations becomes, if
anything, rarer even than before: no word of his family, not a
single letter to his wife has survived, hardly a mention of his
business transactions which must have been considerable.
In 1583 we find him serving on two special Commissions of
the Exchequer; the first, in June, to inquire concerning debtors
of the Crown within the county - a more or less routine inquiry
set on foot by the Exchequer from time to time.^ The second
was more interesting; it concerned the lands which had been
given in time past for the endowment of a chantry in the parish
church of St. Michael Penkivel.^ It brings back vividly to mind
the not far-distant time when mass was celebrated in these
Cornish churches with all the old rites, the annual obits and
commemorations of the faithful departed. The manor of
Fentongollan had been left by one Trenowth for an obit in the
Church of St. Michael Penkivel on St. Gregory’s day. John
Harry deposed before Grenville at Launceston, that mass used
to be celebrated on that day with great solemnity. John Michell
^ Exchequer K. R. Special Commission 139. * ibid. 541.
178
THE JUSTICE OF THE PEACE
of Truro 'saith that about fifty years past he, this examiuate,
repaired with his mother to the parish of St. Michael Penkivel
and saw to the number of — people and upwards and mass [was
said].’ Every priest coming to the mass received a groat for
his attendance; and there was usually great concourse in the
church on that day. The scene appeals movingly to the histor-
ical imagination: the faithful people, the priests hurrying
along the tangled woodland lanes of that Roseland parish to
church.
In December he was appointed along with Bernard Drake to
examine into a case of suspected popery at Great Torrington ^
- one finds him rarely employed in the capacity of a Justice now
in Devon, his work in Cornwall occupied so much of his time.
One Alexander Barry examined before him, deposed that
William Edmunds, servant to Mr. Chappell, had brought with
him to church at Great Torrington, a popish catechism by
Laurence Vaux, a well-known Catholic frequently imprisoned,
a relative of Lord Vaux’s. Edmunds protested that he brought
the book from Mr. Coplestone’s, who was further inculpated by
Barry for his views on the sacraments; for he held the suspicious
view that though only two were essential, the other five Vere
sacraments and had their mysteries and significations as matri-
mony did express the unity betwixt Christ and his church.’ A
distinctly high-church view; but nothing further emerged to
incriminate Goplestone, which would have been a serious
matter, for he was the head of a family important in the county.
Among the State Papers there has survived too a certificate of
this year, from Michaelmas 1 582 to July 1 583, of the amounts
of corn which had been exported abroad under Gren\ilie’s
license as Commissioner.^ The quantities were considerable: it
must have been a year of plenty or permission would not have
been given, for the Tudors were guided by the conception of the
well-being of the whole in their economic policy. What is re-
markable is that though some went to Ireland, most of it was
exported to Spain; and it is amusing to find that the biggest
individual shipment (280 quarters of wheat and a little barley)
was made from Padstow by John Sparke, the Plymouth mer-
^ S.P. Dom. Eliz. 164, nos. 59-61. ® ibid. 161, no. 42,
*79
SIR RICHARD GRENVILLE OF THE REVENGE
chant who went with Hawkins on his second voyage to Guinea
and the West Indies in 1564, and wrote the delightful account
of it in Hakluyt’s Principal J^avigations,
By this time, he was much more occupied with the prepara-
tions for national defence, in the widest, not merely a negative
siense: he was naturally drawn along with the ablest and most
energetic leaders of the nation into the work of keying up the
spirit of the people for the struggle to come. In the summer of
1583, the Council ordered the Cornish Justices to take the
Musters again; it was very short notice, and as the county
extends a great way in length, they reported, there were many
deficiencies ‘too intricate to trouble your Honours withal.’ ^
And so they gave the gentlemen of the county a new day, till
6 November to remedy defaults in the musters, by which time
they would be sufficiently provided. At the same time the
Council ordered the leading Justices to make a return of all the
parks and commons in the county, evidently with a view to
discovering what number of horses it could support in case of
war. They returned a full report, and wrote with Grenville at
the head,
‘we have signified to your Honours of the barrenness of our said
commons, being wet moors in some part. And for the most
part very dry heath-grounds, altogether unable and unmeet to
nourish and breed such mares and horses as should be service-
able for the wars.’
Cornwall was at this time very poorly off for horses and cattle:
the local breeds were undersized and in number very few.
Only the gentry, and a few of the most substantial yeomen were
in a position to supply a horse in case of need.
On 6 October, orders were issued by the Government for the
survey and repair of forts along the coasts, in Essex, the Isle of
Sheppey, Dorset, the Isle of Wight, and in Devon and Corn-
wall.^ For the last a Commission was made out to Bedford,
Grenville, Godolphin and others.® They were to survey the
forts, castles, platforms on the sea-coast, and to place fit persons
S.P. Dom. Eliz., 162, no. 38. * ibid. 163, no. 5.
8 Westley Manning MSS.: Elizabethan Exhibition Catalogue, no. 371.
180
THE JUSTICE OF THE PEACE
to look after them; at the same time they were to have 'some
care and foresight not to increase her Majesty’s charges at this
time, but with that shall be very needful, in respect her Majesty’s
charges (even for this kind of service) is like to be very great
through the realm.’ It has been well said that finance was the
essence of Elizabeth’s success; without the constant and in-
creasing pressure of the Government for strict watchfulness as
to every item of expenditure, English resources would have been
fatally dissipated as Spain’s were. It was 'the disparity between
Elizabeth’s resources and achievements’ which was 'the miracle
of her age.’ ^
It was clear that the main responsibility in the work would
fall upon Grenville; Bedford’s name was placed at the head of
the Commission, but he hardly ever crossed the Cornish border,
though he was frequently enough in Devonshire. On 9 Decem-
ber, the Council wrote to Grenville specially to view the state
of the castle at Tintagel - that fantastic headland stronghold
going back into remote antiquity. At the end of the month, he
reported: ^
'I presently rode thither and sending for him that hath the
charge thereof went up into it. At the entry of the island there
is a door and certain walls standing with certain ruinate rooms
which were lodgings and may yet with some small charges be
repaired and made fit to be dwelt in. From the utter great gate
on the main there hath been within the memory of some that
dwell thereby a drawbridge which is now gone, by reason that
the seas have undermined and fretted out some part of the
rocks whereon the bridge stood.’
He goes on to give a complete and practised survey of the island,
the state of its fortifications and landing-places and makes a
number of suggestions for repairs. This was evidently a strong
point with him: we find him being used shortly by the Govern-
ment to give advice about the important works going forward
at Dover at the entrance to the harbour.
Then he goes on to consider the keeping of the castle, for
Neale, Queen Elizabeth^ 284. * S.P. Dom. Eliz. 164, no. 62.
181
SIR RICHARD GRENVILLE OF THE REVENGE
‘the Isle itself as it is now left, is a dangerous receptacle for an
evil affected person that shall attempt to take it, either by land
or sea, for he who now hath the charge of the castle and the
island, is one John Hendey a very tall young man and one that
is thought to be evil affected in religion; his father now dead who
had the charge before him, was accounted a papist and accused
and long imprisoned in the gaol for seditious words against her
Majesty; this young man’s mother known to be a papist and not
caring for her bonds wherein she stood bound to her Majesty’s
use to appear before us at the Sessions as a recusant for not
coming to the Church, forfeiting the same, hath forsaken this
house and her county and is gone to a house of Sir John
Arundell’s in Dorsetshire called Chideock, where she and many
such are received and harboured, and where this John Hendey
hath of late been with her, coming and going this Michaelmas
term last to and from London where he hath had access to Sir
John Arundell, no cause known.’
It was true that Sir John Arundell’s Dorsetshire house,
Chideock Castle, had become a refuge for a number of his
Catholic dependants and sympathisers who resorted there.
And the withdrawal of Sir John from Cornwall to residence
partly at Chideock and partly in London, which later became
confinement, left all this part of the coast void of its natural
guardian. Grenville had been asked to certify whom he thought
meet for the charge, and he replied,
‘that part of the country is so barren of such gentlemen [i.e.
those well-affected in religion] of any account ... as I know
none more fit dwelling near to the place than Mr. Geo. Gren-
ville, now sheriff of the county, whom I assure your honours to
be a gentleman well inclined to religion and to her Majesty’s
service.’
The Government was not content with the way in which the
organisation of the Musters was being handled in most counties
— in Devonshire the Justices were not even making any efforts,
which they certainly were in Cornwall, and the Council
addressed a pretty stiff remonstrance to the former.^ It was
^ S.P, Dom- Eliz., 170, no. 32.
1B2
THE JUSTICE OF THE PEACE
arranged to send into each county a person experienced in
martial matters to serve as Muster Master and organise the
levies professionally. Thomas Horde was sent down to Cora-
wall.i While his cousin George Grenville, the Sheriff, and other
Justices were tackling the Musters with Horde’s expert advice,
Grenville was away from the county giving his advice on the
question of the harbour-works at Dover.
It was a very considerable problem; for some time the har-
bour had been silting up, there were extensive repairs to be
undertaken, and it was a question on which side of the Crane to
open the mouth of the haven. Work had been going on, but
there was much dispute and doubt about it. In Spring 1584
Grenville and George Cary of Gockington were appointed at
the head of a Commission to go down to Dover and take
evidence on the matter.^ The work was of great complexity and
difficulty, and gave rise to innumerable disputes among the
experts. It occupied Grenville all the early summer.
By 6 August, he was back again in the west, at Penheale with
the Sheriff; for together they wrote from there to the Council
explaining why they had not yet moved the county to contri-
bute to the relief of Nantwich, which had been burned and
for which an appeal was being made throughout the country.®
^Because our poor country hath been somewhat busied ever
sithence and before the receipt of the said letters with musters,
and since with the trainings and the constables continually
followed the same . . . and now those charges being inter-
mitted and the people ready busily to employ their harvest,’
they ask that they may forbear for the time to move the county
for a collection. Captain Horde, they report, has won golden
opinions in the county, having shown himself "among all de-
grees to be a man of a very modest expert and discrete govern-
ment in all his actions and thereby hath won the good com-
mendation of all men.’ The bands have very much profited by
his instructions, and by his discreet and courteous usage of them
he has
^ ibid. 171, no. 8. * ibid. 170, no. 99; 171, nos. 17, 18, 30, 31.
» ibid. 172, no. 57.
183
SIR RICHARD GRENVILLE OF THE REVENGE
‘won them generally to such a willingness to be employed and
trained that they that erst were abashed, yea and as would have
given good sums of money to have been exempted from the
service, rejoice in that they have profited by this training. And
generally they wish that there were allowance of powder for
them that they might the more often be exercised.’
Such was the spirit of the country in the golden days before the
war.
Nor did Grenville lose much time in getting into touch with
the work in building a new pier at Boscastle, which had been
begun under his direction in April and was now two parts done;
he forwarded the account of the charges as delivered to him by
the townsmen^ The pier and quay at Boscastle, that narrow
little entry between the cliffs, but so necessary since it was the
only harbour in forty miles between Padstow and Ilfracombe,
had been twice built within recent memory and had cost
the poor inhabitants and their well-wishers £ 200 , ‘But the
same quay,’ so the townsmen say, being ‘now begun and set in
a new place by the good aid and directions of the right worship-
ful Sir Richard Grenville Knight, is thought of the skilful
workmen and others by God’s grace most like for ever to con-
tinue.’ One is not sure whether it is the aid and directions of
Sir Richard Grenville, or God’s grace, which is expected to be
the more effectual.
On 17 October Grenville wrote to Walsingham to report the
result of his and the Sheriff’s endeavours to raise a subscription
for the relief of Nantwich, at the same time taking the oppor-
tunity to introduce his cousin to the Secretary’s favourable
notice and assuring him of their family’s good wishes and sup-
port:
‘We having motioned the county thereunto do find them
generally to complain of the great burdens that have of late been
laid on them, and yet nevertheless there is collected to the value
of £ 20 , which is to be delivered at your honour’s direction, by
the sheriff of this county my kinsman the bearer hereof; who
also most humbly presenteth himself to your honour as one that
^ S.P. Dom. Eliz., i7i2, no. 57 (i).
184
THE JUSTICE OF THE PEACE
will be always most ready at your commandment, as myself and
the residue of my poor house are by your honourable fav^our
most bounden, therein so do we most humbly desire the con-
tinuance of your favour towards us, and we shall rest ready
with hand and heart at your honours commandment during our
lives as knoweth our good god, to whom we continually pray for
your good preservation, and so most humbly I take my leave,
from my poor house of Stowe this x\m[ of October 1584.J ^
It is not merely politeness, the form of the time, that accounts
for the excessive courtesy of the letter; it signifies that Grenville
looked to Walsingham for his lead, and for the protection of
his interests at Court. Nor was it an empty expectation: w’hat
significance Grenville attached to it may be seen from the
alacrity with which he wrote to defend himself in the affair of
Mrs. Paget: it was important to him to maintain his credit at
Court through the Secretary.
He was, then, at Stowe in the middle of October: one thinks
of the leaves falling in the woods below the house, the even-
ings drawing in, and around the great house on the hill the
autumn gales beginning to blow. The days were full as ever
of business, but no doubt - since those were more leisurely days
all told - there was time for hawking and hunting, coursing the
hare and for bowls in the bowling alley.
The days moved on: towards the end of the month a mes-
senger brought him a letter from the Secretary concerning the
works at Dpver for his opinion. ‘Whereupon I rode presently to
a place called Dodding-castle,’ he wrote, meaning Boscastle,
‘where I caused a pier to be made this summer which as yet is
not fully finished, to the end I would confer with the master
workman, who hath great experience as a manual workman in
that kind of work.’ “ He has there tried out the use of stone
mixed with chalk in building the pier, and is opposed to it, as
the stone sinks into the chalk and soon comes loose. His letter
is full of protestations of service and devotion, because ‘the
work is commanded by her Royal Majesty.’ He is grateful for
being sent a full account of what was done at Dover this sum-
^ ibid. 1 73, no. 76. ® ibid. no. 95.
185
SIR RICHARD GRENVILLE OF THE REVENGE
mer, and to see the good effect of his directions, ‘wherein it
plainly appeareth that to observe the course of nature with the
unruly seas is the best school-master/
With the questions and answers of the master- workmen, and
his own comments on them, he enclosed a sketch of his device
for a pier at Dover, the core of which was of chalk, but entirely
encased in hard stone. It is interesting to observe that though
he was reluctant again to embark upon computations, perhaps
because he was unable, he very competently performed the
drawing of the sketch-plan to indicate his design. This is the
last we hear of him in connection with the works at Dover;
George Cary continued to act as Commissioner for a time.
Grenville became caught up in the Virginia projects of his
cousin, Walter Ralegh, now rapidly rising to power and wealth.
By April, a new Commissioner for Dover was appointed; ^ Gren-
ville was at Plymouth awaiting a favourable wind, and on the
ninth sailed.
Before this, however, one or two more services in the county
and at Westminster remained. In January he was drawn into
the investigations proceeding as regards the Winslade in-
heritance. It was a complex and tangled affair, going back to
the Rising of 1549; but it was an extremely moving story that
was revealed, involving as it did the ruin of a whole family, the
formal depositions of witnesses unfolding layer upon layer of
human suffering.
John Winslade, with whom the trouble began, was a leader
along with Humphrey Arundell in the Rebellion; and like him
was executed and his lands, which were extensive, forfeited to
the Crown. Some time before, perhaps fearing some such
trouble in those unquiet days, he had made over to his wife
Agnes a number of his manors, Bochym, Tregarrick, Talcarne,
Penfugh and Killiow, as her jointure. He seems to have been a
generous, good-hearted nature, just such a man as the Rising
would have swept in with it. After his death, his widow married
John Trevanion of Carhayes, bringing her jointure saved from
the wreck of Winslade’s fortunes with her. When she was dead,
the lands were to go to Winslade’s son William, or his heirs.
^ S.P. Dom. Eliz. 178, no. 2.
THE JUSTICE OF THE PEACE
But Trevanion kept the evidences, nor would he give them up
when his wife lay on her death-bed beseeching him to deliver
them to the Winslades. Instead, Trevanion handed them over
with the lands which he granted partly to Francis Buller, partly
to Sir William Mohun and John Trelawny, for certain sums of
money paid down and so much income for life. Poor Agnes,
the wife, was kept from knowing the details of the transaction;
she was willing enough for him to be made secure for life, but
anxious that the children of John Winslade should come into
their rights after. Buller and Mohun made themselves as
sure as they could legally. Then, on 17 November 1582, she
died.
The position of the Winslades was weakened by the fact that
William Winslade had fled the country some time before. But
there was evidence enough to warrant a full inquiry, and on
28 December 1584, Grenville was put at the head of a Com-
mission to investigate.^ They sat at Launceston on 2 1 January.
Evidence was brought that Daniel Winslade, William’s son, had
come to his grandmother at Tregariick, and asked her "^by
the way of conscience’ to deliver the evidences which he thought
to be in her keeping. It was clear that she meant them to come
to the Winslades after her death, she ‘had already taken such
order with Master Trevanion.’ But upon her death-bed she
was cheated of her wish by Trevanion and her daughter and
son-in-law. The scene in her house at Tregarrick was patheti-
cally described by an old serving-woman there, Alice King of
Talland: how again and again Agnes besought her husband to
give her the deeds that belonged to the Winslades, and was
continually put off; how on the day of her death, her daughter
and son-in-law called for a fire and a wad of straw to burn
evidences of a debt due by the latter to Winslade, and how John
Connock, a lawyer from Liskeard, handed over certain deeds
to Trevanion, with the words: ‘Keep you that safe and I will
keep this; which if we do, the Winslades shall never be able to
recover their lands except they seek it out above, which through
poverty they shall never be able to do.’
And so it came about: the Winslades never came by their
^Exchequer K.R. Special Commission 531.
187
SIR RICHARD GRENVILLE OF THE REVENGE
lands again. The stumbling-block seems to have been, not so
much that, John Winslade having been attainted, they were cor-
rupt in blood, but that William Winslade was a fugitive from
the country. Evidence was given by a number of mariners from
round about Helford Passage, who said 'that about four years
past, William Winslade in a small bark called the Peter of Hel-
ford, in the compstny of these deponents, passed from Helford
into the parts of Brittany being the dominion of the French
King, to a place there called Lantregar.’ That would have
been about 1581. And so all was lost, and the Bullers came to
live in the hall at Tregarrick, where they were comfortably
seated by the time Carew came to write his Survey of Cornwall
and had adopted a satisfactory legend how they came by it.
‘The warmth of this hundred, siding the south,’ says Carew,
‘hath enticed many gentlemen here to make choice of their
dwellings, as Mr. Buller, now sheriff, at Tregarrick, the Wide-
slades’ inheritance, until the father’s rebellion forfeited it to the
Prince; and the Prince’s lai'gess rewarded therewith his sub-
jects. Wideslade’s son led a walking life with his harp, to
gentlemen’s houses, wherethrough, and by his other active
qualities, he was entitled Sir Tristram: neither wanted he (as
some say) a “belle Isoult,” the more aptly to resemble his pat-
tern.’ ^
And sure enough, we find that in his wanderings, by 1583
he had reached the kindly shelter and hospitality of Douai;
for we find an entry in the Diary of the College saying that on
28 August there arrived ‘Tristram Winslade.’ ^ It shows where
his sympathies were: his family had lost everything by their
loyalty to Catholicism: at Douai at this time he would find the
solace of several other Cornish Catholics.
But the Mohuns and the Trevanions went on; the former till
they came to an end with the fifth Baron, an infernal brawler
and duellist who was no better than a murderer and was him-
self killed in a duel with the Duke of Hamilton in Hyde Park on
15 November 1712 ~ an affair of which Swift sent such a vivid
account to Stella; while the latter, the Trevanions, went on at
^ Carew, 308-9. 2 Knox, Douai Diaries,
188
THE JUSTICE OF THE PEACE
Carhayes until early in the nineteenth century they came to an
end in a riot of drink and wild escapades.
So much for the characteristic and many-sided activities of a
leading Justice of the Peace at this time in his county - a posi-
tion to which Grenville had attained in these years by his assidu-
ous attention to business, by the force and vigour of his char-
acter and the historic place of his family in the county’s affairs.
It was a position which he was to continue to occupy until, after
the Armada, he found a wider sphere of service, at first in Ire-
land and then at sea. Nevertheless it is easy to underestimate
the importance of these local and very varied services rendered
within the bounds of his own county. In fact, it was upon this
structure of efficient and voluntary local administration that the
success of Tudor government rested.
As difficulties thickened round the Queen’s government, so
the gentry as the natural leaders of her people drew in around
her person. At the end of 1583, Throckmorton’s conspiracy
against the Queen’s life, and for combined invasion and in-
surrection, was unveiled. Mendoza, the Spanish Ambassador,
had been acquainted with it at every stage and even insti-
gating it. He was told ignominiously to leave the country. It
was too much for his intolerable pride; he said to Elizabeth in
his farewell audience: ‘Don Bernardino de Mendoza was born,
not to disturb countries, but to conquer them.’ 1588 was the
answer to all that. On the day that Throckmorton was exe-
cuted, 10 July 1584, the great William of Orange died at the
hand of an assassin. In September, Elizabeth heard of the plots
of Guise and Allen for replacing her by Mary. The Earls of
Northumberland and Arundel were arrested and sent to the
Tower. All this aroused a fever of resentment and indignation.
Throughout the country Instruments of Association for the
preservation and defence of the Queen were signed by all the
leading persons, binding themselves with all their power to
serve and defend her against ‘all Estates, Dignities, and earthly
Powers whatsoever,’ and to pursue to utter extermination all
that should attempt anything against her Royal Person. The
Instrument of Association for the county of Cornwall was very
widely signed - it contains twice the number of names on that
189
SIR RICHARD GRENVILLE OF THE REVENGE
for Devonshire; at the head of it stood the names of the Sheriff
and Grenville.^
A new Parliament was elected in the autumn of 1 584; by the
time it met, at the end of November, feeling had somewhat sub-
sided. Grenville and Sir William Mohun were returned as
Knights of the shire.® Sir Francis Drake sat for the borough
of Bossiney; Sir John Killigrew’s brother, William, Groom of
the Chamber to the Queen, and the son, John, sat for Penryn.
Old Sir John St. Leger, now very decrepit, was returned for
Tregony. Grenville and Drake, on the other hand, were very
active and served on Several Committees of the House, on some
of them together.
Parliament was opened by the Queen on 23 November, ‘in
her accustomed Pompous and Royal manner.’ ® Its first bill
legalised the Association for her defence. The second banished
all Jesuits and seminary priests who would not take the oath and
prohibited their return on pain of treason. Parliament was
prepared to go much further than the Government, which had
no desire for merciless measures; and the Queen amended the
bill legalising the Association so as to restrain the possibility of
private vengeance. After this, their passion somewhat abated.
Parliament settled down to less important measures.
The one which occupied a good deal of time and gave rise to
much dispute and discussion, was a Bill for the better and more
reverent observing of the Sabbath day. On Friday, 27 Novem-
ber, it was given a second reading, and committed to a large
committee, upon which both Grenville and Drake served.^ On
3 December, an unimportant Bill concerning Hue and Cry was
read a second time and committed to Grenville, Sir Henry Cock,
Mr. Richard Lewkenor and others.® On the same day the Bill
for the true answering of tithes was given a second reading and
committed to Grenville, Sir John Petre, Sir William Herbert
and Mr. Dale, one of the Masters of Requests.
Much more important for the next phase in Grenville’s life
was the Bill for the confirmation of Walter Ralegh’s Letters
Patent for the discovery of foreign countries. Humphrey Gil-
1 S.P. Dorn. Eliz. 174, no. 5. 2 Official Return, i, 413.
* D’Ewes, Journal, 311. * ibid. 333. * ibid. 335.
190
THE JUSTICE OF THE PEACE
bert, Ralegh’s half-brother, had been granted a Royal Charter
in June 1578 to discover and occupy ""such remote and bar-
barous lands . . . not actually possessed of any Christian prince
or people.’ ^ It was in fulfilment of this charter that Gilbert made
his last voyage to Newfoundland in 1583; and upon his death,
Ralegh, who had been associated with his enterprises, immedi-
ately sued for the renewal of Gilbert’s Charter for himself. In
March 1584, his Letters Patent were made out, and he at once
dispatched a small scouting expedition under Captains Amadas
and Barlow to North America. They came back with a favour-
able report of the bounty and good prospects of the land they
had hit upon - the later Virginia. Ralegh at once set in hand
preparations for an expedition on a large scale, which w^as to
occupy and colonise the newly discovered territory'. He in-
tended to go himself at the head of it and take possession.
The Bill before Parliament was to confirm the very' wide powers
which Royal prerogative, and the Queen’s personal favour, had
conferred upon him. It received its first and second reading on
the same day, Monday 14 December; and upon that was com-
mitted to a Committee consisting of the Vice-Chamberlain,
Secretary Walsingham, Sir Philip Sidney, Sir William Court-
enay, Sir William Mohun and others, with Grenville and Sir
Francis Drake.® It was a powerful Committee, with a strong
West-Country representation, wholly sympathetic to Ralegh’s
colonising project. No wonder therefore, as D’Ewes tells us,
three days later the Bill ‘was brought in by the Committees not
altered in any word; and upon motion for ingrossing, was after
some arguments upon the Question, ordered to be ingrossed.’
Next day, it had its third reading, and ‘after many Arguments
and a Proviso added unto it, passed upon the Question.’
There followed the Christmas adjournment:
‘Her Majesty graciously considering the great pains and care-
ful travail of this House in the service and affairs of the Realm,
hath determined upon Monday next to adjourn the Court of
Parliament until some other convenient time after Christmas,
that such Gentlemen and other Members of this House may the
^Edwards: Sir Walter Ralegh, 1, 84.
a D’Ewes, 339.
SIR RICHARD GRENVILLE OF THE REVENGE
more conveniently repair home to their houses in the mean time
for their better ease and recreation/ ^
It is to be noticed that Grenville who had taken a very active
part in the business of the House before the adjournment, took
none of which there is any mention after. At some time during
the proceedings oyer the Bill in Parliament, Ralegh not being
permitted by the Queen to go on the voyage himself, persuaded
Grenville to take the command in his place; and Grenville out of
the ‘love he bore unto Sir Walter Ralegh, together with a dis-
position he had to attempt honourable actions worthy of honour,
was willing to hazard himself in this voyage/ ^
^D’Ewes, 342. ^ Holinshed, Chronicle, 1402.
193
SIR WALTER RALEGH
CHAPTER X
RALEGH AND VIRGINIA
‘I soarvel not a little that since the first discovery of
America (which is now full fourscore and ten years) after so
great conquest and plantings of the Spaniards and Portingales
there, that we of England could never have the grace to set
fast footing in such fertile and temperate places, as are left as
yet unpossessed by them.’
RICHARD HAKLUYT, Dims Voyages, 1582
It was at this time, and in this way, that Walter Ralegh makes
his first known entry into Grenville’s life. Hitherto, there is no
evidence of their having come into contact; which, although
they were cousins, is not surprising, considering the largeness of
the cousinage and the disparity of age between them. Ralegh
was some ten years younger than Grenville, so that, though
their early careers followed the same pattern, service in the wars
abroad and in Ireland, they never coincided. Their relation-
ship was in the first instance on their mother’s side, through the
Ghampernownes. Ralegh’s mother was Katherine Ghamper-
nowne, sister of Sir Arthur and widow of Otto Gilbert - hence
the Gilberts were Ralegh’s half-brothers; while Grenville’s
uncle, William Gole of Slade, his mother’s brother, married
another Ghampemowne sister. But further back than this, their
families had intermingled. Sir Thomas Grenville, whose tomb
is in Bideford church, had married a Gilbert; while a daughter
of Sir Thomas’s, Joan Grenville, married Wymond Ralegh, Sir
Walter’s grandfather.
Such were the connections of the families; they both belonged
to the gentry of long-standing in the western counties, though
the Grenvilles were the more prominent, and the Raleghs had
193 N
SIR RICHARD GRENVILLE OF THE REVENGE
become somewhat impoverished in recent generations. Both
too, as befitted their social class, were in favour of the changes
consequent upon the Dissolution and the reforming movement,
from which they drew advantage.
The career of Walter Ralegh is too well known to need des-
cribing here; it is sufficient to note the close parallel its early
stages afford to those of Humphrey Gilbert and Grenville, and
those are less well known. At the age of fourteen or fifteen he
was at Oxford, at Oriel College. Then in 1569, when Gilbert
and Grenville were in Ireland at the time of the Fitzmaurice
Rebellion, Ralegh was a young volunteer with his cousin
Henry Champernowne going to the aid of the Huguenots at the
battle of Moncontour in October; this was three years after
Grenville’s similar venture in Hungary. Ralegh’s sojourn
abroad lasted much longer; he was in France for some six
years, in the midst of the civil wars, and he must have become
an experienced soldier. By 1576 he was back in England, a
resident at Islington, a hanger-on of the Court. Gilbert was at
this time living at Limehouse, plunged in his schemes for a
voyage of discovery and colonisation; his early Irish exploits
and his expedition to the Netherlands were behind him. In
1578 he was fitting out his first voyage, a large affair into which
he threw all his resources. In June he obtained his Charter
from the Crown to hold and occupy the lands he discovered;
Ralegh in September was at Dartmouth helping him. When it
set sail it was largely a family enterprise, Gilbert being in com-
mand of the admiral, Carew Ralegh of the vice-admiral and
Walter of the Falcon^ a bark of 100 tons. But the enterprise came
to no good. What happened to it is something of a mystery; it
seems that it became engaged in an encounter with Spaniards,
of which no details are known, except that Gilbert lost a tall
ship and came back with the rest ‘sore battered and disabled.’
Next year Gilbert and Ralegh intended to make another at-
tempt and perhaps exact retribution for their losses; but before
they could leave Dartmouth, word came down from the Council
that they were ‘to surcease from proceeding any further’ and
Gilbert was to put in sureties for his good behaviour. He went
straight to Ireland, a field of action always open to the dis-
194
RALEGH AND VIRGINIA
gnintled Elizabethan, and took part in the fighting against
Fitzmaurice and Desmond. Ralegh followed next year, being
given command of loo soldiers. Here he remained for a year,
making a reputation for valour and severity. He rescued a
fellow west-countryman from an ambush with great daring and
at much personal risk to himself. In November he commanded
on the first three days and the final day of the assault on the
Spaniards and Italians at Smerwick, and on their surrender had
them all put to the sword. But he was not contented with Ire-
land; we find him writing in August 1581 to Leicester who had
become in some sort his patron: ‘I have spent some time here
under the Deputy, in such poor place and charge, as, were it
not for that I knew him to be one of yours, I would disdain it as
much as to keep sheep.’ ^ It is the true Ralegh spirit, pride and
discontentment with his present lot.
It was soon to be remedied; in December he was in England
with dispatches, and somehow or other - it is still a mystery how
or when - he gained the favourable attention of the Queen.
Posterity has enshrined its romantic suddenness in the story of
the cloak laid for the royal feet to pass over a muddy place.
There is nothing inherently improbable in it - tradition is often
a useful guide; and there is a worldly parable to be read into
the action. The next generation was not even certain how it
was that Ralegh gained the Queen’s ear. Sir Robert Naunton
suggests that it may have been over some variance with his
superior Lord Grey in Ireland, which drew them both to the
Council-table, where Ralegh had a marked advantage; ‘but
true it is, he had gotten the Queen’s ear at a trice, and she began
to be taken with his elocution, and loved to hear his reasons to
her demands : and the truth is, she took him for a kind of Oracle,
which nettled them all,’ ^ Perhaps a more lasting recommenda-
tion to a lady so susceptible to masculine charms as Elizabeth
was his handsome personal appearance; moreover he was un-
married. Naunton witnesses: ‘He had in the outward man, a
good presence, in a handsome and well-compacted person, a
strong natural wit, and a better judgment, with a bold and
^ Harleian MSS, 6993, f. 3.
2 Naunton, Fragmenta Regalia (ed. Arber), 48-9.
195
SIR RICHARD GRENVILLE OF THE REVENGE
plausible tonguCj whereby he could set out his parts to the best
advantage.’ It should be added, what posterity knows, that he
was a man of scintillating and original genius; and that Eliza-
beth, whose judgment of men was faultless, was justified in her
choice.
Armed with these advantages, he rose rapidly into the
splendour of royal favour. The pay of his Irish establishment he
continued to receive - it was a way of providing for him till
better could be found. It was not long in coming; in 1584 and
later he was given very profitable grants of licences to export
woollen cloths, and in the same year a very lucrative grant of
the farm of wines, power to grant licences for their sale and to
regulate prices. This latter brought in a large regular income;
the impecunious second son of impoverished though gentle
family (‘the Queen in her choice never took into her favour
a meer new man, or a Mechanick’) was financially safe and able
to support the position of conspicuous splendour to which he
had so suddenly risen. Thereafter lands also were granted to
him, and he obtained possession of the desired Sherborne from
the see of Salisbury, with the aid of a tart letter from the Queen
to the reluctant Bishop.
In July 1585, while Grenville was captaining his expedition
on the other side of the Atlantic, Ralegh had succeeded Bed-
ford as Lord Warden of the Stannaries; and in September as
Lieutenant of the county of Cornwall, and Vice-Admiral
of both Devon and Cornwall. In 1587 he became Captain
of the Guard in succession to Sir Christopher Hatton, a
position of constant personal attendance upon the Queen, with
all the great advantages that it offered. The position was com-
plete: Ralegh from being one of the obscurer and unprosperous
members of the great West Country cousinage, was through the
favour of the Queen raised to a pivotal position within it. He
was from now on the most important man in the government of
the western counties; the Devon and Cornish gentry looked to
him for their support - Carew, when he came to write his Survey
of Cornwall^ dedicated it to him; he was in a position to advance
the interests of his friends and relatives. From now on we find
Grenville and Ralegh working in close and friendly association,
196
RALEGH AND VIRGINIA
not only as regards the Virginia schemes but in the government
and defence of the West Country.
It is to Ralegh’s eternal honour that he used his good fortune
and new-found wealth to advance the great schemes for dis-
covery and colonisation which he had set his heart upon. In
1583 Gilbert set out upon his last voyage. The Queen had tried
to hold him back, as Gilbert wrote pathetically to Walsingham:^
‘Her Majesty of her especial care had of my well-doing and
prosperous success hath wished my stay at home from the
personal execution of my intended discovery as a man noted of
not good hap by sea,’ - one more indication of the rightness of
her judgment. But Gilbert had gone too far: he had sold his
lands and even spent his wife’s jointure upon his dream of
discovery. When the time came for him to sail, the Queen gave
him a meaning little token, ‘an anchor guided by a lady,’ but
prudently forbore to subscribe to the adventure. Ralegh con-
tributed £2^000 in equipping the Ark Ralegh^ but the ship re-
turned early to harbour with fever aboard her.
A sort of fatality overhung the expedition from the first.
Gilbert sailed with his remaining ships for Newfoundland,
which he took possession of and then turned south to explore
the American coast. But he lost two of his ships and turned
home defeated and discouraged. The rest we know from the
famous words of Edward Hay’s report in Hakluyt:^ how Gilbert
shifted into the tiny ten-ton frigate the Squirrel^ where
‘the General sitting abaft with a book in his hand, cried out unto
us in the Hind (so oft as we did approach within hearing) : “We
are as near to heaven by sea as by land”; reiterating the same
speech, well beseeming a soldier, resolute in Jesus Christ, as I
can testify he was.’
The same night the lights of the little ship went suddenly
out; ‘whereof as it were in a moment we lost the sight, and
withal our watch cried, the General was cast away, which
was too true. For in that moment, the frigate was devoured
and swallowed up of the sea.’ The single surviving ship,
^ S.P. Dom. Eliz. 157, no. 59. * Hakluyt, VIII, 74.
*97
SIR RICHARD GRENVILLE OF THE REVENGE
the Golden Hind^ arrived in Falmouth, not without peril, on
Sunday 22 September.
Ralegh was the heir to Gilbert's originating spirit; and at
once he set about to resume the enterprise. His half-brother’s
charter had now expired and in March he obtained a new one,
with somewhat larger powers. The objective that Gilbert had
had in mind was not merely Newfoundland but the mainland
of North America. The English claim to possession was based
upon the voyages of John and Sebastian Cabot nearly a century
before. The early promise of these voyages for this country was
somehow not fulfilled; the difficulties and problems of the Re-
formation years for a time confined English energies and
directed our attention inwards. In consequence, not only the
Spanish but the French had stolen a march upon us in North
America. Jacques Cartier and others had explored the St.
Lawrence and into Canada; while at the southern end, in
Florida, to the short-lived Huguenot colony under Ribault,
there had succeeded the permanent Spanish settlements at St.
Augustine and St. Helen’s. But there remained all the Ameri-
can coast north of Florida; and this was what these and suc-
ceeding voyages were designed to bring into English possession:
as Edward Hay wrote, ‘God hath reserved the same to be re-
duced unto Christian civility by the English nation.’
Ralegh’s determination to carry forward his half-brother’s
projects for colonisation in North America, in spite of his ill-
success, attracted the ardent support of the younger Hakluyt,
already well known for his geographical knowledge and a pas-
sionate believer in England’s fortune upon the sea and in the
New World.^ Ralegh had requested Hakluyt to set down in
writing his views on the question of colonisation; and in July
1 584, he came over from Paris and working through the sum-
mer in London, in close proximity to Ralegh, wrote his famous
Discourse of Western Planting, Its real purpose was to persuade
the Queen to take up the project and give it the backing of the
state; Hakluyt seems to have realised that only the resources of
the state could ultimately see the thing through to success. But
Elizabeth was in no mood for such commitments; she was per-
^ Taylor, Writings and Correspondence of the Hakluyts, I, 32—44.
198
RALEGH AND VIRGINIA
fectly willing to see the favourite whom she had raised to afflu-
ence spend his wealth, if not himself, upon the venture. Not all
Hakluyt’s eloquence could persuade her. While he was writing
away through the hot summer in London, Ralegh’s first scout-
ing expedition, two small barks under Captains Amadas and
Barlow, were already in the new country.
Immediately upon the issue of his charter, Ralegh had sent
out the two barks to spy out the new country and prepare the
way for a larger enterprise later. Philip Amadas, of that Ply-
mouth and Launceston family which was connected with the
Hawkinses, and Arthur Barlow, who had served under Ralegh
in Ireland, were in command. The latter in addition wrote the
delightful report of the voyage which is printed in Hakluyt;^
fresh, taut and vigorous as is always the writing of Elizabethan
sea-captains, this one, an otherwise unknown man, surpasses
most in the natural ease and beauty with which he wrote. There
is a singular nostalgia about his writing: one can only put it
down to this time being the morning of the language.
They departed from the west of England on 27 April. They
took the southward course via the Canaries and the West
Indies; the prevailing winds and currents on this route and
thence up the coast of Florida being better known and more
favourable than the northern route. After remaining for a little
in the West Indies to refresh themselves with sweet water and
fresh victual, they struck up the coast of Florida. And on
‘the second of July, we found shoal water, when we smelt so
sweet, and so strong a smell, as if we had been in the midst of
some delicate garden abounding with all kinds of odoriferous
flowers, by which we were assured that the land could not be
far distant. And keeping good watch, and bearing but slack
sail, the fourth of the same month we arrived upon the coast,
which we supposed to be a continent and firm land; and we
sailed along the same a hundred and twenty English miles
before we could find any entrance, or river issuing into the sea.’
At the first entry that appeared, they entered and took possession
in the name of the Queen; ‘the land about us, being, whereat we
^ Hakluyt, VIII, 297-3IO.
SIR RICHARD GRENVILLE OF THE REVENGE
first landed, very sandy and low towards the water’s side, but so
full of grapes, as the very beating and surge of the sea over-
flowed them*’
When they passed from the sea-side to the higher ground,
they found that there was sea on both sides and that they were
on an island. The fact was that they had hit upon the long
chain of narrow islands running for some two hundred miles or
more, roughly north and south, off the coast of what is now
North Carolina. They had struck this low sandy coast some-
where to the north of the modern Gape Lookout, the most
southerly point of the sequence; thence their northerly run of a
hundred miles had brought them to the New Inlet, as it is now
called, and the island they were at was the isle of Wokokon.
Inside the barrier stretched the great inland seas, now known as
Pamlico Sound and Albemarle Sound, which they began
straightway to explore. They were at once struck with the
richness of the woods and the variety of game.
‘Under the bank or hill whereon we stood, we beheld the
valley replenished with goodly cedar trees, and having dis-
charged our harquebus-shot, such a flock of cranes (the most
part white) arose under us, with such a cry redoubled by many
echoes, as if an army of men had shouted all together.’
The islands were not much peopled, and it was not until the
third day that a few native Indians appeared in a boat; one of
them allowed himself to be rowed over to the ships, ‘never
making any show of fear or doubt.’ There they gave him a
shirt and a hat, and ‘made him taste of our wine, and our meat,
which he liked very well.’ Next day there came several boats,
bringing some forty or fifty men, ‘very handsome and goodly
people, and in their behaviour as mannerly and civil as any
of Europe,’ Among them came the King’s brother with great
ceremony. ‘After he had made a long speech unto us, we pre-
sented him with divers things, which he received very joyfully,
and thankfully. None of the company durst speak one word all
the time: only the four which were at the other end, spoke one
in the other’s ear very softly,’ A few days after, they fell to
trading with the Indians, exchanging a few shiny metal things
200
RALEGH AND VIRGINIA
for chamois, buff and deer skins. ‘We exchanged our tin dish
for twenty skins, worth twenty crowns, or twenty nobles: and a
copper kettle for fifty skins worth fifty crowns.’
Gaining greater confidence, the King’s brother brought his
wife and children to see the ships. The English noted that ‘she
was very well favoured, of mean stature, and very bashful,’
and with even greater interest that ‘in her ears she had brace-
lets of pearls hanging down to her middle (whereof we delivered
your worship a little bracelet), and those were of the bigness of
good peas.’ Each day the King’s brother, who was ver>^ friendly
and just of his promise, sent them
‘a brace or two of fat bucks, coneys, hares, fish the best of the
world; with divers kinds of fruits, melons, walnuts, cucumbers,
gourds, peas and divers roots, and fruits very excellent good,
and of their country corn, which is very white, fair and well-
tasted.’
Indeed, Barlow wrote, ‘the soil is the most plentiful, sweet,
fruitful and wholesome of all the world.’
Several days later, a party went some miles farther up into the
Sound and came to the large island of Roanoke, where their
friend the King’s brother lived. Here they were entertained to
a solemn banquet in the large family-house in the native village.
All was as friendly as could be: ‘We found the people most
gentle, loving, and faithful, void of all guile and treason, and
such as live after the manner of the golden age.’ Roanoke was
near the mainland, and while there they gathered as much in-
formation as they could about its geography, inhabitants, the
state of the tribes and their relations with each other - like most
groupings of human beings external to each other, their re-
lations were those of incessant warfare. Beyond Roanoke was
another great inland water [Albemarle Sound] and many
islands ‘very plentiful of fruits and other natural increases, to-
gether with many towns, and villages, along the side of the
continent, some bounding upon the islands, and some stretching
up farther into the land.’
So Barlow rendered his report of this goodly, pleasant land
to Ralegh. He brought home with him two Indians, ‘being
SOI
SIR RICHARD GRENVILLE OF THE REVENGE
lusty men, whose names were Wanchese and Manteo.’ What is
interesting is that when at the end of his report he gives the
names of the chief persons who were of the company on the
voyage, a William Grenville stands at the head. We do not
know for certain who he was, though it is to be presumed that he
was a relative of Sir Richard’s. George Grenville of Penheale
had a brother called William, and it may have been he. Next
year in the great expedition with which Drake went running
‘through the Indies like a conqueror,’ storming San Domingo
and Carthagena, there was a Captain Grenville among those
who were killed. It is not fanciful to identify these two, since
we know that George Grenville’s brother William died un-
married and he was not among those who accompanied Sir
Richard to Virginia. However, he may well have given the
latter some verbal report of it.
Encouraged by this report of the new country, Ralegh re-
doubled his efforts to plant a new England beyond the seas.
The literary powers of the Hakluyts were further drawn upon
to create an atmosphere favourable to the enterprise.^ The
younger Hakluyt completed his Discourse. The elder Hakluyt,
who had not been yet superseded as a colonial adviser by his
more brilliant and more enthusiastic cousin, was called in to
write a pamphlet to encourage the venture: Inducements to the lik-
ing of the voyage intended towards Virginia. This tract was intended
for the information and instruction of the prospective colonists.
As such it dealt chiefly with the commodities and trading pros-
pects of the colony. The region marked out for the enterprise,
lat. 40° to 42°, lay in the latitude which Hakluyt had always
regarded as best for settlement, with a climate like that of Spain
and Italy, and similar produce, olives, vines, mulberries, sugar
and other Mediterranean products. All this was part of the
psychological preparation for the enterprise; and it is notable
that when it set sail, it included a number of friends from the
circle of the Hakluyts, Cavendish, Harriot and Ralph Lane
among them.
In the winter of this year, in order to give Ralegh’s project
the greater security, a Bill was introduced in Parliament to con-
^ Taylor, 36-40.
202
RALEGH AND VIRGINIA
firm his Charter. He certainly intended to lead the expedition
which was to plant the first English colony in America himself;
and when this was made impossible by the Queen’s desire to
retain him by her side, it was arranged that Grenville, who had
taken part in the committee-work on the Bill in the House and
so was acquainted with Ralegh’s plans, should take his place.
After the Christmas recess, Grenville devoted himself to the
preparations for the voyage, at first in London, but mainly in
the West Country. We hear no more of him in Parliament, nor
indeed was he ever returned to Parliament again: for the last
crowded years of his life, action and constant service abroad
and at home claimed him.
It was at this time (February 1 585) that we found him writing
a propos of Mrs. Paget, ‘being now prepared to commit myself to
the pleasure of God on the seas.’ We realise with a start that this
was actually Grenville’s first voyage; so far as we know, his
experience of the sea up to this had been mainly concerned with
the ownership of ships. At the same time there was a project on
foot, and preparations were being secretly made at Plymouth
and elsewhere for a very different voyage by a more practised
hand. Elizabeth had at last been brought round, owing to the
critical posture of affairs in Europe, the assassination of William
of Orange, and the growth of Spanish sea-power, which
was now reaching its apogee under the far-reaching plans of
the great Admiral Santa Cruz, to sanction an unmistakable and
responsible act of aggression against Spain, a powerful arma-
ment under Drake to attack the very strongholds of Spanish
power in the West Indies. The Queen, as usual having com-
mitted herself to so decisive a step, which could not but mean
open war, hung back. Drake was in London up to March and
perhaps later, making what headway he could; in the summer
he was at Plymouth gathering and victualling the fleet, and
having got his commission signed, he slipped away to sea on
14 September.
Grenville was by that time on his way homeward, making no
great hurry, hanging about off the Azores to pick up what he
could. He had departed from Plymouth on 9 April, The Black
Book of Plymouth, in which the town recorded events of historical
203
SIR RICHARD GRENVILLE OF THE REVENGE
importance under its successive mayoralties, has the following
entry under that of Christopher Brooking for 1584-5: ‘Sir
Richard Grenville Knight, departed from Plymouth with vi
ships and barks for Wingane Dehoy, where he carried vi
hundred men or thereabouts/
204
CHAPTER XI
THE FIRST VIRGINIA VOYAGE
The little fleet which Grenville commanded consisted of seven
sails: the Tiger of 140 tons, a flieboat called the Roebuck of the
same burden, the Lion of 100 tons, the Elizabeth of 50 tons, and
the Dorothy, a small bark, with two pinnaces for speedy service.
There were aboard a number of gentlemen, mostly young men,
who had volunteered to make trial of the new country. There
was Ralph Lane, one of the Queen’s equerries, whom Grenville
appointed to take charge of the colony on his return. Thomas
Cavendish, the brilliant young navigator who repeated Drake’s
exploit of circumnavigating the globe, was another; he was now
twenty-five, and it seems to have been his first introduction to
the sea. Equally interesting was the presence of Thomas
Harriot, who became the foremost scientist and mathematician
in England; he was now about the same age as Cavendish, but
unlike him he remained a whole year in the new country under
Lane’s government, and later wrote the True Report of Virginia,
a document full of close observation and scientific curiosity.
Grenville took with him a considerable west-country contin-
gent: there was Philip Amadas, who remained on under Lane as
‘Admiral of the country’; John Arundell, Grenville’s half-
brother; his brother-in-law, John Stukeley, a Kendall, one of the
Prideaux of Padstow, a Courtenay, Anthony Rowse, the friend
and later an executor of Drake’s, along with others.
Five days out from Plymouth, after a storm in which Caven-
dish was separated from Grenville in his flagship the Tiger, the
rest of the fleet fell in with the Canaries and continued their
course across the Atlantic to the West Indies. They reached
Dominica on 7 May, and three days later came to anchor at
Cotesa, a little island off Porto Rico, ‘where we landed, and re-
205
SIR RICHARD GRENVILLE OF THE REVEMGE
freshed ourselves all that day.’ ^ Grenville was determined to
land in Porto Rico, in spite of the Spaniards, to build a new
pinnace in place of that which had been lost in the storm. So
on 12 May they anchored in the Bay of Moskito,
‘within a falcon shot of the shore: where our General Sir
Richard Grenville, and the most part of our company landed,
and began to fortify very near to the sea-side: the river ran by
the one side of our fort, and the other two sides were environed
with woods.’
Next day they began to build their pinnace within the fort, with
the timber which they felled in the country, some part of which
had to be fetched from three miles inland, the Spaniards not
daring to offer any resistance.
A few days later, a small company of eight Spanish horsemen
appeared out of the woods, and stayed some distance from the
fort viewing the English forces: Grenville dispatched ‘ten of our
shot’ against them, and they retired into the woods. On the
19th, Cavendish came up with the rest of the fleet, arriving at
Cotesa, within sight of the Tiger:
‘we thinking him a far off to have been either a Spaniard or
French man-of-war, thought it good to weigh anchor, and to go
room with him, which the Tiger did, and discerned him at last
to be one of our consorts, for joy of whose coming our ships dis-
charged their ordnance, and saluted him according to the
manner of the seas.’
A very natural, if somewhat schoolboyish exhibition of good
spirits; for there they were in the great spaces of the Caribbean
with their diminutive forces: any reinforcement must have been
highly welcome in the unfriendly temper of the Spaniards on the
island.
Three days later, a troop of twenty Spanish horsemen showed
themselves on the other side of the river. Grenville sent twenty
footmen against them, with two horsemen mounted upon
All quotEtions in the following account of the voyage, unless otherwise
stated, are from Hakluyt, VIII, 310-18,
206
THE FIRST VIRGINIA VOYAGE
Spanish horses which they had taken. The Spaniards produced
a flag of truce, and made signs for a parley; whereupon two men
from each side went half-way to meet each other upon the sands.
‘The two Spaniards offered very great salutations to our men,
but began according to their Spanish proud humours, to ex-
postulate with them about their arrival and fortifying in their
country.’ The Englishmen explained discreetly enough that
their only intention was to furnish themselves with water and
victuals, and other things which they needed, and that they
wished to obtain them by fair and friendly means, otherwise
they would be reduced to relieving themselves by the sword.
Upon this the Spaniards ‘yielded to our requests with large
promises of all courtesy and great favour, and so our men and
theirs departed.’
Two days later, when the pinnace was finished and launched,
Grenville marched with his captains and gentlemen some four
miles up into the country, where
‘in a plain marsh they stayed expecting the coming of the
Spaniards according to their promise, to furnish us with
victuals: who keeping their old custom for perjury and breach
of promise, came not, whereupon our General fired the woods
thereabout, and so retired to our fort, which the same day was
fired also, and each man came aboard to be ready to set sail the
next morning.’
It was like Grenville to fire the woods: Drake would have done
the same; the Spaniards recognised very well what it meant.
Before leaving the island, Grenville sent Ralph Lane in a
frigate which they had taken round to the south-west side to
fetch salt, being conducted by a Spanish pilot. Here too they
met with the same unfriendly reception and refusal to traffic
with the English. Lane landed twenty men who entrenched
themselves upon the sands, encompassing one of the salthills,
and so brought away as much salt as they w^anted, unmolested
by the Spaniards who did not dare attack. They returned on
the 29th to St. Germans’ Bay, and from here the fleet sailed the
same day, ‘being many of us stung before upon shore with the
mosquitoes.’ That night they took a Spanish frigate which its
1207
SIR RICHARD GRENVILLE OF THE REVENGE
crew had deserted upon sight of them, and next morning an-
other one 'with good and rich freight, and divers Spaniards
of good account in her, which afterwards we ransomed for
good round sums and landed them in St. John^s’ [i.e. Porto
Rico].
On I June they anchored at Isabella on the north side of the
island of Hispaniola, Here their reception was very different,
for the rumour had reached the Governor of the town and the
Captain of the port that there were a number of English gentle-
men aboard, and that they had very civilly entertained the
Spaniards on their ships. More probably, the Governor thought
discretion the better part of valour and was unwilling to bring
down an attack upon his head and depredations upon the
island. There thereupon followed an elaborate exchange of
courtesies and a singular entertainment, which very curiously
reflects the fluctuating state of international relations in the
Caribbean, with England and Spain on the verge of war in
Europe.
The Spanish Governor, accompanied by 'a lusty friar’ with
some twenty other Spaniards attended by their servants and
negroes, came down to the sea-side where the ships rode at
anchor. Grenville immediately
‘manned the most part of his boats with the chief men of our
fleet, every man appointed, and furnished in the best sort: at
the landing of our General, the Spanish Governor received him
very courteously; and the Spanish gentlemen saluted our Eng-
lish gentlemen, and their inferior sort did also salute our soldiers
and seamen, liking our men, and likewise their qualities;
although at the first they seemed to stand in fear of us,
whereof they desired that all might not land their men, yet
in the end, the courtesies that passed on both sides were so
great, that all fear and mistrust on the Spaniards’ part was
abandoned.’
Underneath it is clear that suspicion and mutual watchfulness
remained in spite of the formal courtesies that ensued.
While Grenville and the Spanish Governor conversed, mainly
208
THE FIRST VIRGINIA VOYAGE
of matters concerning the island, its population and commodi-
ties,
‘our men provided two banqueting houses covered with green
boughs, the one for the gentlemen, the other for the servants,
and a sumptuous banquet was brought in sensed by us all in
plate, with the sound of trumpets, and consort of music, where-
with the Spaniards were more than delighted.’
What a picture it is: the amenities of this marauding, seafaring
life at the other end of the new routes across the Atlantic. It was
like them, too, to make such a show; we are reminded of Drake,
who on his world-voyage did not ‘omit to make provision also
for ornament or delight, carrying to this purpose with him
expert musicians, rich furniture (all the vessels for his table, yea,
many belonging even to the cook-room being of pure silver).’ ^
Moreover, the Spaniards well might be grateful, while keeping
a sharp look-out: colonial life in the island of Hispaniola must
have been tedious in the extreme and such a visit a conspicuous
excitement. Nor to Grenville, dining with the Spaniards under
a canopy of boughs to ward off the hot summer sun, can it have
been without a spice of mingled bravado and irony: the more so
if he could have had any intuition of what would some day befall
him at their hands!
The banquet, which was the English contribution to these
gaieties, over, the Spaniards provided the sport. They had
drawn together from the mountains a great herd of white bulls
and kine, and they provided a horse ready saddled for every
gentleman and captain that would ride. Then they singled out
three of the best bulls ‘to be hunted by horsemen after their
manner, so that the pastime grew very pleasant for the space of
three hours, wherein all three of the beasts were killed, whereof
one took the sea, and there was slain with a musket.’ After the
sport, presents and gifts were exchanged; and next day Sve
played the merchants in bargaining with them by way of truck
and exchange of divers of their commodities, as horses, mares,
kine, bulls, goats, swine, sheep, bull-hides, sugar, ginger, pearls,
tobacco, and such like commodities of the Island.’ To obtain
1 Fletcher, The World Encompassed.
209
o
SIR RICHARD GRENVILLE OF THE REVENGE
these things was the real object on the EngKsh side of those
courtesies; for Grenville it was vitally necessary to obtain cattle
to stock the new colony with. His dealings with the Spaniards in
Hispaniola were, therefore, a triumphant success, and without
any further delay they departed ‘with great good will from the
Spaniards.’
So much for the English account, as given in Hakluyt, of
their doings in the West Indies. It so happens that one or two
Spanish documents remain, which have hitherto been over-
looked by English writers, that enable us to see these events
from the Spanish side.^ They entirely corroborate the English
account, and add some illuminating and picturesque details
which complete the picture for us. At the end of this month, on
22 June, the Spanish Governor of Havana, Diego Hernandez de
Quinones, wrote home to Philip a report containing the in-
formation which had come in to him.
He was alarmed for the trading fleet from Mexico, which,
with the ships of the Honduras, Jamaica and Campeche, had
just arrived in harbour at Havana, under their commander
Pedro Menendez Marques. At the same time warning came
from the Governor of Porto Rico that two big English ships had
arrived there, at a port called Guardianilla, ten leagues from
Porto Rico; that here they had landed some 400 men and were
building an entrenched fort and cutting timber to build pin-
naces. The Governor had sent a Lieutenant, living at San
German, with 40 men to view the position, and dispatched 35
arquebusiers to harass the enemy whenever they left the fort to
cut wood or get water. When the enemy were embarking, hav-
ing finished their pinnaces, the Lieutenant sent two men to
parley with them and ask who they were. The pirates raised a
flag of truce and sent two men in return, who told him that they
were Englishmen, bearing hostages for a good sum whom they
were going to set to ransom in New Spain. As they were sailing
towards La Mona they captured a bark on its way from San
^ Coleccion Navarrete, XXV, nos. 48, 49. These documents, which
derive originally from the Archives of the Indies and the Secretariat of New
Spain respectively, are merely referred to by Duro in his Armada Espahola^
aiD
THE FIRST VIRGINIA VOYAGE
Domingo, and next day a large frigate with a great cargo of
cloth for Porto Rico, causing much loss to the dwellers round
thereby.
At the time of writing, the Governor had reported that there
were still three big ships and two pinnaces at San German, that
they were asking for horses, pigs, calves and mares; and that
they had on board two Indians, richly dressed. They said that
they were going to settle, but did not say where. Upon this, the
Spanish Commanders in the Islands took alarm for the safety
of the fiotas and the Governor of Havana wrote to Philip to send
out some warships to protect them, since the trading ships of
the flotas were incapable of defending themselves- Little did
they know that a far more powerful force, under the redoubt-
able Drake, was shortly to follow Grenville to the Islands, to
wreak destruction upon their commerce and security.
A little later news came to the Governor of Gremdlle’s five
ships anchored in the port of Isabella, one of them a big galleon,
and that they were demanding horses, dogs, cattle and sheep.
The information was that they had been given some horses for
ransoms and that they were staying on that coast- There were
two more big ships on the south coast at the Cabo de Cruz,
which tallied with the news sent out from Seville; but who they
were, the Spaniards did not know, nor do we. The Governor
thought they were the ships which had a little while before been
at Cape St. Anthony, preying upon commerce. The purpose of
Grenville’s expedition, and ‘whither their thoughts are set’ the
Spaniards could not make out. Pedro Menendez w^as, how^ever,
reporting his opinion to his Majesty; and since the Governor
and he agreed that he should return to Florida, it seems that his
suspicions lay in the right direction.
A second Spanish document gives us a much nearer close-up
of Grenville and his proceedings, since it is an account of what
happened by a Spanish gentleman, Don Fernando de Alta-
mirano, who was captured in the frigate taken by Grenville
and held to ransom. The frigate had been taken in the Straits
about four leagues from the Island of Porto Rico. There were
four English ships present, the largest about 200 tons, another of
about 100 according to his estimation; there was the small vessel
21 1
SIR RICHARD GRENVILLE OF THE REVENGE
they had taken the day before and the pinnace they had built on
the Island, on the southern side at a place called Mosquetal,
where they had made a fort and set up a forge to make nails
for the pinnace. Altamirano says that they had been twelve
days repairing their ships because they had been damaged by
a storm, in which thirteen or fourteen ships as they said, had
been separated from them and they were looking for them there.
We do not know that Grenville’s squadron set out in company
with any other ships from Plymouth. The information seems
designed to spread the rumour of much larger forces than they
had at their disposal. Altamirano was also told that they had
the intention of peopling Trinidad and Dominica, and other
lands which the King did not wish to settle, since he had so
much on his hands already. Here again the English were dis-
guising the real destination of the expedition. They told Alta-
mirano a tall story of their wanting the Indies to be the joint
possessions of England and Spain, and that they had been
commanded not to kill anybody by a great lord of England
(i.e. Ralegh) who had so instructed the General of this fleet,
Fulano de Verde Campo, a certain Grenville, many times.
There were in the fleet some twenty people who seemed per-
sons of distinction, and among the rest were officers in all posts;
they were served upon much silver plate, chased and gilt. They
brought with them two Indians who were tall of stature and
well cared for, and who already spoke English. They also
brought much music, clarions and other instruments, and some
organs, because they said the Indians were lovers of music.
And they brought the Bible translated into Spanish in their
fashion and begged him to take a copy to Porto Rico so that
people should understand how their preachers were deceiving
them. At San German, Altamirano relates, they asked to be
given horses and mares and other animals, in exchange for his
person and the others who were with him. When the people on
shore refused, they threatened to hang him and the other
captives. The day before they set sail they set him and his com-
panions ashore, so that they should not see what course they
were taking; and next day, since they had been becalmed, they
saw them go towards the Cape to deceive the island of San
212
THE FIRST VIRGINIA VOYAGE
Domingo. When Don Fernando and his companions had been
taken, the papers which they found in their possession were read
to them by a Portuguese whom they had as their pilot and who
was a Lutheran; there was another odd Portuguese who went
with them too. All this time they were asking if there was any
news of their ships in the Indies. They carried a great many
plants, plantains and other fruits that they found on the sea-
shores, and they drew pictures of both fruits and trees. They
brought with them a Treasurer and Comptroller from their
home; and they asked questions about the forces holding Porto
Rico and San Domingo and whether the Inquisition were there.
From this it is clear that Grenville was expecting Drake’s
expedition to follow close upon his heels; but it was delayed all
through the summer by the hesitations of the Queen. It was not
until September that Drake was at length free to set sail; and
by then, the Spanish authorities had received a warning from
Grenville’s presence. Drake’s task was made all the more diffi-
cult, and the board swept correspondingly clean before his
appearance. As we have seen from the Governor of Havana’s
dispatch, Pedro Menendez went on immediately with the flotas
of New Spain, and so they at least eluded Drake’s grasp. But
it is an interesting deduction from this, that it was the function
of Grenville’s squadron in part, to act as a scout for Drake’s
larger force coming behind. Had their movements synchronised
as was intended, the damage done to Philip’s dominions in the
West Indies and on the mainland would undoubtedly have been
far heavier than it was. But Grenville could not wait on in-
definitely in the Indies; his prime object was to plant his colony
and he was already delayed in arriving upon the coast of
Virginia - as Lane was later to complain, very unfairly, for
it was not Grenville’s fault. More amusing, though less im-
portant, are the glimpses that Altamirano gives us of Grenville
and his ship: the distinguished company, the honoured position
of the two Anglophile Indians, John White drawing the strange
fruits and plants, the plate upon which the gentlemen were
served, and the many instruments of music. Doubtless the
clarions had an heraldic significance, as much as musical; for
the three clarions were the crest of the Grenvilles, Whether the
213
SIR RICHARD GRENVILLE OF THE REVENGE
Indians were lovers of music or no, we know that Elizabethan
Englishmen were.
To resume the English account of the expedition: leaving
Hispaniola on 7 June, they took a north-westerly course towards
the Caicos Islands, a sort of connecting ridge with Florida, to
the north of Cuba. Next day they anchored at a small island to
take seals, which they had heard were in great quantity there.
But instead, Grenville was almost cast away by some accident
that happened to the pinnace, in which he and others were
sailing, presumably, to or from the shore; ‘but by the help of
God they escaped the hazard, and returned aboard the Admiral
in safety-’ Next day they landed upon Caicos, to search for salt-
ponds, ‘upon the advertisement and information of a Portugal:
who in deed abused our General and us, deserving a halter for
his hire, if it had so pleased us.’ In the next four days they
passed along the other islands of this northerly group, landing
at Guanima and at Cyguateo. On the i20th, they came to the
mainland of Florida, three days later were ‘in great danger of a
wreck on a beach called the Cape of Fear,’ and next day came
to anchor in a harbour ‘where we caught in one tide so much
fish as would have yielded us twenty pounds in London.’
This was their first landing in Florida, and on the 26th they
came to anchor at Wokokon. They weighed anchor again three
days later to bring the Tiger through the inlet between the
islands into the Sound; but the passage was very difficult
among those shoals, and ‘through the unskilfulness of the Master
whose name was Fernando, the Admiral struck on ground, and
sunk.’ The ship was not lost, only grounded; but we learn from
Hooker’s account that a good deal of damage was done to the
stores she carried for the provision of the colony, the ‘ship was
so bruised, that the salt water came so abundantly into her,
that the most part of his corn, salt, meal, rice, biscuit, and other
provisions that he should have left with them that remained
behind him in the country was spoiled.’ ^
3 July’s word of their arrival was sent from Wokokon to
the King Wingina at Roanoke: Amadas and Barlow in the pre-
^ Holinshed’s Chronicle^ Continuation to 1586, p. 1402.
214
THE FIRST VIRGINIA VOYAGE
vious year had not seen him, for he had been wounded in battle
with a neighbouring people and during the time that they were
in the country was lying at his chief town, some six days’
journey off. Granganimeo, his brother, was their particular
friend. The geography of this region has changed a good deal
since then, for it is all low-lying swampy ground liable to be
silted up; some of the inlets have become closed in course of
time and certain of the long islands of the barrier been joined
together. Wokokon, however, which was their first anchorage,
seems to be the modern Ocrocoke between Portsmouth island
and Hatteras which has kept its old name.
On the sixth, Captains Aubrey and Bonython were sent up
the next island, Croatoan, where they Tound two of our men
left there with 30 other by Captain Reymond, some 20 days
before.’ Evidently he had arrived there considerably ahead of
the other ships. It took two days to bring these men back to the
base at Wokokon. On the same day, John Arundell was sent
across to the mainland, that would be to Secoton and the dis-
trict round, now known as Hyde county: it was then much more
cut up by inlets of the sea and by a great inland sea called
Paquipee, later Lake Mattamuskee. He was accompanied by
Manteo as guide, one of the two Indians whom Amadas had
taken back with him to England. Manteo remained a staunch
friend to the English all the time they were there under Lane’s
governance; indeed it was due to him that Lane heard in time
of the chief Wingina’s conspiracy against him, and so was saved.
The other Indian, Wanchese, later turned against the English.
The two are commemorated in the two townships upon
Roanoke island which are called by their names.
Grenville led an expedition a few days later to the mainland.
He went in his tilt-boat, with his relatives Arundell and
Stukeley; Lane, Cavendish, Harriot and others went in the new
pinnace; and two ship’s-boats followed with a score of others.
They were victualled for eight days, and they spent a week
exploring the country about the mouth of the Pamlico River.
They discovered several native settlements, Pomejok, Aquas-
cogoc and Secoton, where they were well entertained by the
natives, ‘and also the great lake called by the savages Paquipee.*
215
SIR RICHARD GRENVILLE OF THE REVENGE
But at Aquascogoc one of the Indians stole a silver cup from
them; and Grenville, sending a boat to demand it and not re-
ceiving it according to promise, set fire to the settlement and
burnt and spoiled their corn, ‘all the people being fled/ It was
a characteristically harsh, and probably unfortunate, way of
enforcing a lesson upon them.
The expedition returned on the i8th, and three days later
the fleet sailed for Hatteras, a good deal farther up the coast
towards Roanoke. They arrived there on the 127th, and there
the King’s brother Granganimeo came aboard Grenville’s ship
with Manteo. During August, Grenville explored up the other
great sound (Albemarle Sound), mainly it appears on the north
side to Weapomeiok, about where the modern Hertford is, and
to where the Chowan river, which has retained its old name,
comes into the Sound. At this time Lane was very busy writing
letters home to England, to Walsingham and Sir Philip Sidney,
explaining the situation there between himself and Grenville as
he saw it. On the 5th, John Arundell left for England, and on
the 25th, Grenville, leaving the command in the hands of Lane
and a plentiful supply of provisions for the colony, sailed for
home too. Some 107 men elected to remain behind under
Lane’s command, among them Harriot, Acton, Edward Staf-
ford, and among the west-countrymen, Philip Amadas, Kendall,
Prideaux and Anthony Rowse, Grenville had performed his
task.
On the voyage home, when not many days out from Virginia
- the name conferred upon the new country with the Queen’s
good liking - Grenville, according to the account in Holinshed,
‘descried a tall ship of four hundred tons or thereabouts, mak-
ing the same course that he did, unto whom he gave chase, and
in few hours by goodness of sail overtook, and by violence won,
richly laden with sugar, hides, spices and some quantity of gold,
silver and pearl: she was the vice-admiral of the fleet of Sancto
Domingo that year for Spain.’ ^
The account in Hakluyt says that the Spanish ship was of 300
tons, ‘richly loaden’; but its brief entry as to the manner of her
^ Holinshed, 1402.
216
THE FIRST VIRGINIA VOYAGE
capture is more excitingly specific, if it is to be believed. It says
that Grenville boarded her ‘with a boat made with boards of
chests, which fell asunder, and sunk at the ship’s side as soon
as ever he and his men were out of it.’ He then shipped in the
prize and completed his journey in her in a short time, ‘having
a merry gale.’
On 10 September, he lost sight of the Tiger in foul
weather, which came in at Falmouth on 6 October. Grenville
arrived at Plymouth on the i8th, ‘and was courteously received
by divers of his worshipful friends.’ Drake had left harbour just
a month before on that destructive West Indies expedition
which marked the opening of the war. But the Chronicle says
that Ralegh met with Grenville at Plymouth, where he ‘did
presently resolve upon another voyage, to supply Ralph Lane,
and his company that were left with him in Virginia, the next
spring following.’ ^
It so happens that for the taking of the Spanish prize and
other accidents of Grenville’s homeward journey, we have much
new detailed information in another Spanish document, an
account given by Enrique Lopez, a Lisbon merchant, who was a
passenger with other merchants on board the ship taken by
Grenville.^ We learn that her name was the Santa Maria of St,
Vincent. She set out from San Domingo as flagship of seventeen
other merchant ships, the San Domingo flota^ carrying a cargo
chiefly of hides and sugar. At Havana in July, after Grenville
had left the Islands, the San Domingo contingent joined the
Jlota of New Spain and the Mainland, under the command of
Don Antonio Osorio. When they all set sail for Spain, they
were some thirty-three sail.
Two days out they were caught in a storm, and the Santa
Maria was forced to drop anchor and lay to all night. Next
morning there were only six or seven sail of the Jlota in sight, and
these the ship, being a poor sailor, could not catch up. How-
ever they went on their course lagging behind in the rear, until
^ Plymouth Muniments: VVidey Court Book, 1584-5. Ralegh was at
Plymouth about this time, for in the Town Accounts we find Mr. Hawkins
paid £‘4 and Martin White i u. ^d, for his entertainment.
* Goleccidn Navarrete, XXV, 53-
217
SIR RICHARD GRENVILLE OF THE REVEJ^GE
they were in line with the Bermudas. Here, on 4 September,
about 10 o’clock in the morning, they suddenly saw a sail
following in their track, which they took to be one of their
company which had waited for them; so they took in sail to
await her, so that they might go on together in company. As
the ship came up with them, to windward, they fired a round
from a gun to greet her as a sign of friendship. Immediately the
ship opened fire on them, disabling their rigging and partly
cutting down their shrouds. Since they had no arms nor
artillery, they tried to fly; but they were outsailed, the pirate-
ship firing shot after shot at them, killing one of the crew and
wounding several, and then gave them two rounds of cannon at
the waterline so that they feared they were going to the bottom.
So they took in their sails and lay to: there was nothing else to
be done.
Immediately a boat from the pirate-ship came to board them
with thirty armed soldiers, and among them an officer whom
they called the General, whose name is Richard Grenville
(Richarte de Gampo Verde). He said that they had set out
&om England for the Indies armed with fourteen ships. Com-
ing on board, the General ordered the master and the other
passengers to deliver up all the gold and silver and other things
they had, promising to spare their persons. The passengers gave
him the keys of the boxes; he opened some, broke open others
and took out of them many packets of gold, silver and pearls
that they were carrying. He took also the inventory of the ship
and went through it asking for the gold, silver and pearls cata-
logued in it. They were handed over to him without exception,
to the value of more than 40,000 ducats. In addition there were
some 200 boxes of sugar of about 40 arrobas ^ each, 7,000 calf-
hides and 1,000 quintals of ginger, and other things, worth
altogether 120,000 ducats. Grenville ordered twenty sailors to
be taken out of the prize into his own ship, leaving only some
20 Spaniards all told, merchants and sailors, in the prize. With
his 35 men he stayed in her, continuing the voyage together
with his own ship, until they were some 400 leagues from the
Bermudas, when they were separated in a storm and did not see
^ An arroba = 25 lbs.
218
THE FIRST VIRGINIA VOYAGE
the English ship again. So the Santa Maria continued on her
voyage alone, suffering great hardship from lack of supplies,
for they had hardly any left; Grenville had taken off most of
what they were carrying into his ship which was in want. They
were driven in the end to eating no more than a little r\-e
cooked in salt water. So they went on until 1 2 October (Spanish
Calendar) when they got sight of the Island of Flores.
As soon as they sighted land they drew near so that some boat
might come out and show them a harbourage; and Gren\ille
arranged that no English should be found or appear, but only
the passengers and sailors of the ship. So they had speech with
some of the islanders and asked them to send a boat to board
them because they were in want; and the islanders recognising
them for their countrymen sent out a boat with five men. When
they came alongside the General forced them to come into the
ship and seized them, saying that he would not let them go until
they gave him the supplies of which there w^as need, for pay-
ment, The islanders, knowing him for a pirate, refused. One
of the most important passengers went ashore and begged the
islanders to give them the supplies they asked, for payment;
for if they did not, he said that they would throw him and the
rest of them, passengers and sailors, into the sea; the General
seemed to be so resolved. When the islanders saw that he was
so, they gave them the supplies they needed in return for
money. As soon as the General had got his supplies on board,
he set the Spaniards, some 22 in all, on shore; before they left
the ship he stripped them to see if they had anything hidden on
them.
The Portuguese merchant reports that Grenville’s ship was a
galleon in type, which made good sail and w^as well-armed and
rigged. She had two tiers of artillery on each side, besides many
other firearms; as pilot she had one Simon Fernandez, a Portu-
guese of the island of Tercera. He says that he had talked with
some distinguished persons whom Grenville had with him; they
told him that they had been in the Indies, on the north side of
Porto Rico, where they had taken two frigates carrying mer-
chandise, and that thence they had gone towards Florida, where
they were to lose themselves among certain islands; the General
219
SIR RICHARD GRENVILLE OF THE REVENGE
had set ashore some 300 men there with orders to begin building
a fort for settlement. He had dispatched a frigate to England -
this must have been that which left under the command of John
Arundell on 5 August — to get tools and munitions and men
ready on his arrival to return at once to where he had left his
men.
‘This Richard Grenville appeared to be a man of quality, for
he was served with much show, and vessels of plate and gold,
and servants, and many musical instruments which they played
while he ate; and in his appearance he seemed a distinguished
person, (en su aspeto del parecia hombre principal)
2S20
CHAPTER XII
THE FIRST ENGLISH COLONY IN AMERICA:
VIRGINIA 1585-6
Grenville arrived home to find himself under the necessity of
defending his conduct, not so much over the taking of the
Spanish prize, but as regards certain particulars in his conduct
of the voyage. He waited for some days, doubtless rendering
a full report to Ralegh, and then on 29 October, wrote to
Walsingham.^ He does not make much of the unfavourable
rumours; he merely says, ‘by the ignorance of such as have come
before me a large report hath been made of great quantities of
pearl and metal of gold and silver’ taken in the prize. On the
contrary, he says:
‘I do assure your honour that I have found but little; neither
doth any such quantity pass firom St. Domingo from whence
they came unto Spain. That which was here belonged only to
private persons who were passengers into Spedn from St. Dom-
ingo. And the same when the ship yielded, was embezzled by
the company.’
We need not attach much importance to this last statement,
any more than to his account of the manner in which the prize
was taken:
‘In my way homewards I was encountered by a Spanish
ship, whom assaulting me and offering me violence, god
be thanked, with defence and safety of my self and all my
company, after some fight I overcame and brought into Eng-
land with me; her lading is ginger and sugar.’
Suchstatementsweremoreor less pro formain such circumstances
^ S.P. Colonial, i, no. 7.
22 1
SIR RICHARD GRENVILLE OF THE REVENGE
with Elizabethans: everybody would know how much import-
ance to attach to them. What was of more importance to
Walsingham, for he was a co-adventurer in the voyage, was the
value of the prize. Grenville says that the whole estimate of
the ship by the confession of the Spaniards and view of their
books ‘amounteth only to 40,000 or 50,000 ducats.’ One must
allow a good margin to this, the figure is so very round. But
whatever the precise value was, the voyage was ‘made’ : he was
enabled to pay back what each adventurer had subscribed
with a profit, whatever there was left over for Ralegh and
himself. ‘The same being sufficient to answer the charge of each
adventurer, wherein I am glad that my hope is to yield your
honour the return of your adventure with some gain.’
That was a strong argument with which to meet any diffi-
culties that might be brought up as regards his conduct of the
voyage. Nor does Grenville anticipate objections; he was con-
scious of his own rectitude in having accomplished his mission.
T have, god be thanked,’ he writes, ‘performed the action
whereunto I was directed as fully as the time wherein I have
been absent from hence and all possibilities would permit me.
I have possessed and peopled the same to Her Majesty’s use;
and planted it with such cattle and beasts as are fit and neces-
sary for manuring the country and in time to give relief with
victual, as also with such fruits and plants as by my travail by
the way thitherwards I might procure.’
For any further report of the commodities of the new country
he refers him to his cousin Ralegh, and promises to let him have
a report later of such as he has brought with him, ‘the account
whereof with other relations of the whole course of the voyage
at my repair to the Court, which god willing shall be shortly,
I will my self impart unto you.’ One notices the increased god-
liness of the language with Grenville as with the seamen
generally, as time went on and the impending struggle with
Spain drew nearer: it was no impediment however to their
somewhat pragmatic attitude towards telling the truth.
It does not appear that Grenville was acquainted with Lane’s
222
THE FIRST ENGLISH COLONY IN AMERICA
charges against him; but for some time Lane had been boiling
over. There had evidently been open quarrelling between the
two men on the voyage, and Lane may have been the head of
a second party within the expedition, opposed to Grenville, as
was frequently the case with Elizabethan enterprises. Drake
had only obtained the unity necessary for his great scheme of
circumnavigating the globe, by trying and executing his rival,
Thomas Doughty, who led the opposition to his command.
Lane laid the charge against Grenville that the latter had pur-
posed to do the same by him:
‘he not only purposed but even propounded the same, to have
brought me by indirect means and untrue surmises to the ques-
tion for my life, and that only for an advice in a public consulta-
tion by me given, which if it had been executed, had been for
the great good of us all, but most chiefly of himself’ ^
Lane arrived at this charge in a long indignant letter to Wal-
singham, written on 8 September from Roanoke.
But he had already begun his campaign as early as 1 2 August,
writing ‘from the Port Ferdinando, in Virginia’ - the first letter
to be written from Virginia that survives.^ Either it is wrongly
dated by a fortnight, or Lane took Grenville’s departure to
explore the Sound beyond Roanoke as his departure for Eng-
land. He begins circumspectly enough, writing to Walsingham:
‘The General’s return in his own person into England doth
presently cut me off from using circumstances in report of the
particularities of this country.’ He goes on to hint that they
have arrived in the country late in the year, ‘and that wholly
through the fault of him that intendeth to accuse others.’ It
should be said that there is no evidence whatever to show that
Grenville did accuse Lane; he seems to have been content with
establishing his authority. And the fact that he left Lane in
command on his return, and next year hastened to bring him
supplies, suggests that, the perils and disputes of the voyage
over, Grenville bore him no grudge.
Lane wrote at the same time to Walsingham and Sir William
Russell, commending the bearer of these letters, a Mr. Atkinson,
1 S.P. Colonial, i, no. 6. ® ibid. no. 3.
223
SIR RICHARD GRENVILLE OF THE REVENGE
who had borne himself honestly and industriously throughout
the voyage, ‘notwithstanding the GeneraFs displeasure towards
him and his complaints.’ ^ It is not difficult to see that Atkinson
was one of Lane’s supporters. But there were others according
to Lane. In the letter in which, after Grenville’s departure
when he was now left in control, Lane’s indignation reached its
height, he names particularly Cavendish, the high marshal on
the expedition, Edward Gorges, Francis Brooke, the treasurer,
and Captain Clark, Captain of the fly-boat. Lane thought that
Grenville had returned home to accuse them, for he wrote to
inform Walsingham
‘that it is not possible for men to behave themselves more
faithfully and more industriously in our action . . . Contrary
wise how Sir Richard Grenville, General, hath demeaned
himself from the first day of his entry into government at
Plymouth, until the day of his departure from hence over
the bar in the Port Ferdinando, far otherwise than my hope
of him, though very agreeable to the expectations and pre-
dictions of sundry wise and godly persons of his own country,
that knew him better than my self.’
The circumstances of Elizabethan seafaring, with high-
tempered and explosive men cooped up in small ships for long
spaces together, and when they commanded separate ships so apt
to disagree about the course to be followed, were conducive to
disagreement and quarrelling. But Lane felt venomously about
Grenville, who had evidently given him a fright when Lane
ventured to disagree, if indeed he had intended in his passion
to make him pay the death-penalty. Lane refers Walsingham
for a full account of all the General’s dealings, especially to-
wards himself, to ‘an ample discourse of the whole voyage’
dedicated and sent to Sir Walter Ralegh. It is a pity that this
book has not survived; it perished along with most of Ralegh’s
private papers in the wreck which overtook his fortunes. Lane
concludes:
‘So as for mine own part, I have had so much experience of
^ S.P. Colonial, i, no. 4.
J224
THE FIRST ENGLISH COLONY IN AMERICA
his government, as I am humbly to desire your honour and the
rest of my honourable friends, to give me their favours to be
freed from that place, where Sir Richard Gren\ille is to carr\^
any authority in chief. Assuring you, Sir, with all that the Lord
hath miraculously blessed this action, that in the time of Ms
being amongst us, even through his intolerable pride, and in-
satiable ambition, it hath not at three several times taken a final
overthrow.’
However, it had not, and that was the strong point in Gren-
ville’s case; his great argument, if it came to that, was the
success of the enterprise.
We know no more than this of the quarrel between the parties
within the command: through the perishing of the documents
it has remained obscure. But it left Lane in a queer temper, at
the beginning of a difficult and nerve-racking task. He sought
relief in letter- writing; in a stream of letters at tMs time, to
Walsingham, Sir Philip Sidney, Richard Hakluyt, he sings the
praises of the new country. To the last, he writes that before
Grenville’s departure and after, they have
‘discovered the main to be the goodliest soil under the cope of
heaven . . . and the climate so wholesome, that we had not one
sick since we touched the land here. If Virginia had but horses
and kine in some reasonable proportion, I dare assure my self
being inhabited with English, no realm in Christendom were
comparable to it.’ ^
Left to his own resources, with his company of 107 men, Lane
built a fort at the north end of Roanoke Island, and with tMs
as his base started upon the exploration of the country. We are
greatly aided in following Mm about his travels, and in gather-
ing the character of the country and the people, their villages
and manner of life, by the charming water-colour maps and
drawings made by John White, the artist and cartographer of
the expedition, as Harriot was its scientist — a fine series now
reposing in the British Museum, the first artistic product of the
new country. The farthest Lane travelled to the South was, like
1 Hakluyt VIII, 319--20.
225
p
SIR RICHARD GRENVILLE OF THE REVENGE
Grenville, to Secoton, the district that lies now between the
Pamlico and Neuse Rivers. To the north, their farthest dis-
covery was the country of the Chesapians, 1 30 miles distant, on
the way towards Chesapeake Bay. This country earned Lane’s
enthusiastic commendations, and he had some intention of
moving up the coast to it. His inclination was right, for it was
upon one of the inlets of Chesapeake Bay that the final and per-
manent planting of Virginia took place.
But Lane did not get so far up the coast as this; indeed explor-
ing by water was made dangerous by the shallows of these wide
Sounds; as he says, once come to grief upon one of them, there
was no hope of obtaining help, the shore was so far away. To
the North-West they explored as far as Chawanook, beyond
Weapomeioc which Grenville had reached; it was the country-
lying on both sides of the modern Chowan River, ‘where it
groweth to be as narrow as the Thames between Westniinster
and Lambeth.’ ^ The chief of this country was called Mena-
tonon, ‘a man impotent in his limbs, a very grave and wise man,
and of a very singular good discourse in matters concerning the
state, not only of his own country, but also of his neighbours
round about him as well far as near.’ He certainly entertained
Lane with some strange tales of a country four days’ journey to
the North-East (again on the shores of the Chesapeake Bay),
where there were pearls to be had in great quantity. Of the
second great river which flowed into the Sound, the Moratoc
(now the Roanoke), he told an even stranger tale. Its head,
they gathered, was some thirty or forty days’ journey away,
where it sprang out of a rock, ‘which standeth so near unto a sea,
that many times in storms the waves thereof are beaten into the
said fresh stream, so that the fresh water groweth salt and
brackish.’ This aroused their excitement: did the river rise
somewhere close by the Bay of Mexico? Or could it be that
they were so near the Pacific, or at least an arm running into it:
the long-sought North-West Passage at last?
Lane and his men determined to put it to the trial. The diffi-
culty was that the river was almost impossible to navigate with
oars, there was such a violent current from the west: ‘for the
^ Hakluyt VHI, 320-45.
326
THE FIRST ENGLISH COLONY IN AMERICA
space of thirty miles rowing, it is as broad as the Thames
betwixt Greenwich and the Isle of Dogs, in some places more,
and in some less : the current runneth as strong, being entered
so high into the river, as at London bridge upon a vale water.’
To this, there was added the greater difficulty of a complete
change of attitude among the Indians. After the death of Gran-
ganimeo, the friend of the English, his brother the King
Wingina had changed his name to Pemisapan, and with that
his attitude of former friendliness to secret hostility. He played
upon the powerful Indian tribes along the course Lane was to
take, with tales that the English meant to kill them; ‘on the
other side he told me (Lane), that they had the like meaning
towards us.’ The consequence was that the Indians by con-
certed action withdrew as Lane went up into the country, taking
their corn and victual with them, which ‘made me and my
company as narrowly to escape starving in that discovery before
our return, as ever men did, that missed the same.’ Still the
English struggled forward, led on by the hope of a mine of
‘marvellous and most strange mineral’ at the end of their
journey; until all their corn being exhausted they were
reduced to making the two mastiffs they had brought with
them into a pottage with sassafras leaves, and subsisting
on that, they dropped exhausted down the river again to
Roanoke.
Pemisapan never expected to see them again, having taken
good order as he thought to get rid of them. On their return he
was suitably impressed and ready to submit to their demands
again for a while. Some of the Indians thought that the English
could not be killed, for ‘we be dead men returned into the world
again, and that we do not remain dead but for a certain time,
and that then we return again.’ Pemisapan sowed his ground
at the end of April, besides giving the English a plot to sow^
themselves; by July when the harvest came, they would be safe.
But during the intervening months, Pemisapan suffered a re-
lapse and took to his old courses of starving them out, putting
off their demands for corn with excuses, while he brought
together a confederacy of the Indians against the colony- Lane
was forced to disperse his forces about the islands to live off
2527
SIR RICHARD GRENVILLE OF THE REVENGE
crabs and oysters, while he sent Prideaux to Cape Hatteras and
Stafford to Croatoan to feed themselves and look out for
shipping.
The Indians were gathering in force, planning to fire the
settlement and kill Lane and Harriot in the confusion. Lane
preferred to precipitate matters rather than to wait, and in an
attempt to surprise all their canoes upon Roanoke, which mis-
carried, Pemisapan and his chiefs were set upon, Lane giving
the watchword, ‘Christ our victory,’
‘and immediately those his chief men and himself had by the
mercy of God for our deliverance, that which they had purposed
for us. The King himself being shot through by the Colonel
with a pistol, lying on the ground for dead, I looking as watch-
fully for the saving of Manteo’s friends, as others were busy
that none of the rest should escape, suddenly he started up, and
ran away as though he had not been touched, insomuch as he
overran all the company, being by the way shot thwart the
buttocks by mine Irish boy with my petroneL’
The Irishman, one Nugent, pursued him into the woods alone,
and later came back with Pemisapan’s head in his hand.
A week after this unhappy event, there came news of a large
fleet of twenty-three sail upon the coast; not knowing whether
they were friends or foes, the whole colony stood on guard. But
it was Drake returning from his triumphant rake’s progress
through the Indies, in which he had stormed and taken Santi-
ago, San Domingo, Carthagena and St. Augustine, inflicting a
vast amount of damage and carrying away their defences,
besides much booty. Drake anchored in the roads outside,
being unable to venture in because of the shallows. Lane went
out to him, and Drake offered them forthwith a bark, the
Francis^ two pinnaces and four small boats, with victual for
loo men for four months, and all kinds of necessaries, hand
weapons, boots, match, besides artificers and masters to take
them back to England if need arose.
Lane, who was very discouraged by the accidents that had
happened and ‘seeing our hope for supply with Sir Richard
Grenville, so undoubtedly promised us before Easter, not yet
^28
THE FIRST ENGLISH COLONY IN AMERICA
come, neither then likely to come this year, considering the
doings in England for Flanders, and also for America/ derived
a new lease of hope and courage from Drake’s generous offer
and elected to remain on in the new country. But immediately
after, a great storm arose which lasted for days and Drake’s fleet
had to put out to sea before it, if it was not to be wTecked upon
those shoals, and with it the bark Francis with all Lane’s pro-
visions and hopes was driven clear to sea. It was too much to
endure. The storm subsiding in a few days, Drake made a new
offer, putting the bark Bonner at their disposal to take them and
all their provisions home. This time it was the wish of all the
colony to accept: they had had enough. Setting sail with the
fleet on 19 June, they arrived in Portsmouth 27 July.
It was the end of Ralegh and Grenville’s first and chief
attempt at founding the colony,
"being of all others’ wrote the judicious Harriot in his admirable
True Report of Virginia^ "the most principal, and as yet of most
effect, the time of their abode in the country being a whole
year, when as in the other voyage before they stayed but six
weeks, and the others after were only for supply and transporta-
tion, nothing more being discovered than had been before.’ ^
Harriot was inclined upon reflection to lay some blame for
the unfortunate turn of events upon this, that "some of our com-
pany towards the end of the year, showed themselves too fierce
in slaying some of the people in some towns, upon causes that
on our part might easily enough have been borne withal.’
Perhaps it was that the strangeness of the conditions, and the
strain of their labours and of constant watchfulness, had an
effect upon their nerves, for when they left it was by a sudden
panic. When they saw Drake’s fleet being driven from their
anchors to sea, we learn that "the rest on land perceiving this,
hasted to those three sails which were appointed to be left there;
and for fear they should be left behind they left all things con-
fusedly, as if they had been chased from thence by a mighty
army.’ It seemed little enough that remained from so much
1 Hakluyt VIII, 348-^6.
229
SIR RICHARD GRENVILLE OF THE REVEJ^GE
effort - a few letters and writings, John White’s drawings and
some confusion.
And yet in reality the colony achieved something of the
highest importance: it founded the tradition; from that every-
thing else sprang. Voyage after voyage, often after an interval
of years, was despatched - and so strong was the tradition that
they made for Roanoke, when the country was not really
favourable for colonisation and that to the north along the
shores of Chesapeake Bay offered a far better foothold; until
in the end, in the latter area, a permanent colony was planted.
But all went back to these earlier efforts, in particular to Gren-
ville’s colony of 1585. A more curious, though not less far-
reaching, by-product of this year’s residence in the new world,
was the introduction of tobacco into the old. One can never
be sure who has the first claim to the honour, or according to
Camden, the dishonour; but we may be certain that tobacco
was among the commodities that Grenville brought back in the
Tiger. Harriot wrote immediately after: ^We ourselves, during
the time we were there, used to smoke it after their manner,
as also since our return, and have found many rare and wonder-
ful experiments of the virtues thereof.’
230
CHAPTER XIII
LATER VIRGINIA VOYAGES
T shall yet live to sec it an English nation.’
SIR WALTER RALEGH, 1609
Ralegh and Grenville were not unmindful of the colony and
spared no pains in the winter of this year to gather reinforce-
ments and supplies. Ralegh was extremely pressed with busi-
ness at this time; he had only just been appointed to his new
and important offices in the west, and at the same time he was
engaged upon schemes for the colonisation of Munster, laid
waste and depopulated in the Desmond Rebellion, and where
he had been granted some twelve thousand acres. The main re-
sponsibility as regards Virginia fell therefore upon Grenville;
and during this winter and spring he was gathering supplies and
fitting out ships, this time at his home-port of Bideford.
In February the Council wrote him and the deputy-lieuten-
ants of Cornwall concerning the plantation of Munster; they
were to treat with the gentlemen of the county, making offer of
certain grants of land there to be taken up and settled.^ On 27
April, the deputy-lieutenants wrote back: ‘We have generally
made known through this country her Majesty’s offers, and do
find none of sufficient ability offer to undertake the same.’ They
suggested that it would ‘further the people’s willingness if some
principal gentleman of each county, of whose discretion and
fidelity the people are persuaded, be sent with them as their
captain or governor’; the people then would follow.* This was
indeed the crux of the question of planting Munster as of other
colonies: to be successful it needed the transplantation of the
1 A.P.C. XIV, 8-9. * S.P. Doitt. Eli2. 148, no. 42.
231
SIR RICHARD GRENVILLE OF THE REVENGE
social structure men were accustomed to, with its dependence
upon the gentry. It was not until Grenville turned his attention
to Munster that Cornwall took a part in the plantation, a band
of a hundred men following Grenville's lead into this new field
of enterprise, so much nearer home than Virginia, but in the
end no less heart-breaking.
Then too there was Grenville's place in the defence of the
country to be filled in his absence: he commanded a body of 300
trained men, the forces of Stratton hundred. The deputy-lieu-
tenants advertised the Council that
"Sir Richard Grenville now being ready to depart to the sea,
hath signified unto us that he hath left the charge of the 300
men whereof he was by your Lordships appointed captain unto
Digory Grenville, John Facey and John Bligh gent, his petty
captains, and to his kinsman George Grenville as their captain,
whom we do for the present necessity confirm and allow so to
be, until it shall please your lordships otherwise to direct.’
Before leaving for whatever perils the new voyage might
hold, Grenville put his affairs into order, executing a trust deed
on 16 March to regulate the uses of his real estate and the suc-
cession thereto.^ The trustees whom he appointed were Ralegh,
Sir Arthur Basset, Sir Francis Godolphin; Henry Killigrew,
Richard Bellew, his brother-in-law, John Hele and Christopher
Harris; Thomas Docton and John Facey, gentlemen. His
estates are set out in full: the mansion house and demesne lands
of Stowe, the manor of Kilkhampton with all lands, tenements,
hereditaments, etc., in the parishes of Kilkhampton, Stratton
and Morwinstow; the manors of Wolston and Widemouth; the
manor of Swanacott and lands in Week St. Mary; the manors of
Bideford, Littleham and Lancras, with all lands in Devonshire;
and the manor and island of Lundy.
All these were to be held by the trustees to the use of his wife
after his death, so long as she remained unmarried, in recom-
pense of the jointure she might claim. After her death, or
second marriage, the trustees are to pay the debts, marriage of
the daughters and performance of Grenville’s will, and then the
1 Granville, 124-7.
LATER VIRGINIA VOYAGES
estate is to go to the use of Bernard, his son and heir, and in
turn to the next heirs in carefully elaborated succession. On
Dame Mary Grenville’s marriage after his death, her interest
in the premises determined, and she was to be paid an annuity
of £200 per annum ~ a goodly sum, indicative perhaps of the
jointure he obtained with her. Finally, it is provided that if
Grenville at any time in his natural life, in person or by writing,
demand of the trustees at the parish church of Kilkhampton
the sum of :£‘50,ooo and is not paid, the above grant is then void
and all the estates and rights in it shall stand to the only use and
behalf of Grenville and his heirs. This sufficiently safeguarded
himself; for ;;{^50,ooo was out of all proportion to the value of his
estate.
Having made his preparations, Grenville was ready to depart
by the middle of April. It was already late. Ralegh had des-
patched a ‘bark of aviso,’ a small express-boat ‘freighted with all
manner of things in most plentiful manner for the supply and
relief of his colony then remaining in Virginia: but before they
set sail from England it was after Easter, so that our colony half
despaired of the coming of any supply.’ ^ By the time the bark
reached Cape Hatteras, the colony had already been taken off
by Drake; and after spending some time in seeking for them up
in the country, the ship returned with all its provisions into
England. A slight accident on leaving harbour at Bideford de-
layed Grenville a little further. We hear from the useful Philip
Wyot, Town Clerk of Barnstaple, who kept a diaiy^:
‘16 April Sir Richard Grenville sailed over the bar with his
fly-boat and frigate; but for want of sufficient water on the bar,
being near upon the neap, he left his ship. This Sir Richard
Grenville pretended [i.e. intended] his going to Wyngandecora,
where he was last year.’ ^
The fly-boat and frigate were the Roebuck and the Tiger^ each of
140 tons; it would seem that Grenville w^as sailing in the Span-
^ V. the account of the Third Voyage, Hakluyt V^III, 346-8; cf. W.
Strachey, Historie of Travaile into Virginia (Hakluyt Society), 149, and W.
Stith, History of Virginia (New York 1865), 22.
* Chanter, Literary History of Barnstaple, 91.
233
SIR RICHARD GRENVILLE OF THE REVENGE
ish prize, in which he had returned last year, and that being of
much greater burden got stuck on the bar.
However, he arrived in Virginia fourteen or fifteen days after
Ralegh’s bark had departed;
‘who not finding the aforesaid ship according to his expecta-
tion, nor hearing any liames of our English colony there seated,
and left by him anno 1 585, himself travelling up into divers
places of the country, as well to see if he could hear any news of
the colony left there by him the year before, under the charge of
Master Lane his deputy: but after some time spent therein, not
hearing any news of them, and finding the places which they
inhabited desolate, yet unwilling to loose the possession of the
country which Englishmen had so long held : after good delibera-
tion, he determined to leave some men behind to retain posses-
sion of the country: whereupon he landed fifteen men in the Isle
of Roanoke, furnished plentifully with all manner of provisions
for two years, and so departed for England.’ ^
It must have been a great disappointment to him and even
more, matter for bewilderment. He cannot have known at this
time that it was Drake who had taken off the colony and was
even now bringing them home; nor, we may be sure, would it
have contented Grenville any the more if he had known. The
score against Drake was running up; later on we shall find an
unmistakable indication that their personal relations were not
good. On his way home, not long after this, we read, Grenville
Tell with the Isle of Azores, on some of which Islands he landed,
and spoiled the towns of all such things as were worth carriage,
where also he took divers Spaniards. With these and many other
exploits done by him in this voyage, as well outward as home-
ward, he returned into England.’
This seems to have been his first landing in the Azores; no
wonder his name afterwards aroused such terror among the
islanders. It was out of this and similar experiences that the
islanders conceived the great fear they had of him; and fear
gave rise to the sort of stories reported by the Dutchman, van
1 Hakluyt, VIII, 347-8.
234
LATER VIRGINIA VOYAGES
Linschoten, who was in the Islands at the time of the last fight
of the Revenge. There is, for example, the tale that everybody
knows that ‘while at dinner or supper, 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.’ ^ All sixteenth-century people relished
incredible tales of this sort: nor to them were they incredible; a
later, more critical generation regards them, not so much as
true, but as having their value in revealing the age no less than
the man.
There is no need to extenuate or excuse Grenville’s descent
upon the Azores; it was now open war with Spain. The long
period of doubt and hesitation, when it was neither war nor
peace, was considered by the English seamen to have passed
into war with Philip’s arrest of the English cornships in Spanish
ports in May 1585. Even Elizabeth regarded Drake’s West
Indies expedition as an act of retaliation; and in descending
upon the Azores Grenville was following in his footsteps. We do
not know what spoil he brought home with him, nor even when
he arrived again in England.
On 2 June of this year, his daughter Mary was married to
her cousin Arthur Tremayne of Collacombe.^ It is unlikely that
her father was present; after all, privateering was a more profit-
able occupation than even marrying one’s daughters. Again,
we do not know if the interesting entiy that Wyot records in his
Diary for December, means that Grenville kept the seas all the
latter part of this year, or put out a second time; there may be
a mistake simply in the month, when he says: ‘In December
this year Sir Richard Grenville came home bringing a prize
with him, laden with sugar, ginger and hides.’ ^
These incursions into what he considered his own privileged
sphere of the New World were watched with close attention by
one great person in Europe, the King of Spain. To the English,
^ The Last Fight of the Revenge (Arber’s Reprints 1871): J. H. van Lin-
schoten: ‘The Fight and Cyclone at the Azores,’ 91-
* Kilkhampton Parish Register. * Chanter, 92.
235
SIR RICHARD GRENVILLE OF THE REVENGE
Ralegh and Grenville’s new country was Virginia, named so by
the to the Spaniards it was the northward extension of
their Florida. Sitting into the early hours at his writing-table in
the Escurial, endlessly annotating the reports from his agents
concerning his interests all over the known world, Philip was
astonishingly well-informed, if a little late. He knew very well
what was going on in England and had no desire to be involved
in war. From the days when he had reigned as King in England
- gone were the happy days when he could rely on the English
alliance to protect his sea-communications in the Channel-
from those days he had remembered a good deal of the political
life of the country and had taken trouble since to keep in touch
with innumerable Englishmen. But the new generation grow-
ing up he did not know. He would hardly have known a Drake,
who had only recently thrust himself into the forefront from
obscure beginnings; but neither did he know Grenville.
It so happened that when Grenville was at Plymouth in 1585
preparing for his first Virginia voyage, he pressed a German
captain into going with him. At some time this German con-
trived to remain behind in the West Indies, whence his account
of Drake’s expedition was dispatched to the King. In July 1586
Philip wrote to Mendoza, now in Paris, urging him to send con-
stant reports of what was happening in England, and take
occasion to note as regards the German who had recently ar-
rived in Spain: ‘I do not understand that he was a prisoner of
Drake’s, but of him whom he mentions in his relation.’ ^ This
was Grenville: evidently Philip had not yet heard of him.
On 7 August, Mendoza wrote a letter of information, which
must have crossed Philip’s; he says:
‘The ships of Richard Grenville, on board of which he (the
German captain) says he was pressed at Plymouth, are those
which I mentioned to your Majesty as soon as I came to France
were being fitted out by Ralegh, the Queen’s favourite, to sail
for the coast of Florida; which voyage was under discussion for
two years before the ships left England as I informed your Maj-
esty. The ship that this captain says was captured from Santo
^ Cal. S.P. Spanish 1580-6, 591.
236
LATER VIRGINIA VOYAGES
Domingo with so large a treasure in gold, silver, pearls, cochi-
neal, ivory and hides, was one I advised your Majesty of
months ago as having arrived in England, and that Ralegh
himself had gone down to the port to take possession of her
cargo and not to allow it to be distributed among the sailors.’ ^
Mendoza goes on to describe the way in which the English
pirates undertook these long voyages to the West Indies, plun-
dering ships on the way to provide them with victuals, or at
least with goods to barter with the King’s subjects there when
short of stores. The voyages were evidently self-subsisting. In the
Indies traffickers on shore even made fires at night in the creeks
as a signal for them to come and take victuals in exchange for
merchandise, which they give at a fair price. At this, Philip
wrote in the margin, in his rapid, crabbed hand: ‘Notice! I
believe this is true. It will be advisable to have it remedied.
Remind me.’ Mendoza states that so long as this continued,
there was no hope of extirpating the pirates; and that the King’s
officers had not acted with energy in this respect, as the Ger-
man captain’s Relation shows that in Porto Rico and Santo
Domingo, Richard Grenville was offered victuals for money.
He corrects the statement that ‘General Grenville’ had sailed
with twenty-eight, and Hawkins with fifteen, of the Queen’s
ships: the ^ueen had not so many in all, and they were all in
England on 20 July.
On 1 3 August, Mendoza sent the King a report of the sailing
of Cavendish’s expedition, with the design of getting to the East
Indies through the Straits of Magellan, a design which, as we
know, was brilliantly accomplished. He adds that
‘news had arrived in England that Richard Grenville with
seven ships had been captured by five of your Majesty; that the
story went round that the Spaniards seeing the English superior
in number pretended to take to flight; that the English gave
chase and encountered separately were captured.’ ^
Mendoza had no certainty of the news, except that it was sent
from England. The air was thick with such rumours; the inter-
^ ibid. 599-600. ® ibid. 61 1.
237
SIR RICHARD GRENVILLE OF THE REVEJ^GE
est of this one is that it relates to Grenville’s homeward voyage
from Virginia via the Azores: the rumour curiously pre-figures
what was to happen to him at no distant date in those very
waters. But Philip had heard nothing of it, nor perhaps as yet
of Grenville’s descent upon the islands. He wrote upon the
margin:/! do not know what ships these could be. I do not be-
lieve it.’ The point remains that Grenville’s name was becoming
known to the King: the account against him was mounting up
in Spain.
From now on, with an open state of war at sea and in the
Netherlands, and an invasion impending, the situation had
very much worsened for Ralegh’s hope of carrying through his
plans for a colony to success. Moreover, both Ralegh and
Grenville were exceedingly occupied in the work of concerting
measures for the defence of the country against the approaching
emergency, overseeing the defences, drilling the trained bands.
They were both members of the small body of ‘experienced
captains’ which was called into consultation by the govern-
ment to consider and report on the defences of the Realm.
Since the most exposed position, the western coast-line, was in
their charge, they were both kept hard at work, particularly
Grenville who was resident there. Nevertheless they continued
to carry on with their Virginia enterprise, in spite of increasing
difficulties and great losses in these years.
In 1587, ‘intending to persevere in the planting of his country
of Virginia,’ Ralegh sent out a new expedition of three ships
with 150 men under John White, as Governor.^ They followed
the old route to the West Indies and up the coast, but they were
directed by Ralegh after making search at Roanoke for the
fifteen men left there the previous year by Grenville, to make
farther up the coast and plant their settlement in Chesapeake
Bay. This last the master and sailors flatly refused to do, on the
ground that the summer was too far spent;
‘wherefore it booted not the Governor to contend with them,
but passed to Roanoke, and the same night at sunset went
^ Hakluyt VIII, 386-404.
238
A NATIVE INDIAN OF VIRGINIA
LATER VIRGINIA VOYAGES
aland on the Island^ in the place where our fifteen men were
left; but we found none of them, nor any sign that they had
been there, saving only we found the bones of one of those fif-
teen, which the savages had slain long before.’
Next day, John White and some of the company walked to the
north end of the island, where Lane had built his fort and some
dwelling-houses .
‘When we came thither, we found the fort rased down, but all
the houses standing unhurt, saving that the nether rooms of
them and also of the fort, were overgrown with melons of divers
sorts, and deer within them, feeding on those melons: so we
returned to our company, without hope of ever seeing any of the
fifteen men living.’
Nor did they ever see them.
At the isle of Groatoan, which being inhabited by Manteo’s
mother and kindred was ever friendly, they heard how the
year before, the fifteen men Grenville had left on Roanoke had
been set upon by a company of Indians from the mainland,
men of Secoton and Aquascogoc with whom the hostile Wan-
chese and the remnant of Wingina’s men kept company. The
Indians had come suddenly out of the wood upon the houses
where the Englishmen were living carelessly off their guard,
killed one of them in a parley and drove the rest into a house
which they set fire to. The English fought their way out to the
water-side where their boat was, and retired to ‘a little island
on the right hand of an entrance into the harbour of Hatorask,
where they remained a while, but afterwards departed, whither
as yet we know not.’ On 13 August, Manteo for his faithful ser-
vice, was by Ralegh’s commandment christened in Roanoke,
and named Lord of the island. Five days later, a child was born
to Eleanor, the Governor’s daughter, and wife of Ananias Dare
- the first English child to be born in America, and so they
named her Virginia.
Soon after there arose disputes among the colonists as to who
should be sent back to England for supplies; in the end they all
settled upon Governor White. White allowed himself to be per-
239
SIR RICHARD GRENVILLE OF THE REVEJ^GE
suaded and set sail with two ships, leaving a hundred or so
persons to form a plantation in his absence. There was some
idea that they were to go fifty miles up-country to settle; it was
all very vague, and in the event, the fate of the settlers equally
so. Of all the attempts so far made, this should have been the
most promising for a permanent settlement, since there was a
proportion of women to accompany the men; instead, it was the
most ignominious and its fate the most mysterious.
In spite of discouragements, on hearing White’s plea for sup-
plies, Ralegh appointed a pinnace forthwith with such neces-
saries as the colony was crying out for, and promising them
‘a good supply of shipping and men with sufficiency of all
things needful, which he intended, God willing, should be with
them the summer following. Which pinnace and fleet were
accordingly prepared in the west country at Bideford under
the charge of Sir Richard Grenville.’ ^
This was now 1588: the country had entered the danger-zone of
imminent invasion. It was hardly to be expected that Grenville,
a leading captain, would be permitted to leave the country at
such a moment; though after the insubordination displayed by
the colonists under the leniency of White, it must have been
evident to Ralegh that what was needed was the hard hand of
Grenville.
The ships were got together at Bideford, by the usual time in
April; they were probably the same three in which Grenville
sailed in 1585 and 1586, with two pinnaces; or they may have
been five in number: it is not certainly known. Just as they
were about to sail, ‘this fleet being now in a readiness only
staying but for a fair wind to put to sea,’ the news that the
Armada was ready to sail came to England; practically all ships
capable of fighting were stayed for service at home, ‘and Sir
Richard Grenville was personally commanded not to depart out
of Cornwall.’
This was a serious situation for the stranded colonists in Vir-
ginia, if they, poor things, had known of it: ‘the voyage for Vir-
' V. account in first edition of Hakluyt 1589, reprinted by R. P. Chope in
Trans, Devon. Assoc. ^ 1917, 274-8.
240
LATER VIRGINIA VOYAGES
ginia by these means for this year thus disappointed.’ Governor
White pleaded so earnestly with Ralegh and Grenville that he
obtained two small pinnaces, one of 30 tons called the Brave, the
other of 25 called the Roe, and departed with fifteen planters and
their provision, with some relief for those that were wintering in
the colony. But the relief never reached them. In the disturbed
state of the seas in that year, it was too much to expect two
heavily-armed if diminutive boats not to think of gain by the
way rather than of distant relief. Their course from Bideford
to Madeira was one of continual giving chase and being chased;
one of them, after a disastrous fight with two much bigger
French ships, in which she suffered very badly and was ran-
sacked and spoiled of everything worth carrying away, stag-
gered home at the end of May, anchoring ‘between Lundy and
Harting [Hartland] point near unto Chavell [Clovelly] ^uay,
where we rode until the next tide, and thence we put over the
bar, and the same day landed at Bideford.’ Some weeks later,
the other pinnace from whom they had parted company, after
similar experiences, also returned ‘without performing our in-
tended voyage for the relief of the planters in Virginia, which
thereby were not a little distressed.’ They were more than dis-
tressed, they were irretrievably lost.
Ralegh was by now so discouraged, and so taken up by other
and more necessary work at home, that he was prepared to give
over for the time; and with him Grenville. The former had
spent, so he claimed, ^40,000 on these enterprises. He made
an agreement granting liberty to carry on the planting of Vir-
ginia to Thomas Smith, Governor White and a number of Lon-
don merchants and adventurers. A curious relic of Grenville’s
arduous efforts at establishing the colony is to be found in the
Parish Register of Bideford. An Indian whom he brought
back with him on one of his two voyages was baptised in Bide-
ford church on Sunday, 26 March 1588. He was given the
name of Ralegh. It was just before Grenville hoped to go on
his third voyage; and perhaps he intended to take the Indian
back with him, like the faithful Manteo who had behaved with
the utmost constancy to the English. But Grenville was to be
disappointed; and next year the Indian died, and was buried in
241 0.
SIR RICHARD GRENVILLE OF THE REVENGE
Bideford churchyard on 7 April 1589. He is described in the
Register as a native of Wynganditoia.
The London adventurers seemed in no great hurry to take up
their appointed task - though we must remember the excite-
ments and stress of these years 1588, 1589, 1590; so that it was
not until the last of these years that John White departed once
more from Plymouth with three ships for Virginia^ They made
first for the West Indies and plunder, gaining considerable
booty. Passing by Wokokon and Croatoan, they came to Hat-
teras, whence they descried smoke rising at the place in Roan-
oke where the colony had been left three years before. On
landing, White found traces of their having been there; en-
graved upon a tree in Tair Roman letters’ he recognised the
sign CRO which had been agreed when he left them should
instruct him where to look for them on his return; if they were
in distress a cross was to be carved over the letters.
Arrived at the settlement he found all the houses had been
taken down and the place enclosed with a high palisade of great
trees. On a post at the entrance there was again engraved the
word CROATOAN, without any sign of distress. Within,
various heavy pieces of iron and lead and sacre-shot had been
thrown down and were now overgrown. Some of the sailors
found traces of chests having been buried and again dug up.
White went to the place,
‘which was in the end of an old trench, made two years past by
Captain Amadas: where we found five chests, that had been
carefully hidden of the planters, and of the same chests three
were my own; and about the place many of my things spoiled
and broken, and my books torn from the covers, the frames of
some of my pictures and maps rotten and spoiled with rain.’
White concluded that this had been done by the hostile In-
dians of the mainland, who had watched until the colony had
departed for Croatoan and dug up wherever they suspected
things to be buried; but he was ‘greatly joyed’ to find some
certain token of the colony being safe at Croatoan.
Almost inexplicably, they never went there to seek them.
^ Hakluyt VIII, 406-22.
242
LATER VIRGINIA VOYAGES
Travelling about in the shallow waters of these sounds was al-
ways dangerous, and several accidents had already overtaken
them. At last, when they came to depart for Croatoan, foul
weather arose and their ship lost two of its anchors; frightened
of the narrow escapes they had along these shoals, they put to
sea intending to make again for the West Indies to winter there
and return in the spring. It was only an excuse they made to
themselves for their unforgivable behaviour; at sea they were
forced to run before a westerly gale to the Azores and so made
straight for England. No doubt it was the profits they had in
hold and which they wanted to see safely home, which made
them put to sea and shirk their duty to the colony.
No one knows, or will ever know, what happened to those
hundred or so English men and women, who left for their last
token that they were going to Croatoan. They must have been
too many for the inhabitants of that island to support indefi-
nitely; they may have left for the mainland and been set upon
there. Or again, some of them giving up all hopes of rescue,
may have been received into the Indian tribes. There is a
tradition that remains that in the veins of some of these Indian
tribes there flows the blood of white people; and that is all.
After this humiliating end to so many attempts, nothing more
was done for twelve years. Grenville was killed; Ralegh turned
his attention to the fabulous wealth of Guiana. In 1602 a
voyage was made by Bartholomew Gosnold, who made a land-
fall much higher up the coast, at Cape Cod: it was ‘the first that
came in a direct course to America.’ ^ Four years later there
set sail the expedition which arrived in Chesapeake Bay, where
Ralegh had directed White to plant his colony in 1587. Now,
twenty years later, when Ralegh was a prisoner under attainder
in the Tower, it was under other auspices that the first perma-
nent settlement at Jamestown was made. But there can be no
doubt who was the real founder of English rule in North
America; a year before his fall, Ralegh had written, T shall
yet live to see it an English nation.’ In this work, Grenville had
been his right hand.
^ W. Stith, History of Virginiay 3 1 .
243
CHAPTER XIV
THE ARMADA AND THE DEFENCE OF
THE WEST
When at last the war came which so many had done their best
to make inevitable, but which Elizabeth had always hoped to
avoid, the country was by no means unprepared for it. The
popular conception of an innocent defenceless isle, fighting with
the aid of the Almighty against the overwhelming might and
wickedness of Spain, is like most popular conceptions untrue -
untrue in both its terms. The English chances in a war with
Spain were very good; all the better for thirty years’ careful
husbanding of resources under Elizabeth. They were under-
rated, certainly by the Spaniards, and by a good deal of con-
temporary opinion abroad; but not by those who were in the
best position to know - the sea-captains. When the war actu-
ally came, English sea-power was at the highest level of effi-
ciency it had yet attained; the great efforts made by Henry VIII
reached their fruition and their reward under his daughter.
For years now, since the early seventies, Hawkins at the head
of the Navy Board had worked unceasingly to equip the state
with first-class fighting ships; when the test came, the seamen
were as proud of them as Hawkins himself ‘The ships sit
aground so strongly and are so staunch as if they were made of a
whole tree,’ wrote William Hawkins from Plymouth in Febru-
ary 1588 to his brother John, who had had the labour and
anxiety of making them.^ When the latter himself came down
to Plymouth in July, to see the Queen’s ships riding there, he
wrote back to Burghley, ‘the four great ships, the Triumph, the
Elizabeth Jonas, the Bear, and the Victory are in most royal and
perfect estate’; you could not tell that they have been at sea, he
^ S.P. Dom. Elia. 208, no. 72.
244
THE ARMADA AND DEFENCE OF THE WEST
said, ‘more than if they had ridden at Chatham.’ ^ Yet they
had been out sweeping the Channel and off the coast of Spain
in all the gales and storms of that summer.
Spanish sea-power was at its height too in these years, when
the maritime resources of Portugal had been joined to those of
Spain. But the nature of that sea-power was different in its
basis from the English; with Spain it depended upon the strictly
regulated traffic with the Indies, it was shaped and controlled
from the top downwards by the royal government ~ in the end
by Philip’s own command. In England, it had a healthier basis -
the manifold and natural activities of the sea going on all round
the busy English coasts. And when the crisis came, the English
had the advantage of a numerous body of seamen all with their
own individual experience of the sea, and, thanks to the dis-
turbed conditions that had long prevailed, practised and skilful
fighters. In this struggle, it was the English who were the
professionals.
The sea, then, was England’s front-line of defence - or of-
fence— it came to the same thing. From 1585, when the em-
bargo had been placed upon the English ships in Spain, there
was a tightening up of the government’s activity. As the full
extent of the preparations in Spanish harbours became known,
the English government came more into the open. In Decem-
ber 1586, Drake’s cherished plan for a raid on these prepara-
tions, after the pattern of his West Indies raid the winter before,
was sanctioned. He set sail from Plymouth in April 1587, and
in two months, by his attack on the shipping in Cadiz harbour
and his seizure of Cape St. Vincent, did a great deal of actual
damage to Philip’s preparations and disorganised the concen-
tration of his fleets upon Lisbon. In consequence, the sailing of
the Armada had to be postponed till next year, with all that
meant in increasing the burden of upkeep and supplies. Nor
were Drake and the seamen in favour of using the inter\^al
gained to stand on the defensive; they all without exception
were in favour of making a great attack in force upon the
Spanish coast before the Armada could get going. Elizabeth,
however, was engrossed up till the last moment in negotiations
^ ibid. 212, no. 61.
245
SIR RICHARD GRENVILLE OF THE REVEJ^GE
which she thought might yield a durable peace; not so en-
grossed, though, but that she kept the fleet ready in skeleton-
formation, and continued to put the country in a state of defence
on land.
We have already seen that on land, the state of military pre-
paredness had been advancing for some years past. Each year
now, musters of all the able men of the county were held
throughout the southern and midland counties; a proportion of
them were trained, and as far as the resources of the county
allowed, tUey were armed, some with calivers and muskets, most
with pikes, bills and bows. There was no professional army,
though bands of English troops were becoming seasoned fighters
in the Netherlands, in France and in Ireland. The training of
the bands at home depended upon captains and gentlemen who
had had some experience of war. In addition, in the last few
years the Government had sent into each of the southern coun-
ties a professional soldier as muster-master, to be actually re-
sponsible for training. It was the counties along the south coast
which were most exposed to the danger of invasion, and here to
other duties was added that of inspecting all likely places of
descent for the enemy, and as far as possible arranging for their
defence. All this was especially Grenville’s field; he was by
origin a ‘martial’ man, not a sea-captain, and so accounted
until the fame of his last commission at sea put out of mind his
earlier life.
Devon and Cornwall were in the most exposed and dangerous
position of all; and of these two, as Ralegh wrote a few years
later, ‘Devon may better spare men than Cornwall . . . which
hath fewer men and is nearer the enemy.’ ^ After all, the plan
drawn up by the great Menendez in 1574 for an attack upon
England, rested on a descent upon Falmouth. Grenville
was given the especial charge of the oversight of Cornwall’s
defences.
Among Burghley’s memoranda of business relating to the
defence of the country, we find in his notes on the situation in
Devon and Cornwall on the last day of the year 1585:
^ Edwards, Ralegh^ ii, 96.
246
THE ARMADA AND DEFENCE OF THE WEST
‘Sir Walter Ralegh to show all the force of the stannary and of
the duchy to the Lieutenant’s deputies. And that he also see the
Musters and make report. Cornwall: the Lord Admiral to do
the like. Sir Ric. Grenville, having charge of 300, gone to the
seas.’ ‘
Much of 1586 he was away at sea, towards the end of the year
returning (according to Philip Wyot) with a prize. By January
1587 he was attending upon his duties as Justice of the Peace
again; for we find his name among those of the Justices
who had assembled according to the Council’s directions and
taken order for supplying the markets with grain. ^ Nothing
would be more disturbing to the morale of the country-side in
time of war than the dearth of corn which was prevailing in the
west. We find Grenville named, along with Richard Chamond
and John Kempthorne, as responsible for collecting such grain
as could be spared for distribution from the hundred of Strat-
ton. Later the Sheriff wrote up to the Council: ‘There is found
a great scarcity within the country, but the people are very
willing to do their best for the relief of their poor neighbours.’ ®
In February, the Council drafted its orders for putting in
readiness the forces of the maritime counties.^ The Deputy-
Lieutenants were to call the bands together, and view them,
supplying deficiencies in equipment; they were to repair to the
sea-side, to view likely landing-places, to cover them with
stakes and throw up ramparts. Ammunition would be supplied
by the Queen, but they were not to use it for pleasure or
it would be charged to them. Watch was to be kept on the
beacons, according to the orders sent out in 1585. There were
additional instructions ‘because of the increasing danger of the
times.’ Grenville was already taking his part in these exercises,
for we read in Wyot’s Diary of a general muster at Barnstaple
on 24 February,
‘before my Lord of Bath, Sir Richard Grenville, Mr. Hugh
Acland, and Mr. George Wyot, Justices, of all the able men
1 S.P. Dom. Eliz. 185, no. 36. ® ibid. 197, no. 42.
3 ibid. 199, no. 37. * ibid. 198, no. 63.
247
SIR RICHARD GRENVILLE OF THE REVENGE
with a show of their arms and furniture of the hundreds of
Braunton, Sherwell, and Fremington. And on Wednesday
following the inhabitants of this town and parish mustered be-
fore the said Justices in the Church with a show of their arms
and artillery.’ ^
Grenville was residing now at Bideford, for three days later
he wrote a letter from there to Dr. Julius Caesar, the Judge of
the Admiralty Court, concerning a prize which had come into
his possession, a hulk of Amsterdam: we do not know whether it
was the same he had brought in in December, or another
brought in by one of his ships.® A factor of one Lemon had
come into the West Country armed with a commission from
the Court of Admiralty, to demand certain goods which he
claimed to have proved before the Court. Grenville wrote with
politic address to the Judge:
‘Good Mr. Doctor, I do understand by my servant and others
how troublesome some causes which partly concern me have
been unto you, and withal your good will professed towards me,
for the which albeit hitherto I have not been so grateful unto
you as I should, yet in the end I trust to be found neither un-
mindful nor unthankful to so good a friend.’
With this polite introduction, signifying what previous en-
counters in the Court of Admiralty we do not know, Grenville
goes on to claim that this Lemon is just a common dealer in
such causes:
‘upon some intelligence that he hath gotten that such a ship is
come into my hands, and thereon at hap-hazard hath made
some unjust proof of something as by his factor’s instructions ap-
peareth; for neither knoweth he the just quantity of the goods,
nor the prices, by which means he is inforced to send to his
master to understand the same, (as I doubt not but his master
hath since sent into Holland to have the promotion of this
cause).’
^ Chanter, Literary History of Barnstaple, 93.
2 Lansdownc MSS. 158, 48.
248
THE ARMADA AND DEFENCE OF THE WEST
He then maintains that the goods belonged to Spanish
Flemings and had been consigned to liegers in Spain, ‘which
cause I think the States relinquishing the government and their
subjection to the King of Spain, would never allow of.’ Besides,
the goods were contraband: there was ‘some good proportion of
victual for the Spanish Fleet, as butter, bacon, cheese, whereby
it may appear unto all men that these goods do rather belong to
such as are wholly Spanish than any way assured to this estate.’
Nevertheless, because of the favourable letters they had ob-
tained from the Lord Admiral, he says that he is willing to deal
with Lemon in the matter, but that
‘the ship being taken by some of my company, that account hath
never come to my sight which Lemon demandeth. And that
which hath come hath been so spoiled with wet and other sea
accidents, as it amounteth not by far to that quality and
quantity, that is imagined; and you know how hardly such a
company as men in like actions must use at sea will be kept from
spoil of such things as come to their fingers.’
So concluding, he asks the Judge to give him ‘that favour that a
true English subject to Her Majesty and his countiy shall
deserve.’
It is, as usual, a plausible case that Grenville makes out; but
reading between the lines, one suspects that his case in law was
not a good one and that the Admiralty Court had declared
against him. To give a decision, however, and to get it exe-
cuted were two different things. The Court was at its wits’ ends
in these years to hold the balance fairly between English sub-
jects and neutral traders. We do not know in this case whether
Grenville succeeded in getting away with it; what is more im-
portant is to observe that the ships with which he would have
made another voyage to Virginia are engaged this winter in
privateering.
Another voyage was out of the question this year, he was so
fully occupied in carrying out the government’s orders for pre-
paring the defences in the west. In March he was given the
special charge of surveying and reporting on the places of
descent in both Devon and Cornwall, and giving his opinion on
249
SIR RICHARD GRENVILLE OF THE REVEJ^GE
the measures to be taken to prevent the enemy’s landing. To
this the Council later added the instructions that
‘before his coming up he should also take a view of the trained
bands of the said two counties, and of their armour and furni-
ture; and to see them mustered and exercised in his presence, to
the end he may be able to bring a true and sound report as of
the choice of the persons and the sufficiency of their armour, as
also of the profit they have made by the exercise of training in
the pse of the several weapons they are appointed unto, and of
such- defects as he shall find in their persons, furniture or skill,
that order may be taken for repairing of the same.’
Orders were at the same time sent to the Earl of Bath, Lord
Lieutenant of Devon and to the Deputy Lieutenants of Corn-
wall, to assist Grenville ‘in the execution of his charge that is
laid upon him, wherein her Highness wisheth as great expedi-
tion to be used as may be, for that she very earnestly desireth to
be truly informed of the state of that country.’ ^
The work must have taken some months, and its impulse went
right on through the year. It is to this that we owe the certifi-
cates of musters, the abstracts, the returns from the western
counties that are so frequent among the State Papers this year.
They make dry reading; yet it is not difficult to capture the
atmosphere from these scraps of paper - the living urgency, the
immediacy of the hour speaks in them no less than in the winged
words of a Drake. It was the habit of Tudor government to ex-
pect the localities to provide for and look after themselves; but
in this emergency the Government sent down a certain pro-
vision of powder and shot and ordnance: for Devon 7,200 lb.
each of powder and lead, and half as much for Cornwall,^ Of
ordnance, each county received two sacres, two minions, and
two falcons, which were to be mounted; together with a pro-
portion of match, and all necessaries for the cannon. Certifi-
cates of the musters were delivered to Grenville to be handed on
by him to the Council; possible landing-places were viewed by
^ A.P,C> 1586-7, 370-1; V. also Hist. MSS. Com., Foljambe Papers, 22; S.P.
Dom. Eliz. 199, no. 19.
2 S.P. Dom. Eliz. 198, no. 43; 203, no. 17.
250
THE ARMADA AND DEFENCE OF THE WEST
him, and the Councirs instructions to the Deputy-Lieutenants
to confer with him for the trenching of these places carried out A
In June the certificate of the Cornish musters was complete - it
is worth noting that the returns were more fully and perfectly
made from Cornwall than from Devon or Somerset - doubtless
there was a greater feeling of urgency where the fear of invasion
was greatest. The Cornish certificate returns some i,6oo men
as trained; they were divided into six divisions, each under its
captain: Grenville himself stands at the head of one of the
larger divisions of 300 men.^
There are few traces of other activities than this, doubtless so
much of his time was taken by his charge. But in April we find
the Council writing to him ‘for the release of the two French
men,* probably two ships which had either been stayed by him
in port or else brought in by his own company;^ and in May we
find a Devonshire gentleman, James Woodley of Ilsington, who
had been bound over by him, making appearance before the
Council - probably for some failure to do his duty as regards
defence.^ About this time too, at the christening of the Earl of
Bath’s son, Grenville stood as godfather for the Lord Chancellor,
Sir William Mohun for the Earl of Essex and Lady Denys for
the old Countess of Bedford.® With the summer there comes a
lull; the preliminary work of surveying and organising having
been tackled, exercises and training follow and then the har-
vest. It was now the turn of the seamen.
Drake had been at Plymouth through the winter, organising
his expedition for the attack on the preparations in Spanish
ports. He was on tenterhooks lest the (Queen’s permission given
in December should be withdrawn before he had sailed. But
the revelation of the Babington Plot and the decision to bring
Mary Queen of Scots to execution kept the Government firm
upon its course; while the news of Mary’s death steeled Philip’s
resolution and determined him upon the invasion of England -
Drake had collected a force of some twenty-three ships, to
1 ibid. 199, no. 76. ® ibid. 202, no. 37.
® ibid. 205, no, 28. * A.P.C. 64.
Wyot’s Diary, p. 15 (in Chanter, Lit. Histy. Barnstaple).
251
6
SIR RICHARD GRENVILLE OF THE REVEJiGE
which the Queen, the Lord Admiral, himself and the West
Country ports contributed. On the day of his leaving harbour, 2
April, he wrote from the Elizabeth Bomventure to Walsingham:
‘there was never more likely in any fleet of a more loving
agreement than we hope the one of the other, I thank God . .
If your honour did now see the fleet under sail and knew with
what resolution men’s minds do enter into this action, so you
would judge a small force would not divide them. Each wind
commands me away, our ship is under sail, God grant we may
so live in his fear as the enemy may have cause to say that God
doth fight for her Majesty as well abroad as at home, and give
her long and happy life and ever victory against God’s enemies
and her Majesty’s.’ ^
This was the spirit in which the famous exploit, ‘the singeing
of the King of Spain’s beard,’ was carried through. Drake made
straight for Cadiz, where he arrived in the Road on 19 April,
ran his ships into the harbour beneath the fortifications on
either side, and wreaked destruction upon all the shipping
gathered in the outer harbour in preparation for the invasion of
England. A great Biscayan of 1,200 tons, a galleon of the Mar-
quis of Santa Cruz of 1,500 tons and 30 lesser ships were all
burnt. The extent of Philip’s preparations was a revelation: ‘the
like preparation,’ Drake wrote home, ‘was never heard of nor
known as the King of Spain hath and daily maketh to invade
England.’ ^ Thanks to Drake the invasion had to be postponed
till next year. Lisbon proved too strong to be assaulted with his
present forces, but he took possession of Sagres and St. Vincent,
and from this vantage-point disorganised the Spanish attempts
to concentrate their forces. Making for the Azores, he there cap-
tured a great East Indiaman, the San Felipe - the richest prize
that had yet been brought to England, with which he more than
covered the costs of the expedition. On 26 June he arrived back
again in Plymouth Sound.
When Drake’s report of the immense character of the pre-
parations in Spain reached England, it appears that the Gov-
ernment considered sending out reinforcements to him to en-
^ S.P. Dom. Eliz. 200, no. 2. * ibid. no. 42.
252
THE ARMADA AND DEFENCE OF THE WEST
able him to continue the good work of holding them up. The
Spanish intelligence from England early in June was that four
of the Queen’s ships guarding the west end of the Channel, and
her armed merchantmen of the West Country ports, were to be
sent out to him. But ‘it was uncertain whether they would be
commanded by Grenville, a gentleman who has been sailing as
a pirate, or Frobisher, who they thought would agree with
Drake better than the other.’ ^ This is extremely interesting
news, and this is the only source in which it appears: it may be
that this is what accounts for our lack of information regarding
Grenville’s whereabouts this summer. It is still more interesting,
if the Government contemplated appointing Grenville to lead
a squadron to reinforce Drake, to know that it was common in-
formation that their personal relations were difficult, so that it
was doubtful whether Grenville would serve under Drake.
Mendoza’s information to Philip towards the end of the
month, while Drake was still at sea, was even more positive on
this point.
Tt was proposed in the Council,’ he writes, ‘that Grenville, a
gentleman who has always sailed with pirates, should command
the squadron, but it was objected that he would not serve under
Drake, and it was necessary to send some person who would not
raise questions but would obey Drake unreservedly, and it was
therefore thought that Frobisher would be put into command.’ ®
This is specific enough, whatever the Government’s plans might
be as regards the reinforcement. Grenville indeed had no reason
to love Drake, who had stolen his laurels with the voyage
into the Pacific in 1577, and had adversely interfered with his
Virginia projects in bringing home the colonists in 1586. It is
true that there is no evidence of an open quarrel; there is, in-
stead, the very suspicious absence of any reference on either side
to the other. We may presume at least a coldness in their re-
lations; and with the family pride of the Grenvilles which must
have made Grenville regard Drake as a parvenu, we may be
sure that the Spanish information that he would not serve
under him, was correct.
^ CaL S.P. Spanish^ 1587—1603, 93.
253
2 ibid. no.
SIR RICHARD GRENVILLE OF THE REVENGE
By the end of the year the government felt that the invasion
was inevitable, and full plans for defence were set in motion all
over the country. To co-ordinate them and advise the govern-
ment, a committee of ‘noble and experienced captains’ was ap-
pointed to report on ‘such means as are considered to be fittest
to put the forces of the Realm of England in order to withstand
an invasion pretended [i.e. intended] by the King of Spain.’ ^
Members of the Committee were Lord Grey, the Lord Deputy
of Ireland under whom Ralegh had served, Ralegh himself. Sir
Francis Knollys, Sir Thomas Leighton, Sir John Norris, Sir
Richard Bingham, Sir Roger Williams, Ralph Lane and Gren-
ville. At the end of November it presented a report, which was
a fully drawn scheme for the land defences of the realm. In
December, the Spanish intelligence service reported that fever-
ish preparations were being made; that the Earls of Cumber-
land and Huntingdon were being sent to the North, Sir John
Norris to Milford Haven, Grenville to Plymouth and Ralegh
into Cornwall.^
Ralegh was at Exeter on 2 1 December, when he reported to
Burghley that he had
‘attended the Earl of Bath and conferred with the deputies of
Devon and Cornwall for the drawing together of 2,000 foot
and 200 horse, and I find great differences of opinion among
them. Some are of opinion that this burden will be grievous
unto the country standing at this time void of all traffic, the
subsidy not being yet gathered and the past musters having
been very chargeable. Sir John Gilbert, Sir Richard Grenville
and the Earl himself being more zealous both in religion and
her Majesty’s service, who have always found a ready disposi-
tion in their divisions and willingness to bear whatsoever shall
be thought meet for her Majesty’s service by their people, are of
opinion that the matter and service will be very feasible.’ ^
It appears that some of the Commissioners for Devonshire were
‘vehemently malcontent,’ while the citizens of Exeter refused to
^ q. from Harleian MSS. 168, by R. P. Chope, Trans. Devon. Assoc., ,
6
* Cal. S.P. Spanish 1587-1603, 174. » S.P. Dom. Eliz. 206, no. 40,
254
THE ARMADA AND DEFENCE OF THE WEST
bear the part thought meet by the Deputy-Lieutenants of Devon.
Ralegh wrote that he was now ready to repair into Cornwall
with all diligence to perform the commands laid upon him.
It seems that the plan that was under consideration was for
the drawing together of a western army, to concentrate upon
whichever of the ports the Spaniards attacked. The \iew was
held that Plymouth was the likeliest of all, for the Spaniards
would not care to engage ‘too far within the Sleeve [i.e, the
Channel] before he have mastered some one good harbour, of
which Plymouth is the nearest to Spain.’ ^ It was arranged
therefore that if Plymouth should be attacked, 6,000 trained
men of the western counties should converge upon it for its
defence; and some similar proportion for Falmouth in like case.
It was also recommended that some one person should be ap-
pointed to the head of the western forces in both Devon and
Cornwall, where there were ten Deputy-Lieutenants in all, ‘so
that there may be no straining of courtesy, lest there be confu-
sion and delay to the advantage of the enemy.’ By April, the
certificates of musters, as the result of the work put in, were able
to show much fuller returns: Devonshire had a total of 10,000
able men, of whom 6,200 were furnished with some sort of
weapon; of these 3,650 were trained, and 2,550 untrained.^
Cornwall could show some 5,776 able men all told, of whom
3,600 were furnished, 1,500 were trained and 2,100 untrained.
The larger totals of 10,000 and 5,776 respectively represented all
the men of fighting age, between sixteen and sixty, in the two
counties.
Meanwhile, since returning from Spain, Drake had remained
at Plymouth with the nucleus of a fleet; his task was to keep
watch on movements in the Spanish ports, and as the time of
invasion drew near to collect the contingents of ships from all
the ports of the West Country under his command. Grenville,
having performed his especial charge, was at Bideford fitting
out his ships for the voyage with which he intended to relieve
and supply the colony which had been planted the previous
^ ibid. 209, nos. 49 and 51.
* ibid- 210, no. 42; and Harleian MSS. 286, 92.
255
SIR RICHARD GRENVILLE OF THE REVEATGE
year under the command of John White. A rumour that
Grenville’s ships were to be used upon some service of the
Queen reached Mendoza in Paris at the end of February; for he
wrote on the fzSth to Philip that
‘the Queen had ordered Grenville (an Englishman who, as I
have informed your Majesty, has several times gone on plunder-
ing voyages, and was lately on the coast of Spain) to remain
with twenty merchantmen and pirate ships on the English
coast opposite Ireland.’ ^
The news had not lost anything in the telling, nor was it exact;
however, there was something in it.
We hear further too, if belatedly, of the Spaniards whom
Grenville took in the prize near the Bermudas on his way home
from Virginia in 1 585. For two Spanish prisoners in England at
this time, writing to Mendoza, suggest that one James Lomas,
an English merchant in Seville,
‘be held for the liberty of the poor pilots who were captured by
Richard Grenville of Cornwall, and are now held prisoners by
him. He is a pirate; and brought to England twenty-two
Spaniards whom he treated as slaves, making them carry stones
on their backs all day for some building operations of his, and
chaining them up all night. Twenty of them have died or
escaped, but he still keeps the two pilots.’ ^
To a Spaniard, all the English seamen were pirates; they made
no distinction between piracy and privateering, especially when
the latter was directed against Spain. We know no more of this
episode, nor even whether the information of these two Span-
iards was accurate. It would be interesting to know what
building operations of Grenville’s these were — probably at
Bideford if anywhere. It is always the misdeeds of the other side
that arouse men’s moral indignation; it is not likely that the
Spanish gentlemen would have been roused to protest by the
spectacle of the English prisoners serving in the galleys.
On the last day of March, an embargo was placed on all
^ Cal. S.P. Spanish, 1587-160$, 223.
256
2 ibid- 220.
THE ARMADA AND DEFENCE OF THE WEST
shipping throughout the kingdom; and the Council wrote a
special letter to Grenville, saying that
‘whereas he hath seven or eight ships and pinnaces ready for a
voyage heintendethtomake tosomepart of the West Indies; for-
asmuch as her Majesty doth receive daily advertisement of the
preparations of the King of Spain to increase, whereupon it is
also thought necessary her navies on the seas should be rein-
forced and strengthened, and to that end order is given both
for the stay of all ships in all the port towns of the Realm, and
to the said towns to furnish a certain number of vessels etc. ; he is
also straightway charged and commanded in her Majesty’s name
and upon his allegiance to forbear to go his intended voyage,
and to give the ships so by him prepared to be in readiness to
join with her Majesty’s Navy as he shall be directed hereafter.’ ^
Grenville’s ships, as we saw, were already at this time in readi-
ness for his voyage, ‘only staying but for a fair wind to put to
sea.’ Without a word he complied and wrote to inform the
Council of his intention to ‘repair unto the Cape of Cornwall or
the Scillies for commodity of wind, to be better able upon any
occasion to repair where most use might be of his seivdce.’
There was no use in being caught on the north coast of Devon,
with the Armada in full sail up the Channel.^
It may be supposed that beneath this ready compliance,
Grenville may have hoped to keep his ships together under his
own command and to perform his service at sea. But it was not
to be: his services were more urgently required on land. The
Council approved of his plan, but directed him
‘to send presently unto Sir Francis Drake such ships as were of
greatest burden and fittest for service according unto such
direction as he should receive from him, the others of less bur-
den, and such as Sir Francis should not think fit to be retained,
he might dispose of and employ in his intended voyage as he
should think good.’
Since Grenville’s ships were already victualled for many months,
Mr. Darrell, who was in charge of the victualling of the Na\y
1 A,P,C, 15S8, 7-8. ibid. 27.
SIR RICHARD GRENVILLE OF THE REVENGE
in the west, was to come to an arrangement with him for pay-
ment.
‘Moreover, Her Majesty considering the danger of this present
time and his knowledge and experience in martial affairs, did
think it convenient he himself should remain in those parts
where he now was, to give his assistance and advice to the
Lieutenants of Cornwall and Devon.*
A letter was sent to Drake informing him of this recruitment to
his forces.
Grenville’s conduct, regarding only the service of the state
and sacrificing his own projects and interests, was in marked
contrast to Sir John Gilbert’s. In spite of the embargo, and
Drake’s command, Gilbert had allowed a large ship of his, of
great burden and fit for service, to depart out of the Realm, and
‘in a letter of his did seem little to regard the authority of the
said Sir Francis.’ ^ Such were the difficulties of co-ordinating
defence in the conditions of Elizabethan individualism. Gilbert
was severely reprimanded by the Council. Grenville’s ships,
according to the Council, were seven or eight in number; at the
end of April, as we saw, two small pinnaces, the Brave and the
RoBy were detached for John White to take a supply to Virginia.
Wyot’s Diary tells us that ‘five ships went over the bar to join
Sir Francis Drake at Plymouth.’ ^ Grenville was still at Bide-
ford on 17 April, for on that day John Hender, a messenger,
was paid a shilling ‘to run to Bideford with post letters to Sir
Richard Grenville that came from Sessions,’ probably at
Stratton.®
Soon after this he set sail, joining forces with the Bristol squad-
ron on the way, for they had arrived together at Plymouth by
12 May. Captains Fenner and Crosse wrote to report to Drake
then in London: ‘Here are arrived all the ships from Bristol and
all the west parts, with Sir Richard Grenville and Mr. St. Leger,
for which two we pray your consideration in moneys they de-
mand for victual.’ ^ Grenville certainly remained with his
^ A.P.C. J388, 17. 2 Chanter, 94,
® Gould ing, Records of Blanchminster*s Charity y p. 72 .
^ S.P. Dom. Eliz. 210, no. 17.
258
THE ARMADA AND DEFENCE OF THE WEST
Kttle squadron at Plymouth till the end of May, by which time
Drake had returned and the Lord Admiral himself had arrived
with the main body of the Queen’s ships; for Howard writes to
Burghley on 28 May, complaining that the fleet has only
eighteen days’ victual left and they must not tarry,
Tor even this morning Mr. Gary, the sheriff of Devonshire, and
Sir Ric. Grenville have brought me word of a bark that is
newly come from the South Cape [i.e. St. Vincent] and was
there within these seven days and did take two or three fisher-
men of that place who told them that the Spanish fleet was to
come out with the first fair wind.’ ^
Of the ships which Grenville brought round to Plymouth to
serve under Drake, three were his own: the galleon Dudley of
250 tons, the Virgin God Save Her of 200 tons and the Tiger}
The first, which was the largest, may be identified with the
Spanish prize that Grenville took on his way home from Vir-
ginia in 1585. Against the Armada she was now commanded
by James Eiisey, Grenville’s cousin, who had previously com-
manded the White Lion in Drake’s West Indies expedition, of
two years before. The God Save Her had for her captain John
Grenville, Grenville’s second son, who died on Ralegh’s Guiana
Voyage in 1595. In addition to these three, there were the
bark St, Leger, commanded by Sir John St. Leger’s son; and the
Golden Hind, which was the first to bring the news of the
Armada’s approach.
Grenville returned to Stowe, while the fleet at Plymouth
passed these months in an agony of expectation. The seamen
were all in favour of a descent upon Spain, seeking out the
Spanish fleet and destroying it before it could set sail. Drake had
written to the Queen in April:
‘The advantage of time and place in all martial actions is half
a victory, which being lost is irrecoverable, wherefore if your
Majesty will command me away, with those ships that are here
1 ibid. no. 35.
2 ibid. 216, no. 54; 237, f. 15; and cf. Chope, Trans. Devon, 265-9.
259
SIR RICHARD GRENVILLE OF THE REVENGE
already and the rest to follow with all possible expedition, I
hold it in my poor opinion the surest and best course.’ ^
It was not adopted: Elizabeth took the peace negotiations with
Parma in the Netherlands seriously and did not want to pre-
judice their chances. As it happened too, the defensive waiting
policy was usually the best in sixteenth-century conditions: they
had so much less command then over external forces and con-
ditions that whichever side put forth an aggressive effort on
a large scale exposed himself to far greater risk of losses.
The long delay, due mainly to the storms of this summer, ate
into the English provisions and put a great strain upon the
government’s resources to victual such a large body of ships and
men. The Lord Admiral wrote at the end of May: 'God send
the wind to serve to put us out, for I believe surely if the wind
hold here but six days they will knock at our door.’ ® The spirit
in the fleet was excellent. Howard scribbled in his own fist a
postscript to his secretary’s letter to Burghley, saying, 'My
good Lord, there is here the gallantest company of captains,
soldiers and mariners that I think ever was seen in England.
It were pity they should lack meat, when they are so desirous to
spend their lives in her Majesty’s service.’ ® He concludes with a
little joke against the landsmen, knowing full well how much
Burghley was in favour of negotiating peace: 'God send us the
happiness to meet with them before our men on the land dis-
cover them; for I fear me a little sight of the enemy will fear the
land men much.’
Then in the middle of June, a storm swept down upon the
Channel. Howard wrote to Walsingham:
'Sir, we have endured these three days, Wednesday, Thurs-
day and Friday, an extreme continual storm. Myself and four
or five of the greatest ships have ridden it out in the Sound, be-
cause we had no room in Cattewater for the lesser ships that
were there; nor betwixt the shore and the Island, because Sir
Francis Drake with some four or five other ships did ride there.
Myself and my company in these ships do continually tarry and
^ S.P. Dom. Eliz. 209, no. 89. 2 ibid. 210, no. 35.
® ibid. no. 36.
2G0
THE ARMADA AND DEFENCE OF THE WEST
lie aboard in all the storm, where we may compare that we
have danced as lustily as the gallantest dancers in the Court.’
Still the victuals have not come, and the ships are running
short; ‘and if it do not come, yet assure yourself we will not
lose any opportunity nor we will not lack; there is good fishing
in the seas.’ ^
At the end of June, word came that the Spanish Fleet was on
the way: Sir Francis Godolphin wrote to say that a little bark of
Mousehole had encountered nine sail of great ships at the en-
trance of the Channel.^ At the same time, a new supply of pro-
visions came for the fleet, and, writes Howard, ‘we will not cat
nor sleep till it be aboard us. We must not lose an hour of
time.’ ^ Ralegh, meanwhile, had taken steps with the land
forces for a body of 2 ,ooo foot, and 200 pioneers for incamping,
to march from Cornwall to the royal camp upon invasion; ‘and
if I shall not be commanded down myself, I have thought good
to direct Sir Ric. Grenville to have the conduction of this
regiment to bring them to the camp.’ *
But they were not needed: the Spanish ships, an advance
division of the Armada, were driven back to Spain by the
storms which raged this unnatural June. The English fleet dis-
posed itself in three divisions across the entrance of the Channel,
between Scilly and Ushant, to keep watch. For a moment at
the beginning of July, the wind was favourable for a descent
upon Spain; then it changed to south-west again. There was no
hope now of a preventive attack on the Armada; there was
nothing for it but to await its arrival. On land, the Deputy-
Lieutenants of Cornwall, with Grenville at their head, speeded
up their precautions and screwed an increase out of the exiguous
resources of the county in horse and weapons. They reported to
Ralegh that they had ‘dealt with the gentlemen of the best sort,
whom we find very willing to increase their proportion to the
uttermost of their powers’; but they cannot equip themselves
‘with such speed as is requisite, because there is not armour to be
bought here for money.’ ® But they had raised the number of
^ ibid. no. 47. ^ ibid. no. 51.
® ibid. 212, no. 22.
261
^ ibid. 211, no. 18.
ibid. no. 90.
SIR RICHARD GRENVILLE OF THE REVENGE
horsemen, and taken order for the little army of 2,000 men to be
ready to march when the word was given.
Then at the end of July the Armada was suddenly there.
Some fifty sail were first descried off the Scilly Islands, where
they waited for the rest to come up; on Friday 19 July, the
whole fleet was off the Lizard, 120 sail in all, moving up-Chan-
nel in a half-moon formation, the great ships flying their flags
with the red cross - the crusade for the conversion of England.
All day and night before, the English fleet had been getting
their last supply of provisions on board; so great was the haste
that not all the ships were fully victualled; when at night, the
wind being against them, they warped out under the lee of
Mount Edgcumbe and Rame Head, and on Saturday afternoon
at three o’clock came in full view of the Armada. That evening
and through the night they continued tacking along the Cornish
coast, and on Sunday morning, having gained advantage of
the wind, they began the running fight which continued off and
on all that week up the Channel.
‘Sir, for the love of God and our country let us have with some
speed some great shot sent us of all bigness, for this service will
continue long, and some powder with it’ : so wrote Howard to
Walsingham on 21 July, when the fleet had come up thwart of
Plymouth again. ^ The good citizens of Plymouth could see the
splendid but dangerous spectacle out beyond the Sound:
‘Our last intelligence we gave to your Lordships,’ wrote the
Mayor, William Hawkins, to the Council, ‘was that the Spanish
fleet was in view of this town yesternight and that my Lord
Admiral was passed to the sea before our said view and was out
of our sight. Since which time we have certain knowledge both
by certain pinnaces come from his Lordship as also by plain
view this present morning, that my Lord being to the windwards
of the enemy are in fight, which we beheld.’ ^
The Mayor kept sending out such reinforcements of men as
came in from town and country as the fight went on off the
coast. The alarm was given throughout the country from the
west.
^ S.P. Dom. Eliz. no. 80.
262
^ ibid. no. 81.
THE ARMADA AND DEFENCE OF THE WEST
Though nothing survives from Grenville to tell us where he
was and what he was doing at this moment of crisis, there are
traces, footmarks as it were, to reveal the agitation. In the
records of Blanchminster’s charity at Stratton, there appear
these tell-tale entries:
to Harry Juell the 21 July to run to Stowe with a letter
in post haste for her majesty’s service iijd.
to Richard Juell of Launceston (with five others) for
their horses to go in post to Launceston for Sir Richard
Grenville to ride to Plymouth when the Spaniards were
come to Plymouth, viijd. for every horse iiijs.
to John Short for his horse to carry the victuals the same
time viijd.
to Thomas Juell Cordener for his horse to carry the
armour to Launceston for the same time viijd; proven-
der for the said horses at Launceston xd; for setting 3
new shoes unto them ixd; for John Juell’s labour to go
to Launceston to fetch back the same post horses & for
going to Stowe with a post letter xiijd.
paid to Jasper Bedlime the same night to warn the par-
ish that they should be ready at an hour’s warning iijd. ^
These are but diminutive and unimportant relics of the agita-
tion of that night when the news of the Armada came to one
remote Cornish parish: how many thousands in all the parishes
of the West Country must have passed that night with their
harness, their bills and pikes ready at hand in case the call
came!
But in the event it was not needed. The turning-point came
with Howard’s successfully warping out of Plymouth Sound and
gaining the wind of the Armada: had he not done so, the fleet
might have been caught bottled up in harbour and no one can
tell the consequences. As it was, the Armada passed on up-
Channel - the danger to Plymouth was removed by the time
Grenville got there; the great fleet sailed on its course to the
rendezvous off Calais, the fire-ships, the storms of the North
1 q. by Chope from Goulding, Records of Blanckminster's Charity, 73.
263
SIR RICHARD GRENVILLE OF THE REVENGE
Sea and to the wreck of Philip’s hopes upon the cruel shores of
Ireland.
Throughout August, the levies were kept up throughout the
southern counties; but at the end of the month, the danger
having passed, Howard and Drake discharged the volunteer
ships from the western ports. They asked for payment to be
made for Grenville’s ships which had been Taken into service
by Sir Francis Drake then over and above his warrant, yet by
order from the Council, as Sir Richard Grenville and he hath to
show.’ ^
The Council could not be sure that all danger had passed
from the quarter of Ireland: it was known that a number of
Spanish ships were upon that coast and that numbers of
Spaniards were landing. It was decided to send a small force
into Ireland, to stay shipping upon the north coast of Devon and
Cornwall to transport it, and to form a small squadron to keep
a look out in the Irish Channel. Grenville was chosen for the
service. The Queen wrote him on 14 September:
‘We require you that upon the north coast of Devon
and Cornwall towards Severn, you make stay of all shipping
meet to transport soldiers to Waterford, and to give charge that
the same ships be made ready with masters, mariners and all
other maritime provisions needful; so as upon the next warning
given from us or from our Council they may be ready to receive
our said soldiers, which shall be 300 out of Cornwall and
Devon, and 400 out of Gloucester and Somersetshire. We have
also some other further intention to use your service in Ireland
with these ships aforesaid, whereof Sir Walter Ralegh, Knight,
whom we have acquainted therewith, shall inform you; who
also hath a disposition for our service to pass into Ireland, either
with these forces or before that they shall depart.’ ^
^ The month before, Howard and Hawkins had sent up an estimate of
charges for eight ships of this little squadron, mostly Grenville’s: 700 men
in all for four months, which would amount to 1,960, and for the tonnage
of the ships, 800 tons in all, £^^0. Laughton, The Defeat of the Spanish
Armada^ ii, 163.
* S.P. Dom. Eliz. 216, no. 24.
264
THE ARMADA AND DEFENCE OF THE WEST
This document is a draft in Burghley’s hand, but it has the
Queen’s signature at the top and the commission went forth.
Next day the Council wrote to Ralegh recommending him to
see that the hundred soldiers appointed out of Cornwall for
Ireland were well chosen and their oflScers able and well dis-
posed, and to help Grenville to stay shipping in Devon and
Cornwall and in transporting 700 soldiers to Ireland upon in-
telligence that they were needed there. ‘The ships shall be
under the leading of Sir Richard Grenville to use them as he
informed to destroy the Spaniards’ ships, wherein he is required
to assist him.’ ^ Grenville’s device, it seems, was the same that
Drake had used so successfully off Calais, to send in a number
of fire-ships among the Spaniards; for the Mayor of Bristol was
ordered to make provision of fifty barrels of tar, with brimstone,
pitch and pitch-boards and ‘to deliver the things above men-
tioned to such as Sir Richard Grenville shall appoint to receive
the same.’ ^ A general Warrant was issued to all officers to aid
and assist Ralegh and Grenville in taking up such ships as they
thought needful for the Irish service.^ Three Queen’s ships, the
Foresight^ the Aid^ and the Tiger were allotted to this task, being
ready victualled for 370 men for 14 days.
Ralegh and Grenville then kept the western seas with this
little force, until all doubt about the capacity of the Spaniards
to make a return blow was dispelled. A number of the finest
ships of the Armada, some twenty in all, w’-ent on the rocks of
the Irish coast in the storms of this stormy autumn, and with
them there perished some thousands of men and many of the
gallant est names among the chivalry of Spain. The remnants
of the Armada -* forty ships in all with the unfortunate Duke of
Medina Sidonia intact - were in no condition but to struggle
helplessly back to Spain, their crews dying in hundreds. In
November, the last fears from Ireland removed, the Council
gave orders for the stay of the western bands that were to have
been dispatched there.*
So passed that year of crisis, the greatest in Elizabeth’s reign,
a determining point in the history of the English people. As we
^ A.P.C. 1^88, 277. ® ibid. 276. ® ibid. 278.
* ibid. 330-1.
265
SIR RICHARD GRENVILLE OF THE REVENGE
have seen, Grenville played a not inconsiderable part at a
danger-point in the English defences. It may have been a
matter of disappointment to him that his role was not a more
spectacular one - like Drake's on board the Revenge (for it was
Drake’s hour), or the Howards, or Ralegh who had rushed
down to the coast to join the fleet — that after the Armada had
passed by Plymouth, his chance had once more slipped by. If
it were so, as it may well have been, no murmur of his dis-
appointment escaped his lips.
^66
CHAPTER XV
GRENVILLE IN IRELAND 1588-90:
THE PLANTATION OF MUNSTER
Xhe Irish service with which Grenville was charged in the
autumn of 1588 brought him once more into direct contact
with that field of plantation and colonisation in Munster, in
which he had been an early, a too early pioneer, twenty years
before. Then, the great Desmond power in the south of Ireland
had been still unbroken; it was under a temporary eclipse,
while the Earl, upon whom centred the devotion and the
national aspirations of the native Irish, wore away his years in
confinement in London. In the interval, after many years of
partial resistance, semi-rebellion, reconciliations and lapses,
that power had been broken; but not without four years of war-
fare on an extensive scale and of great savagery on both sides.
In November 1583, the last Earl of Desmond -the ‘Earl
Garrett of the Risings’ of Irish Legend - driven to his last des-
perate lair in the woods of Ahurlow, in the extreme
mountainous west, was killed by an Irish clansman. The wide
and fertile spaces of Munster, after so much fighting and laying
waste on both sides, were a scene of desolation. The orderly
mind of the Devonshireman, John Hooker, was revolted by it:
‘The curse of God was so great,’ he wrote, ‘and the land so
barren, both of man and beast, that whosoever did travel from
one end to the other of all Munster, even from Waterford to
Smerwick, about six score miles, he should not meet man,
woman or child, saving in cities or towns, nor yet see any beast,
save foxes, wolves or other ravening beasts.’ ^
The English Government agreed that it was desirable to re-
^ Hooker’s Supplement to Holinshed’s ChronicU, q. Edwards, Ralegh 1, 95.
267
SIR RICHARD GRENVILLE OF THE REVEMGE
people the province, as far as might be, with ‘well-afFected’
English settlers; it turned to the gentry of the western counties
to provide them. The appeal was not without its effect on
Grenville, who had made a premature attempt in this direction
in 1569 and must have kept in some contact with southern
Ireland through his shipping interests and the port of Bideford;
but for the time he was taken up by the Virginia project.
Ralegh took an immediate interest in the scheme, in addition to
Virginia, hoping to make a princely patrimony for himself in
Ireland.
The scheme was to get a number of undertakers, gentlemen of
substance, who would take up the lands escheated to the Crown
by the treason of Desmond and his supporters. These lands
were of enormous extent, but there were many difficulties in the
way. A rough survey of Munster was made, and a seignory of
1 2,000 acres was fixed as the basis of a plantation. The younger
sons of gentlemen and substantial yeomen were encouraged to
take up leases under the undertakers, who were to provide
English artisans and labourers. The scheme hung fire, partly
because of the increasing tension in England due to the war,
and partly because of the general uncertainty in Ireland regard-
ing the titles to the land. The Irish took advantage of the delay
to regain or take possession of the land, creeping back into the
fertile lands from their mountains and bogs, welcoming the
enforced peace after the horrors of the Desmond rebellion. All
kinds of difficulties arose - the troubles that one famous under-
taker, the poet Spenser, had with the Lord Roche are well
known and typical.
In August 1588 the Government sent over Chief Justice
Anderson with a commission to try out and settle all questions
of title, and from then on the plantation began in earnest.
Ralegh took up a large seignory in Waterford and Cork; with
his usual energy he proceeded to settle English families upon it
and set to work on the estate, introducing the potato from
Virginia, developing the timber trade, building houses for him-
self at Lismore and Youghal. In the earlier lists of undertakers,
Grenville’s name does not appear; but Sir Warham St. Leger,
who had gone back to Ireland in 1579 as provost-marshal of
268
GRENVILLE IN IRELAND 1588-90
Munster, was there to partner Grenville’s interests. From a
letter of St. Leger’s to Walsingham in February 1588, it appears
that already by then Grenville had got together a number of
settlers for Munster. Though he was as determined as ever to
establish the Virginia colony — we saw that on the eve of the
Armada he had an expedition ready to sail - he doubtless felt
that he could send over his settlers to St. Leger who would look
after his interests in Ireland until such time as he was free to see
to them himself.
St. Leger was claiming certain lands that had been mortgaged
to him by ‘the late wicked Earl of Desmond’ - it was de rigeur
among the English to refer to poor Desmond, the sport of fate
and ineluctable circumstance if ever a man was, as ‘the wicked
Earl.’ St, Leger’s grant, like so many others, was being held
up for legal reasons; a most grievous matter, he writes, since he
has been put to the charge of ^£“500 in furnishing himself and
his company to go there, ‘besides the preparation that Sir
Richard Grenville and his friends hath bestowed in furnishing
themselves to set down here with me.’ ^ St. Leger had made
over a half of his grant of Kerrycurrihy, the fertile country to
the west and south of Cork, the scene of their previous un-
successful experiment in settling. Grenville was a desirable, or
even a necessary partner, having the greater ability to draw
followers to settle in Ireland through his influence in the West
Country.
By May 1589, Grenville had brought over 99 settlers and
St. Leger 46; but as yet the lands which they were to hold as
tenants had not been apportioned, because of the delay in mak-
ing out their patent. The settlers meanwhile had been main-
tained to their great charges; ‘and as many more we have in
readiness in England to come over, upon understanding what
lands we shall be able to assure them.’ But they did not as yet
know how many Irish were occupying the land, nor had it been
decided how many of their claims to freehold were recognised,
if any. Grenville returns that he had had the use of five plough-
lands since midsummer 1588; and so far his stock there
amounted to
^ S.P. Ireiand 133, no. 85.
269
SIR RICHARD GRENVILLE OF THE MEVEJ^GE
‘xx Irish kine, two English bulls, vn English rams, xn English
oxen, four Irish oxen, one Irish bull, vn Irish caples [i.e.
small horses], four English horses able to serve for light horse-
men. I have no crops of corn nor able to till any as yet.’
Among the settlers who had accompanied Grenville, the chief
were members of his own family circle. There was his second
son John, who had fought in the Virgin God Save Her against the
Armada; and there was his half-brother, John Arundell, who
had accompanied him on the Virginia voyage in 1 585. Then
there were Christopher Harris of Radford, who later married
Grenville’s daughter Bridget; Thomas Stukeley, who may have
been brother of the John who went on the 1 585 voyage, and was
Grenville’s brother-in-law; John Bellew, another brother-in-
law; John Facey who signed Grenville’s family settlement as a
witness in 1586. There were besides a number of farmers and
labourers like the family of Cornish Teagues who formed part
of St. Leger’s following.
Grenville evidently spent the winter months of 1588-9,
following straight upon the heels of his temporary service at sea,
in Ireland, For St. Leger, who was very dissatisfied with the state
of affairs in Munster and the delay in the final arrangements for
the land-settlement, wrote to Walsingham on 20 January 1589:
‘Sir Richard Grenville now departing hence to the Court of
England ... is so thoroughly able to inform you touching the
estate of this Province, as I hold it superfluous to write thereof.’ ^
A week later, St. Leger wrote to Burghley, requesting him to
have some conference with Grenville regarding the former’s
proposals for preventing foreign invasion. St. Leger, who was
not at aU popular at Court because of his hostility to Ormonde,
was now in the absence of the Vice-President in charge of
Munster. At the same time, St. Leger took the opportunity of
sending a letter to the Queen by Grenville as bearer, giving her
an account of the situation in Munster, and inveighing against
‘those who be undertakers in word and not in action.’ ^
Whether Grenville had an interview with Burghley we do not
know; but at any rate his ideas on the situation reached him,
^ S.P. Ireland, 140, no. 25. ^ ibid. no. 14.
270
GRENVILLE IN IRELAND 1588-90
for a draft of his "Remembrances’ exists, which was endorsed by
Burghley.^ Probably Grenville saw him, for it was Burghley’s
way to fix a conversation which he considered of importance by
having it drafted in memorandum. Though it is incomplete,
it is a statesmanlike document, combining the political realism
of the Elizabethan with a genuine consideration of the course to
improve conditions for the Irish no less than the English.
He recommended that the various fees which were charge-
able by tribal custom upon the Irish and were a great burden,
should be swept away; and in their place a revenue raised by
an annual tax upon ploughlands and the sale of cattle. The
lords of the countries should be made to let their lands to the
Irish for fixed terms and rents ‘by which means they shall be
freed of the bondage and fear that now they be in under their
lords, and so become more obedient to her majesty, they being
by her majesty’s laws made to enjoy the benefiit of their labours.’
Officers should be appointed to account for the Queen’s profits,
fines and other issues at assizes and sessions, and the hundred
courts be kept as in England. All the ecclesiastical livings which
never yet paid any dues to the Crown should be rated, and those
livings, by far the majority, in which there were no ministers
should be converted to the Queen’s use until such time as they
have inhabitants and ministers: these revenues would defray
the cost of the President and garrison in Munster. Good care
should be taken that each undertaker should have the full
number of Englishmen resident on his seignory as he w^as bound.
Finally, he recommended that the question of tenure between
the freeholders’ titles and the Queen’s should be decided; until
which time the undertakers could hardly be held responsible for
not peopling their seignories.
It is clear that the remedies Grenville saw for the unsatisfac-
tory state of affairs in Munster were first settlement and then
assimilation to English conditions. Nor can it be denied that
such assimilation would have been to the advantage of the poor
Irish on the land, no less than to the incoming English. For the
latter, Grenville’s proposals were precisely such as to make their
position strong, that they might live long in the land. He him-
^ ibid. no. 16.
271
SIR RICHARD GRENVILLE OF THE REVENGE
self took his part in the scheme with the utmost responsibility
- unlike such nominal undertakers as Sir Christopher Hatton,
who never came near the place, or Sir William Courtenay of
Powderham, who backed out at the commencement. Grenville
contemplated spending a number of years in the country getting
his seignory in order, building himself houses, equipping the
rich but ravaged land; and he saw how important it was that all
the undertakers equally should fulfil their responsibilities. It
was the fact that they did not that ruined the prospects of this
first plantation. It was as much an experiment in colonisation
as Virginia; but in the end, it was for Grenville and his family
no less of a disappointment.
Grenville’s attitude on the problem is expressed even more
clearly in the letter which he wrote to Walsingham on 1 7 March
1589, recommending Nicholas Skiddy, one of that Cork family
which was ever loyal to the Crown and, it will be remembered,
had remained so in the Fitzmaurice Rising of 1 569.^ The letter
is dated from ‘my poor house of Gilly abbey by Cork,’ a ruined
Cistercian house just outside the walls of the city on the west;
Grenville had built a house within its precincts, repaired the
walls and made it his Irish residence. It is interesting to think
what would have happened if the Grenvilles had held on to
their very large Irish estates - Sir Richard was about to double
their extent. It would have been the Grenvilles who would have
become Earls of Cork, instead of the Boyles, possessors of an
enormous Anglo-Irish patrimony which would have entitled
them to a dukedom in the palmy days of the peerage in the
eighteenth century.
Grenville’s letter recommends Skiddy for his honest disposi-
tion to the English Government, in relation to which he was in a
position to be notably useful; for he had married the sister of
Cormoke mac Dermod, the chieftain of the Muskerry country,
who was very loyal and willing to co-operate. Further, the chief
practises with his tenants and clansmen
‘to draw them from their wandering and uncertain dwelling
[so shocking, and rightly, to an English gentleman used to the
^ S.P. Ireland, 142, no. 53.
272
GRENVILLE IN IRELAND 1588-90
settled conditions of the English country-side] and seeks to set
his land unto them by lease for xx years, or three lives. If the
like course were held by the other lords and captains of coun-
tries here, there were nothing that would breed a more
assurance to her Majesty for the obedience of the common sort
of this country people.’
There speaks the English settler who wanted order and the
cultivation of the soil, instead of the ro\dng, restless, lazy tribal
life of the Irish hitherto. A very small point here is worth notic-
ing in the manuscript: Grenville has difficulty in mastering the
Irish use of ‘mac’ and ‘O’; he first wrote ‘O Dermod’ and
then crossed it out. He was obviously not familiar with the
Celtic forms; one imagines Skiddy standing by him in the room
prompting him with the correct style.
On 22 April, the Queen wrote to the Lord Deputy directing
that a lease of the abbeys of Gilly and Fermoy should be made
out to Grenville for forty yearsA The processes of the Irish law
were slow; and there was many a slip between even royal wishes
as expressed in England and dieir execution in Ireland. It was
not until June 1591, when Grenville was in the Azores on the
eve of his last fight, that the Irish Chancery made out its grant
in his name.^ The site and precincts of Fermoy Abbey, some
sixteen miles north-east of Cork in the midst of what was then
the Lord Roche’s country, contained three acres within; the
stone walls of the monastic church remained, a vault, two
chambers, a close, a garden, a messuage, six cottages, with
various parcels of lands containing 340 acres arable, 160 acres
pasture, and mountain, and 40 acres of wood in all: a fine site
for a baronial mansion and park at a somewhat later date. At
Gilly, late the monastery of St. Finbar, the precincts were four
acres, in which were a church, a belfry, several stone walls
uncovered and a cemetery; three gardens, a close, a mill, two
salmon weirs, 40 acres arable, 20 acres pasture; with all the
townland of Kilmoney in Kerrycurrihy containing 120 acres
arable, 140 acres pasture and several other lands and islands.
So much for the character of the properties which Grenville
^ CaL Pat. and Close Rolls Ireland, 1 1 , 195.
^ ibid. 201 .
SIR RICHARD GRENVILLE OF THE REVENGE
made his residences upon the wide-spread lands of his seignory.
But there was, as the way is with Irish lands, to be more trouble
before he came into secure possession of them; and, more
surprising, the trouble was to come from a St. Leger,
Some periods of the year 1 589, after March and again in the
autumn, Grenville spent in England- For on 20 March, the
Council wrote to the Mayor, Recorder and Justices of Exeter,
putting Grenville’s name into the Commission, along with
Richard Champernowne and others, to try an important
murder case, in which two or three servants of Sir William
Courtenay were charged with murdering two of the servants of
William Fortescue.^ In May, we find him at Bideford, con-
templating a journey to London to discuss various matters of
business with Dr. Julius Caesar, Judge of the Court of Admir-
alty- He writes to the Judge for his favour to a kinsman, who
had made a seizure on a ship laden with wines at Padstow.^
Others are making claim to it, he says, ‘yet I think and hope
that the first seizure by a commission of reprisal is good’ ; from
which we understand that Grenville’s kinsman, either George
Grenville or a Roscarrock, had a ship out with letters of marque
to prey on trade with Spain, or else the seized ship had been
arrested in Padstow by virtue of a commission of reprisal for
some ship which he had previously lost.
Grenville was already in negotiation for the sale of the wines,
and had gone so far as to bring down a couple of merchants at
their great charge which should be recompensed if the seizure
is not valid. But he hopes that it is and begs the Judge’s favour
for his kinsman to enjoy the seizure. It is interesting to note
that the merchant who came down to Cornwall to deal for the
wines was a Mr. Guinness, whom Grenville recommends the
Judge to see, as he has taken great pains in following the case.
One wonders if this is not among the earliest notices of that well-
known name in such a connection. Finally, Grenville has taken
order with Mr. Guinness to pay a certain Dutchman ^^120 Tor
the oils and figs’ upon Caesar’s making out a discharge for
them. For the other causes ‘according to my speech with you
^ A.P.C. 1388-^, III. 2 Lansdowne MSS- 143, f. 264.
274
GRENVILLE IN IRELAND 1588-90
the next week (god willing) , I shall be able to advertise you to
the performance thereof.’
Whether Grenville got up to London and back in time for
his daughter Catherine’s marriage on i July, we do not know.
She was married on that date in Hartland Church, to Justinian
Abbot, second son of William Abbot of Hartland Abbey. ^ The
Abbots of Hartland were Grenville’s obvious neighbours be-
tween Stowe and Bideford; but apart from this marriage there
seems to have been very little or no relations between them. The
Abbots belonged to the new class of Reformation gentry, having
obtained the abbey for a song - William Abbot as a Groom of
the Chamber had been in a good position for picking up un-
considered trifles -at the Dissolution. We do not find the
Abbots interested in any of Grenville’s ventures, or among his
circle of west-country kith and kin. This marriage was their
first introduction into it; but it seems curious, if a match
between the families had been arranged by the parents, why
Grenville did not marry his daughter to the elder son. Perhaps
he was not disposed to be generous enough in the matter of a
dowry; or it may have been a love-match; we cannot tell. All
we know is that Justinian died early, being buried at Bideford
where he lived, 6 February 1602. The Abbots of Hartland died
out, as their reverend predecessors before them; and that lovely
estate, one long deep valley, twisting between its wooded slopes
to its mouth upon the sea, passed from them to the Luttrells,
from the Luttrells to the Orchards, and from the Orchards to
the Stucleys with whom the Grenville blood enters into long-
deferred possession. On 9 June, a family event of a different
kind took place: Grenville’s fourth daughter, Rebecca, w^as
buried at Bideford.
This summer he was back in Ireland, in time to meet the
Commissioners who had been sent over to investigate a number
of troublesome questions connected with the plantation of
Munster. These w^ere three in number: the confused (and con-
fusing) question of the titles to the chargeable lands; an attempt
to change the cess, which was a customaiy^ charge upon the land
^ Granville, 124.
275
SIR RICHARD GRENVILLE OF THE REVENGE
for the maintenance of soldiers, into a regular revenue payable
to the Queen; and thirdly, to make a survey of the number of
Englishmen each undertaker had brought over.
From the returns, we learn that Grenville had considerably
added to his interests and responsibilities: he had taken over
from one Hugh Worth, one-half of the country of Kinallmeky,
a double seignory of 24,000 acres, which Worth had taken up
along with Phane Beecher. The latter asked that an equal
division might be made between him and Grenville -so that they
might know how to place their people.^ From Grenville’s
answers we learn that the rent of his portion of 12,000 acres was
100 marks, and that it contained no chargeable land.^ No
settlement had as yet been proceeded with, for one Daniel
Granoe "pretended to be lord of that country, became a rebel,
spoiling and wasting that country till March last, whereby no
tenants durst to undertake to dwell there.’ So far, only one pr
two undertakers of English birth had been placed in the whole
seignory, but he promises that "the gentlemen that are to enjoy
this seignory will before midsummer next, bring over to inhabit
upon the same seignory the full number required by the articles
so as the rebels that are out upon the same country may be
suppressed.’ Lastly, Grenville informs the Commissioners that
he had bought the seignory on behalf of two of his relatives, one-
half for Richard Bellew, his brother-in-law, the other for his
half-brother, Alexander Arundell, ‘who hath sent over at this
present the one his son, the other his brother to view and take
the conveyance of the country, and so return in to England
to bring over people to plant the seignory according to her
Majesty’s plat.’
Altogether, the Grenville interests were at this time the largest
of any of the Undertakers in Munster. Even Ralegh had as yet
no more than one seignory of 12,000 acres; but that was the best
cultivable land of all, and Ralegh had already settled more
Englishmen than any of the others, 1 20 men, many of them with
families. Sir Christopher Hatton, Sir George Bourchier and Sir
Edward Fitton were among the next largest Undertakers;
Edmund Spenser had a grant of only some 4,000 acres, which,
^ S.P. Ireland 146, no. 45 (8). ^ ibid. 148, no. 36.
1276
GRENVILLE IN IRELAND 1588-90
he complained, was reduced to less than 3,000 acres by the
claims and depredations of Lord Roche.
With regard to the chargeable lands, the Commissioners
frankly confessed to the Council the almost insuperable difficul-
ties they had met with. These lands were those upon which the
Earls of Desmond had charges by Celtic custom, considerably
diminishing their value. There was the right of the Lord with
all his followers to take meat and drink from the inhabitants one
day in a fortnight. Similarly his huntsmen and hounds had to
be fed for a day and a night. The Lord might charge upon
them the cost of his journeys to Dublin, or of entertaining
strangers. Nor were these by any means all; there were other
charges equally burdensome.^
It is obvious that these fantastic expressions of the primitive
Celtic system of land-tenure would be regarded by the English
Undertakers as the unmitigated nuisance, thoroughly un-
economic in character, which they were; and that they woiild
desire some definite arrangement with the occupiers, by which
the latter received in freehold a portion of the land they
occupied, while the rest went to the Queen to whom all Des-
mond’s rights had escheated. The Commissioners offered a
fourth part of the land to the customary tenants, and to those
of them who had written evidences, a third part; retaining the
remainder in the Queen’s hands to grant to her Undertakers.
But the occupiers w'ould come to no agreement, and some of
them put forward ancient charters to show that their titles to
the lands existed before ever the Desmonds had any footing in
those parts. The poor baffled Commissioners reported from
Dublin:
‘The question of the chargeable lands hath often been
debated, but it could never be decided whether the chargeable
lands were the traitor’s inheritance that had the rents and
spending thereof, or whether they were the iawTui inheritance of
such the tenants whose ancestors had enjoyed the possession
thereof many descents. It is probable that in the beginning
some of the tenants were freeholders, and others but tenants-at-
^ ibid. 144, no. 84.
277
SIR RICHARD GRENVILLE OF THE REVENGE
will to Desmond, but how to distingidsh them, wanting the
traitor’s evidences and rentals, we know not.’ ^
It was a matter of the first importance for the success of the
Plantation; lacking this certainty^ how could those of the
Undertakers who were affected by it, settle their followers?
Grenville and St. Leger were most of all concerned, for their
cantred of Kerrycurrihy, being of Desmond inheritance, was
largely chargeable land. Upon his coming over to England in
October, Grenville wrote from Stowe a long letter to Walsing-
ham, stating his considered opinion upon each of the three
questions before the Commissioners. It is a very full and states-
manlike document, which enables us to appreciate what must
have been the representative view of the Undertakers, as ex-
pressed by one of the most important of them.^
‘Being newly arrived out of Ireland,’ he writes on 14 October,
‘I have thought meet to make known to your honour how the
estate of the undertakers standeth in the county of Cork, where
my self is one that have an earnest care for the performance of
that which her Majesty hath directed to be done for the
peopling thereof.’
He continues, after reciting the questions submitted to the
Commissioners:
‘The first part concerning the chargeable lands both more
concern Sir Warham St. Leger and me than any other of the
undertakers, because there is not so much chargeable land
found in any other place, which caused me the more earnestly
to follow her Majesty therein, at my being at the Court. At
which time her Majesty having Justice Anderson and Mr.
Attorney before her, they delivered their opinions, that in re-
spect of the charge which was found by office that the traitor
Earl had on the land, her Majesty might justly take three parts
of four parts of the land into her own hands for the undertakers
... Yet her Majesty’s pleasure was that some sorts of the free-
holders should have a third part.’
^ S.P. Ireland, 147, no. 51.
278
2 ibid. no. 20.
GRENVILLE IN IRELAND 1588-90
From this it is clear that when earlier in the year he had
attended the Court, he had had an audience of the Queen, who
took a personal interest in the affairs of the plantation.
Now, he continued, the freeholders had been called before
the Commission, but would yield to no composition; it was well-
known that
'of themselves they will never yield to better conformity.
Wherefore except her Majesty please to direct a certain course
by the advice of her learned counsel (who have heard all their
titles) according to that which by law she may do, her Majesty
shall greatly prejudice herself and hinder her purpose of plant-
ing that country with Englishmen. As for my own part I
mustered before them 100 Englishmen that I brought over
with me to plant there, yet have I not five ploughlands to place
them in. I was very earnest with the Commissioners to procure
them to set down order, according as I had heard the Judge and
Mr. Attorney yield their opinions, but nothing was done, which
hath been to my great harm.’
Yet he is sure, he says, in spite of the refusal of the freeholders
to come to an agreement, that they do not really expect to have
more than a fourth; for one of them before the Commissioners
came, had sold Grenville the fourth part of his ploughland and
claimed no more. The frowardest of the freeholders claim that
the earfs charges were by extortion. But this, Grenville says,
was not so: there were divers sorts of freeholders, some yielding
only a small rent and suit of court, and the Earl never took
more than that from those freeholders. He claims that a third
part of all the land that he and his uncle St. Leger hold, was
held thus only by rent and suit [i.e. were not chargeable] . Of the
rest which was chargeable, the Earl often made leases to
strangers, when the freeholders would not inhabit the same, by
which the Earl was to have three parts and the freeholder the
remaining fourth.
'And when my uncle St. Leger and I first planted there,
being more than twenty years past, we being then tenants to the
Earl, all those that now seek to keep the whole of the chargeable
land, yielded then to give us as much rent for every of those
279
SIR RICHARD GRENVILLE OF THE REVEjYGE
ploughlands, as any lord or captain of the Irishry do make of
their own private land at this day . . . And if this chargeable
land be held as the freeholders now seek the same, I do protest
unto your honour I would not exchange the poor portion I have
in England for the greatest lord’s living in Munster.’
As regards the cess which was charged upon the Irish lords
and chiefs for the maintenance of soldiers, and which the
government desired to change into a regular revenue out of
their lands, Grenville reported that they were unwilling to yield
to such a composition;
Tor that might somewhat touch themselves, where now though
the cess be very grievous, yet it never hurteth them, for that the
whole burden thereof lighteth on the freeholders and inhabit-
ants, who nevertheless yield unto their lords their whole
demands. But a great number of the freeholders were very will-
ing to agree unto it.’
Short of the decisive intervention of the Government, it was
clear that nothing could be done; each class stuck to its own
interest, with no thought of what was the best interest of the
whole country: the chiefs were only prepared to give way on
what was the interest of the freeholders, the freeholders to accept
what was their own interest against the lords. It was all very
human. We are forced to conclude that the only power which
was looking to the interest of Ireland as a whole was the English
government. The tragedy of the situation was that in the six-
teenth century, as in later centuries, it was never strong enough
continuously to impose this solution upon the shifting and
treacherous currents of Irish discontents.
Grenville goes, on to attack the uncertain and brief tenures
upon which the Irish chiefs set their lands to their tenants,
‘who hold the same not above four years, and so wander from
one place to another; which course being redressed, and they
commanded to set their lands as the undertakers must do, would
do much good to breed civility generally in the country; for
whereas now the poor man is never certain to enjoy the fruits
of his own labour and knoweth not in certainty what his lord
280
GRENVILLE IN IRELAND 1-588-90
will have of him. For fear, he must depend on him and follow
all his actions, be they good or bad; whereas otherwise, if the
poor tenant held his land by lease for his life or for twenty-one
years at a certain rent, then were he sure of his charge and that
the overplus were his own; so would he depend on her Majesty
and her laws to be defended against the .oppressions w^hich now
too commonly every lord useth.’
It was a penetrating diagnosis of Irish troubles; and there can
be no doubt that if, as Grenville saw, the Irish system of land-
tenure could be assimilated to the English, it would lead to an
improved economy, a better social order and much greater
prosperity for the ordinary tillers and cultivators of the soil.
Unhappily the resources of Elizabethan government w^erc in-
sufficient for so vast a task.
As was usual in that age, though particularly so whenever
Grenville was writing to a friend at Court, he concludes with
a request for a personal favour:
'whereas I having settled my mind to follow the planting of the
Seignory that I have undertaken, am for some years to make my
abode in that country, so for my poor credit’s sake amongst
my neighbours and friends here, I shall become an humble
suitor unto your honour that my eldest son, being now of some
ripe years, and I hope able to serve her Majesty and his country
in civil as in martial actions, may by your honour’s means have
such charge of private bands of men as are now" under me, and
to supply a place with the rest injustice, wherein my care shall
be such over him, while I am, as he shall be able to do her
highness and his country the better service w"hen I am gone.’
Alas, Grenville did not know how soon that was to be! His
idea was to leave his eldest son Bernard to take his place in the
West Country ~ it would be good training for the position he
was to occupy when his father was gone, and meanwhile he
would deputise for him among the Cornish Justices and in com-
mand of the trained bands. We do not know if the scheme com-
mended itself to the Government; Bernard was still very young
to be a Justice of the Peace - he w^as only twenty- two. It w’ould
seem that he was not put into the Commission of the Peace
281
SIR RICHARD GRENVILLE OF THE REVENGE
until after his father’s death and he had become the head of the
family. His father’s plan was now to remain in Ireland building
up a patrimony there for his second son John. It was, as always,
the interests of the family that he had in mind.
This year 1589 witnessed the Drake-Norris expedition to Lis-
bon, which was England’s reply to the Armada. Its failure
meant a loss of some of the prestige gained in 1588; yet the
humiliation to Spain of an English army invading its soil, shook
the country out of the dazed condition the disaster to the
Armada had left it in. New preparations were made in the
northern parts of Spain for concentrating a fleet; and many
of the new ships laid down in Spanish yards incorporated the
lessons learnt in English waters and followed English designs.^
The fleets of Spain, and the system of guarding the annual
treasure fleet by convoys of fast cruisers, were being ably and
gallantly reorganised. Spain was becoming stronger again.
In England there was no serious fear of another invasion,
but it was feared that the Spanish preparations meant a descent
upon Ireland. Through the winter of 1589 and the spring of
1590, speedy efforts were set on foot to organise the defence of
Munster, so disorganised by the Desmond Rebellion, where the
blow was likely to fall. In December the Council sent over
Edmund Yorke, an experienced officer, to survey the likely
places of descent and take measures for their strengthening and
defence. He was instructed in Munster to take the advice of
Grenville and St. Leger, ‘'in what sort the towns of Waterford,
Cork and Limerick may be strengthened and fortified in short-
est time by rampering the said towns within the walls or by
raising up of forts or sconces with earth.’ ^ In January, Ralegh
undertook for himself and Grenville to raise 200 of the 600 men
appointed to be levied in Ireland for service.^ Later Ralegh
changed his offer to that of raising 50 horse in place of 1 00 foot;
we do not know how far Grenville proceeded with the job
allotted him over his head, but the emergency seems to have
passed with the summer months.
Levies were raised, however, in the early months in the
1 Corbett, II, 364. a A.P.C. i58g-go, 299, 331. s ibid. 333, 372.
282
GRENVILLE IN IRELAND 1588-90
counties of Pembroke, Somerset, Shropshire, Wanvick and
Chester, and the work of fortifying the towns in Ireland pro-
ceededA Grenville and St. Leger were to meet Yorke and Sir
Thomas Norris at Waterford in February; but for some reason
they failed to appear. Nevertheless, the works went merrily
forward, and by the end of May Yorke could report: ‘Dun-
cannon is one of the prettiest fortresses in Christendom, and so
is the Rock over the water’ [i.e. at Waterford] . He was so much
in love with his handiwork that he desired to have the keeper-
ship of the former.^ By October, there was a considerable body
of troops in Ireland under the command of the great Sir John
Norris, Black John Norris, the most famous of English soldiers
of the time. All was ready for the attack which, as usual, did
not come.
Throughout 1590, at least right up to the end of October,
Grenville remained in Ireland, working upon his land; for at
the end of that time we hear of his having built a house for
himself at Gilly Abbey,
‘purchased other lands adjoining to it, erected a mill and made
divers other commodious and necessary things, greatly to the
ease and good of the inhabitants of that part of the country and
to the furtherance of our service there, with his great costs and
charges.’ ^
Having got this much into order, he found himself up against
a difficulty which all too frequently dogged the steps of the
sanguine undertaker: a legal claim advanced to the property
by his cousin, Warham St. Leger the younger, nephew of Sir
Warham, who doubtless thought it would be a nice little thing
to succeed to, now that some work had been put into it.
Some seven years before, at the time of the Desmond Rebel-
lion, when all was wasted, he had been offered a grant of the
property, but refused it at the rent demanded by the Crown.
Now that Grenville had improved it and made the place habit-
able again, he procured letters from the Lord Deputy, with
whom he was in closer contact than Grenville, who confined
1 Cal. S.P. Ireland 315. ^ ibid, 348.
® S.P. Ireland, 155, no. 14.
283
SIR RICHARD GRENVILLE OF THE REVENGE
himself to the south, to have Grenville's grant stayed, and
accepted the abbey himself at the rent he had previously re-
fused.
^Whereby,’ wrote the Queen to the Lord Deputy in her
magnificent style, her large late signature scrawled across the
top of the brief, 'this being as it is informed us, we may have
good cause to conceive no direct nor sound dealing in St. Leger,
both in respect of the hindrance grown to us through want of
the said best rent for so long time, and otherwise also. And do
find it likewise strange that you should in such sort grant the
same to him, who had so long time refused it.’
Apparently the distracted Deputy had also promised the
grant to Grenville upon the strength of the royal letters of
22 April 1589, upon which assurance Grenville had begun to
build and lay out his charges. The Queen commanded the
Deputy forthwith to resume into his hands the letters-patent
granted to the younger St. Leger, and to report on the whole
proceedings to her or the Council. Meanwhile he was to take
order that Grenville should not be disturbed in the quiet occu-
pancy and enjoyment of the property and that no disorder or
quarrel should be suffered by occasion of it: 'Being our meaning
nevertheless, in lieu of this, to extend our gracious favour to
St. Leger in some other thing there to the like value.’ This
seems to have been sufficient: there was no quarrel or disorder,
such as were endemic over Irish land; and shortly after, St.
Leger was appointed to the Irish Privy Council.
Four months elapsed, and Grenville, now in England with a
more exalted sphere of service before him - his great oppor-
tunity come at last - took the occasion to petition the Queen
for a more favourable grant of the fee-farm of Fermoy and Gilly
abbeys.^ The Queen’s missive of April 1 589 had been for a
lease to be made out to him for a term of forty years. It was like
Grenville to use the fact of his service being required, to extract
a further concession; but in that he was very typical of his class
and time. It was the way these men made their own greatness
and the greatness of their country.
^ S.P. Ireland, 157, no. 19-
284
GRENVILLE IN IRELAND 1588-90
True, it was no great suit; and since Grenville intended to
make Gilly and Fermoy his Irish residences, the nuclei of his
estates, it was only natural that he should wish to obtain a
freehold of the houses and demesnes, at least. The Queen was
very willing and wrote forthwith her letters to the Lord Deputy
to expedite the grants to 'our wellbeloved serv-ant. Sir Richard
Grenville.’ ^ It was the first time that he was addressed accord-
ing to the formula which indicated the new service of the crown
to which he had been called. It was a foretaste of its rewards :
the first-fruits of which the full harvest was his own heroic death.
Tn consideration of the good service of the said Sir Richard,’
the Queen now commands the Lord Deputy to make out
patents for Grenville and his heirs male to enjoy the sites and
demesnes of the two abbeys in fee-farm at the regular rents of
£40 ys, 6d, and ^^33 gs. 4^. respectively; the remainder of the
properties, outlying lands, parsonages, tithings, were granted on
lease, with fines payable on renewal. So that the Crown was
not being unduly generous with its own; it was fortunate rather
to have a tenant who meant to put all he could into the pro-
perty. After Grenville’s death, we learn from a petition of his
son John, that he had expended in his efforts to plant an estate
in Ireland and by his losses in the Fitzmaurice Rebellion in
1569, some j^8,ooo.^ In his lifetime there was no return w^hat-
ever on this large outlay of capital: time was not granted him to
see any fruit for all his efforts. Whatever return they might
yield in the end could only depend upon the continuance of his
work by his posterity.
In the matter of the chargeable lands, the Queen directed the
Deputy to make out a Commission to the Vice-President of
Munster and others to hear Grenville and St. Leger’s case for
their enjoying the lands; and to call all parties advancing titles
to the lands before them and hear their claims, 'and thereupon
to decide their titles to the benefit of the said Sir Warham St.
Leger and the said Sir Richard Grenville, as far forth as by law
^ S.P. Ireland, 155, no. 17, The correct date is 7 March 1591 not 24
October 1590 as given in the Calendar; cf. Hatfield Papers {Hist. MSS. Com.),
IV, no. 98 and Cal. Pat. and Close Rolls Ireland, II, p. 207.
® ibid. 169, no. 7.
283
SIR RICHARD GRENVILLE OF THE REVEMGE
and justice, the same ought to be/ Thus prodded by the Qiieen,
the long delays of the Irish Chancery came to an end. On
26 June, the patents were made out: ^ Grenville was already in
the Azores.
For, sandwiched into the State Papers between the Queen’s
letters relating to Gilly and Fermoy, on the back of the draft of
the first, is the following docquet: letter to Sir Richard Gren-
ville to make his repair to her Majesty, for some causes of service
as he shall understand, and to make the Deputy acquainted
with this her pleasure.’ ^ This was at the end of October, and
Grenville must have repaired to Court immediately. It is all
that we have of the Commission which was to lead to
such fateful consequences in the Azores.
^ Cal. Pat. and Close Rolls Ireland, II, 201.
2 S.P. Ireland, 155, no. 16.
286
CHAPTER XVI
IN THE AZORES
Drake’s great expedition to Lisbon, which was our reply to
the Armada, had failed. It was a very spectacular affair, and
its failure produced a corresponding sense of disappointment.
From the first its success had been jeopardised by divided coun-
sels, a divided command, and the usual delays inseparable from
the conditions of sixteenth-century warfare, and particularly
from the subtle hesitations of the Queen’s mind.
It was intended to be both a land- and sea-enterprise. As
such the troops and landsmen were placed under Sir John
Norris, Black Norris, most famous of our commanders in the
Netherlands, and the command was divided between him and
Drake. The magic of their names - for it was a semi-private
enterprise, to which the Queen contributed six of her ships, in-
cluding the Revenge in which Drake sailed - brought together a
motley crowd of men and ships. When they set sail, ill-fed, over-
crowded, delayed by bad weather so that provisions were run-
ning short, they were some 130 ships in all and 23,000 men.
The objectives of the expedition were confused from the start.
Drake and Norris were to attempt to establish Don Antonio
upon the throne of Portugal, and if possible to capture some of
the Islands, the Azores, as a base from which to sever the sea-
communications of the Spanish Empire. But they were in-
structed first to scatter the remnants of the Armada which had
collected in the Biscayan ports, and this led to the attack upon
Corunna which delayed the expedition, gave warning to the
Spaniards of its presence and an opportunity, owing to the
wines which the men took in the sack of the town, for disease
to spread through the fleet.
After this all went wrong. Norris landed his troops at Pen-
287
SIR RICHARD GRENVILLE OF THE REVENGE
iche some fifty miles from Lisbon, but marched them through
the country in vain, for he could not get at the capital. Drake
arrived at the mouth of the Tagus, but could not take the city
without the troops whose movements had failed to synchronise.
Now starving and with a gale blowing upon the coast, all they
could do was to re-embark the troops and return home, giving
up the projected descent upon the Azores. Off the coast at the
height of the storm, the Revenge sprang a leak, and it was only
with the greatest difficulty that Drake managed to bring her
into Plymouth.
The consequences of this ill-success were important. Our
naval strategy was overhauled and a new plan of action adopted.
Drake was left to languish in retirement at Buckland; though he
was still the chief influence at Plymouth and was employed
about its fortification. But he was not given another command
at sea, until that of the expedition to the West Indies in 1595
which proved to be his last. For six years he was virtually un-
used, at the height of the war, when the new phase of the sea-
fighting most suited his genius. In the curious way in which
his fortune was connected with Grenville’s, indirectly, almost
as if by mutual exclusion, Drake’s reversal opened the way to
Grenville’s opportunity.
The connection, as is the way these intricate strands of cir-
cumstance are woven, was not obvious; it may even seem in-
consequent: but time brought them together. While Grenville
was oblivious of them, hard at work in Ireland, the new plan
of campaign was worked out and set in being. It was mainly
the work of Hawkins, who expressed its guiding principle of
policy to be, 'that first we have as little to do in foreign coun-
tries as may be (but of mere necessity), for that breedcth great
charge and no profit at alP: ^ a principle which became the
classic tradition of English policy. The plan was to hold the
seas between Spain and the Azores by successive small squad-
rons of six of the Queen’s ships, with their supports, so as to
exert continuous pressure upon the vital route by which the
flotas^ the treasure-fleets from the Indies, replenished Spain with
the resources of her Empire.
^ Williamson, Sir John Hawkins^ 45 1 .
288
IN THE AZORES
It was a good plan, but it depended upon two assumptions:
first, that the squadrons should succeed each other without in-
termission upon the Azores station and the coast of Spain, so
that Xhtflotas should not slip home unobserved in the interv^al:
a matter very difficult to accomplish in the conditions of those
days, dependent as they were upon wind and weather, with
very inadequate provisions for supply and a faltering and dis-
continuous command of material resources. Secondly, these
tactics assumed that Spanish sea-power was so crippled by the
disaster of 1588 that Philip would be unable to raise forces
sufficient to sweep even these small squadrons from the sea.
But it was a matter of life and death for Spain that he should
do so.
Slowly, laboriously, but surely, as his manner was, Philip
planned to repair the damage, and to construct the nucleus
of a fighting force which he might send to sea to keep his com-
munications open. In 1589 he contracted for twelve galleons,
the twelve ‘Apostles,’ to be built on the English model in the
Biscayan ports; nine more were laid down on the Portuguese
model at Lisbon. Next year he contracted for twelve Ragusan
galleons to enter his service.^ With the assassination of Henry
III, the religious wars in France entered upon their final phase
and Philip was drawn into intervention on the side of the Catho-
lic League, as Elizabeth was on behalf of Henry of Navarre.
Philip sent an expedition to Brittany; its presence there, right
on the flank of the Channel opposite Plymouth and the Cornish
coast, occasioned far more alarm in England than its actual
strength warranted.
Most important of all was the question of safeguarding the
homecoming treasure from the Indies. For this purpose,
Alonso de Bazan proposed a small number of fast vessels of a
new type - gallizabras - small but heavily armed, in which the
treasure was to be carried, capable of outsailing whatever they
could not fight. The reconstitution of Spain’s naval forces was
proceeding under the influence of Bazan, a commander of long
experience in the Mediterranean and on the Atlantic coasts; he
was the brother of the great Admiral Santa Cruz and the in-
^ C. F. Duro, HLstoria de la Armada Elspaiiola^ III, 79; Corbett II, 364.
289 T
SIR RICHARD GRENVILLE OF THE REVENGE
heritor of his tradition. It was Bazan who had led the attack
of the galleys upon Drake in Lisbon harbour; now he was placed
in charge of the collection of an ocean fleet in the northern
harbours.
But that would take time; meanwhile the hour was to the
English. For a variety of reasons, chiefly through difficulties of
supply and in the way of co-ordinating movements, they did not
do so well as expected. Cumberland was out in the Azores with
a few ships of his own all the summer of 1589 and right up to
October. But he did not know the Isles well, and somehow both
the Jlota of New Spain and the great East Indian carracks man-
aged to evade him. The one rich prize he took, worth 100,000
and laden with hides, sugar and cochineal, was wrecked in
Mount’s Bay when nearly in port and became a total loss. In
September, Frobisher was at sea taking his station off the coast
of Portugal with the aim of intercepting what might elude Cum-
berland. Had the two joined forces they might have captured
the flota; as it was, Frobisher got a couple of rich prizes which
more than recompensed him for his pains. Spain was quite
unable to get a fleet to sea this year to protect her trade. But
the bulk of the treasure was not on this flota which got through
the blockade; it was coming on the flota from the Mainland,
whose sailing was delayed till next year. Philip had therefore
to get through the winter without the precious means for the
sustenance of his wide-flung forces throughout Europe.
Hawkins knew that the treasure had been delayed, and
through the winter he pushed on the preparations to take the
sea himself as early as possible. Suddenly the Council took
fright at Bazan’s preparations at Corunna and Ferrol: they
supposed the new Spanish fleet could only mean another des-
cent upon England. Hawkins’s squadron was countermanded.
In his laconic, repressed way he wrote with bitterness to
Burghley: ‘Being out of hope that ever I shall perform any
royal thing, I do put on a mean mind and humbly pray your
lordship to be a good lord to me.’ ^ He might well be bitter:
he had missed the chance of achieving the ‘royal thing.’ The
second flota^ trusting to the winter seas rather than the summer
^ Williamson, 456.
290
IN THE AZORES
or the autumn when they were alive with English ships on the
look-out, crossed in the early months of 1590, arriving in port
in March, with five million ducats on board.
Too late for this catch, the Council permitted both Hawkins
and Frobisher, each with a squadron of six Queen’s ships, to
depart in May. Frobisher went to the Azores, with the Rivenge
as his flagship, while Hawkins lay oflT the coast of Spain to watch
for the sailing of the Brittany expedition which had caused such
trepidation in England, and for the homecoming trade. This
time Frobisher was too late; a consignment of treasure in the
new gallizabras had just passed through before his arrival and
reached Portugal in August. However, his presence created
alarm throughout the Islands and frightened Philip into coun-
termanding the dispatch of any more treasure till 1591. When
Frobisher’s supplies were exhausted, Hawkins took his place in
the Azores. But there was now nothing to intercept. At the
end of September Bazan had collected sufficient forces to put
to sea; with some forty ships, of which perhaps twenty were of
any size or strength, he made for the Azores.^ A battle might
have taken place in less unequal conditions than came about
next year: no doubt Hawkins would have considered six Queen’s
ships a match for twenty Spaniards. But when within ten
leagues of the Islands, Bazan was driven back by bad weather;
and at the end of October, Hawkins was recalled.
The alarm created in the Spanish world, in the colonies and
in Spain no less than in the Islands, was intense. Linschoten, a
Dutch merchant who was in the Azores at this time, wrote that
the English ‘are become lords and masters of the sea, and need
care for no man,’ and that the Spaniards themselves ‘cursed
those that had been the cause to provoke the Englishmen to
fight.’ The colonies in America had their own troubles to deal
with, in addition to the King clamouring for treasure; but they
were incapable of dealing with them. John Watts, lying in wait
off Havana in the summer of 1590, had captured two ships of
the New Spain fleet attempting to collect there. In the end it
was decided to winter in the harbour, news which caused a
panic in Seville. The governor of Havana declared that the
^ Oppenheim, Af orison's Tracts, I, 251.
291
SfR RICHARD GRENVILLE OF THE REVENGE
Spaniards were bottled up, while the audacious Englishmen
dared them at their very doors. The winter wore on, and the
colony itself, under the inspiration of the governor, Texeda,
constructed its own frigates for the transport of treasure. Four
were finished and left Havana on lo February 1591 ; three made
Gascaes, at the mouth of the Tagus, on the night of 12 March,
the fourth arrived at San Lucar on 19 March. The treasure
was loaded on mule-trains and dispatched to Seville; and be-
cause money was desperately needed in Spain, the frigates were
at once sent back to Carthagena for more.^
It was known in England that there was last year’s Jlota in
addition to the current year’s to cross, but there was no know-
ledge at what time they were to be expected. Monson after-
wards wrote that the King of Spain, ‘being sensible how much
the safety of that fleet concerned him, caused them to disem-
bogue so late in the year that it endangered the shipwreck of
them all.’ He adds that there were two motives in bringing
home the flota so late; one was to exhaust the supplies of the
English squadron watching, the other to give him more time
to prepare a strong fleet under Bazan to meet the flota at the
Azores and convoy it home. In England it had not been realised
what efforts Philip had put forth to reconstitute an ocean-going
fleet, nor what measure of success Bazan had attained. The
Government therefore went on with its policy of sending out
small cruising squadrons, which in spite of the absence of any
signal coup had been very promising of result, at a minimum
of cost.
There was a good deal of discussion as to who should be sent
out and what form the force should take. The first plan was
for some twenty ships and pinnaces to be sent under the joint
command of Lord Thomas Howard and Ralegh.^ The latter,
for some reason, perhaps because it was thought he would not
agree with Howard, was not permitted to go. But he continued
to participate in the expedition, for he victualled the Revenge
and the Crane, while the Defiance, the flagship, was victualled by
^ I am indebted for the infoimatiun in this paragraph to the kindness of
Miss 1 . A. Wright.
2 Oppcnheim, I, 257.
292
IN THK AZORES
Lord Thomas Howard, and the Bonaventure, Charles and Moon
by the Lord Admiral. Doubtless it was through Ralegh's influ-
ence, and in some sense as occupying his place, as happened
before over the Voyage to Virginia in 1585, that Grenville was
appointed Vice-Admiral of the squadron. He had had no part
in these proceedings; he had simply received, as we saw, at the
beginning of March, the command to come direct to Court and
there the order to serve. Almost immediately, we hear from a
letter to the Earl of Shrewsbury on 10 March, giving him news
of the Court:
"My Lord Thomas Howard hath kissed her Majesty’s hand,
and is gone down to his ships. Sir Richard Gren\ille being his
Viceadmiral, and they and their partners I assure your Lord-
ship make a very goodly fleet. God send them good speed,
and a safe return: My Lord of Cumberland is not yet ready.’ ^
The fleet with which Howard and Grenville were to put to
sea consisted of the Defiance^ Howard’s flagship, the Revenge^ in
which Grenville sailed as Vice-Admiral, the Bonaventun^ the
Nonpareil^ all of them medium-sized fighting ships of about 500
tons, the Crane of 250 tons, with the two smaller ships, the Charles
and the Moon of 60 and 70 tons.^ Later on, after some months
at sea, there were changes: the Moon was sent home in July to
hasten the supplies which had been promised, the Nonpareil fol-
lowed because of ‘the great infection of the ship’; and before the
action off Flores, Howard was reinforced by two more Queen’s
ships, the Golden Lion of 500 tons and the Foresight of 300. In-
structions sent later to Howard warned him that there was a
Spanish fleet between Cape St. Mary and Cape St. Vincent,
low down upon the south-w-est of the Spanish peninsula, and
left it ‘to my Lord Thomas’s judgment by such intelligence as
he shall learn, whether it be surer lying at the Islands for the
Indian fleet, or at St. Mary’s Cape, but it is thought by men
of good judgment and experience that the Cape is the surer.’
Howard was promised that victuals for two months would be
sent after him. Cumberland, with a force of his own and backed
^ Lodge, Illustrations of Biitish History (cd. 1791), HI, 28.
2 Oppenheim, I, 256-9.
293
SIR RICHARD GRENVILLE OF THE REVENGE
by Ralegh, Drake and others, was to take up a post off the coast
of Spain.
In June, the Council made efforts to whip up reinforcements
for the ships at sea; letters were written round to various ports
to fit out ships for service in the Azores, for the most part elicit-
ing despondent replies. Padstow replied that they had no ship
exceeding 23 tons; Barnstaple and Bideford replied that of their
ships of 100 tons burden, ‘two are at the Newfoundland’ and
one, serving under a commission of reprisal, was already ‘we
verily think, before this time with one of her Majesty’s fleets.’ ^
But from their reply we obtain a last glimpse of Howard and
Grenville making their final preparations at Plymouth:
‘Also here are few mariners left at this time, because there are
a great number forth in the said reprisal men, another company
at the Newfoundland, and divers were pressed here hence by the
Earl of Cumberland, Lord Thomas Howard and Sir Richard
Grenville at their last being at Plymouth.’
It so happens that for what occurred on the expedition, par-
ticularly on board the Revenge^ up to the time of their arrival in
the Azores, we are more than usually well-informed. For there
sailed in the Revenge with Grenville, a young gentleman- volun-
teer, Philip Gawdy, cadet of a Norfolk family, whose letters
home — it is by singular good fortune that they have survived
— give us a vivid picture of his time on board, and much use-
ful information. His letters begin before their departure; they
are very characteristic of a young man of the time, expressive,
eager, elated with the chance of seeing action, full of a naive
pride at going to sea and at the attentions he receives at Gren-
ville’s hands, with quick changes of mood from the gay and
whimsical to homesickness and a regret for the fields of Norfolk.
The younger son of a younger son, Philip had no obvious pros-
pects in the world; for some years, nominally attendant upon
the Inns of Court, and having chambers at Clifford’s Inn, he
hung about the Court, was excited by the deeds of Drake and
Frobisher and Howard, and longed for an opportunity for active
1 HatfUld MSS., IV, 1 19-20.
294
IN THE AZORES
service. Once already, in 1588, he had been disappointed; now
his chance had come.
‘Sweet Brother/ he writes before leaving; ‘over-charged with
haste I will make me write with the shorter style, till it please
God that I may write from Plymouth, when I will load you with
news. How Sir Richard Grenville and my Lord Thomas have
sought for me I will not tell you. Let Tom in his simplicity tell
you whether he saw them make any reckoning of me or no. To
be short, the news I know is thus much. The Queen hath com-
manded all possible speed to be made. Sir Richard and other
captains will presently go to the court with whom I will go.
And so away as fast as the ships will fall down [sc. the Thames].
I have already bought my arms and target, the very fellows to
my Lord Thomas and Sir Richard. My apparel will be made
to night, what is necessary else I do provide, besides the great
kindness I find both at Sir Richard’s hands and at Mr. Lang-
horne’s [the captain of soldiers on board the R€venge\.' ^
Philip’s next letter to his brother is written from on board the
Revenge^ 3 April. There seems to have been a strong affection
between the two brothers, in spite of the excessive good fortune
of the elder in marrying an heiress. Philip sends his sister-in-
law his good wishes, ‘And I trust she will ever love me, till I
give her other cause. And that shall not be till the salt seas be
dried up and then we shall come home for want of water.’
He sends friendly commendations to all the neighbourhood;
and upon the margin of the letter. Sir Richard himself wrote
a few words to the elder brother in testimony of Philip’s con-
duct of himself, that ‘no sickness, no danger, no fear . . . nor
no extremities of weather, mutiny, hard[ship] or other peril or
grief could provoke’ him from his duty. From a postscript by
Captain Langhorne, we gather that they had already experi-
enced ‘the extremest fury of the weather,’ which drove Lord
Thomas’s ships to take shelter at Falmouth, while the Revenge
rode out the gale at the mouth of the Channel.-
From his next letter, which is very long and informative, and,
it is not too much to say, delightfully written, we have a com-
^ Letters of Philip Gawdy, Roxburghe Club 1 906, 53. * pp. 54“5*
295
SIR RICHARD GRENVILLE OF THE REVENGE
plete journal of their proceedings from the time of leaving Ply-
mouth, till midway between Cape St. Vincent and San Miguel
in the Azores they captured a hulk which they sent home with
their letters. This one was dated from the Defiance^ 24 April, for
Lord Thomas had sent for Philip that day; he was writing at it
when he was sent for and completed it on board the flagship, to
be despatched on the prize that night. He describes the storm
that overtook them, and becomes ingenuously nautical about
the Revenge which rode it out between Scilly and Ushant. ‘We
spent both our masts, but by God's grace, they were espied in
good time, and strengthened with fishes, wolding and caulking,
and now, thanks be to God, they be in very good plight.' The
Revenge^ being a fast ship, went on ahead of the rest, and off
Finisterre met with four or five ships of Hamburg from which
*we borrowed some victual, for other good thing had they not
any.’
Off the Burlings about 1 8 April, seven or eight sail were des-
cried from the topmast, with one large ship which they took to
be a carrack among them. The Revenge prepared for action; but
the big ship proved to be a great hulk of Liibeck, of i ,000 tons,
laden with masts and deal, which was being chased by some of
Lord Thomas's ships. The Lubecker yielded herself to Gren-
ville, who placed a crew in her; she turned out to be good prize,
for her lading was bound for the King of Spain, and worth
£10^000. Off Gape St. Vincent, Lord Thomas with five of his
ships came up with them, and ‘we made great joy to meet him.’
Howard and Grenville determined to send the prize home,
and in her went someone who promised to deliver Philip’s letter
to his brother in Norfolk.
‘Sweet brother, I am become a reasonable good mariner, and
thanks be to God as strong at the sea as any in our company.
I want nothing but thy sweet company. I do continually medi-
tate upon thee, and verify the old proverb ^^Celum non animum
mutant^ qui trans mare curruntN Sweet brother, my lord sent for
me this day to be with him, so that I am hasted by him won-
derfully to dispatch my letter, for he sends away with all speed.
I honour him much and have great cause to love him. I thank
296
IN THE AZORES
God I am contented with this life which I have framed myself
to. We want the sweet flowers and herbs to breathe upon, for
here we find nothing but only Celum undique^ et undique mare.
There is not a good ale-house within twenty leagues of us.’
He continues with innumerable commendations to The good
company of Harling’ which ‘maketh me long home. And when
I think of Norfolk and your sweet company, and someone be-
sides of that country, I sigh and say the sea doth not content
me.’ Then, with a touch of pride in such a home-bred country-
man, ‘And hitherto I may justly say that I have travelled
further than any of my name.’ He bids his brother look in his
map at home for the course they have so far followed, which
he describes for him in detail. ‘These seas that we be now in
are almost as sweet as a river in the country’; yet again, ‘the
southern seas cannot blow the remembrance of my friends out
of my mind.’ The fleet had heard the news of the four treasure-
ships arriving at San Lucar, and was now immediately bound
for the Islands.
A little later, he adds a postscript with the information that
they had met the hulk again, being an unwieldy vessel, midway
between San Miguel and Cape St. Vincent.
‘There hath not anything else happened worth the writing,
but only this: we sunk a carvel, where we only saved three score
jars of oil, the men and a bushel of letters which they carried of
intelligence to the Islands to meet with the fleet coming home,
whither we are now going. The most of us like lions that have
been almost famished for want of prey, or rather like a bear
robbed of her whelps. Sweet brother, I do this day wish myself
a-maying at Harling, with a sudden return. Once again fare-
well to thy sweet self, this first of May.’ ^
It is evident that so far the cruise had been singularly unpro-
ductive; apart from Grenville’s capture of the great Liibecker,
only one hulk had been taken and a carvel sunk. On i8 May,
the Council wrote to Howard saying that they still could give
him no reliable information when the Jlota was to be expected,
1 pp. 56-62.
^97
SIR RICHARD GRENVILLE OF THE REVENGE
but it was thought either in September or October A A month
later, Burghley and the Lord Admiral wrote that two months’
victuals had been sent out, and that having learnt that the Jlota
would be convoyed by twenty men-of-war and more, besides
the fleet going out from Spain to meet it, they thought it advis-
able to reinforce him with two ships of the Queen, the Lion and
the Foresight^ and six armed merchantmen. The two Queen’s
ships sailed at the end of June or the beginning of July to join
Howard without delay; but the armed merchantmen, powerful
ships of their class, the Susariy the Centurion^ the Mayflower^ the
Cherubim^ all round about 300 tons, with the Margaret and John
and the Corselet of 200 — a very desirable reinforcement, were
held up by bad weather at Plymouth and did not leave the
Sound till 17 August.
For three months there is no news of Howard and Grenville’s
doings in the Islands, except that, as we gather from Philip
Gawdy, they ran up to Flores to water. We are not told whether
they came back again to the midst of the Islands, Flores being
in the extreme north-west about 1 10 miles from Terceira in the
centre, but that would be their likeliest course; the Spanish in-
formation was that they were cruising about. Gawdy wrote
home again on 6 July by the pinnace which brought the
Council’s letters:
‘We stay and pray every day heartily for the Spanish fleet’s
coming; and if they come not suddenly I thank God we are and
shall be sufficiently provided to look for their longer coming.
Since my last writing we have had some adventures. We
watered at Flores. And I saw the dolphin course the flying
fish, whereof I saw one fly as far as your young partridges will
do at the first flight. I thank God we have good ships with us,
both of her Ma,jesty’s and otherwise. I never had my health
better in my life, thanks be to God; and the better for the good
usage both of Sir Richard, and Captain Langhorne, whose
commendations I willed to remember to you, and to my Uncle
Anthony, also from his kinsman Sir Richard Grenville. I am
bound to them both in many courtesies. I like the sea and the
^ Oppexiheim, I, 260.
298
IN THE AZORES
sea life, and the company at sea, as well as any that ever I lived
withal. The place is good and healthful to a willing mind.^
There follow the usual bantering commendations to his rela-
tions; his sister-in-law is bidden ‘let her imagine that I am now
so in love with the sea as I had rather be married to a mermaid,
except only in Norfolk.’ He concludes: T can appoint no cer-
tainty of my coming . . . Commend me lastly to thine own
heart and most loving thoughts, and think sometimes of him
that daily museth, and nighdy dreameth of thy welldoing.
From aboard her Majesty’s good ship the Revenge.^ ^
It was the last letter which Philip Gawdy wrote, or at least
dispatched from on board the Revenge. His next was to be
written as a prisoner from the castle at Lisbon.
^ Gawdy, pp. 62-3.
299
CHAPTER XVII
THE LAST FIGHT OF THE REVENGE
It was after this that their troubles began. From Gawdy’s letter
it is clear that sickness had not yet broken out in the squadron,
or not to any serious extent, or he would have mentioned it.
But by the end of the month, it had gained a terrible hold in
the fleet; half the crews of the ships were down with it, and on
23 July, the Nonpareil had to be sent home because of the ‘great
infection’ reigning in her.^ Howard must have been anxiously
awaiting by now the tight little squadron of armed merchant-
men promised him. He had given them a rendezvous some
sixty leagues west of the island of Fayal, ‘spreading North and
South betwixt 37^ or 38 I degrees.’ If he were not to be found
there, Captain Robert Flicke, who was in command of the
rherchantmen, was to run up to Flores or Corvo, where, if
Howard had gone, a pinnace would be left to meet him until
31 August, After this date, the place of meeting was to be the
coast of Portugal, west of Cape Roca. Since he was already so
late, Flicke went first down to Cape Roca, and on 29 August
bore away westwards for the Azores. On the 31st, when his
presence might have made all the difference to Howard and
enabled him to engage the Spaniards, he was only two days
out in the Atlantic. Don Alonso de Bazan, with a strong
force of some fifty-five ships, of which twenty were fighting
vessels, and with 7,000 men on board, was already in the
Azores.
The forces which were to make the name of Flores in the
Azores so celebrated in maritime history, were converging upon
the Island. The English knew that the fota from the West
Indies might be expected any time now. But they were forced,
^ Oppenheim, I, 256.
300
THE LAST FIGHT OF THE REVENGE
owing to the prevalence of the sickness and the foul condition
of their ships after four months’ cruising in southerly waters,
to set their sick ashore and thoroughly ‘rummage’ and clean the
ships. The operation meant clearing out the old ballast into
which all the drippings and the waste of the ship had run,
scrubbing out the interior and fumigating with vinegar, and
finally taking on board new clean ballast from the shore.
Doubtless they thought there was time, and kept a pinnace to
warn them of the approach of the floia from the west. What
they did not know was that Don Alonso was approaching from
the east.
In the Indies, meanwhile, the Spanish Jiotas were collecting
at Havana, losing individual vessels right and left to the English
privateers. The fleet from New Spain [i.e. Mexico] left San Juan
de Ulloa on 13 June with twenty-two sail ; two of these which
straggled from the convoy were taken by John Watts, one of
them carried plate. Watts lying off Havana had previously
captured seven ships of the San Domingo fleet. The Governor
of Havana described himself as sitting in rage upon a piece of
ordnance Navarro brought him, surrounded by horse and foot,
but unable to lay hand on the enemy who sailed by under his
very nose. On 27 July, Ribera, commander of the mainland
flota^ set out for Spain from Havana with some seventy-three or
more sail: the armada, the merchantmen who had wintered
there, the New Spain fleet which Navarro had just brought in,
and various oddments from the Honduras and other quarters.
This was the quarry that Howard and Grenville were lying
in wait for at Flores, with little suspicion that they them-
selves had now become the quarry for someone else.^
A Spanish Relation written from on board Bazan’s flagship
a day or two after the action, enables us for the first time to
follow events from the Spanish side.*’ It is the only first-hand
account of what happened at Flores. Hitherto we have had
to rely for our knowledge of the engagement upon the English
accounts, none of which was written by anyone present at it.
^ For these details I am indebted to Miss I. A. Wright.
2 Coleccidn Sanz de Barutell (Madrid^ Art 4, no. 11121.
301
SIR RICHARD GRENVILLE OF THE REVEKGE
If only Philip Gawdy had used his long and enforced leisure at
Lisbon, or even in after years, to write as informative an account
as some of his earlier letters: we may imagine that as the years
went on, and he became old and garrulous, he often spoke of
those last days of the Revenge. But nothing has come down to us,
and he missed his one chance of being remembered by posterity.
Of the English authorities, the chief is Ralegh’s famous
pamphlet, A Report of the Truth of the Fight about the Isles of
AgoreSy which was written that same autumn A Ralegh’s must
rank almost as a first-hand account since it is based upon the
examinations of survivors from the Revenge: ‘two of the Revenge's
own company, brought home in a ship of Lyme from the
Islands, examined by some of the Lords, and others,’ and an
examination of four others of her company taken by Sir Francis
Godolphin on their arrival in Cornwall. But Ralegh’s pamphlet
was written to serve a controversial purpose: to glorify his own
nation and to vindicate his cousin Grenville’s action. We have
therefore to remember his bias in making a judgment upon
disputed points. The other English authorities are Sir William
Monson, in his Xaval Tracts^ and Sir Richard Hawkins, in his
Observations] ^ but these were written some twenty or thirty
years later. There are lastly the recollections of the Dutchman,
van Linschoten, who was resident in the Islands at the time of
the action, and reported what was the current gossip about it
there. ^
But none of these is equal to the Spanish Relation, an official
account, in giving the precise facts and movements of the ships,
concretely and objectively. There has never been an adequate
account of the battle so far, for want of information, though
attempts have been made to reconstruct it. ® In consequence it
has given rise to a flood of controversy and supposition as to
Grenville’s motives. The latter can in any case never be any
other than uncertain; but one can at least give an account
which is consistent with his whole life and character, now that
^ Arber's English Reprints (1871).
^ Ed. Oppenheim. ^ Ed. Williamson. ^ Reprinted in Arber.
^Notably Professor Callender's ‘The Battle of Flores,' History (1919),
vol. IV.
302
THE LAST FIGHT OF THE REVENGE
it has been explored. And for the course of the action - though
there still remain points which are doubtful, and others on
which we are ignorant - we can now take both the English and
the Spanish accounts, checking each by the other, and draw a
fairly full picture of the whole.
Don Alonso de Bazan with his fleet, arrived at Terceira, the
Spanish stronghold among the Islands on 30 August, by their
reckoning.^ Here he learned from a despatch-boat which was
sent him that the English were at Flores and Corvo, the two
extreme north-westerly isles of the group. But for a week he was
kept beating about in the channel between San Jorge and
Graciosa by bad weather. During this time he learned from a
Franciscan friar and a pilot, who had been captured by the
English on their way from Havana and were some days on
board the English flagship^ the exact strength of their forces:
they were not more than twenty-two ships, and of these there
were only six great galleons of the Queen and one small one.
The English fleet was commanded by Lord Thomas Howard,
second son of the Duke of Norfolk, ‘hombre mogo y no marinero’
(an inexperienced man and not a sailor) and ‘Almirante
Ricardo de Campo Verde gran cossario y de mucha estimacion
entrellos’ (Admiral Richard Grenville a great corsair and of
great estimation among them). From this we already learn
something of the light in which Howard and Grenville respec-
tively were regarded in the fleet.
On 7 September, the wind came fair from the east and Don
Alonso went forward on his course to Flores. Next day in the
evening they met their pilots fifteen leagues due east from
Flores, and having such certain information of the English it
was agreed to put on sail so as to arrive upon them at dawn next
morning when the wind was fresh; and that they should enter
the channel between the two islands in several squadrons and
others on both sides of the islands, surrounding the enemy on all
sides. After proceeding some way with this plan in mind.
General Saiicho Pardo sent to Don Alonso to tell him that he
The following paragraphs follow the Spanish Relation - are virtually a
translation of it; and here I retain their dating.
303
SIR RICHARD GRENVILLE OF THE REVENGE
was carrying a broken bowsprit on his galleon - one of the
Santander squadron - so that he could not put on much weight
of sail. It was agreed to keep company and not to leave the
ship on its own where the enemy was cruising about. Hence
Don Alonso was unable to arrive upon the Islands at dawn, but
about eight leagues from them with a fresh east wind. He at
once sent a pinnace to the islands to report how things were
and to order General Marcos de Aramburu with a squadron
of eleven ships - seven galleons of Castille, the flagship of the
despatch-boats and the San Francisco of the prizes, with two fly-
boats, the Leon Rojo and the Cavallero de la mar - to enter the
channel between the islands.
Don Alonso himself with the rest of the fleet was going round
by the left side of the isle of Flores, so as to catch the enemy
whom he understood to be watering there, in the midst. On the
windward side there sailed Don Luis Cuitiho with the eight
fly-boats in his charge, on the leeward there were Generals
Martin de Bertendona, Sancho Pardo and Antonio Urquiola;
the rear was brought up by Don Bartholome de Villavicencio.
In this formation they were sailing when the pinnace Bazan had
sent to reconnoitre, signalled that she had seen the enemies hoist
and lower their main-topsail four times and fire two pieces at
the same time. Simultaneously with this Aramburu signalled
that he saw the enemy fleet coming out from the isle of Flores
on the side of Corvo, and he fired two pieces to tell Bazan that
he had seen it and to put on sail because he was going in the
direction of it. Don Alonso at once sent to tell Cuitiho, who
was in command of the fly-boats to windward, ordering him to
leave the first course they were taking and to follow him, Don
Alonso; so that Cuitiho’s squadron, which before was going in
front of the wind of all the fleet, now brought up the rear upon
the new course.
^At Flores in the Azores Sir Richard Grenville lay,’ says the
poet very truly; but the difficulty has always been that nobody
knows precisely where, in relation to the island. Mr. Oppen-
heim in his edition of Monsords Tracts quotes observations to the
effect that the prevailing winds in the Azores in these months
are from north-east and north-west, and suggests therefore that
304
7/7 under Cuiti
V///a\/'Jcencio .
THE LAST FIGHT OF THE REVENGE
the anchorage would be on the east of the island. But it is
fairly clear from the Spanish Relation that the English were on
its west side, probably to the north-west near the channel
between it and Corvo; while the wind, we are informed, held
from the east. That same morning -it was 31 August in the
English reckoning - Howard received warning of the approach
of the Spanish fleet. Bazan had been observed upon leaving
Ferrol by some of Cumberland’s squadron keeping watch there,
and the Earl despatched a pinnace, the Moonshine^ Captain
Middleton, to warn Howard. Middleton kept company with
Bazan’s fleet by way of discovering their strength some three
days prior, and then sped on to Flores with the news of their
approach.
Time was very short, even if not quite so short as Ralegh
says:
had no sooner delivered the news but the Fleet was in
sight: many of our ships’ companies were on shore in the Island;
some providing ballast for their ships; others filling of water
and refreshing themselves from the land with such things as
they could either for money, or by force recover. By reason
whereof our ships being all pestered and rummaging every
thing out of order, very light for want of ballast. And that
which was most to our disadvantage, the one half part of the
men of every ship sick, and utterly unserviceable. For in the
Revenge there were ninety diseased: in the Bonaventure^ not so
many in health as could handle her main-sail. For had not
twenty men been taken out a bark of Sir George Gary’s, his
being commanded to be sunk, and those appointed to her, she
had hardly ever recovered England. The rest for the most part,
were in little better state.’
Besides this, the English were fairly taken by surprise, since
they were expecting the Jiota from the west; and some odd-
ments of the Spanish fleet, pinnaces or fly-boats, were taken to
be the expected fiota, which added confusion to surprise.
The English fleet consisted of the six ships of the Queen, the
Defiance^ the Revenge^ the Bonaventure, the Lion^ the Foresight and
the Crane; the last two being small ships, the rest of middle size.
305 ^
SIR RICHARD GRENVILLE OF THE REVENGE
In addition there were six victuallers of London, the bark
Ralegh and two or three pinnaces riding at anchor.
‘The Spanish fleet/ says Ralegh, ‘having shrouded their
approach by reason of the Island: were now so soon at hand,
as our ships had scarce time to weigh their anchors, but some
of them were driven to let slip their cables and set sail. Sir
Richard Grenville was the last weighed, to recover the men
that were upon the Island, which otherwise had been lost. The
Lord Thomas with the rest very hardly recovered the wind,
which Sir Richard Grenville not being able to do, was
persuaded by the master and others to cut his main-sail, and cast
about, and to trust to the sailing of his ship: for the squadron
of Seville were on his weather bow.^ But Sir Richard utterly
refused to turn from the enemy, alleging that he would rather
choose to die, than to dishonour his sdf, his country, and her
Majesty’s ship, persuading his company that he would pass
through two squadrons, in despite of them; and enforce those
of Seville to give him way. Which he performed upon divers
of the foremost, who as the mariners term it, sprang their luff,
and fell under the lee of the Revenge. But the other course had
been the better, and might right well have been answered in so
great an impossibility of prevailing. Notwithstanding out of the
greatness of his mind, he could not be persuaded.’
When Bazan first caught sight of the English ships they were
coming out from Flores ‘on the side of the island of Corvo, to
the windward of it, giving their right side to our fleet whose
aim was to grapple the first ships of the enemy.’ ^ The English
had only their main-topsails and foresails out, their great sails
taken in. Howard’s flagship was leading, the rest behind her.
From this it appears that Howard was tacking up against the
wind, so as to get the windward of the Spanish fleet: the very
manoeuvre which Drake and the Lord Admiral Howard had
1 This shows that Grenville had the Spaniards on his right; and it would
be the Seville squadron that would first come in contact with him, for after
Bazan had given the order to change course, the Seville squadron, which had
previously been on the right wing, became the van of the whole fleet.
^ Spanish Relation.
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THE LAST FIGHT OF THE REVENGE
successfully brought off under the lee of Mount Edgcumbe and
along the Cornish coast when the Armada was oflF Plymouth
Sound. It was a close thing then; it was still closer now. In
fact, the Revenge, which was the last ship to weigh anchor, could
not manage it; and her commander, who could almost certainly
have run back before the wind, showing the Spaniards a clean
pair of heels, refused to do so. It was not in his nature to run.
Soon it would be too late, anyhow.
At five o’clock in the afternoon, Aramburu was sufficiently
near to exchange shots with Howard. There was a good deal of
firing on both sides as the Spaniards advanced in two squadrons
into the Channel, broadsides from the guns, and arquebus and
musketry fire; but he was unable to grapple with the English
flagship, which was besides unrigged. Bazan followed with the
rest of the .fleet, putting on more sail; and the great galleon
San Phelipe and the San Barnabe now coming level with Howard
tried to board the English flagship, and not being able to, gave
her a great broadside at close range. Then passing on with the
wind filling her sails, the San Phelipe caught i^p with the Revenge,
which, according to the Spaniards, putting its trust in being the
best sailing-ship of the fleet, came swaggering up [gallardeando)
~ the word catches the very spirit of the ship and of the man.
Now, Ralegh says,
‘the great San Philip being in the wind of him, and coming
towards him, becalmed his sails in such sort, as the ship could
neither weigh nor feel the helm: so huge and high carged was
the Spanish ship, being of a thousand and five hundred tons.
Who after-laid the Revenge aboard.’
The Revenge, remember, was a ship rated at 500 tons, though
actually more like 450. The Spanish account of this episode
is that the San Phelipe boarded her, and at the first encounter
threw nine or ten soldiers into her; but not having grappled
with grappling irons, but with a rope, it could not stand the
strain and broke, so that the ships parted.
In this interval, General Bertendona came up in the San
Barnabe, which grappled to the Revenge so well that he could not
disengage to throw the grappling-iron. Bertendona was the
307
SIR RICHARD GRENVILLE OF THE REVENGE
commander of the Biscayan galleons - son of the captain of the
ship which conducted Philip to his marriage in England in
1554A He had a score to pay off against the Revenge: he had
been on duty at Corunna when Drake arrived there in her in
1 589 and he had been forced to set his great galleon on fire to
save it from falling into Drake’s hands. So he held on, while the
great San Phelipe sheered off; according to Ralegh, she 'having
the lower tier of the Revenge^ discharged with crossbar-shot,
shifted herself with all diligence from her sides, utterly misliking
her first entertainment.’ The San Phelipe was the largest of
Bazan’s newly-built 'Apostles.’
It was now nightfall, and according to the Spaniards, the rest
of the English ships hoisted their mainsails and took to flight.
Don Alonso went in pursuit of them and if night had not come
down at once, they said, he would have taken several ships, at
the least Howard’s flagship because it was the least good of
sail; but through the obscurity of the night they were lost from
sight and Bazan returned to collect his ships together. This was
the end of Howard’s part in the action. The Revenge received no
more help; though Ralegh tells us that
‘in the beginning of the fight, the George Jsfoble of London, having
received some shot through her by the Armados, fell under the
lee of the Revenge^ and asked Sir Richard what he would com-
mand him, being but one of the victuallers and of small force:
Sir Richard bade him save himself, and leave him to his
fortune.’
The Revenge meanwhile lay locked in the embrace of Berten-
dona’s galleon; the English at the first shock of the encounter
put themselves into the high works of the ship fore and aft,
whence they fired their artillery and musketry, and threw
grenades. Of the soldiers that the San Phelipe had thrown into
her seven were killed, but the rest gave such a good account of
themselves that when Bertendona came up they went aboard
his ship, whence no more were thrown into her because of night
falling. Bertendona’s ship lay on the larboard of the Revenge.
Now Aramburu came up to give aid and boarded her poop with
^ C. F. Duro, La Armada Invencible, i , 2 1 1 .
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THE LAST FIGHT OF THE REVENGE
his prow, throwing some men on to her quarter-deck who cap-
tured the ship’s ensign, killed some of her men and got as far as
the mainmast. But Aramburu’s ship was so badly damaged by
the encounter, all her prow being destroyed down to the water,
that she too had to sheer off, and burnt flares for Bazan and his
ships to come to her aid. She was then succeeded by the galleon
Ascension^ under Don Antonio Manrique, who boarded by the
Revenge's prow and Bertendona’s. Next came up Don Luis
Cuitiho who boarded by joining on to Manrique. So the firing
continued at intervals all night long.^
Ralegh says:
‘The Spanish ships were filled with companies of soldiers, in
some two hundred besides the mariners; in some five, in others
eight hundred. In ours there were none at all, beside the
mariners, but the servants of the commanders and some few
voluntary gentlemen only. After many interchanged volleys of
great ordnance and small shot, the Spaniards deliberated to
enter the Revenge^, and made divers attempts, hoping to force
her by the multitudes of their armed soldiers and musketeers,
but were still repulsed again and again, and at all times beaten
back, into their own ships, or into the seas.’
But as often as they attacked and were beaten off,
‘so always others came in their places, she having never less
than two mighty galleons by her sides, and aboard her. So that
ere morning, from three of the clock the day before, there had
fifteen several Armados assailed her; and all so ill approved their
entertainment, as they were by the break of day, far more
willing to hearken to a composition, than hastily to make any
more assaults or entries.’
Don Alonso de Bazan cruised about all night collecting his
ships, and ordered them to circle round this tangle of locked,
splintered and sputtering ships that could no longer move on
their own. Ralegh says that the Revenge was ‘not able to move
one way or other, but as she was moved with the waves and
billow of the sea.’ The Spanish account tells us that she was
1 Spanish Relation.
309
SIR RICHARD GRENVILLE OF THE REVENGE
unrigged and without her masts. But their own ships that had
engaged her were in even worse case. The galleon Ascension
and Cuitiho’s ship, the flagship of the hulks, were so badly
damaged by each other and by the Revenge that both went to the
bottom. The Ascension went down that night, saving most of her
maririers and soldiers in Bertendona’s ship; Don Luis Cuitifio’s
ship next day, her men having been taken out.
Day broke:
‘And the night went down, and the sun smiled out far over the
summer sea,
And the Spanish fleet, with broken sides lay round us all in
a ring’;
‘But,’ Ralegh says, ‘as the day encreased, so our men
decreased: and as the light grew more and more, by so much
more grew our discomforts. For none appeared in sight but
enemies, saving one small ship called the Pilgrim, commanded
by Jacob Whiddon [a Plymouth ship: a Plymouth man], who
hovered all night to see the success; but in the morning bearing
. with the Revenge, was hunted like a hare amongst many rave-
nous hounds, but escaped.’
The total result of the night’s fighting and of the evening
before, was that the Revenge was still unbeaten: she had beaten
off every assault, and the Spaniards were reluctant to push
conclusions any further home. But her condition was desperate:
Ralegh compares it to a slaughter-house, ‘the ship being marvel-
lous unsavery, filled with blood and bodies of dead and
wounded men.’ Sir Richard himself had remained on the
upper deck till an hour before midnight, when he was wounded
with a musket-shot in the body; then as he was being dressed,
he was dangerously wounded in the head, his chirurgeon being
killed beside him. The powder of the Revenge was spent by the
morning, all her pikes broken, forty of her best men slain, and
most of the remainder hurt. At the beginning of the fight she
had but a hundred men free from sickness, and ninety sick laid
in hold upon the ballast. She had no hope of supply either of
ships, men or weapons, as against the large reserves of the
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THE LAST FIGHT OF THE REVENGE
Spaniards: her ‘masts all beaten over board, all her tackle cut
asunder, her upper work altogether razed, and in effect evened
she was with the water, but the very foundation or bottom of a
ship, nothing being left over head either for flight or defence/
It was in this desperate condition that Grenville’s courage rose
to heroic heights: a sort of fixed, daemonic will, a gesture against
the world and fate, by which a man is for ever remembered.
Perhaps it was due to his being a dying man; but he was in full
command of his senses and capable of still imposing his will
upon the ship. One might have thought that there was no
alternative but surrender. But no; there remained another, a
more absolute way out, his deliberate and determined choice.
‘Sir Richard finding himself in this distress,’ says Ralegh,
‘commanded the master gunner, whom he knew to be a most
resolute man, to split and sink the ship’ - there was evidently
enough powder left for that - ‘that thereby nothing might re-
main of glory or victory to the Spaniards . . . And persuaded
the company, or as many as he could induce, to yield themselves
unto God, and to the mercy of none else; but as they Lad like
valiant resolute men, repulsed so many enemies, they should
not now shorten the honour of their nation, by prolonging their
own lives for a few hours or a few days. The master gunner
readily condescended and divers others. But the Captain and
the Master were of an other opinion, and besought Sir Richard
to have care of them; alleging that the Spaniard would be as
ready to entertain a composition, as they were willing to offer
the same; and that there being divers sufficient and valiant men
yet living, and whose wounds were not mortal, they might do
their country and prince acceptable service hereafter. And
(that where Sir Richard had alleged that the Spaniards should
never glory to have taken one ship of her Majesty’s, seeing
that they had so long and so notably defended themselves) they
answered, that the ship had six foot of water in hold, three shot
under water which were so weakly stopped, as with the first
working of the sea, she must need sink, and was besides so
crushed and bruised, as she could never be removed out of the
place.’
3 ”
SIR RICHARD GRENVILLE OF THE REVENGE
What an extraordinary scene it is! It is more like the daemonic
determination, the self-dedication to death of those early Norse
seamen, whose blood, the Grenvilles boasted, ran in their veins,
than it was like sixteenth-century warfare. No wonder the
Islanders believed that Grenville’s soul was possessed by devils.
It may be that his resolve was due to the oncoming of death, as
conversely it was an argument to those ‘whose wounds’ they
pointed out ‘were not mortal,’ that they should live. Their case
was a strong one: they had made one of the most heroic fights
against odds in the annals of the sea: no-one could say that they
were not ‘valiant resolute men’ as Grenville called them in
persuading them to death. And they were right: the Spaniards
would not long enjoy the glory of possessing the carcase of the
Revenge) she was in a desperate state, and in the storm that
followed was one of the first ships to go to the bottom. Never-
theless it is probable that if Grenville had not been mortally
wounded, he would have had his way, and he and the master-
gunner would have blown up the ship themselves.
The issue entered a new phase, a no less extraordinary
scene.
‘And as the matter was thus in dispute,’ Ralegh wrote, ‘and
Sir Richard refusing to hearken to any of those reasons: the
master of the Revenge (while the Captain won unto him the
greater party) was conveyed aboard the General, Don Alfonso
Bazan. Who finding none over-hasty to enter the Revenge again,
doubting lest Sir Richard would have blown them up and him-
self, and perceiving by the report of the master of the Revenge
his dangerous disposition: yielded that all their lives should be
saved, the company sent for England, and the better sort to
pay such reasonable ransom as their estate would bear, and in
the mean season to be free from galley or imprisonment. To
this he so much the rather condescended as well as I have said,
for fear of further loss and mischief to themselves, as also for the
desire he had to recover Sir Richard Grenville; whom for his
notable valour he seemed greatly to honour and admire. When
this answer was returned, and that safety of life was promised,
the common sort being now at the end of their peril, the most
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THE LAST FIGHT OF THE REVENGE
drew back from Sir Richard and the master gunner, being no
hard matter to dissuade men from death to life.
'The master gunner finding him self and Sir Richard thus
prevented and mastered by the greater number, would have
slain himself with a sword, had he not been by force witheld
and locked into his cabin. Then the General [i.e. Bazan] sent
many boats aboard the Revenge^ and divers of our men fearing
Sir Richard's disposition, stole away aboard the General and
other ships. Sir Richard thus overmatched, was sent unto by
Alonso Bazan to remove out of the Revenge^ the ship being
marvellous unsavoury, filled with blood and bodies of dead, and
wounded men like a slaughter-house. Sir Richard answered
that he might do with his body what he list, for he esteemed it
not; and as he was carried out of the ship he swooned, and
reviving again desired the company to pray for him. The
General used Sir Richard with all humanity, and left nothing
unattempted that tended to his recovery, highly commending
his valour and worthiness, and greatly bewailed the danger
wherein he was; being unto them a rare spectacle, and a resolu-
tion seldom approved.'
Thus much Ralegh says he derived from a Spanish captain in
Bazan's fleet, who afterwards became separated in the storm
and captured by a small English ship, the Lyon^ was brought
home prisoner to London. It is borne out also by the Spanish
Relation, which says that Don Alonso had him brought aboard
his flagship, where, because he was wounded, a head-wound
from an arquebus-shot, he might be taken care of and refreshed,
receiving good treatment and being consoled for his loss; mas la
herida era grande y murio otro dia (but his wound was grievous
and in a day or two he died). The Spaniards, as was to be
expected, behaved like great gentlemen, and when he died, the
Relation writes his epitaph: el Almirante de los may ores marinerosy
cosarios de Inglaterra gran hereje y perseguidor de catholicos. And
Ralegh wrote, on his information:
'Sir Richard died as it is said, the second or third day aboard
the General, and was by them greatly bewailed. What became
of his body, whether it were buried in the sea or on the land we
313
SIR RICHARD GRENVILLE OF THE REVENGE
know not: the comfort that remaineth to his friends is, that he
hath ended his life honourably in respect of the reputation won
to his nation and country, and of the same to his posterity, and
that being dead, he hath not outlived his own honour.’
There is some further evidence of Grenville’s last hours, that
of the Dutchman Linschoten, which is not to be neglected. It
is true that it is not first-hand, and there are points in it which
are doubtful. On the other hand, he was resident at Terceira
at the time of the action, and when Bertendona’s ship came in
there, the very one which lay all the time of the fight beside the
Revenge^ he went on board and was received by Bertendona.
'He seeing us called us up into the gallery, where with great
courtesy he received us, being as then set at dinner with the
English Captain [i.e. Langhorne] that sat by him, and had on
a suit of black velvet, but he could not tell us anything, for that
he could speak no other language but English and Latin, which
Bertendona also could a little speak. The English Captain got
licence of the governor that he might come on land with his
weapon by his side, and was in our lodging. The Governor of
Terceira had him to dinner, and showed him great courtesy.
The Master likewise with licence of Bertendona came on land,
and was in our lodging, and had at the least ten or twelve
wounds, as well in his head, as on his body, whereof after that
being at sea, between Lisbon and the Islands he died.’
It may be seen that Linschoten was in a position to pick up
information directly after the engagement; for the rest he is
useful in that he records the gossip current in the Islands, the
impression that these events made upon the Islanders. Lin-
schoten tells us, quite correctly, the name of the Spanish flag-
ship (the San Pablo) on board which Grenville was taken in a
dying condition, and he says that his wounds were dressed; but
he continues that
‘Don Alonso himself would neither see him, nor speak with him:
all the rest of the captains and gentlemen went to visit him,
and to comfort him in his hard fortune, wondering at his cour-
314
THE LAST FIGHT OF THE REVENGE
age, and stout heart, for that he showed not any sign of faintness
nor changing of colour.’
Whether it be true or no that Bazan would not see Grenville,
it is not incompatible with the otherwise good treatment that
Grenville received from the Spaniards. After all, the action
reflected little or no credit upon Bazan; what credit there was
on the Spanish side was due to Bertendona, whose prize the
Revenge became. Bazan may have been chagrined by the long
resistance the Revenge put up, and when he arrived in Spain
was much criticised for not having taken the rest of the English
ships. On the other hand, there is no hint of this in the Spanish
Relation which appears to come from the flagship itself. Lin-
schoten goes on to report the gist of Grenville’s last words on
board the San Pablo.
Teeling the hour of death to approach, he spake these words
in Spanish, and said! ‘‘Here die I Richard Grenville, with a
joyful and quiet mind, for that I have ended my life as a true
soldier ought to do, that hath fought for his country. Queen,
religion and honour, whereby my soul most joyful departeth
out of this body, and shall always leave behind it an everlasting
fame of a valiant and true soldier that hath done his duty, as
he was bound to do. But the others of my company have done
as traitors and dogs, for which they shall be reproached all their
lives and leave a shameful name for ever.” ’
This last speech as reported by Linschoten is much disputed
and has given rise to controversy. It may indeed be a Thucydi-
dean speech, truer in drift and intention than as a report of
Grenville’s actual words. Then, too, when Linschoten’s account
was translated into English, the last sentence of scorn and re-
proach was omitted. But it is precisely this sentence which is so
true in character to Grenville; he was not the man to spare the
feelings of those who had crossed his will, in order to make a
good, a more pious ending. It has usually been considered that
the target of Grenville’s contempt was Howard and the rest of
the English ships that had got away. It would seem, however,
that it is those of his own company, those on board the Revenge
315
SIR RICHARD GRENVILLE OF THE REVENGE
who had thwarted his will, who incurred his wrath; that his
mind had become fixed in the determination to blow up his
ship and that their crossing of his will was what possessed his
dying thoughts.
The Spaniards were proud to have got possession of the
Revenge^ even in her present condition and upon terms. The
Spanish Relation says of her:
‘This Admiral-galleon was one of the best there were in
England; they called her the Revenge, She was the flagship that
carried Drake to Corunna . . . She carried 42 pieces of artillery
of bronze without three which were given to another ship a
few days before, the 20 on her lower-deck of 40 to 60 quintals,
and the remaining 22 of 20 to 30 quintals, all good.’
She was rated among the Queen’s ships as a second-rater; but
she was the crack ship of her class, the middle-sized fighting
galleon. She was laid down in 1 575, and represented the new
ideas of fast, but heavily-armed ocean-going galleons, which
Hawkins introduced into the Navy Board. When built she was
actually 441 tons, though rated at 500; she was 92 feet in
length, 32 in beam, and 15 in depth, and was regarded by Drake
as the perfect warship of her time.^ Alas that no picture of her
has survived! But there is her fighting record, most of it, though
not all, accomplished under Drake’s command. She was over-
hauled and made readier for the approaching war, in 1583;
she was off the coast of Spain with Hawkins in 1586; in the
triumphant year 1 588 she was Drake’s flagship and as such the
glory of that year reflected her name; in 1590 she was in the
Azores with Frobisher. It is another of the ironies of history
that in the end, and to all posterity, her name should go down
with another’s name.
The younger Hawkins, Sir Richard, in his Observations des-
cribes her as ‘ever the unfortunatest ship the late Queen’s
majesty had during her reign,’ and he recounts the accidents
that happened to her in her crowded life: how she was nearly
cast away upon the Kentish coast, coming out of Ireland with
Sir John Perrot; how she struck aground at Plymouth before
^ Corbett, I, 371-2.
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THE LAST FIGHT OF THE REVENGE
the voyage with Hawkins in 1 586, and sprang a leak upon her
return with Drake from Lisbon which nearly sank her; then
coming into Plymouth ran upon the Winter stone, and at Ports-
mouth was twice aground; and now at last, "the cost and loss
she wrought, I have too good cause to remember, in her last
voyage, in which she was lost, when she gave England and
Spain just cause to remember her.’ ^ Of the men in her, she
carried 250, the Spanish Relation says; and only 100 remained,
who were divided among all the ships of the Spanish fleet, "not
having among them any person of quality except for a young
gentleman who is not a soldier nor a sailor, and another who
was killed who was a sailor.’ The former of these is evidently
Philip Gawdy. One wonders with what party he had sided,
with Grenville or with Captain Langhorne, when the ship might
have been blown up on Grenville’s orders? Perhaps those last
hours on board were a nightmare to him, a sufficient reason for
him never, so far as we know, to have written down the
experience.
The Spaniards admitted to greater damage to their ships
than actual loss of men: the Relation says only 100 men, includ-
ing those drowned in the Ascension who were most in number.
Two of their captains were killed: Luis de San Juan and Don
Jorge Broano. They claimed that in the running fight Howard’s
flagship received a good deal of damage by the San Christobal
and the San Phelipe. They say nothing about the Foresight^
which Ralegh says
‘performed a very great fight, and stayed two hours as near the
Revenge as the weather would permit him, not forsaking the
sight, till he was like to be encompassed by the squadrons, and
with great difficulty cleared himself. The rest gave divers volleys
of shot and entered as far as the place permitted and their own
necessities, to keep the weather gauge of the enemy, until they
were parted by night.’
The Spanish Relation states that they
"took to flight in disorder, some bearing west and others towards
^Hawkins, Observations (Hakluyt Society), p. 9.
317
SIR RICHARD GRENVILLE OF THE REVENGE
the Isles [i.e. east] taking advantage of the obscurity of the
night, and others by different ways; of whom up to now we do
not know that they have collected together, nor seen them,
except for one very far off plying to windward; though we have
gone with the Fleet more than 40 leagues in the direction in
which the fiotas have to come, carrying light ships on the
flanks separated some eight leagues from the Fleet so as to
discover them, besides others sent still further ahead for that
purpose/
It had been a notable scattering of the English; but a still
greater scattering of the Spaniards was to come. The autumn
of that year was an exceptionally stormy one, and the com-
mercial fleets in the Indies had been at sea in those tropical
waters so long, that they could not withstand the gales that
blew. Before ever they reached the Havana, the fleets of New
Spain, the Mainland, San Domingo and Honduras had endured
losses, from weather and by the depredations of the English,
which reduced their number from 120 to something over 70.
Further storms while they were on their way across the Atlantic
weakened them still more. When Don Alonso met them off
Flores and Corvo, having collected all his ships in the vicinity
together, there were in all some 140 sail under his command,
according to Linschoten.
Then when they were all proceeding under his convoy to
Terceira, a storm far worse than all those preceding, one which
reached the velocity of a cyclone, suddenly swept down upon
them. It wrought tremendous havoc in Bazan’s fleet but even
more among the jiotas, Ralegh says, and he is not exaggerating,
that fifteen or sixteen of Bazan’s ships of war were lost upon the
Islands, and of the Indies fleets, what with those lost on the
way and in the cyclone, more than seventy perished.
‘The 4 of this month of November, we received letters from
Tercera, affirming that there are 3,000 bodies of men in that
Island, saved out of the perished ships: and that by the
Spaniards own confession, there are 10,000 cast away in this
storm, besides those that are perished between the Islands and
the main.’
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THE LAST FIGHT OF THE REVENGE
Linschoten bears this out. There had never been such a storm
in the Azores in living memory, he says. It lasted not a day or
two, but for seven or eight days continually. On Terceira where
he was living, twelve ships were cast away, on every side there
was nothing but crying and lamenting that here was a ship cast
ashore, and here another and all the men drowned, so that for
twenty days after the storm the drowned men came driving
continually ashore. On San Jorge, two ships were cast away,
on Pico two more, on Graciosa three, on San Miguel four, while
between Terceira and San Miguel ‘three more were sunk, which
were seen and heard to cry out, whereof not one man was
saved.*
Among those cast away in the storm, as the Captain and the
Master had predicted, was the Revenge herself. It must have
pleased them as it did Ralegh, who wrote of that great destruc-
tion and the last of the Revenge with a touching emotion; ‘So it
pleased them to honour the burial of that renowned ship the
Revenge^ not suffering her to perish alone, for the great honour
she achieved in her life-time.* Linschoten tells us that she was
‘cast away upon a cliff near to the Island of Tercera, where it
brake in a hundred pieces and sunk to the ground, having in
her 70 men gallegos [i.e. Galicians], Biscayans and others,
with some of the captive Englishmen, whereof but one was
saved that got up upon the cliffs alive, and had his body and
head all wounded, and he being on shore brought us the news,
desiring to be shriven, and thereupon presently died.*
Of all the ships of the Indies fleets that year, a double flota^
only some twenty-five or thirty ever reached Spain. Fortun-
ately for Philip the treasure was not on board; that was waiting
for the fast frigates at Havana and did not reach Spain until
next year. The losses suffered by Spain were enormous, and
in that country people were forbidden under severe penalties
to speak of them. But in the Azores they talked, and Linschoten
reported what was said. They said that Spain lost even more
this year than she had by the Armada;
‘that, the taking of the Revenge was jusdy revenged upon them,
319
SIR RICHARD GRENVILLE OF THE REVENGE
and not by the might or force of man, but by the power of God,
as some of them openly said in the Isle of Tercera, that they
believed verily God would consume them, and that he took
part with Lutherans and heretics: saying further that so soon as
they had thrown the dead body of the Viceadmiral Sir Richard
Grenville overboard, they verily thought that as he had a
devilish faith and religion, and therefore the devils loved him,
so he presently sunk into the bottom of the sea, and down into
Hell, where he raised up all the devils to the revenge of his
death.’
A credulous people: but then this was the sixteenth century.
Grenville was an even greater torment to them in death th.an
ever he had been in life. The Revenge had justified her name in
a whirlwind of disaster.
320
CHAPTER XVIII
CHARACTER AND MYTH
Give me a spirit that on this life’s rough sea
Loves to have his sails filled with a lusty wind,
Even till his sail-yards tremble, his masts crack.
And his rapt ship run on her side so low
That she drinks water, and her keel ploughs air.
There is no danger to a man who knows
What life and death is; there’s not any law
Exceeds his knowledge: neither is it lawful
That he should stoop to any other law.
He goes before them and commands them all.
That to himself is a law rational.
CHAPMAN
The action in the Azores gave satisfaction neither in England
nor in Spain. In Spain it was asked why the English squadron
had not been totally destroyed; in England how it was that the
Revenge should have been caught in that manner. This led to
much public discussion, and the discussion, in a sense, has gone
on ever since. With the aid of the Spanish Relation newly
brought into light, we have been able to determine more clearly
than ever before, what precisely happened off Flores. But still we
do not reach certainty as to what it was that determined Gren-
ville’s action. All depends upon our interpretation of his char-
acter; and it is only now that all the facts regarding his life, such
as they have survived the passage of time, have been brought
together into a coherent whole. It is upon his life as a whole
that we must base our reading of that action upon which rests
his popular, his world-wide fame: one of the great myths of the
English people.
We have shown in this book that there is a solid basis of
321 X
SIR RICHARD GRENVILLE OF THE REVENGE
achievement for his name to have been remembered in the
ordinary way, and to have come down to us as one of the most
active of those who fashioned the Elizabethan triumph. There
is his record of consistent and crowded service to Crown and
country; there were his sea-enterprises, his development of the
trade of Bideford, his great project for the South Seas, unaccom-
plished through no fault of his own; he was the first planter of
Virginia, by far the most important step, for it was the first of
all those by which, in the usual English method of trial and
error, the mainland of North America was colonised by the
English people. But it is not upon any of these achievements
- few indeed have ever known of them - that his legendary fame
rests: that is due simply to the heroic quality of his last action.
Nevertheless, that final quality has nothing inconsistent with
the general tenor of his life — now that the mystery of that has
been lifted. Indeed, we may say, as frequently is the case with
men who turn out to have genius, that the predisposing condi-
tions were there: that his nature, from what we have seen of
it in other actions of his life, and however little we may be
attracted by its qualities - harsh, hard-hitting, as hard upon
himself as upon others, with a strain of nervous over-balance in
it - was just the nature to have accomplished such an end, the
heroic gesture which sets the imagination of a people on flame.
So perhaps, in view of this consistency -- that the end is of a
piece with his life, that it was just to him of all the Elizabethan
fighting-men that this thing would happen - we may not be so
uncertain after all, even in the realm of character and motive.
The Spaniards could not but be expected to make the most
of their capture of one of the Queen’s great ships - the first, and
the last, that was to be captured in the whole war. Monson,
who had been himself taken in a small ship off the Burlings,
tells us that he saw one of Bazan’s twelve apostles coming into
harbour at Lisbon all decked for the capture of the Revenge.
Tt happened on St, Andrew’s day following, that being upon
the wails [i.e. of Lisbon Castle] at our usual hour, we beheld
322
CHARACTER AND MYTH
a great galleon of the King’s turning up the river in her fight-
ing sails, being sumptuously decked with ancients [ensigns],
streamers and pendants, with all other ornaments to show her
bravery. She let fly all her ordnance in a triumphant manner
for the taking Sir Richard Grenville in the Revenge at the
island of Flores, she being one of that fleet and the first voyage
she ever made.’ ^
This ship was the St, Andrew; and whether we are to believe
him or no, Monson tells us that in his annoyance he wagered
the other Englishmen in his company ten to one that he would
live to see her taken yet. He did: in 1596 in the descent upon
Cadiz, it fell to Ralegh’s good fortune to tackle the great St,
Philip and the St, Andrew^ both ships which had boarded the
Revenge, It was a chance of war that Ralegh leaped at, ^being
resolved,’ as he said, ‘to be revenged for the Revenge^ or to second
her with mine own life.’ ^ The attack was so furious that the
Spaniards themselves set fire to the St. Philip to prevent her fall-
ing into English hands; the St. Andrew was captured and brought
back to England.
It was only natural that one of Bazan’s fleet should have made
the most of the ‘victory’; but in Spain itself, when the extent of
its losses became known, there was general murmuring against
Bazan for not having utterly destroyed Howard so that not a
ship escaped, since he had had such a large force under his
command.^
Similarly, in England, the first news of the loss of the Revenge
created much concern and a host of rumours.'* She was already
such a famous ship, Drake’s favourite, her name associated in
the public mind with the triumphs of 1588. As yet the public
^ Monson, V, 17 1—2. ^ Edwards, Ralegh^ II, 151.
® cf. Duro, Armada Espanola, III, 81: ‘viendolas estampadas en Espatia
contra D. Alonso de Bazan por no haber destruido a Howard sin que un solo
navio se escapase, teniendo tantos a sus ordenes.’
^ cf. the evidence of Gonzalo Gonzales del Castillo, one of the prisoners of
1588, who was in England at the time: ‘They were much grieved at the loss
of one of the Queen’s galleons, called the Revenge. They say that she was the
best ship the Queen had, and the one upon which she relied the most.’ CaL
S.P. Spanish 1587-1603^ 597.
323
SIR RICHARD GRENVILLE OF THE REVENGE
did not know the circumstances of her last fight, nor whether
she had gone to the bottom or not. At the end of October, Sir
Henry Killigrew, writing from Dieppe to the Earl of Essex, had
heard that she had been towed, a complete wreck without deck
or mast, into Lisbon by two galleysA This, as we know, was
untrue.
On 3 1 October, a letter was written by Thomas Phillips the
decipherer, to an English spy in Paris to be sent on to Charles
Paget, from which we may learn something. He
‘can write him no good news from hence,’ the draft says, ‘the
loss of the Revenge with Sir R. Grenville being now stale, which
you keep quiet, as they disguised it here with the sinking of so
many ships of the King of Spain and loss of so many men, be-
sides that she should be since sunk in the sea with so many
Spaniards that were in her. Here they condemn the Lord
Thomas infinitely for a coward and some say he is for the King
of Spain. The quarrel and offer of combat between the Lord
Admiral and Sir Walter Ralegh about the matter you are sure
he hath heard of. Here be seven prizes brought in as they say
parcel of the West India fleet by the merchants that went to
second my Lord Thomas and they give out that the great part
of the rest and the King’s ships of war are drowned by tempest
and but twenty-six arrived in Spain.’ ^
This takes us a good deal further on in the reception of the news
by the English public. It is interesting to hear of a challenge
between Lord Admiral Howard and Ralegh; later there was no
love lost between Ralegh and the Howards, and the news may
well be true. The rest of the information is substantially cor-
rect; by the end of October, people in London knew pretty well
what had happened.
For the benefit of the public, which was a prey to all sorts of
rumours, and as a statement of the English view of the action,
as well as a defence of his cousin’s conduct, Ralegh wrote his
famous pamphlet, which was published anonymously that
autumn. Its full title was: Report of the truth of the fight about
the Isles of Agores^ this last summer, betwixt the Revenge f one of her
^ Hatfield MSS., IV, 155. 2 3 Dom. Eliz. 240, no. 53.
324
CHARACTER AND MYTH
Majesty s Skips, and an Armada of the King of Spain,^ ^ It was his
first prose- work to appear, the first proof he gave of that mag-
nificent command of English prose which was to find full expres-
sion in his History of the World.
It was not so much European opinion that he had in mind,
though he began his tract with a recital of Spanish expectations
of the Armada and their grievous disillusionment in 1588. After
all, the Spaniards had not been able to make much of their cap-
ture of the Revenge; the official Relation which was sent home
from Bazan’s fleet was singularly objective, unimpassioned,
faithful reporting. It was the English who were more uncer-
tain of themselves, new to power, and therefore more exagger-
ated, more Italianate in the sixteenth century; Ralegh more
than any. What he set himself to do was to still the unfavour-
able rumours which questioned Grenville’s conduct, to recon-
struct the action in a manner that would convince and vindicate
the memory of the man who was no longer there to speak for
himself.
For there was a case against Grenville: why had he delayed
so that his ship was caught by overwhelming numbers? Ralegh
says that Grenville was the last to weigh anchor, 'to recover the
men that were upon the Island, which otherwise had been lost.’
That made it too late to follow Howard’s course in tacking to
windward of the Spaniards. It remained for him either to run
away from them before the wind, or - what seemed incredible
for anyone to attempt - to try and cut his way through the
whole Spanish fleet. Dr. Williamson has constructed a defence
of Grenville’s action, mainly on the ground that we do not know
what his conditions were.^ But the evidence points to an ex-
planation, not in technical but in psychological terms. Gren-
ville would not ‘cut his main sail, and cast about, and trust to
the sailing of his ship,’ as the ship’s master and others tried to
persuade him; he
‘utterly refused to turn from the enemy, alleging that he would
rather choose to die, than to dishonour himself, his country, and
1 Printed for William Ponsonbie, London, 1591; reprinted under Ralegh’s
name in Hakluyt, Principal Navigations. Text in Arber’s English Reprints,
2 ‘Sir Richard Grenville’ in The Great Tudors^ 445.
325
SIR RICHARD GRENVILLE OF THE REVENGE
her Majesty’s ship, persuading his company that he would pass
through the two squadrons in despite of them: and enforce those
of Seville to give him way.’
Thus much Ralegh admits, and he comments a little sadly -
it is an adverse judgment: ‘But the other course had been
the better, and might right well have been answered in so
great an impossibility of prevailing. Notwithstanding out of
the greatness of his mind, he could not be persuaded.’ There
was perhaps one chance in a hundred, or, more exactly, in
fifty, that he might get through; if he should not, he did not
fear the consequences. In that act of will - it is not rational,
nor perhaps even intelligent - lies the quality of the heroic.
The judgments of the experts, both those who were friendly
and those who were unfavourable, seem to converge upon this
explanation in terms of Grenville’s character, rather than of
technical conditions. Sir William Monson, writing his account
of the action some years afterwards, strongly approved of
Howard’s ‘wary and discreet’ conduct in getting clear of the
Spaniards.
‘But Sir Richard Grenville, being astern, and imagining this
fleet to come from the Indies, and not to be the Armada of
which they were informed, would by no means be persuaded
by his master or company to cut his cable to follow his Admiral,
as all discipline of war did teach him, nay so headstrong, rash
and unadvised he was that he offered violence to all that coun-
selled him to the contrary.’ ^
This is rather exaggerated, and it is hardly likely that Grenville
imagined Bazan’s fleet to be the flotas from the Indies, after the
warning that Captain Middleton had delivered the night before.
Nevertheless, the substantial point remains, and it is borne out
by the impression the Spaniards got that Grenville trusted in
his ship being the best sailing ship of the fleet.^
Since Ralegh’s pamphlet was virtually an official account of
1 Oppenheim, I, 254.
2 *La Almiranta que fiada en ser el mejor Navio de vela de su Armada,’
Spanish Relation.
326
CHARACTER AND MYTH
the action, it fell to him at the same time to exonerate Howard’s
conduct. This he did very handsomely. If there had been a
quarrel and a challenge between him and the Lord Admiral,
there had evidently been a reconciliation, for Ralegh now wrote
defending Lord Thomas:
‘Notwithstanding it is very true, that the Lord Thomas would
have entered between the squadrons, but the rest would not
condescend; and the master of his own ship offered to leap into
the sea, rather than to conduct that her Majesty’s ship and the
rest to be a prey to the enemy, where there was no hope nor
possibility either of defence or victory. Which also in my opinion
had it sorted or answered the discretion and trust of a General,
to commit himself and his charge to an assured destruction,
without hope or any likelihood of prevailing: thereby to dimin-
ish the strength of her Majesty’s Navy, and to enrich the pride
and glory of the enemy.’
Such was Ralegh’s reconciliation of the conflicting points of
view with regard to the action, the picture which he wished to
impress upon the public mind. In this he was entirely success-
ful; posterity came to view the last fight of the Revenge through
his eyes - a proof, if any be needed, of the power of literary
genius to impress its views upon men’s minds. The growth of the
pamphlet’s influence can be traced in the literature of the time.
But first, to gather together the few remaining recorded facts,
last floating spars of the wreckage of the Revenge, Philip Wyot’s
Diaryl^t^ us know how, towards the middle of October, the news
came home to Barnstaple and Bideford: ‘ 12 October . . . report
came that her Majesty’s ship at sea, Sir Richard Grenville, Cap-
tain, was taken by the Spaniards after encountering the whole
Spanish Fleet for two days.’ ^ One can imagine the sensation
the ill news caused through all that Grenville countryside; but
of its reception at Stowe, now suddenly turned into a house of
mourning, not a word remains. How much one regrets the
destruction of its records at such a time!
The Government, to mark its sense of the exceptional services
of the men who had fought in the Revenge^ paid them, according
1 f. 46 Diary, ed. Chanter.
327
SIR RICHARD GRENVILLE OF THE REVENGE
to Hawkins, six months’ wages; ^ or according to a more certain
source of information, a gratuity of six months’ pay to the
widows of the men who had perished in her.=^ The Spaniards
had been as good as their word, and allowed the men they had
taken in the ship to come home free. That autumn and winter,
the prisoners came dribbling back, most of them evidently be-
longing to the West Country. There is an examination of
Thomas Meade of Topsham, preserved among the State Papers;
he was taken in the Revenge and landed at Dartmouth, 15
December.® Among the business before the Privy Council in
that month, there was an appeal from a woman
‘pretending herself to be the wife of one John Carew, mariner,
said to have served in her Majesty’s ship the Revenge^ doth in-
form us that her said husband hath been slain in the said ship
and she, left poor, with child and without relief, doth desire
such wages as was due unto him before his death.’ ^
A pathetic piece of the wreckage left; hers was a case of what
not seldom happens when a sailor goes to sea and never returns.
Lastly there is Philip Gawdy, who after such ardours and
expectations from a sea-life, found himself downcast and de-
jected in Lisbon Castle, with Captain Monson for company.
He was lucky, indeed, to be alive. The Spaniards on this occa-
sion had treated their captives handsomely, but since Philip was
almost the only person of quality left on the ship, they kept him
at Lisbon for ransom.® Whether Lord Thomas Howard inter-
vened on Philip’s behalf or no, we are not told; but almost
certainly he did - were they not both Norfolk men? For next
year, we find Philip once more in England, having ‘^now passed
my long and wearisome troubles, and by the help of good friends
I am now returned into mine own country,’ With his return,
we may say that the last account of the action in the Azores
was liquidated.
Not so its fame: that went on mounting with the years. Nor was
it so much due to Ralegh’s pamphlet: action in itself was what
1 Observations (ed. Williamson), 16. 2 Oppenhcim, I, 256.
^ S.P. Dom. 240, no. 97. * A.P.C. 12 1. ® Gawdy, 63"4.
328
CHARACTER AND MYTH
appealed to the mind of the Elizabethan public^ unusually sus-
ceptible as it was to the appeal of the heroic, the dare-devil, the
bloody “ witness their early drama just entering on its astonish-
ing efflorescence. Such events as the fight of the Revenge have
their importance for the development of mind which led to such
creative activity. In 1595, there appeared a long poem. The
Most Honorable Tragedy of Sir Richard Grenville^ Knight, by Gervase
Markham.^ Tedious as it is, the poem is not without merit;
indeed, one may doubt whether it has ever had justice done to
it, so few can have got through it. To some extent it may have
suffered from Markham’s later reputation, as a hack-writer on
every conceivable subject from the arts of love and war to those
of farriery and husbandry. The Grenville poem is, however, a
poem of his youth; he was only twenty when he wrote it: it has
therefore something of the freshness as well as the naivete and
the longueurs of youth.
It is for the most part an exercise in verse, a sort of exhibition
piece, taking the compact and moving prose of Ralegh and ex-
panding it until all genuine emotion has gone out of the thing.
Markham was something of a scholar and knew the classical
languages. The result is that his poem cannot move for classical
machinery, the action is made the consequence of a dispute
between the goddesses of Good and 111 Fortune, and there is
a good deal about Phoebus and Neptune, the loves of Jove and
(of course) the shears of Atropos. The only tolerable way of
regarding the poem is as a baroque piece, comparable to the
furniture and the building of the age. One stanza has a fair
baroque seascape:
By this, the sun had spread his golden locks.
Upon the pale green carpet of the sea,
And opened wide the scarlet door which locks
The easeful evening from the labouring day;
Now Night began to leap from iron Rocks,
And whip her rusty wagon through the way.
Whilst all the Spanish host stood maz’d in sight,
None daring to assail a second fight.
Reprinted in Arber, English Reprints.
329
SIR RICHARD GRENVILLE OF THE REVENGE
When all is said, it is but poor stuff. It is odd that it was not
until three hundred years later, out of a far subtler and more
sophisticated age, that there came the simple and direct ‘Ballad
of the Revenge' of Tennyson, a perfectly satisfying poem. The
inspiration of that, even to verbal echoes, came direct and
immediate from Ralegh’s prose.
It was only natural that Carew, whose Survey of Cornwall
appeared in 1602, should in his own quaint way, commemorate
the dead hero: who
‘made so glorious a conclusion in her Majesty’s ship the Revenge
. . . that it seemed thereby, when he found none other to com-
pare withal in his life, he strived through a virtuous envy to
exceed it in his death: a victorious loss for the realm; and of
which the Spaniard may say with Pyrrhus, that many such
conquests would beget his utter overthrow.’ ^
Sir Richard Hawkins’s commemoration of Grenville in his
Observations, is altogether warmer as befits a fellow seaman and
one who went through a similar ordeal to Grenville, fighting
an action against odds, though not such odds, in the Bay of
Atacames off the coast of Peru. It is a complete vindication of
Grenville’s conduct at Flores; Hawkins belonged to the same
school of thought, but he must have had plenty of opportunity
of hearing the whole action thrashed out in discussion:
Tn this point, at the Isle of Flores, Sir Richard Grenville got
eternal honour and reputation of great valour, and of an experi-
mented [i.e. experienced] soldier, choosing rather to sacrifice
his life, and to pass all danger whatsoever than to fail in his
obligation, by gathering together those which had remained
ashore in that place, though with the hazard of his ship and
company . . . and I account that he, and his country, got much
honour in that occasion . . ^
Such was the code of honour among the Elizabethan seamen,
and such the view that prevailed.
Last of all comes the tribute of the noblest intellect, if not the
noblest mind, of the age - all the more moving because in that
^ Carew, 176. 2 Hawkins, 16.
330
C^%7CVtLX^^^i*'‘i ^ ^t^iPC4^ ^uas '•
SIR RICHARD GRENVILLE
CHARACTER AND MYTH
way at any rate after a lifetime of rivalry and mutual dislike,
Bacon was at one with Ralegh: ‘that memorable fight of an
English ship called the Revenge . . . memorable (I say) even
beyond credit, and to the height of some heroical fable,’ ^
II
The concentration of posterity upon this one episode, even
though it is the last and most exciting in his life, meant that
the sense of Grenville’s career as a whole became submerged,
and, when to this was added the destruction of Stowe and its
archives, was forgotten. We have to attempt to assess his career
as a whole, and to fix the character of the man in the light of
that.
He was a man very representative of his time. His career was
an embodiment of those tendencies which were characteristic
of the age and made it what it was. We can see that he was
neither the romantic and chivalrous survival from the Middle
Ages such as Corbett imagined, nor the inhuman and ravening
figure of the islanders’ legend in the Azores. He was very typi-
cal of his age and class - that small class of captains and com-
manders by land and sea, which set the pace for the Eliza-
bethan Age. Like them he was strenuous, hard-working, ac-
quisitive, restless, devoted; more selfless than most: there was
nothing of the egoist in him, as in so many of those others. He
had the passion for action that was common to them all; in-
deed, he was solely the man of action; for though he was very
capable of giving an opinion on public matters, for example the
vexed question of the settlement of Munster, he was, unlike
Ralegh, singularly unspeculative. We may be sure that such
doubts as he had were not of an intellectual character.
Again, it is notable that when he was consulted on public
matters, it was usually on technical affairs: matters relating to
defence, or harbour-works, which were regarded in much the
same light as fortification; or questions of detail relating to the
administration of his county - musters, the supply of corn,
^ Bacon, ‘Considerations touching a war with Spain.* Letters and Life, ed.
Spedding, VII, 491.
331
SIR RICHARD GRENVILLE OF THE REVEJ>fGE
keeping the peace, bringing offenders to book. It is obvious
that he would not be consulted on high policy; he had not the
mind or temperament for that in an age when, the political
system not being democratic, politics moved upon a higher in-
tellectual plane. He was used upon committees in the House of
Commons; that in itself was only another tribute to his local
importance and the possession of average business ability. The
field of action was his real sphere; he was a devoted public
servant, the chosen instrument of the government in the West
and of Ralegh in the wider fields of colonisation and plantation.
How wide that sphere of action was, we have seen in this
book. The foundation of his career rested upon a long record of
work in his county. Long before his career came to its prema-
ture end, he had come to occupy a pre-eminent place in Corn-
wall: in itself evidence of his competence, at a time when Godol-
phins and Carews and Hawkins’, men of ability, were also con-
tent to spend themselves upon local affairs - critical as they
were in the west in those years before and after 1588! Over and
above this local work as Justice of the Peace, and serving at
Westminster as member for the shire, there were his military
qualifications which meant that further services and his advice
were required relating to more general questions of defence. In
addition there was his early interest in exploration and dis-
covery; his very great services towards colonisation and planting
in Virginia and in Ireland; and his fairly constant interest in
privateering, a favourite avocation with west-country gentry on
the sea-board, more professional in his case, as with the Haw-
kins’ and Ralegh, since it grew naturally out of shipping in-
terests.
Of his private virtues (or otherwise) we have no speaking evi-
dence: not a letter of any intimate character, which might en-
able us to descry his emotional life, has survived. Perhaps that
in itself is some evidence. It is clear that family pride was a
strong instinct with him as with all Grenvilles; a sense of the
family, the maintenance of its tradition and the constant pur-
pose of advancing its interests, no less ardent than with Drake
or Hawkins, though they had the spur of belonging to new
families which had their name yet to make. Though his was one
332
CHARACTER AND MYTH
of the oldest in the land, Grenville was no less ambitious for it.
That too was very Elizabethan: the elbowing struggle, the
competitiveness, the vulgarity.
In this sphere, as in his public life, he displayed an equal and
a passionate devotion to business and duty. He must have
cared for his sons, at any rate for his second son, John, who was
a lad after his own heart. In this region we really know nothing.
It all appears rather hard and bleak; the passion of his nature
was concentrated upon action. I do not suppose that he was a
likeable man; what is more important, he lived a significant life.
It may be that the hardness is in part due to the absence of in-
formation. Those all too brief glimpses of him at his cousin
Roscarrock’s with other friends among the Cornish gentry,
playing bowls and fidling and trifling the time away,’ enable us
to guess what a picture in the round would be like if the mate-
rials existed for it. We have had some glimpses of him as Justice
of the Peace at his house, hot-tempered and rough-handed with
obstreperous disturbers of the peace, hanging his dial up upon a
pole and dispersing a mob of country-people with the gesture -
we can imagine with what contempt. For the rest we are to
suppose him like his fathers before him, taking his part in all
the life of country and town: coursing the hare, flying his fal-
cons, gathering in his wheat in the high corn-fields towards
Kilkhampton where he went to church on Sundays, receiving
his rents, or sitting over his accounts in the town house on the
quay at Bideford, the ships passing in or out of the river beneath
his eyes.
In religion also he was a man of his time, and moved with the
times. We can be sure that the subject did not arouse his intel-
lectual curiosity as it did Ralegh’s very remarkably. In the early
years of the Elizabethan settlement these issues were not so
clear as they subsequently became; and it may be that he would
have preferred then to remain attached to the ways of his
fathers, stare super antiquas vias. But the movement of the time,
like a tide, was too strong for that and with such a man, whose
whole instinct was for action. He was no religious devot like the
Arundells or Tregian - indeed it is likely that their attitude in-
spired him with anger and contempt. He was anything but a
333
SIR RICHARD GRENVILLE OF THE REVENGE
mystic; he was essentially worldly, finding his satisfaction in the
things of this world and judging by its standards.
So was the age - taking its cue from the extraordinary woman
who stood at the apex of their society, and had led them to such
success. Those who put themselves against that movement be-
came defeatists, or if by instinct men of action, like Parsons,
were driven into conspiracy. Grenville went with it, with an
increasing conviction as the years went on and the struggle in
Europe and upon the high seas developed, giving great outlet
to men of action like him, so that in the end he was prepared to
die for it. But there is no sign that the religious formula had
any inner meaning for him. Of course he had God on his lips,
like the rest of them as the years passed and times became more
dangerous. But everthing points to this being but form, con-
ventional acceptance of what society in general thought, a
simple but sufficient faith. There is not the same personal con-
viction as Drake and Hawkins had; but they were bourgeois and
Puritans. Grenville was an aristocrat: his attitude was more
like the Queen’s or the Howards’.
Deep down, however, at the root of the man, there was,
surely, an element of unbalance, of overstrain. It comes out in
his impulsive temper, terrifying to his subordinates, which made
him unloved where Drake was adored. It is not without signi-
ficance that his very first appearance upon the public scene was
an act of manslaughter. No doubt it was an accident, and the
Elizabethans thought little of an affray; but the rashness, the
intemperateness were there, and the determination to see a
thing through. One wonders if this overbalance, this nervous
strain, may not have been due to the absence of the restraining
influence of a father, acting upon a passionate temperament.
A young heir, he must have been left a good deal to himself.
We do not hear of his guardian concerning himself with him in
any way. He must have had to learn to discipline himself by his
own experience; the experience was a hard one and we cannot
say that it was ever wholly learned. He remained to the end a
man with whom passion and pride were the fundamental ele-
ments in his character: again, the Elizabethan man. Yet that
he did try to subject himself to discipline is equally evident from
334
CHARACTER AND MYTH
his public career: the long laborious service to the State in so
many fields, and on the whole, as was Elizabeth’s way, so little
rewarded. Yet there was no word of recrimination or complaint
from him that greater reward did not come his way, a fuller
share of the dazzling light from the throne so amply permitted
to Ralegh, and even, so much more generously than to himself,
to Drake. Perhaps he was unattractive to the Queen, a hard
man, without gallantry; she may not have felt entire confidence
in him, and, shrewd judge of men that she was, she would not
have been wrong.
Over so much of his character, as we have analysed it, Gren-
ville is not dissimilar from his fellow-men of action, Ralegh,
Drake, Hawkins, Howard, Only in this case there was some-
thing added, this element of undependability, of strain: Essex
had it too and we know where it led him. There burned in
Grenville the same intemperate ardour for action, even though
it was less romantic, a headlong taking to a course, and a fixity
of will in persisting in it - evident in his pouncing upon Mayne
and the Cornish Catholics in 1577, no less than in the end he
brought upon himself. That he had the extreme of courage
that goes with such a nature, this whole book is evidence of.
We know of no occasion when he drew back: clearly he deliber-
ately determined not to, off Flores; and the knowledge that he
really intended to blow up his ship rather than surrender, shows
what an intensity the flame of that courage had blown into.
Out of such a mbcture of qualities is the quality of the heroic
made. There is the element of the undependable about it. as
with genius: some sport of nature. Grenville was not a genius
like Ralegh, but he was a hero. In the end, it is by this daemo-
nic quality of the heroic that he survives to us. He would not
have made the indelible impression he has upon the tradition of
the English people without that; he would have been but one
more Elizabethan commander. As it is, everybody knows the
name of Grenville, however few know anything of his life beyond
that one solitary action, lighting up the horizon with its dark
glow. There is historic justice in that: the sense, the tradition
of a nation is a better test of these values than any rational
calculation of chances of survival.
335
SIR RICHARD GRENVILLE OF THE REVENGE
For it was by this last action alone that Grenville emerged as
the legendary hero of Elizabethan sea-warfare. The manner of
his death won him that place which he could never have at-
tained to in life. In life, he was disappointed of the opportuni-
ties and the good fortune which came to Drake, nor anyhow
had he Drake’s genius as a commander. It is the irony of fate
that by his death, the chief legend in all that legendary time in
our history should be his and not after all Drake’s, who died
quietly enough at sea a few years later and was buried off
Portobello in the Spanish Main.
336
CHAPTER XIX
POSTERITY: EPILOGUE
A man’s life does not begin, nor does it end with himself. His
life is but a link, unless he wills it to be otherwise, between all
the generations that went before and those that come after.
We have traced with Grenville something of the tradition of his
fathers that went to make him the man he was; we must not
leave him without a word of what he handed on to the genera-
tions succeeding him.
We have to draw together the few threads that are left, con-
cerning Grenville himself. There is no will of Grenville’s re-
maining; he died intestate, yet not without having made cer-
tain settlements and arrangements regarding his property which
he may have thought sufficient for any contingency. The usual
Commission to inquire post-mortem was issued to Sir Richard
Bevil and five others on 15 December 1591.^ The return, which
was made at Bodmin on 27 September in the next year, deals
with certain properties about which there may have been some
uncertainty, outside the main entailed estate at Kilkhampton
and Bideford. ** What is of more interest is that it refers to the
settlement not now remaining, which Grenville made on 6 Feb-
ruary 1591, for the marriage of his heir Bernard and for the
jointure of Lady Mary Grenville his wife. For the latter’s bene-
fit, a number of trustees were appointed, including Sir William
Bevil and William Langhorne, evidently the Captain of the
soldiers on board the Revenge, to hold the manors of Kilkhamp-
ton, Wolston and Bideford to her use after Grenville’s death, and
so long as she remained unmarried.
^ S.P. 38, vol. 2 (Docquet).
2 Inq. post-mortem. Chancery Series II, vol. 233, no. 1 19; and for Devon-
shire property, vol. 237, no. 138.
337
SIR RICHARD GRENVILLE OF THE REVENGE
Lady Mary did not marry again, but lived on to a ripe old
age at Bideford where she died in 1623. There were other sor-
rows yet to come to her, so that it is not surprising that in her
will, the only personal document that we have left of her - in-
deed the only glimpse of her it is possible to obtain “• she should
speak of her ‘departure out of this vale of misery,’ a phrase rare
in the wills of that time.^ She affixed her sign to the document,
not her signature; so that it is probable she could not write and
that may help too to account for the absence of personal letters
between her and Grenville. A charitable soul, with the good
nature of the St. Legers, she left small legacies to the poor of
the parishes of Winkleigh, Broadwood Kelly, Monk Okehamp-
ton and Bideford; further small sums to her manservant and
three women-servants; a ring to a godson; the rest of her
property, houses, land and goods, she bequeathed to her
daughters Katherine Abbot and Bridget Grenville. Bridget
afterwards married Sir Christopher Harris of Radford, the
friend and executor of Drake, through whom the sale of Buck-
land had been arranged. Their sister Ursula was left in the
care and ‘under the government and tuition’ of Katherine
and Bridget, who were to receive her yearly allowance from
their brother for her maintenance. She may have been an
invalid: victim of the over-nervous strain in the Grenvilles or
of the weakness and debility of the St, Legers. She died at
Bideford in the same year that Sir Bevil, her famous nephew,
was killed at Lansdown.^
It is interesting to know that Grenville provided for his son
Bernard’s marriage, before he left on his last voyage. It was a
very eligible match that he had arranged: Elizabeth Bevil of
Brinn, in the parish of Withiel, was the sole heiress of her
father and eventual heiress of her uncle. Sir William Bevil.
The marriage, which took place at Withiel, that little granite
church on the edge of the moor overlooking the Camel valley,
on 10 July 1592, ten months after Sir Richard’s death, brought
both Brinn and Killigarth and other properties in mid- and
south-Cornwall into the Grenville family.
At the time of his father’s death, Bernard was twenty-four.
1 Exeter Wills J.C. 24/934. 2 Granville, 123.
338
POSTERITY: EPILOGUE
His was an unexciting personality: it was as if the land, ex-
hausted by so much energy, such restless spending of itself, lay
fallow. He did his duty well enough; he too in his turn became
the chief servant of the Crown in Cornwall, and his was a long
record of service in a quiet way. In his earlier years, succeeding
to his brother’s interests in Ireland, he had some experience of
Irish affairs and was knighted in 1608. Then, having had, no
doubt, more than enough of the troubles and disappointments
of Ireland, it was he who slipped the connection; and Sir
Richard’s Irish estates, upon which such efforts had been ex-
pended, came, like so much else in Munster, into the possession
of the great Earl of Cork. In the West Country, Sir Bernard was
a single-minded and devout supporter of Charles I in all his
causes, particularly against Sir John Eliot’s immense personal
influence which carried over with it into the Opposition, Sir
Bernard’s own son BeviL In the end, Sir Bernard’s main raison
d^itre seems to have been the begetting of his two sons, Bevil and
Richard, the one famous, the other infamous.
Much more exciting than Bernard’s is the all too short career
of John, Grenville’s second son, who must have been a lad after
his father’s heart. Grenville took him with him in the contin-
gent of ships that he brought round from Bideford to Plymouth
to serve against the Armada; and John commanded the Virgin
God Save Her in those anxious, glorious days. At the time of his
father’s death, he was serving in the Low Countries, taking hold,
as Garew says, ‘of every martial occasion that was ministered
him.’ ^ Next year, we find him in Ireland, whither he had
gone to enter upon his patrimony; which makes it clear that
Grenville’s aim in his Irish ventures was to provide an estate for
his second son. The difficulties there were as great as ever, the
discouragements as sickening, the situation intractable.
Sir Warham St. Leger and John Grenville, who had suc-
ceeded his father in the partnership, were driven to appeal to
Burghley to permit them to enjoy their seignory of Kirry
whirry.^ The Commissioners who were surveying the land
settlement of Munster had granted away 39 ploughlands out of
the 56 in their seignory. Out of the whole there remained to
1 Carew, 176. ^ S.P. Ireland Eliz. 167, no. 37.
339
SIR RICHARD GRENVILLE OF THE REVEJ^GE
them only some 15^. Yet the lands had been mortgaged by
Desmond to St. Leger and Grenville, upon a statute of £ t ^ oqo ;
and without regarding that, ;^8,ooo had been spent within the
last six years in bringing people over and settling them upon the
land, besides the losses that they had sustained in the Fitz-
maurice and Desmond rebellions. They ask Burghley to con-
sider Sir Warham’s old age and long service,
‘and then to think on the sudden death of Sir Richard in her
Majesty’s service, whereby his youngest son, your poor suppliant,
had not left him any other portion but this poor Irish patri-
mony to live on, being also at the time of his death in her
Majesty’s service, in the Low Countries, where he performed
the part of a faithful soldier. Neither hath he any means to
relieve himself if this be taken from him.’
Sir Warham added a postscript:
T most humbly beseech you to consider of the estate of your
poor suppliant, Sir Richard Grenville’s son, whose father even
to the end, carried a true testimony of his loyal mind towards
his prince and country, as the world generally doth witness . . .
and that you will vouchsafe to have that remorse of him as that
he may be the better encouraged to good actions and be able
to relieve himself as the son of him who lived and died her
Majesty’s most loyal and vowed soldier and servant; or other-
wise he shall be driven to wander as a distressed soul to seek his
relief, which were a case most lamentable.’
Nor was this the end of their troubles. It is a mistake to sup-
pose that most people made anything out of the attempt to settle
and civilise that unhappy country: far more frequently fortunes
were swallowed up in its bogs, legal and political no less than
physical. It is clear that Grenville had overspent himself on the
Irish venture and made nothing but losses by it. He would have
been better off if he had stayed at home. Later on we find Sir
Bevil Grenville complaining against the burdens laid upon the
estate by his ‘wasteful predecessors.’
Is it any wonder that life in Ireland did not appeal to John
Grenville? That same year, 1 593, we find him at sea, serving as
340
POSTERITY: EPILOGUE
a captain in the fleet set out by Ralegh to watch off Spain and
the Azores for the great East Indian carracks.^ Two great ships
of the Queen, the Garland and the Foresight were of the com-
pany. The fleet was divided into two squadrons; John Gren-
ville being on board the Garland under Frobisher which was de-
tailed to watch off the Spanish coast; the other squadron, under
Sir John Borough, off the Azores captured the Madre de Dios, the
richest carrack ever brought to these shores, and burned an-
other, the Santa Cruz- Two years later the young Grenville
joined Ralegh’s great expedition for the discovery of Guiana:
the first voyage of exploration which Ralegh was to lead him-
self, and the beginning of that life-long preoccupation with the
idea of an English Empire in South America which brought him
to his end.
In the superb account which Ralegh wrote of the voyage, we
frequently hear of John Grenville in the forefront of adventure,
exploring the numerous and intricate channels of those great
rivers, going sometimes forward in the galley-boat with Ralegh
himself (^my cousin John Grenville’), sometimes coasting along
the fever-laden river-banks in the barge; but always with a
gallant company of west-countrymen whom Ralegh’s call had
brought forth to the adventure: his cousin young Gilbert, Cap-
tain Thynne, or Captain Whiddon, Butshead Gorges or William
Connock, or Captain Facey, his father’s friend.^ So that there
were west-country faces around him to the last; for though
Ralegh does not tell us how, upon this voyage he died, and, as
Carew says, ‘under the command of Sir Walter Ralegh, the
ocean became his bed of honour.’
So much for the family which Grenville begot; his son and
successor. Sir Bernard, had a long and peaceful reign, and did
not die until well on in the reign of Charles I, in 1636. The
specific qualities of the Grenville character remained latent
with him; he was not at all venturesome, but rather a stay-at-
home; so far from being passionate, he was inclined to be easy-
going, good-tempered, pacific; something of an antiquarian.
Only the devotion to duty was there. There was no doubt also
the living influence of his father’s heroic quality, of his life of
1 Hakluyt VII, 108. ® Hakluyt X, 350, 396, 403, 417, 422.
SIR RICHARD GRENVILLE OF THE REVEKGE
service to the state, ever present with the family and increasing
its hold on the mind of later generations. It is a thing in its
nature intangible, impossible to calculate.
But we have something more striking, and more certain, in
the family’s heredity. It is remarkable how the Grenville
qualities come out in the second generation, with Bevil and
Richard, Grenville’s grandchildren, and how they seem to
bifurcate into these two. All the best qualities of Grenville, the
adventurousness, the high mettle, the devotion to duty, with
an added tenderness and charm which made him a figure so
poetic and appealing, went into Bevil; and all the bad into
Richard, intensified to such a degree that he becomes a carica-
ture of his grandfather. His temper made him impossible to
live with; he quarrelled with everybody; his acquisitiveness was
such that in the Civil Wars he embarked on a career of high-
handed plundering on the grand scale; the harshness and un-
balance of the man came near to insanity. Yet he was a good
soldier. He had courage, and, being a Grenville, could somehow
carry off all the bravado and swagger. When he was deposed
from his command by the Prince’s Council in the west in 1645,
Hyde was astonished to find that in spite of all his depredations
and his consistent record of oppression, the country people
besieged the Prince on his retreat through the west with peti-
tions to pardon and release him. So high stood the name of the
Grenvilles in the west country in the darkest days of defeat for
their cause!
That their name stood so high in the land was due to Bevil
Grenville, the ‘most generally loved man’ in the west. His was
a nature singularly gallant and lovely. He had not always been
on the King’s side; as a young man, he had been Sir John
Eliot’s closest friend and supporter: Eliot, with that fascination
he must have had, exercised an empire over his mind. As the
years went on (Eliot now dead), and it became clearer that the
ancient foundations of the monarchy were being challenged by
the Parliamentarian party, Bevil Grenville, like many of the
choicest spirits in the country, like Hyde and Falkland, came
over to the King. They were the heart and soul of the King’s
cause, and not all the Endymion Porters, the Finches and
342
POSTERITY: EPILOGUE
Windebanks. When the war with Scotland came, Bevil Gren-
ville wrote:
‘I cannot contain myself within my doors when the King of
England’s standard waves in the field upon so just occasion:
the cause being such as must make all those that die in it little
inferior to martyrs. And for mine own part, I desire to acquire
an honest name or an honourable grave. I never loved my life
or ease so much as to shun such an occasion, which if I should,
I were unworthy of the profession I have held as to succeed
those ancestors of mine who have so many of them sacrificed
their life for their country.’
Such was the spirit in which Sir Bevil answered the call in
the King’s hour of still greater need with the outbreak of the
Civil War. His services to the Royalist cause in the west were
inestimable. He was the first to raise the King’s standard there
and to call his friends and tenantry to arms; his influence in the
country was enormous. He it was who, with Hop ton, organised
the royalist forces and made such a wonderful fighting instru-
ment of the Cornish foot. He led them to victory at Braddock
Down, Stratton and Lansdown, where at the last he fell; on
the battlefield his young son John was lifted on to his charger
to lead his men. But with his death, the heart went out of the
cause; and with the terrible decimations which the Cornish
army suffered at Round way Down and the siege of Bristol, even
though victorious, they ceased to be the fighting force they had
been. Bevil Grenville had not, as his brother Richard had done,
received any training as a soldier. But he was a born leader of
men, an instinctive soldier, all the fighting qualities of his race
came out in him, pure and unadulterated, with any selfish
passion. As the historian of that splendid moment in the history
of the Cornish people has said: ‘his death, in the moment of
victory for a cause in which he believed implicitly, was happy.’ ^
There were other qualities too, very endearing, in Bevil Gren-
ville’s nature: his affectionateness to his friends, the concern he
felt for them in their troubles, the love that passed between him
and his wife, so that they were never happy away from each
^ M. Coate, Cornwall in the Civil War, 88.
343
SIR RICHARD GRENVILLE OF THE REVJSJVGE
Other. A few years after they were married, about 1 625, they
went to live at Stowe, which Sir Bernard handed over to them,
himself retiring for the last ten years of his life to one of his
other Cornish houses, Killigarth or Brinn.^ Bevil in these early
years was much engaged in repairing and rebuilding at Stowe,
making walls for sheltered closes, planting trees, buying pictures
and carpets for the house. His wife writes to him while he was
away in London attending Parliament; 'Your case of pictures
was loose and almost open, before I had it, and the King’s and
Sir John Eliot’s hath received some hurt in carriage, but none
since it came hither. I pray you make haste and come home, so
God keep you well and be not angry with me.’ Or Bevil writes
home: 'Your beds are amaking, and some Turkey work for
stools and chairs I have seen, but not yet bargained for; it is
very dear, but if money hold out I will have them’; with a post-
script: 'Charge Postlett and Hooper that they keep out the pigs
and all other things out of my new nursery and the other
orchard too. Let them use any means to keep them safe, or
my trees will be all spoiled if they come in, which I would not
for a world.’ Or he sends home a box of dried sweetmeats to
his wife, the best that he can get, of all sorts saving only
apricots: 'The note of particulars is herein enclosed, wanting
only one box of the Quidiniock, which I have eaten.’
Then there are more important matters to worry him: money,
Sir John Eliot’s imprisonment, or his son Dick’s wasting his time
at Oxford. To the latter he writes recommending him to keep
to his logic and his Aristotle, and to give over reading so much
history and poetry:
T am my self in this very point a woeful example; I pray God
you be not such too. I was left to my own discretion when I was
a youth in Oxford, and so fell upon the sweet delight of reading
Poetry and History, in such sort as I troubled no other books,
and do find my self so infinitely defective by it, when I come to
manage any occasions of weight, as I would give a limb it were
otherwise.’
But Dick went his own way, even as Bevil himself had gone his
^ For following paragraphs cf. Granville, and Diet, Nat. Biog.
344
POSTERITY: EPILOGUE
against his father; and we find him writing to his wife later: 'He
shall stand or fall by his own judgment for mine is despised by
him’ - a frequent sentiment with fathers. Then, a year or two,
and the lad was dead.
The Civil War sweeps down upon them all; Bevil is caught
up into it from the first, every moment occupied, and yet has
time to write to his wife of the progress of their arms. He sends
her immediate news of the first Cavalier victory at Braddock
Down; how the night before 'we could march no further than
Boconnock Park where (upon my Lord Mohun’s kind motion)
we quartered all our Army by good fires under the hedge.’ In
the midst of these employments he thinks of his orchards at
Stowe and remembers to send home graftings of fruit trees: T
did send home some pear grafts from Truro about Michaelmas;
let them be carefully grafted also, and note which is one and
which the other.’
It is very fortunate that these letters, at least, have been pre-
served, giving us the details, intimate and trifling, by which we
may reconstruct the picture of their daily life. Lady Grace’s
letters are no less charming than his, with her 'Sweet Mr. Gren-
ville’ answering his 'Dear Love.’ It is only by these fragments
that remain, and sometimes when one looks upon their memo-
rials in the quiet Cornish churches, the seasons racing by outside
the windows, that one has a sudden apprehension of these men
and women long dead and of what they were when they were
alive, going about the countryside on their concerns. In those
moments, it is as if one were listening to the beating of their
hearts, and they all the more intimate and moving, being dead.
All was very different with Sir Richard, BeviTs brother. His
was the life of a turbulent soldier; we are back in an earlier
Grenville atmosphere, earlier and coarser. Richard began life
fighting in the Palatinate and the Netherlands: the Thirty
Years’ War is the background against which to see him. Then
he served in the various unsuccessful expeditions of Bucking-
ham, to Cadiz and the Isle of Rhe; he was knighted and
appointed to command a regiment against Rochelle. Through
Buckingham’s influence, too, he was married to a rich Devon-
shire widow, the daughter of Sir John Fitz of Fitzford, widow
345
SIR RICHARD GRENVILLE OF THE REVEJVGE
of Sir Charles Howard. The pair were not unequally matched;
the one was a brute, and the other a vixen, and no better than
she should be into the bargain. Needless to say, their married
life was one prolonged contest, in which, in the end the lady
came off best. For by the Howard influence, Grenville was
ruined at law by being fined large sums for insulting the family.
He went abroad; but on the outbreak of the Irish Rebellion
took service there. He fought energetically, bravely, savagely.
In 1643 he returned.
Since he had not declared himself for either King or Parlia-
ment, the latter invited him to London, made much of him,
thanked him for his services, paid his arrears in full and gave
him command of a troop of horse. The plan for a surprise attack
on Basing House was also confided to him. Equipped with this,
with a troop of horse and ;^6oo, he drove out of London in
coach and six - and straight to Oxford to place himself under
the King’s orders. Parliament was furious, not unnaturally;
he was proclaimed 'traitor, rogue, villain and skellum’ and a
gibbet was set up for him in Palace Yard. Henceforth, he was
always called Skellum Grenville in all their proclamations and
excepted by name from those malignants who might be par-
doned, in all negotiations set on foot by Parliament. It seems
he had a pretty sense of humour. The Royalists were vastly
amused: 'O credulous Parliament!’ one of their newsletters
wrote, Tf Sir Richard Grenville was indeed a Red Fox, what
were the sagacious ones who hearkened to him?’
Within a few days of his arrival at Oxford, he was given a
command in the West and was particularly charged with the
siege of Plymouth. Operations around Plymouth lasted for the
rest of the war and the town never capitulated. But one of the
consequences of this charge was that Grenville took up his
residence at Buckland Abbey; the Drakes were Parliamen-
tarians and driven out of possession. So once more, for a brief
period, a Grenville ruled at Buckland: a curious ghostly hark-
ing-back to an earlier period in its history. The King seques-
trated the estate to him, and with it also the large estates of the
Earl of Bedford and then Lord Robartes. Sir Richard now ruled
with a high hand; during the last years of the Royalist cause in
346
POSTERITY: EPILOGUE
the West, he was the leading west-countryman on the spot and
that gave him a popular hold in spite of all his misdeeds. He
hanged the solicitor who had conducted his wife’s case in the
Star-Chamber: that was a good joke, to him. His quarrels with
the other commanders were incessant; he was at daggers drawn
with Hyde, the leading member of the Prince’s Council, a sort
of Royalist Prime Minister (‘So fat a Hide ought to be well
tanned,’ he wrote) ; and when he was at length laid by the heels,
the whole West Country rose up in protest. When the debacle
came, he was permitted to get away from St. Michael’s Mount,
where he had been confined; he escaped to France and there
died, after further recriminations with Hyde and being at
length forbidden to come into the Prince’s presence. This he
took very seriously, became a misanthrope - of which he had the
makings already; shut himself up and died two years before his
Majesty’s happy Restoration, which might have recovered him.
In bringing about the Restoration, the Grenvilles had a very
significant, if necessarily backstairs part. Sir Bevil Grenville
had left two sons, John and Bernard. John, though very young,
fought on in the Civil War, his father’s heir; he was severely
wounded, in fact left for dead, at the second battle of Newbury,
when only sixteen. On the execution of the King, he left the
country for Jersey, whence he sailed to assume the command of
the Scilly Islands, which were held in force for Charles. For
two years he maintained himself here, building up a formidable
force of privateers - again a harking back to an old family
tradition - which preyed upon the shipping and trade of the
Commonwealth. At last, the Islands had to be reduced; but it
took a large force under Blake, with the help of the Dutch under
van Tromp, to do it. By the articles of surrender, Grenville was
permitted to visit Charles abroad and then to return. This he
did, made his submission, lived on at Stowe helping Charles
financially all he could and with his finger in every western
conspiracy against the Protectorate.
It so happened that Grenville was on close terms of intimacy
with the Monks - they were cousins of his, a Devonshire family;
of whom one, George Monk, was a Cromwellian general, left in
a dominating position at the head of the army by Cromwell’s
347
SIR RICHARD GRENVILLE OF THE REVENGE
death. John Grenville established contact with the General in
these uncertain decisive days, 1 658-9, through Nicholas Monk,
the General’s brother, whom he had presented to the living of
Kilkhampton, Grenville himself made the contacts with
Charles II abroad; and after a long period of negotiation,
Monk’s going over to the King’s side enabled the Restoration
to be brought about.
This small group was, of course, richly rewarded by the King
on his return, and remained in high favour and influence
throughout his reign. Monk was given a dukedom: he became
Duke of Albemarle. Charles I had intended to make Sir Bevil
an Earl for his services; they were rewarded now in the person
of his son, who became Earl of Bath, Viscount Lansdowne and
Baron Grenville of Kilkhampton. This was the hey-day of the
Grenvilles; it rained titles upon them. Now was the time when
the great rococco legend was fabricated, of their descent from
the Earls of Granville in Normandy: the inflated and bogus
antiquarianism which so much appealed to later generations of
Grenvilles, and so aroused the ire of the learned Dr. Round.
Very ridiculously, they changed the spelling of their name to
Granville. The new Earl of Bath was given permission to use the
titles of Earl of Corbeil, Thorigny and Granville ‘as his an-
cestors had done.’ They had a good enough Norman descent
without this absurdity. Bath maintained throughout Charles’s
life a position of very intimate friendship with the King. As
first gentleman of the bedchamber and Groom of the Stole, he
was constantly with the King; and when Charles on his death-
bed was received into the Roman Church, Bath and Fever-
sham were the only Protestants admitted into the room.^
In the west, the Earl’s position was tremendous and beyond
comparison; for the time, at any rate, the Grenvilles had out-
soared all competitors. At the very beginning of the reign, he
had been made Steward of the Duchy of Cornwall, of all the
castles and other offices belonging to it, and Rider of Dartmoor
Forest. A little later he was made Lord-Lieutenant of the
county and Lord Warden of the Stannaries. Then, in addition
to his offices at Court, he became Captain and Governor of
^ cf. the vivid description of the scene in Bryant, Charles 77, 368-9.
348
POSTERITY: EPILOGUE
Plymouth, with the castle and fort. To this period belongs the
building of the Citadel overlooking Plymouth Hoe, with the
great gate which we still see with the Earl of Bath’s arms over
it, the famous (if obscure) Grenville clarions. Further pro-
motions and appointments were still to come. Perhaps the most
interesting in view of Sir Richard Grenville’s part in first plant-
ing an English colony in Virginia, was the constitution of Caro-
lina, all the country between Albemarle Sound and the river
St.John, into a colony under eight Lords Proprietors, of whom
Bath was one and Albemarle another. The Grenville connec-
tion with Carolina was maintained after Bath’s death by his
second son, John, who was created Baron Granville by Queen
Anne and was also a Lord Proprietor. He died without issue
in 1707, his title lapsing with him.
But there was a certain insecurity in the foundation of this
too exalted position; the fact was that the Grenvilles were not
a rich family, and their estates were not adequate to support
such grandeur. Much of their wealth must have been drained
generation after generation from the time of Sir Richard for
their various enterprises and their costly services to the Crown.
It was only right that the Crown should recoup them, and
Charles did his best by making Bath a number of grants,
various fees, the grant of deodands and felons’ goods in certain
Cornish manors, the agency for issuing wine-licences, a lease of
the duties on the pre-emption and coinage of tin in Devon
and Cornwall - some iC3>ooo a year which was later charged
upon the revenue from tin and made a grant to him and his
heirs in perpetuity. Fortified by these grants, Bath embarked
upon pulling down the old medieval mansion at Stowe which
had served so many generations of Grenvilles, and putting up
a superb great classical building in the new style in brick. It
was sumptuously furnished, wainscoted with cedar.
What all this ostentation ignored, was that the position
depended so much upon royal favour. With James II, who re-
sented Bath’s stubborn Protestantism, it was withdrawn. Nor
was the position ultimately made any better by the Revolution
of 1688, though Bath after long hesitation threw in his lot with
the Prince of Orange; for the Grenvilles were far too much
349
SIR RICHARD GRENVILLE OF THE REVENGE
bound up with the loyalist cause and with the exiled Stuarts, to
feel happy under Dutch William. Moreover, the Earl received
a bitter disappointment over the dukedom of Albemarle. It had
always been understood that the dukedom should devolve upon
the Grenvilles, on the failure of heirs to the Monks. Charles II
had made a promise to that effect, but he was of course unable
to commit his successors. It was the wish of the second and last
Duke, who died in 1688, a hopeless drunkard and without
children, that his cousins should succeed to his title and pro-
perty, Bath spent the next seven years trying to make good his
claim to the latter, upon which enormous sums were spent at
law. Then in 1696 the Albemarle title was suddenly granted by
William III to his friend Keppel.
The Grenvilles were bitterly mortified; the dream, or rather
the confident expectation, of a dukedom was disappointed,
their estate burdened, and in his last years Bath was made to
resign his lord-lieutenancies and some of his other appoint-
ments. This was the position to which his heir, Lord Lans-
downe, succeeded; it is said that when he learnt the full facts
of the position, a fortnight after his father^s death, he shot him-
self, and both were carried down to Cornwall and buried the
same day at Kilkhampton. The only significant thing in the
young Lansdowne’s life was that he served, like his great an-
cestor before him, in the wars of Austria and Hungary against
the Turk; he fought in the last siege of Vienna, among the
foreign contingents under John Sobieski who delivered the city
when it was at its last gasp in 1683. For his services he was
created a Count of the Holy Roman Empire.
He left a young son, William Henry, who became third Earl.
He also took to the profession of his family, and quite young,
fought two campaigns in Flanders. While he was on one of
these, his cousin George Granville, wrote a long letter of advice
to the young head of the family, which, sententious though it is,
like everything that George Granville wrote, is remarkably
interesting as expressing the Grenvilles’ conception of their
family and of its place and duty in the west.
‘You are placed at the head of a body of gentry entirely dis-
350
POSTERITY: EPILOGUE
posed in affection to you and your fanaily ... You are upon an
uncommon foundation in that part of the world, your ancestors
for at least five hundred years never made any alliance, male or
female, out of Western Counties. Thus there is hardly a gentle-
man either in Cornwall or Devon but has some of your blood, or
you some of theirs. I remember the first time I accompanied
your grandfather into the West, upon holding his Parliament of
Tinners as Warden of the Stannaries, when there was the most
numerous appearance of gentry of both counties that had ever
been remembered together. I observed there was hardly any-
one but whom he called cousin, and I could not but observe at
the same time how well they were pleased with it. Let this be a
lesson for you when it comes to your turn to appear amongst
them . . .
‘There is another particular in my opinion of no small con-
sequence to the support of your interest, which I would recom-
mend to your imitation: and that is to make Stowe your
principal residence. I have heard your grandfather say that,
if ever he lived to be possessed of New Hall, he would pull it
down that your father might have no temptation to withdraw
from the ancient seat of his family. From the Conquest to the
Restoration your Ancestors constantly resided amongst their
country men, except when the public service called upon them
to sacrifice their lives for it. Stowe in my grandfather’s time till
the Civil Wars broke out was a kind of academy for all young
men of family in the country; he provided himself with the best
masters of all kinds for education, and the children of his neigh-
bours and friends shared the advantage of his own. Thus he in
a manner became the father of his country, and not only
engaged the affection of the present generation but laid a
foundation of friendship for posterity, which is not worn out at
this day.’ ^
Alas, that such good advice should have been of no effect, on
either point! For it never came to the young Earl’s turn to
appear amongst the gentry of the west-country like his grand-
father. The very next year he died on service in Flanders under
^ Granville, 397-8.
SIR RICHARD GRENVILLE OF THE REVENGE
Marlborough; and within ten years Stowe was pulled down and
the materials all sold^ the place made desolate. It is said and
it is quite credible - that a man of Stratton remembered the
place where Bath built his great house, a little away from the
old one, first a cornfield, and then a cornfield again forty years
after. The egregious woman who was responsible for this was
the Countess Granville, created so in her own right in 1714,
daughter, and a coheiress, of the first Earl.
Tlxe male line continued for some time longer in the descend-
ants of Bernard Granville, Sir Be\drs second surviving son,
Bath’s brother. Bernard’s eldest son, another Bevil, served in
the army in the Low Countries, there fought a duel in which he
killed his man, the Marquis de Rada; was made Governor of the
Barbadoes under Anne and died of fever at sea on his way
home in 1706. His brother George, Lord Lansdowne, was one
of the peers created by the Tories in 171 1 to secure a majority
in the House of Lords. He had a somewhat variegated, but
dilettante, career in politics and literature. Like his uncle,
Denis Granville, Dean of Durham, Lansdowne was a Jacobite;
the Dean went into exile for the sake of the Stuarts, but had the
satisfaction of living at Corbeil for the sake of his ‘ancestors,’
where he died. Lansdowne compromised, and led an active
political career under Queen Anne; but this was ruined with
the accession of the Hanoverians and he took to literature: an
unattractive frigid figure, from whom all the Grenville fire had
departed, an unpleasant mixture of the pompous and the frivo-
lous. Indeed the male line, with such a fearful mortality in the
early years of the century, what with deaths by fever and by
their own hand, like the deaths on the field of battle or at sea
in earlier generations, was becoming exhausted. A certain
rigidity, a lack of the old ilan^ becomes noticeable with the men
of the stock; the talent and the attractiveness come out only in
the women.
There remained only Bernard Granville’s third son, another
Bernard, who had any boys to carry on the line. This second
Bernard also served in the wars in Flanders and accompanied
his eldest brother, the Governor of the Barbadoes, to the West
Indies; on his return he became Lieut. -Governor of Hull, But
352
POSTERITY: EPILOGUE
his only significance was in his children; for he was the father
of the vivacious and universally admired Mary Granville, sub-
sequently Mrs. Delany. She was one of the most attractive of all
the Grenville women, witty, clever, kind-hearted and of the
most exquisite manner and breeding; rather a highbrow: the
friend and correspondent of Wesley (she was Aspasia to his
Cyrus), of Pope and of Swift in his later years. She was a
counterpart among all the later Grenville women, the only
one who is comparable in attractiveness and vitality to Lady
Lisle among the earlier. When she was a very old woman, she
became the close friend of George III and Queen Charlotte:
their simple and unaffected kindness to her was one of the most
charming features in their rather dreary domesticity.
There were two brothers of Mary Granville’s; Bernard the
third and Bevil. The latter was a clergyman, and died without
progeny •“ at least without any legitimate progeny. The former,
Bernard, was the last male heir of the Grenvilles. He began in
the army, but on the death of his uncle, Lord Lansdowne, who
seems to have had an affection for him and left him his heir, he
retired. About the same time, he benefited considerably by the
death, at last, of the old Duchess of Albemarle who had caused
the Earl of Bath so much trouble a generation before; her
property was divided between the Countess Granville, Lord
Gower and Bernard Granville as the heirs of Lord Bath, though
the old lady had lived till 1734 to spite them all.
With his considerable fortune, Bernard Granville bought an
estate in Staffordshire, Calwich Abbey. His desertion of Corn-
wall after so many centuries of the Grenville connection has
something peculiar in it; and it is said that a disappointment in
love, while he was staying there with his sister Mary, then Mrs.
Pendarves, turned him against the place and soured his dis-
position. Certainly he never married, and he was a queer
character for the Grenvilles to come to an end with. He was
accomplished and well-bred, a musician and a connoisseur of
pictures. Among his few close friends were Jean Jacques Rous-
seau, while the latter lived in this country, and Handel who
was a frequent visitor at Calwich, where an organ was built
for him by Father Smith and where a magnificent collection
353 z
SIR RICHARD GRENVILLE OF THE REVEJ^GE
of his original manuscriptis accumulated, along with the rare
antiquarian books, the choice pictures and family portraits.
But there was another side to his nature. He was stern and
unbending, unloving and unlovable in character. He had all
the family haughtiness and family pride; he never forgave his
spirited and charming sister for her marriage to Dr. Delany.
The old Countess Granville gave Mary and her husband a
mauvais quart (Theure when they went to call on her; they literally
stopped there no longer than a quarter of an hour. Bernard
kept up his resentment throughout the rest of his life; and
though he liked corresponding with his sister, he would not
have her near him when he lay dying. Mary wrote of him that
his unhappiness was due To a temper never properly subdued";
the last of the Granvilles was evidently a true Grenville.
Upon the death of the young William Henry, last Earl of
Bath, his aunts, Lady Leveson-Gower and Lady Carteret (after-
wards Countess Granville) laid claim to the estates. It would
seem that Lord Lansdowne had a better claim, but as he was
a prisoner in the Tower at the time, he was glad to accept a
composition for 3(^30,000. The estates in the West Country,
instead of descending in the male line, thus descended in the
female line; the Gowers and through them the Sutherlands, got
the Devonshire property, and the Carterets the Cornish. It is
through the latter that the Thynnes inherited what remains of
the Grenville lands in Cornwall, mostly in the parish of Kilk-
hampton and including the site of Stowe. Through the various
lines of female descent, the Grenville blood has disseminated
itself through the peerage: the Sutherlands, Ellesmeres, Gran-
villes, Dysarts, Baths and Spencers. The last Bernard Granville,
the last male branch, are represented by the Granvilles of
Wellesbourne, who descend from Anne Granville, Mrs. Delany’s
younger sister, who married into the D’Ewes family which took
the name of Granville. Last there are the far-flung relation-
ships of the west-country gentry, among whom the Stucleys of
Hartland represent the chief female Grenville descent.
But it should not be forgotten that in the numerous and
fascinating clan of Cornish Grenfells - the spelling is an indica-
tion of how the Grenvilles pronounced their name in earlier
354
POSTERITY: EPILOGUE
centuries - the male stock in its junior line going back to the
time of Sir Richard Grenville of the Revenge^ though not to the
hero himself, goes on. The Grenvilles were a very prolific
family in the fifteenth and early sixteenth century; and it is from
that time that the numerous Grenfells scattered over Cornwall,
and to be met with beyond, descend. It is astonishing how faith-
fully too they reproduce the family characteristics, for they
have been mostly fighters, adventurers, explorers. And in the
last generation, their exploits in capturing peerages - three of
them, the Grenfell, Desborough and St. Just peerages - almost
equal those of the Granvilles at the Restoration. But the domin-
ant note has been that of fighting and adventuring. A family
which has produced in short space Admiral Grenfell of the
Brazilian exploits, Grenfell of the Congo, explorer and
missionary, Field-Marshal Lord Grenfell, and Grenfell of
Labrador, remains true to type.
And never was it truer than in producing those fighting men,
the soldier-sons of Lord Desborough, Julian and Billy Grenfell,
both killed in the War. Julian Grenfell was the incarnation of
the fighting-man, as much as Sir Richard Grenville himself.
T adore War,’ he wrote home from the Front. T have never
felt so well, or so happy, or enjoyed anything so much. It just
suits my stolid health, and stolid nerves, and barbaric disposi-
tion. The fighting-excitement vitalizes everything, every sight
and word and action. One loves one’s fellow-man so much
more when one is bent on killing him.’ ^
It is what so many generations of Grenvilles felt, though they
could not have put it in words; Sir Richard, Marshal of Calais,
Roger drowned in the Mary Rosey his son Richard killed in the
Azores, John who died at sea upon Ralegh’s expedition to
Guiana, Sir Bevil killed at Lansdown in the Civil War, the
young Earl who died in Flanders fighting under Marlborough
and his cousin who died at sea on his way home from the Bar-
badoes. It is curious to reflect that so many centuries should
have passed and then the spirit of the family achieve belated
expression in Julian Grenfell’s poem:
^ iVar Letters of Fallen Englishmen^ i ly-iS.
355
SIR RICHARD GRENVILLE OF THE REVENGE
The fighting man shall from the sun
Take warmth, and life from the glowing earth;
Speed with the light-foot winds to run,
And with the trees to newer birth;
And find when fighting shall be done.
Great rest, and fullness after dearth . . .
And when the burning moment breaks.
And all things else are out of mind.
And only joy of battle takes
Him by the throat, and makes him blind,
Through joy and blindness he shall know.
Not caring much to know, that still
Nor lead nor steel shall reach him, so
That it be not the Destined Will.
The thundering line of battle stands.
And in the air death moans and sings;
But Day shall clasp him with strong hands,
And Night shall fold him in soft wings.
On the day on which his poem was published, his death in
France was announced, leaving, as so often before in the history
of the Grenvilles, a place desolate and empty. What does it all
mean? one asks, reading his poem and his letters glorying in war,
or casting back over all that history; to what purpose?
In the end, one comes to rest upon the place they all sprang
from, no less empty and desolate. There are the emplacements
where the last house stood, there are even portions of its brick
foundations, the levelled spaces beneath the grass where the
terraces were. But beyond those empty spaces through which
passed so much crowded life for so long a time, the country has
not much changed. There it is, just as Sir Richard surely saw
it in his mind’s eye in those last hours in the Azores: the corn-
fields are still there and something of the orchards; below are
the woods of Coombe, in the east the tower of Kilkhampton
church putting a term to the horizon, and in the west, the sea.
INDEX
Abbot, Justinian, 275; William, 275
Allen, William, Cardinal, 131, 137--8, 140
Altamirano, Fernando de, aii-13
Amadas, Captain, 191, 199, 214, 215, 216, 242
America, geography of, 85-6; colonisation, 198. (See also
Virginia, and West Indies)
Anian, Straits of, 85-6, 102-5, m-is
Antonio, Don, Portuguese Pretender, 158-9, 167
Antwerp, sack of, 127, 128
Aramburu, Marcos de, 304, 307, 309
Armada, the Spanish, 245, 257, 261, 262-4, 265-6
Arundel, Ven. Philip, Earl of. 133
Arundells, of Lanheme, 17, 18, 27, 13 1-2; Humphrey, 41-2;
Sir John (nth), 27, 131-2; (13th), 74, 75, loi, 132, 133,
136, 143, 152, 169, 182; Sir Thomas, 30, 132
- Thomas, of Leigh, 37, 49, 57; Alexander, 43, 95
Arundells of Trerice, 27, 49; Sir John, loi, 169; John, 169, 205,
215, 216, 220
Australis, Terra, 86-94,
Azores, the, 158-9, 167, 234-5, 286, 290-1, 298, 300-20, 324-8,
356
Bacon, Francis, 330-1
Barlow, Captain, 191, 1 99-201
Barnstaple, 77, 114, 233, 247, 294, 327
Bassets, the, 31-2, 56, 122; Sir Arthur Basset, 33, 56, 57, 78, 95,
122, 128
Bazan, Alonso de, 289-90, 292, 300-1, 303-5, 306-9, 313-15,
318, 322-3
Bedford, Francis, 2nd Earl of, loo-i, 139, 140, 152, 162, 171,
181, 196
Bertendona, Martin de, 304, 307-8, 309, 314, 315
357
INDEX
Bideford, 15-19. 1 13-15. ” 7 . 232-3, 240-2, 248, 255, 275, 294,
327. 337-8
Bodmin, 41, 75, 173, 337
Boleyn, Queen Anne, 30
Boscastle, 16, 184-5
Bristol, 153, 265
Buckland Abbey, 15, 36, 44, 57, iir, 123-6, 155-6, 288, 346
Budockshide, Philip, 50, 62-3
Bullers, the, 186-8
Burghley, William Lord, 19, 82-3, 118, 153, 246-7, 260, 270-1
Cabot, John and Sebastian, 198
Cadiz, 245, 252, 323
Caesar, Dr. Julius, 120, 248-9, 274-5
Calais, 21, 26, 32-5, 1 1 7, 263
Campion, Edmund, 130, 159-60
Carews, 51-2; Sir Peter Carew, 51, 60, 66; Richard, 28, 44, 63,
126, 172, 188, 330, 339
Carnsew, William, 126-9
Carrigaline Castle, 66, 68-9
Cathay, North-West Passage to, 84-6, 101-2, 226; North-East
Passage, 84-6
Catholicism, 130-1, 142-3, 144, 159-60, 179
Cavendish, Thomas, 205, 224, 237
Champernownes, the, 50, 62-3; Sir Arthur Champernowne, 62,
n > 973 993 loi, 1 18
Channel, the English, 39, 51, 72, 81-2, 100, 165, 245, 253, 260-
263, 289
Charles II, 347-8, 349-50
Chesapeake Bay, 226, 230, 238, 243
Clifton, 37-8, 43, 49, 57
Cork, 65-70, 268, 272, 273
Cornelius, Fr. John, 142
Cornwall, disorders of 1548, 40; the Rebellion of 1549, 41-3;
defence of, 246, 249-51, 254-5; Musters in, loo-i, 144-5,
180-2, 247; Parliamentary representation, 76, 78,
190; and the plantation of Munster, 231-2; state of clergy
175
358
INDEX
Courtenays, i8, 51; Edward, Earl of Devon, 51
Croatoarij isle of, 215, 239, 242—3
Cromwell, Thomas Lord, 3^5 33“45 35
Cumberland, George, 3rd Earl, 290, 293
DSmond^GeraldtiS* Earl, 65-7, 100, 101, 267-9, 277
-James Fitzmaurice of, 66-70, 100, 153
Devon, 30, 52, 62, 181-2, 246, 249-51, 254-5
Dover Harbour, 183, 185-6 „ Or. t fto or 106-
Drake, Sir Francis, 37, 49 - 50 , 60, 63, 71 2, , 3 , 95 ,
1 12, 154-6, 158, 190-1, 203, 209, 213, 228-9, 245, 251 3,
257—9, 282, 287—8, 33 ^
Edgcumbe, Peter, 50, 76, 95-6, loi, 128, 152; Sir Piers, 29, Sir
Richard, 19
Eliot, Sir John, 339, 342, 344 „ „ , .g 78-0 82,
256, 258, 260, 284-6
Elizabethan Age, the, 22—5, 33 ^
of (WaUamBradbridge). .37-K John
Wootton, 174-5
Falmouth, i6, 147, 164-8, 198, 217, 246, 295
Fermoy Abbey, 273, 283-6
Flores, 219, 300-1, 303-6, 318, 323 7, 33
Florida, 199, 214
with, .543-6, 38-40; Socond ReUgious War in.
61-3
Frobisher, Martin, 105, 290-1, 34 ^^
Gawdy, Philip, 294 9, 3^7, 328 Qo—fi 101—2 iQi, t94,
Gilbert, Sir Humphrey, 61, 69-70, 76-7,83 6, 0 3, 9 , 9
197-8; Sir John, 258
359
INDEX
Gilly Abbey, 272, 273, 283-6
Godolphin, Sir Francis, 161, 261; Sir William, 74, 75
Grainville, Richard de, 17
Granville, Bernard (ist), 347, 352; (2nd), 352“3; (S^d), 353-4
- Countess, 352, 354; Denis, Dean of Durham, 17; George,
Lord Lansdowne, 15, 350-2; Mary, Mrs. Delany, 353-4;
William Henry, 3rd Earl of Bath, 350-2, 354
Grenfells, the, 354-6; Julian Grenfell, 355”6
Grenville, Sir Bernard, 58, 281, 337-9, 341; Sir Bevil, 22, 340,
342-5, 347~S; George, 76, 78, 126, 128-9, HL 162, 183;
Lady Grace, 343-5; Honor, Lady Lisle, 21, 26-33; John,
Rector of Kilkhampton, 28; John, 2nd son of Sir Richard,
21, 259, 270, 339-41 ; John, ist Earl of Bath, 347-50, 35^-3;
Lady Mary, 58-9, 67-70, 337-8; Dame Maude, 41-2, 44,
48; Sir Richard, Marshal of Calais, 21, 26-47, 4^
- Sir Richard, birth, 36-7; wardship and education, 48-53;
student of Inner Temple, 53; pardon for manslaughter,
54-6; Member of Parliament, 56, 76-9, 190-2; marriage,
58-9; in Hungary, 61-4; Ireland, 66-70, 264-5, 267-86;
portrait, 79-80; prepares South Sea Voyage, 83-112; ob-
tains charter for Bideford, 1 13-16; shipping interests, 1 17,
privateering, 1 1 8, and the Castle of Comfort^ 1 1 8-2 1 ; recon-
structs Buckland Abbey, 123-6; social life in Cornwall,
126-9; Sheriff of Cornwall, 130-56; knighted, 144; law-
suits, 150, 169-74; piracy cases, 146, 162-8; the Rectory of
Kilkhampton, 174-8; first voyage to Virginia, 192-220;
captures Spanish prize, 216-21; second Virginia voyage,
233-4; descent upon the Azores, 234-5; prepares third
voyage, 255-7; contingent of ships to serve against Armada,
257-9; defences of Cornwall against Armada, 246-8; Irish
service, 264-5; ^^e Azores, 293-320; battle of Flores,
303-13; death, 313-16; controversy over last Action, 32 1-7;
fame, 23, 328-31 ; character, 331-6; religion, 333-4; family,
337-42; his memory, 9; and the Elizabethan Age, 22-5
- Sir Richard, Royalist Commander, 342, 345-7; Sir Roger,
29; Roger, 21, 36, 38-9; Sir Thomas, 19, 20, 27-8; William,
Archbishop of York, 18; William, 202
Guinness, Mr. 274
360
INDEX
Hakluyt, Richard, i8o, 198-9, 202
Harriot, Thomas, 24, 205, 216, 228, 229, 230
Hartland, 17, 275
Havana, 291-2, 301
Hawkins, Sir John, 50, 71-2, 78, 81-2, 244-5, ^88, 290-1; Sir
Richard, 302, 316-17, 330; William, 50, 72-3, 95-6, 118-
121, 244, 262
Henry VIII, 27, 32, 33, 39
Hilling, Thomas, 150, 170-1
Hispaniola, 208
Howard, Lord Admiral, 259-64, 324; Queen Katherine, 30,
132; Lady Margaret, 30, 132; Lord Thomas, 152, 293-6,
298, 303, 305-7, 324-7; Thomas, Viscount Bindon, 151-2;
Thomas, 4th Duke of Norfolk, 74, 77-9
Hungary, war in, 61-3
Ireland, 64-70, 100, 153, 160-1, 264-5, 267-86, 339-40
Jamestown, 243
Kerrycuirihy, 66-7, 269, 273, 278
Kilkhampton, 15-16, 28, 43, 58, 75, 146, 232, 233, 333, 350,
354) 356
Killigrews, the, 51, 167; Sir Henry Killigrew, 76, 78, 324; Sir
John, 76, 140, 146-7, 164-8; William, 76, 78, 190
Lane, Ralph, 205, 207, 213, 216-17, 222-9
Langhorne, Captain William, 295, 298, 314, 337
Lanherne, 18, 74, 131-2, 136, 152
Launceston, 40, 42, 56, 76, 78, 135, 139, 140, 142, 143-4, 170,
171, 199, 263
Launceston Priory, 35, 139
Lee, Sir Richard, 33-4
Lepanto, 64
Linschoten, J. H. van, 235, 291, 302, 3 H-i 5 > 319-20
Lisbon, 245, 287-8, 322, 328
Liskeard, 78
Lisle, Arthur, Lord, 26, 27, 30, 32-3
361
INDEX
Lizard, the, 262
Lopez, Enrique, 217-20
Lundy Island, 149-50, 163, 232
Magellan, 86-7; Straits of, 85, 97, 103, 105-9, 237
Manteo, 215, 239
Marco Polo, 87
Markham, Gervase, 329-30
Marlowe, Christopher, 24-5, 54-5
Mary, Queen, 50-2, 53
- Queen of Scots, 73-4, 77 " 9 > 251
Maximilian II, Emperor, 61-3
Mayne, Cuthbert, 133-44, 335
Mendoza, Bernardino de, 155, 159, 189, 236-7, 253, 256
Menendez, Pedro, 210, 21 1, 213
Mohuns, the, 186-8; Lord Mohun, 345
Monk, George, Duke of Albemarle, 347-8
Monson, Sir William, 302, 322-3, 326
Munster, 65-6, 69-70, 231-2, 267-73, 275-81, 282-5
Nantwich, 183, 184-5
Newfoundland, 191, 198
Nombre de Dios, 80-1, 109
Norris, Sir John, 287-8
Ormonde, Thomas, loth Earl of, 67, 69-70
Oxenham, John, 106-9, ^54
Pacific Ocean, the, 85-112, 154
Padstow, 16, 28, 162-4, ^ 79 ^ 274, 294
Paget, Eusebius, 146, 174-7
Palaeologus, John, 38
Panama, Isthmus of, 80-1, 106
Parliament, Reformation, 29-30; of 1571, 76-7; 1572, 77-9;
1581, 160; 1584, 190-2, 202-3
Parsons, Robert, 159-60
Paulet, Sir Hugh, 48-9, 78
Pemisapan {alias Wingina), Indian chief, 214, 215, 227-8
362
INDEX
Petiheale, 126, 128, 183
Penryn, 40, 165-6
Philip II, King of Spain, 51, 53, 72, 157-8, 235-8, 289, 291, 292
Piracy, 39-40, 146-7, 161, 162-4, 164-8
Plymouth, 15, 36, 41, 59, 78, 81, 118, 124, 145-6, 154-6, 186,
203, 217, 236, 244, 245, 251-2, 254-5, 259. 262, 263, 288,
294 -> 346, 348
Porto Rico, 206, 208, 210-11, 212, 219
Portugal, 157-8, 287
Privateers, 39-40, 82
Quinones, Diego Hernandez de, 210-11, 213
Ralegh, Sir Walter, 21, 61, 62-3, 161, 186, 190-2, 193-9, 221,
222, 231, 233, 236, 238-41, 243, 254-5, 261, 264-5, 302,
305-6, 308-13. 318, 323, 324-7> 332. 333> 335. 34i
Reformation, the, 20-1, 22, 29, 35, 64
Roanoke Island, 201, 214-16, 223-5, 227-8, 230, 238-9, 242
Roscarrock, 28, 126-8, 162; John Roscarrock, 27; Thomas, 128,
162; Nicholas, 128, 141
Rowse, Sir Anthony, 205, 216
Russell, John, ist Lord, 35, 41, 42
St. Legers, the, 58, 149, 15 1; Sir John St. Leger, 58-9, 76, 78,
149-50, 190; Lady, 67-9; Sir Warham, 58, 65-70, 268-70,
278-9. 339-40
St. Leger House, 121-2
St. Malo, 118-21
St. Michael Penkivel, 178-9
St. Vincent, Cape, 245, 293, 297
Saltash, 43, 73, 146
San Domingo, 21 1, 213, 217, 221, 228, 237
San Juan de Ulloa, 60, 71
Santa Cruz, Admiral, 158, 159, 203
Scilly Isles, 81, 257, 261, 262, 347
Secoton, 215, 226, 239
Ships: Aidy 265; Ark Ralegh^ 197; Ascension, 309-10, 317; BeaVy
244; bark Bonner, 229; Brave, 241; Castle of Comfort, 96-7,
3^3
INDEX
117-21; Cavallero de la Mar, 304; Centurion, 298;
Charles, 293; Cherubim, 298; Corselet, 298; Crane, 292, 305;
Ip.hance, 2Q2, 296, 305; Dorothy, 205; Dragon, 80; Dudley,
, 1^05: Elizabeth Bonaventure, 293, 305; Elizabeth
4; Foresight, 265, 293, 298, 305, 341; hs^vk Francis,
1 ; Garland, 241; George Noble, 308; Golden Hind
Golden Hind (Gilbert’s ship), 197-8;
Harry, ; Jesus of Liibeck,
71-2; Leon Rojo, 304; Lion (Grenville’s), 20
(ypeen’s ship), 298, 305; Lyon, 313; Madre de Dios, 341;
Margaret and John, 298; Marie, 1 17; Marie of San Sebastian,
165-8; Mary Rose, 21, 38-9, 355; Mayflower, 298; Minion, 71 ;
Moon, 293; Moonshine, 305; Nonpareil, 293, 300; Our Lady of
Aransusia, 146-17; Pascoe, 80; Pilgrim, 310; Revenge, 21, 23,
235, 265, 287-8, 292-3, 295-6, 299, 302, 305-H> 3^6-17,
319-20, 322-8, 330-1, 337, 355; Roe, 241; Roebuck, 205;
Royal George, 39; St, Andrew, 323; SL Leger, 259; San Barnabe,
307-8; San Francisco, 304; San Pablo, 314-15; San Phelipe
(carrack), 252; San Phelipe (galleon), 307-8, 317; Santa Cruz,
3^1*, Santa Maria oiSt. Vincent, 217-19; Sauveur Malo,
118-21; Squirrel, 197; Susan, 298; Swan, 80; Tiger (Gren-
ville’s), 205-6, 214, 217, 230, 259; Tiger (Queen’s ship),
265; Triumph, 244; Victory, 244; Victory (Nelson’s), 23;
Virgin God Save Her, 259, 339; White Lion, 259
Sidney, Sir Henry, 65, 69-70; Sir Philip, 191, 225
Solomon Islands, 88-9
Solyman the Magnificent, Sultan, 61-2
Spain, relations with, 72, 82, 90, iio~ii, 157,
Specott, Nicholas, 54-5, 57
Spencer, Edmund, 276-7
Stannary Court, 150
John, 17. ^
5» 34. 37. 57”8, 170-1, 176, 185, 263, 344, 347, 349,
351. 352, 356
Stukely, Captain Thomas, 93, 153; Thomas, 270
Taverner, Richard, 171-3
Tintagel Castle, 181-2
364
INDEX
Tregarrick, 186-8
Tregian, Francis, 34, 132-43; John, 33-4
Trelawny, John, 187
Trematon Castle, 41-2
Tremaynes, the, 50-2; Arthur Tremayne, 235; Edmund, 50,
59, 95, 141; Nicholas and Andrew, 50, 60-1
Trevanions, the, 186-8
Uniformity, subscriptions to Act of, 75-6
Virginia, 2, 4, 116, 117, 191, 199-202, 214-16, 223-30, 236,
8 - 42 , 332
Walker, Christopher, 170-1
Walsingham, Sir Francis, 177, 221-2, 223, 225, 270
Wanchese, 215, 239
Waterford, 67, 282-3
Wentworth, Paul, 78; Peter, 77, 78
West Indies, 80-1, 106, 199, 205-14, 236, 237, 243, 300-1
White, John, 213, 225, 238-43
Winslades, the, 186-8
Wokokon, Isle of, 200, 214-15
Wyot, Philip, 233, 246, 247-8, 258, 327
365
