Such were old Stow, and its gallant owner Sir Richard. And the women of the Grenville home seem, for the most part, to have been as fair and virtuous and accomplished as their husbands were sagacious and brave. Polwhele, in after-times, particularly noticed the remarkable beauty of Sir Richard's great-great-granddaughter Mary, the daughter of the Honourable Bernard Grenville, of Stow. Sir Richard married Mary, the daughter of Sir John St. Leger; but the lovely dame had, like the wife of her illustrious grandson, Sir Bevill, to give up what was dearest to her in the world, to the cruel necessities of the troubled times in which they lived.
Yet I cannot doubt that these women had the spirits of Roman matrons within them; and would have assented to Lovelace's lines had their husbands whispered the couplet to them:
'I could not love thee, dear, so much
Lov'd I not honour more.'
To return to Sir Richard:—In 1591 we find him acting as Vice-Admiral of a squadron sent out to intercept the richly-laden Spanish fleet on its return from the West Indies; a service of the utmost importance, as, in capturing or sinking the Indian supplies, observes Mr. Arber, England 'stopped the sources of Philip's power to hurt herself.' How the English ships were surprised in their lurking-place 'at Flores[14] in the Azores,' and how valiantly Sir Richard Grenville fought and died for Queen and country, let Raleigh and Tennyson tell.
It was towards the end of August, whilst the Admiral, Lord Thomas Howard,[15] with six of her Majesty's ships and a few smaller vessels and pinnaces, was at anchor at Flores, when news suddenly came of the near approach of the great Spanish fleet. Many of the Englishmen were ill on shore, while others were filling the ships with ballast, or collecting water. Imperfectly manned and ballasted as they were, there was nothing for it—at least so Lord Howard appears to have thought—in the face of so enormously preponderating a force as they found was close at hand, but to weigh anchor, and escape as they best could: and so it became a complete sauve qui peut; some of the ships were even compelled to slip their cables. Sir Richard, as Vice-Admiral, was the last to start, delaying to do so till the final moment, in order to collect several of his sick crew who were on the island, and who, if he had left them there, must have been lost. This noble delay of his resulted in the safety of the remainder of the fleet; but it cost Sir Richard and his crew their lives; and the little Revenge, which had four or five times narrowly escaped shipwreck, her existence: but she was, as Admiral Hawkins described her, 'ever a ship loaden, and full fraught with ill successe.' Grenville refused to 'cut his mainsail, and cast about,' and so run from the enemy; but persuaded his crew that he would contrive to pass through the two great Spanish squadrons which intercepted him, 'in despight of them, and would enforce those of Sivil to give him way.' It was the story of the 300 Spartans at Thermopylæ acted over again. The huge San Philip of 1,500 tons (carrying 'three tier of ordinance on a side, and eleven pieces on every tier; she shot eight forth right out of her chase, besides those of her stern ports'), however, loomed to windward of the small English ship; and 'becalmed his sails in such sort as the Revenge could neither make way, nor feel the helm;' and then—
'Sir Richard spoke and he laughed, and we roared a hurrah, and so
The little Revenge ran on sheer into the heart of the foe,
With her hundred fighters on deck, and her ninety sick below;
For half of their fleet to the right, and half to the left were seen,
And the little Revenge ran on thro' the long sea lane between.'
What end could there be, but one, to courage so chivalric, so desperate, and so devoted as this? 'After the Revenge was entangled with this Philip,' says Raleigh, 'four other boarded her—(i.e., laid her aboard)—two on her larboard, and two on her starboard. The fight thus beginning at three o'clock in the afternoon, continued very terrible all that evening. But the great San Philip having received the lower tier of the Revenge, discharged with cross-bar shot, shifted herself with all diligence from her sides, utterly misliking her first entertainment. Some say that the ship foundered, but we cannot report for truth, unless we are assured. The Spanish ships were filled with companies of soldiers, in some two hundred, beside the mariners; in some five, in others eight, hundred. In ours there were none at all besides the mariners, but the servants of the commanders, and some few voluntary gentlemen only. After many interchanged vollies 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.'
'And the rest they came aboard us, and they fought us hand to hand,
For a dozen times they came with their pikes and musqueteers,
And a dozen times we shook 'em off, as a dog that shakes his ears
When he leaps from the water to the land.'
'In the beginning of the fight,' Sir Walter Raleigh continues, 'the George Noble, of London, having received some shot through her, by the armadas, fell under the lee of the Revenge, and asked Sir Richard what he would command him, being but one of the victuallers, and of small force; Sir Richard bade him save himself, and leave him to his fortune. After the fight had thus, without intermission, continued while the day lasted, and some hours of the night, many of our men were slain and hurt, and one of the great gallions of the armada, and the admiral of the hulks both sunk, and in many other of the Spanish ships great slaughter was made.'
The marvel is how a fragment of the brave little craft was still afloat, for