'Trevanion is up, and Godolphin is nigh,
And Harris of Hayne's o'er the river;
From Lundy to Loo, "One and all" is the cry,
And "The King and Sir Bevill for ever!"
'Ay! by Tre, Pol, and Pen, ye may know Cornish men,
'Mid the names and the nobles of Devon;
But if truth to the King be a signal, why then
Ye can find out the Grenville in heaven.
'Ride! ride with red spur! there is death in delay,
'Tis a race for dear life with the devil;
If dark Cromwell prevail, and the King must give way,
This earth is no place for Sir Bevill.
'So at Stamford he fought, and at Lansdowne he fell,
But vain were the visions he cherished;
For the great Cornish heart that the King loved so well,
In the grave of the Grenville is perished.'
From Stow Bevill Grenville went to the famous old West-country college, Exeter College, Oxford; where he was placed under Dr. Prideaux (one, I fancy, of the worthy family of Prideaux Place, Padstow). He shortly afterwards entered Parliament, and going to Scotland, in command of a troop of horse, with the King, was knighted.[20]
The relations of Sir Bevill and Clarendon were peculiar. Clarendon had quarrelled with Sir Bevill's fiery brother, Sir Richard (created, according to Whitelocke, Baron of Lostwithiel in 1644), a man of high spirit and of considerable bravery and military skill, but with an unlucky facility for getting into scrapes and troubles of all sorts. He begins with a squabble with his wife's brother-in-law, the powerful Earl of Suffolk, which ends in Sir Richard's having to pay a fine of £8,000, besides undergoing sixteen months' imprisonment in the Fleet. He afterwards served in Ireland, and on his return to England, finding it a matter of considerable difficulty to get his arrears of pay, resorted to the following questionable artifice for the purpose. He pretended to lend a not unwilling ear to the Parliament's suggestion, that in return for being paid the money due to him, he should transfer his sword from the King's cause to theirs. Indeed, he even went so far as to take the command of a body of Roundhead horse, and marched upon Basing. But on reaching Hounslow he, without much difficulty, persuaded all his officers and men to proceed to Oxford instead, where he placed the services of his whole party at the King's disposal, whereupon the Parliamentarians righteously enough dubbed him 'skellum' (scoundrel) and 'renegado.' He did yeoman's service for the King in Cornwall, and Charles left the blockade of Plymouth in his charge—a blockade which, as we know, was finally abandoned. The whole story is given in Llewellyn Jewitt's 'History of Plymouth,' together with a scornful letter to Sir Richard from the defenders. And I notice that in a letter from Sir R. Grenville to his nephew, the Earl of Bath, then only about sixteen years old, he is reported to have said, 'We have here made a stand with our forces and the garrisons of Salt Ash, Milbrooke and others considerable have come up and added to our former, and we hope well.' The letter is dated 'Truro, 29 July, 1644.'
There appears to have been no sufficient reason why he should have been asked to surrender his post of 'the King's General in the West'[21] in favour of Lord Hopton, but he was compelled to do so; and on giving up his command he refused to serve under that officer, upon which he was forthwith 'clapped up' in Launceston Gaol, to the great dissatisfaction of many of the Cornish officers and soldiers, who attributed their ultimate discomfiture to the absence of Sir Richard from the field.[22] Clarendon (his foe), and the prejudiced and inaccurate Echard, give very unflattering accounts of Sir Richard; but his grand-nephew, George Lord Lansdowne, published a skilful and temperate vindication of him against their aspersions; and Sir Richard printed his own 'Defence' in Holland, dating it 28th January, 1654. Whilst in Holland, by the way, he seems to have attempted reprisals upon the Earl of Suffolk; for we find that one of Milton's Latin 'State Letters' is addressed to the Archduke Leopold of Austria, Governor of the Spanish Netherlands (undated), to the effect that Sir Charles Harbord, an Englishman, has had certain goods and household stuff violently seized at Bruges by Sir Richard Grenville. The goods had originally been sent from England to Holland in 1643 by the then Earl of Suffolk, in pledge for a debt owing to Harbord; and Grenville's pretext was that he also was a creditor of the Earl, and had obtained a decree of the English Chancery in his favour. Now, by the English law, neither was the present Earl of Suffolk bound by that decree, nor could the goods be distrained under it. The decision of the Court to that effect was transmitted, and his Serenity was requested to cause Grenville to restore the goods, inasmuch as it was against the comity of nations that anyone should be allowed an action in foreign jurisdiction which he would not be allowed in the country where the cause of the action first arose. The letter ends thus:
'The justice of the case itself and the universal reputation of your Serenity for fair dealing have moved us to commend the matter to your attention; and, if at any time there shall be occasion to discuss the rights or convenience of your subjects with us, I promise that you shall find our diligence in the same not remiss, but at all times most ready.'
Clarendon and Sir Richard both went into exile, and more than once hurled reproaches at each other; but the crowning misfortune of Grenville's life was the refusal of Charles II., on Sir Richard's failing to justify some statements which he had made against Lord Clarendon, to let him appear at Court. This broke the old man's heart. He let his beard grow from that time; and died soon afterwards.[23]