'18. That at nine o'clock, our family prayers being ended, all persons shall repair to their chambers; and are desired to dismisse the servants soe soon as possible, that they may put the house in order, and go to their beds near ten of the clock or by eleven at farthest....'
'20. That my house bell be rung every morning at 5 in the winter, and about 4 in the summer to awaken my family, and alarume my servants to arise, and to give opportunity and incouragement to early risers, who are alwaies the most welcome persons to my family.'
'25. That there shall bee no dinners on Wednesdaies and Fridaies in Lent.'
* * * * *
But James II.'s 'Second Declaration of Indulgence,' 7th April, 1688, an attempt to divide the Protestant party, and to secure the favour of the Non-conformists after having failed to seduce from their allegiance the leaders of the Church of England, placed the Dean in a most trying position. His loyalty to his Church was in conflict with his loyalty to his Sovereign; and the latter prevailed: 'If the King goes beyond his Commission, he must answer for it to God, but I'le not deface one line thereof. Let my liege and dread Sovereign intend to do what he pleases to me or mine: yet my hand shall never be upon him, so much as to cut off the skirt of his garment.' Not only (to the Dean's intense grief) did his elder brother, the Earl of Bath, now desert the Stuart cause, but another Cornish Church dignitary of this period—Bishop Jonathan Trelawney—took the bolder course of opposing the King's views, thus exemplifying the old Cornish saying that a Trelawny never wanted courage, nor a Grenville loyalty. It is needless to repeat that the Dean of Durham found himself in a very small minority.
His loyalty was about to undergo another and a severer test. In the autumn of 1688 news arrived of the projected 'invasion and usurpation,' as our Dean would always call it, of the Prince of Orange: at once he summoned his Chapter, prevailed upon them to assist the King's cause 'with their purses as well as their prayers,' and £700 were accordingly subscribed forthwith. But Lord Lumley pounced upon Durham on the 6th of December in that year, whilst the Dean was in his pulpit preaching a sermon, still preserved in the Surtees Collection, on 'Christian Resignation and Resolution, with some loyal reflexions on the Dutch Invasion'; and Dr. Grenville was, on his refusal to deliver up his arms and horses, confined within the walls of his own Deanery during the occupation of the city by the friends of King William III. Another similar sermon, however, did he, with undaunted courage, preach on the following Sunday, notwithstanding his now almost solitary position amongst his brother clergy. But James's cause was entirely lost; and our Dean had to fly from Durham to Carlisle at midnight on the 11th of December, with the help of two faithful servants. At Carlisle he learned that all was over, and made up his mind to follow his King into France, if only he could make good his escape by way of Edinburgh. On his way thither he was roughly handled by a mob, who took him for a Popish priest and Jesuit, and at eleven at night 'pulled me out of my bed, rifling my pockets and my chamber, and carrying away my horses (two geldings worth £40) and my portmantoe, and mounting me on a little jade not worth 40s.' Once more he was plundered on the road, and returned to Carlisle, where he preached on Christmas Day, when he says he hoped that he convinced the people that he was no Romanist.
In the following month, however, he made another attempt—this time successfully—to reach Edinburgh; and after a long and tedious voyage, arrived at Honfleur on the 19th March—the very day after James had left Brest for Ireland, 'a great mortification and disappointment to mee,' adds Dean Grenville. Rouen was the place which he had fixed upon for his abode, and thither he removed a few days afterwards, forthwith setting about writing remonstrances to his Bishop, his brother, and his 'lapsed assistants,' his Curates; printing his sermons, to which reference has just been made, and also his 'Loyall farewell Visitation Speech,' delivered on 15th November, 1688.[38]
Little remains to be told of him, but that he was formally deprived on the appointed date of 1st February, 1690/1, and his goods and chattels were distrained by the Sheriff, in consequence of his continued pecuniary embarrassments; his library, also, which was very rich in Bibles and Prayer-books, was purchased by Sir George Wheeler; and the Chapter had to grant the unhappy Mrs. Grenville an allowance of £80 a year 'in compassion to her necessities.' She died twelve years before her husband, and was buried in Durham Cathedral.
Nor did James, to whose Court at St. Germains Dennis Grenville shortly afterwards repaired, by any means console his faithful servant for the troubles and trials he had undergone in his King's behalf. 'He was slighted,' says Surtees, in his 'History of Durham,' 'by the bigoted Prince, for whom he had forfeited every worldly possession, because he would not also abandon his religion.'[39] In fact, the Dean was at length compelled to retire from the Court to Corbeil, his ancestral home, about twenty miles from Paris, in consequence of the indignities heaped upon him there by his ecclesiastical opponents, and by their persistent, though vain, attempts to draw him into polemical discussions. Whilst in France, he sometimes went by the name of Corbeil—sometimes by the name of Stotherd; and here it may be added, that Mr. H. R. Fox Bourne, in his 'Life of John Locke,' mentions that the illustrious metaphysician and Dean Grenville were old friends, and that they corresponded in 1677-78 on the subjects of Recreation and Scrupulosity. Copies of the letters are in the British Museum, Additional MSS. 4290. Mr. Bourne states that James II. actually appointed Dean Grenville Roman Catholic Archbishop of York.[40]
Two furtive journeys did he make to England, in disguise—one in February, 1689-90, 'whereby he got a small sum of money to subsist while abroad ... tho' with much trouble and danger occasioned him by an impertinent and malitious post master, who discovered him in Canterbury;' and once again in 1695, probably with the same object. In 1702 he wrote an amusing letter to his nephew, Sir George Wheeler, acknowledging 'a seasonable supply' of £20, from which it may be gathered that he preserved to the last his unbroken and cheerful spirit. But, in the following year, on Wednesday, the 8th April, 1703, at six in the morning, the exiled, supplanted, and childless Dean of Durham died—as he asserts, himself, in the preamble of his will—a true son of the Church of England, at his lodgings at the Fossée St. Victoire, in Paris, in the sixty-seventh year of his age.