[32] Sir Bevill Grenville was forty-eight years of age at the time of his death, as appears by the following record of his birth in the parish register at Kilkhampton:
'Bevell, the sonne of the worshipful Bernarde Greynville, Esquire, was borne and baptized at Brinn in Cornwall, Ao. Dni. 1595.'
In the margin, 'Marche 1595, borne the 23d day; baptized the 25th day of Marche.'
[33] Sir Bevill's name and memory were of course long revered in the family. Mrs. Delany was particularly anxious that it should be always borne by some member of it, and it may be convenient to note here that his grandson, Sir Bevill Grenville, was Governor of Barbadoes, in 1704 (cf. Rawlinson, A 271, Bodleian Library), a major-general in the army, and M.P. for Fowey, 1685-89.
[34] Echard gives some interesting details respecting the conduct of this delicate business; and Masson refers to it in his 'Life of Milton' (vol. v.)
[35] The following extract from Pepys is so amusing that I cannot forbear inserting it: 'This afternoon Mr. Ed. Pickering told me in what a sad, poor condition for clothes and money the King was, and all his attendants, when he came to him first from my Lord, their clothes not being worth forty shillings the best of them. And how overjoyed the King was when Sir J. Greenville brought him some money: so joyful, that he called the Princess Royal and Duke of York to look upon it as it lay in the portmanteau before it was taken out.'
[36] This appears the more probable from the following passage, which occurs in Lyte's 'History of Eton College' (p. 269): 'The keen competition for Fellowships, which we have noticed at the period of the Restoration, continued almost throughout the reign of Charles II. Sir John Grenville was not satisfied with having procured the Provostship for his kinsman, Nicholas Monk, and applied to the King for a Fellowship for his own brother. The vacancy caused by the death of Grey had just been filled up, but it was arranged that Denis Grenville should have the next. But, though the letter in his favour was confirmed sixteen months later, the Fellowship which Meredith resigned on his promotion to the Provostship, was granted by the forgetful King to Dr. Heaver, of Windsor. The Grenvilles were naturally indignant at such treatment, and the King had to write to the Provost and Fellows, explaining that the late appointment had been made in consequence of Laud's decree of 1634, which annexed a Fellowship at Eton to the Vicarage of Windsor, and once more bidding them reserve the next place for Grenville, whose family had rendered such eminent services to the Royalist cause.
[37] 'Comperts and Considerations.'
[38] He had also published previously some other sermons; a letter written to the Clergy of his Archdeaconry; and 'Counsel and Directions, Divine and Moral, in plain and familiar Letters of Advice to a Young Gentleman' (his nephew, Thomas Higgons), 'soon after his admission into a College in Oxon;' and his Memoirs, some of them of a painfully personal character, were edited by the Surtees Society in 1865.
[39] It is indeed said that James promised him, on his restoration, the Archbishopric of York (a post which, as we have seen, was once before filled by a member of the Grenville family).