instituted a nominee of Sir John Raleigh’s to the Grenville family living of Kilkhampton, in defiance, it would appear, of the lawful patron’s rights. Sir Theobald made war at once in the best Grenville manner. At dawn on Sunday, March 24, 1347, he invaded the Manor of Bishop’s Tawton with 500 followers “armed with divers kinds of weapons, offensive and defensive, after the fashion of men going to mortal war.” They stormed the Manor-house, the Sanctuary and the Manse; killed some of the defenders, took plunder to the value of two hundred marks (the Bishop’s estimate) and otherwise “multipliciter perturbarunt pacem et tranquillitatem Domini nostri Regis.” The Bishop’s peace and tranquillity being also disturbed, he at once excommunicated the entire army. Sir Theobald
then brought and won an action against Raleigh in the King’s Bench; the Bishop’s man appealed to Rome, with the inevitable result; the King’s Bench judgement was annulled, with costs against Sir Theobald. Cheered by this, the Bishop sent the Abbot of Hartland and the Prior of Launceston to Kilkhampton one fine July day to put things to rights. The Grenville army, with faces masked and painted, bows bent and arrows notched, met the Church Militant in a narrow lane and routed it shamefully; the pursuit lasted for a mile, and Sir Theobald then fortified and held Kilkhampton Church for several days. After eighteen months more of contumacy, peace was made; from the terms we may judge how hard the Grenville had pressed his tremendous adversary. He knelt, it is true, and confessed his guilt—there
there was no denying that—but the Bishop, in return for this preservation of his dignity, had to revoke his own institution and admit a new rector upon Sir Theobald’s presentation; Raleigh got nothing but the barren pleasure of reading aloud the Act of Submission. The significant points of the story are to me, first, that this boy of twenty-two gained his end in the teeth of all Rome; second, that to gain it he cared not what he did or suffered; and last, that it was never worth the money or the crimes it cost him.
It is vain, I think, to deny that in such a family group as this, Sir Richard Grenville of the Revenge would be in every sense at home. His record is plain. In 1585, when Raleigh’s first colony for Virginia set out from Plymouth in seven ships, it was Sir Richard who took command of it,
