The following is said to have been an earlier letter by many years, written when Grace was a wife of six years' standing:

The superscription of this letter is:

'To my ever dearest and best Friend, Mr. Bevill Grenvile, at the Rainbow, in Fleet Street.'

The other letters in this collection—alleged to have been so strangely discovered—will be found enumerated in the Appendix to Mr. Gould's 'Life of Hawker.'

There are many portraits of Sir Bevill Grenville. One is in Prince's 'Worthies of Devon;' another in Lloyd's 'Worthies;' and one, by Dobson, is in the fine collection at Petworth Park. Here also is a group described as Sir Bevill Grenville, Anne St. Leger (his grandmother!) and John Earl of Bath, their son—after Vandyck.

What can be added to such tributes as those which we have just read but that, in Sir Bevill Grenville's case at least, 'the good was not interred with his bones;'[33] his valiant spirit continued to animate his friends and followers, and prompted their valour on Roundway Down, at the siege of Bristol, and—when one of the last gleams of success shone upon the Royal cause—when Essex's infantry surrendered to the King in person, at Fowey. On the latter occasion Sir Richard, brother of Sir Bevill, held and fortified Hall House, on the eastern side of the harbour, for the King: he had previously captured Restormel Castle near Lostwithiel.

Then there soon came a time when, as Macaulay says, England had to witness spectacles such as these: 'Major-Generals fleecing their districts—soldiers revelling on the spoils of a ruined peasantry—upstarts, enriched by the public plunder, taking possession of the hospitable firesides and hereditary trees of the old gentry—boys smashing the beautiful windows of cathedrals—Fifth-Monarchy men shouting for King Jesus—Quakers riding naked through the market-place—and agitators lecturing from tubs on the fate of Agag.'

---

'Where,' asked Dr. Llewellyn, the Principal of St. Mary Hall, Oxford, in the stilted style of the day in which he wrote:

The answer to which question must be that the next famous Grenville—Sir Bevill's eldest son, Sir John—was destined to become a conspicuous figure in the field of Diplomacy. He even attained to a higher rank than his father, soon after the Stuart cause became once more triumphant. Leaving Gloucester Hall, Oxford,—where he was a Gentleman Commoner,—when only fifteen years of age, he commanded his father's regiment in the west; and at the second battle of Newbury (to which he brought his Cornish troops) he was wounded, and left for dead on the field. He had received a dangerous wound in the head from a halberd, and was carried to the King and Prince of Wales, who ordered him to be taken care of in Donnington Castle hard by. The Castle was soon after besieged, and the bullets constantly whistled through his sick-room; but the boy-warrior at last came safely off. When the Scilly Isles revolted from the Parliament and became the last rallying-point of the Royalists, he it was who (like one of his ancestors) was made Governor, for the King—taking up his quarters at Elizabeth Castle on St. Mary's Island. But the Parliamentary Admirals, Blake and Ayscough, appeared before Scilly with so overwhelming a force, that Sir John Grenville thought it best to capitulate; extorting, however, such favourable terms that, until Blake represented to what an extent his own honour was involved in their confirmation, the Parliament refused to recognise them. It is said that Sir John had with him commissioned officers enough to 'head an army.'

Sir John Grenville, although he now returned quietly to Stow, was by no means unmindful of his royal master, and soon opened negotiations with his cousin George Monk (afterwards Duke of Albemarle), who became the well known chief instrument in the restoration of Charles II. A brother of Monk's (afterwards Bishop of Hereford), who was at this time in Cornwall, having been appointed by the Grenvilles to the living of Kilkhampton, seems to have been the medium of this dangerous intercourse; but our Sir John managed matters with such loyalty, courage, and discretion, that all ultimately went well for the Royal cause.[34] He had at one time accompanied Charles into exile, and was one of the Commissioners, known as the 'Sealed Knot' from their secrecy, appointed to conduct the affairs of the King in England during his absence; and though Sir John Grenville could not obtain from Monk (who was determined upon being supreme in the transaction) the stipulations which even Charles's most loyal friends thought desirable for the future, events proved that it would have been well if more weight had been attached to the suggestions of the sagacious Cornish Knight and his colleagues. So highly, however, were his fidelity and wisdom esteemed, that he was selected to present to Parliament the King's proposals from Breda: an office which he discharged with such efficiency as to obtain the thanks of both Houses, and a jewel worth £500, as well as a ring worth £300 from the Common Council, for his services at this important crisis. (Cf. also Thurloe's 'State Papers,' Grammont's 'Memoirs,' Clarendon's Correspondence and Diary, and Dr. John Price's 'Mystery and Method of His Majesty's Happy Restoration,' dedicated to the Earl of Bath.) Pepys describes the circumstances, and tells us how, on 2nd March, 1660, Parliament continued bareheaded whilst the King's letter was being read.[35]

The favours of royalty were also showered upon Grenville—though Charles II. was apt to be unmindful of his friends in the past—and Sir John was made a Secretary of State, and was created Lord Grenville, of Kilkhampton and Bytheford, Viscount Grenville of Lansdowne, and Earl of Bath; with a pension of £3,000 a year to be paid out of the Stannaries, of which he was made Lord Warden, and a reversion to the Dukedom of Albemarle. He also received the Royal Licence to use his titles of Earl of Corboile, Thorigny, and Granville. Of the architectural merits of his 'new house' at Stow, built for him, it is said, by the King, Kingsley writes in disparaging terms, as we have seen. He married Jane, the daughter of Sir Peter Wiche or Wych, by whom he left a noble offspring. The eldest son, Charles, second Earl of Bath, died in 1701,—twelve days after his father; the second son, John, who was created Baron Grenville of Potheridge in 1703, died in 1707; and the male line became extinct on the death, from small-pox, of his son William Henry, third Earl of Bath, in 1771.

James II., however, seems to have shown the Earl of Bath—who was a staunch Protestant—little favour. So Grenville declared for the Prince of Orange; and, having first seized Plymouth citadel, admitted the Dutch fleet into that harbour; his nephew Bevill performing a similar service with his uncle's own regiment at Jersey. King William III. consequently created him a member of his Privy Council, and continued him in his previous offices.

The Earl's eldest son, Charles, was accidentally killed by the discharge of a pistol at his father's funeral; and the title consequently devolved upon his son William Henry, thus giving rise to the observation that at one time there were 'three Earls of Bath above ground at the same time.' From the first Earl descended, in the female line, the present representatives of the family—the Thynnes, not unknown to fame.

---

And Sir Bevill had another son, Dennis, who was by no means undistinguished in his own walk of life. Born in 1636/7, and educated probably at Eton,[36] he was entered a Gentleman Commoner of Exeter College, Oxford, on 22nd Sept., 1657; took his degree of M.A. on 28th Sept., 1660, and that of D.D. on 20th Dec, 1670. Kilkhampton was his first preferment, though he does not appear to have taken up residence there. He was Chaplain in Ordinary to Charles II.; and in 1684 was made Archdeacon and Dean of Durham. But he was a true Grenville in his attachment to the Stuarts; and early in 1690 went into exile with James II., residing at Corbeil, in France (near the place whence his family are supposed to have sprung), rather than acknowledge William III. as his sovereign. He left several works behind him, and died in Paris in 1703.

There are many incidents, however, connected with his career which seem to require a fuller notice of the Cavalier Dean. The command, 'Fear God,' scarcely commended itself more forcibly to his conscience than its complement 'Honour the King;' and, although he was in a very small minority, his high-minded consistency and loyalty were such, that, whatever we may think of his prudence, or of the practicability of his views, we are bound, I think, to honour the man who chose rather to sacrifice the highest preferments than to swear allegiance to one whom he, at least, regarded as an invader and a usurper.

There are full details of the latter part of his career preserved in the library of the Dean and Chapter of Durham, from which I have gathered most of the following accounts.

He married Ann, daughter of Bishop Cosin (an unhappy union, for her husband—and two physicians confirmed his statement—alleged that the lady was subject to fits of temporary insanity), at a time when the Church of England was in sad disorder, and when vigorous, earnest spirits were wanted to remedy the listless slovenliness of many of her clergy.

Dennis Grenville was equal to the trying occasion. He found that the Church services were often either curtailed or omitted altogether; many of the churches were 'altogether unprovided of ministers'; and the fabrics themselves were 'ruinous and in great decay.' Not only the minor Canons and singing men, but even many of the highest dignitaries were guilty, according to Cosin,[37] of sluttish and disorderly habits, even in the cathedrals themselves; and the Rubrics and Canons were almost ignored. But, as Parish Priest, as Prebendary, and as Archdeacon, and afterwards, especially in securing a weekly celebration of the Holy Communion in his own cathedral, Dennis Grenville laboured so earnestly and so conscientiously, as to warrant his promotion, young as he was, to the post of Dean.

His rapid advancement, however, seems to have almost turned his head; he became ambitious and extravagant, was frequently absent from his post, and fell into pecuniary troubles (aggravated by the non-payment of an expected marriage portion with his wife) which, almost to the last, hung like a millstone round his neck. On the 8th of July, 1674, on returning from public prayers and Captain Foster's funeral, he was actually arrested 'in his Hood and Surplice' for debt, within the cloisters; and although he was afterwards released as a Chaplain in Ordinary of the King, and though the bailiffs and the Under Sheriff who were responsible for his arrest were reprimanded before the Council Board at Hampton Court, yet the indignity seems to have entered into the Dean's very soul, producing, however, more than one good result, viz. the more economical management of his resources, and salutary counsels to his nephew at Oxford, published in 1685. He was a capital preacher, but a bad man of business: '"I cannot manage nor mind these money affairs," is his own candid confession,' observes the Rev. George Ormsby, in his interesting memoir.

Of the Dean's management of his own household full details are preserved; they will probably be found interesting here as showing how a Church dignitary lived two hundred years ago: one who was always at work on the scheme of reformation to which he had laid his hands, and who seems to have taken for his model George Herbert's 'Country Parson.' This book he recommended to his curates, and to all the clergy in his jurisdiction, 'for their rule and direction in order to the exemplary discharge of their functions, having always made it mine.' The Diocese of Durham, under such auspices as those of Cosin and Grenville, (notwithstanding the incapacity of the latter to properly manage his money affairs,) accordingly improved rapidly in tone, until the Dean was at length able to report to the King that it was 'without dispute the most exemplary county for good order and conformity of any in the nation.'

These, then, were amongst Dean Grenville's thirty-two Home Rules:

*      *      *      *      *

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.

His portrait, admirably engraved by Edelinck, was painted by Beaupoille when Dean Grenville was fifty-four years of age; a print of it is prefixed to the copy of his 'Farewell Sermons' preserved in the Bodleian Library, and there is another copy in the British Museum. His character may almost be gathered from what we have seen of his life and works; and it should be added that he was not only of good natural abilities, but also no mean scholar. His kinsman, Lord Lansdowne, may have drawn a somewhat too eulogistic account of the Dean; but, overshadowed as his fame undoubtedly is by the greater names of his ancestors, Sir Richard and Sir Bevill, it should never be forgotten that he was an energetic reformer, in very difficult times, of the Church and the clergy;—though, as he says, 'his religion and loyalty were not of the new cutt, but of the old royall stamp;'—yet he was the friend of such men as Beveridge and Comber—and, above all, it should be remembered that, whatever we may think of his judgment, he undoubtedly performed that rare act of moral heroism, the sacrifice of his dignities and honours, his ample revenues, all the comforts of his native land, and, in fact, all his worldly interests, to his conscience.

Well might it have been said of Dennis Grenville that his

and truly might he have exclaimed, whilst in exile and poverty paying the penalty of his loyal attachment to the House of Stuart, in the words of one of the Roxburgh Ballads:

He wrote to his elder brother—the Earl of Bath—a reproachful letter, in November, 1689, wherein he says, evidently hoping against hope, that nothing 'shall convince him that it is possible for one descended from his dear loyall father Sir Bevill Grenville to dye a rebell;' but I confess that the sentiment of Dean Grenville's which I prefer treasuring in my own memory, is the noble and tolerant one with which he concludes his 'Third Speech' to his clergy:

To one more only of the Grenvilles does it seem necessary to refer, as with him the connexion of that illustrious family with Cornwall ceases: viz., to George Baron Lansdowne, the poet, who was a nephew of the Dean and a grandson of Sir Bevill. His father's as well as his brother's name was Bernard. It is true that he did not live at Stow, which, as we have seen, was no longer the family mansion; but he comes within our scope: for, in a defence of his grand-uncle, Sir Richard ('Skellum') against some anonymous author who took the side of the Parliament, I find him writing thus: 'Like an old staunch Cornishman I tell you that we, who had before beaten two of your generals into the sea, might as well have beaten the third:' and again, in a letter, in 1718, to his 'dearest niece,' Mrs. Delany, he calls Cornwall 'his country.'

He was entered at Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1667, and was about the Court of James II., much smitten, it was said, with the charms of his Queen, Mary of Modena—the Myra, in all probability, of some of his amatory lines. He wrote both poems and plays, many passages in which are of a somewhat licentious character: amongst the plays are the 'British Enchanters' (for which Addison wrote the Epilogue); the 'She Gallants, or once a Lover always a Lover;' and the 'Jew of Venice,' imitated from Shakespeare. He was Member of Parliament successively for Fowey, Lostwithiel, Helston, and finally for the county of Cornwall itself; and was at length made by Queen Anne a Privy Councillor, and Treasurer of the Household, but, on some silly suspicion of plotting against the Government, was, in 1715, committed to the Tower, from which place of confinement, however, he was shortly released. In 1722, his affairs becoming embarrassed through his somewhat extravagant mode of life, he went abroad to retrench his expenses; and, returning to England, died at his house in Hanover Square on the 30th January, 1735. He had married the widow of Thomas Thynne,[42] and was celebrated for his tender devotion to his family.

A curious story about his remains is told in Lady Llanover's 'Life of Mrs. Delany.' No tomb or tablet of any kind marks (in St. Clement Danes Church) the site of their sepulchre; and when inquiries on this point were made in 1859, it was found that a short time previous to that date an order to close a vault under the Church had been put in force. The coffins in the vault were placed in the centre of the chamber, a quantity of quicklime was thrown in, and the whole then filled with rubbish. There were two bodies in the vault which had always been called 'My Lord and my Lady,' and which were in extraordinary preservation. They were not skeletons, although the skin was much dried, and they were very light; they were set upright against the wall, and it had always been the custom whenever a new clerk was appointed, to take him down into the vault and introduce him to 'My Lord and my Lady.' It seems not at all improbable that these were the corpses of Lord and Lady Lansdowne; and that their remarkable preservation was due to their having been embalmed. Lord Lansdowne's portrait may be seen in the 'Life of Mrs. Delany,' vol. i., p. 418. She says of him: 'No man had more the art of winning the affections where he wished to oblige ... he was magnificent in his nature, and valued no expense that would gratify it, which in the end hurt him and his family extremely.'

Of his character, as a man and as a poet, Anderson thus writes in his 'Poets of Great Britain:'

'The character of Granville seems to have been amiable and respectable. His good nature and politeness have been celebrated by Pope, and many other poets of the first eminence. The lustre of his rank no doubt procured him more incense than the force of his genius would otherwise have attracted; but he appears not to have been destitute of fine parts, which were, however, rather elegantly polished than great in themselves.

'There is perhaps nothing more interesting in his character than the veneration he had for some, and the tenderness he had for all of his family. Of the former his historical performances afford some pleasing proof; of the latter, there are extant two letters, one to his cousin, the last Earl of Bath, and the other to his cousin, Mr. Bevil Granville, on his entering into holy orders, written with a tenderness, a freedom, and an honesty which render them invaluable.

'The general character of his poetry is elegance, sprightliness and dignity. He is seldom tender, and very rarely sublime. In his smaller pieces he endeavours to be gay, in his larger to be great. Of his airy and light productions the chief source is gallantry, and the chief defect a superabundance of sentiment and illustrations from mythology. He seldom fetches an amorous sentiment from the depth of science. His thoughts are such as a liberal conversation and large acquaintance with life would easily supply. His diction is chaste and elegant, and his versification, which he borrowed from Waller, is rather smooth than strong.

'Mr. Granville,' says Dr. Felton, 'is the poetical son of Waller. We observe with pleasure, similitude of wit in the difference of years, and with Granville do meet at once the fire of his father's youth, and judgment of his age. He hath rivalled him in his finest address, and is as happy as ever he was in raising modern compliments upon ancient story, and setting off the British valour and the English beauty with the old gods and goddesses!'

'Granville,' says Lord Orford, 'imitated Waller, but as that poet has been much excelled since, a faint copy of a faint master must strike still less.'

The estimate of his poetical character, given by Dr. Johnson, is, in some respects, less favourable:

'Granville,' says the Doctor, 'was a man illustrious by his birth, and therefore attracted notice; since he is by Pope styled "the polite," he must be supposed elegant in his manner, and generally loved; he was in times of contest and turbulence steady to his party, and obtained that esteem which is always conferred upon firmness and consistency. With these advantages, having learned the art of versifying, he declared himself a poet, and his claim to the laurel was allowed.'

Pope, in a courtier-like passage in his 'Windsor Forest'—a poem which he dedicated to Lord Granville—says of him:

adding,

With one more extract from the praises of his contemporaries, and this the weightiest and most poetic of them all, we will conclude.

Dryden said of him—à propos of his tragedy of 'Heroick Love'—