To Edward, King and Emperor, we’ll raise our shouts anew.
And may our mighty Empire still flourish and increase—
May War and Anarchy give place to Unity and Peace.
W. H. K. WRIGHT.
THE GRENVILLES: A RACE OF
FIGHTERS.
BY THE REV. PREBENDARY GRANVILLE, M.A.
The family of Grenville claimed descent from Rollo the Sea-King, and
they did not belie their fierce and adventurous ancestor. They were
fighters to the core. Rightly they had for their bearing three
horseman’s rests, in which the lance or tilting spear was fixed. Some,
of course, through the long centuries, were senators, magistrates,
ecclesiastics; but as a rule they were men of the sword, serving their
country by land and sea.
The first Sir Richard de Grenville, “near kinsman to the Conqueror,”
sheathing his sword after the Conquest of South Wales, settled on the
borders of Devon and Cornwall beside the Severn Sea. Concerning any
feats of arms achieved by his immediate descendants the chronicles are
silent. We have only their frequent summonses “to go with the King
beyond the seas for their honour and preservation and profit of the
Kingdom”; but another Sir Richard was Marshal of Calais under Henry
VIII., and in the quaint language of Carew, “enterlaced his home
magistracy with martial employments abroad”; whilst his son, Sir Roger,
a sea captain, and the father of the future hero of the _Revenge_, after
fighting the French off the Isle of Wight in 1545, went down in the
_Mary Rose_ off Portsmouth, when that ill-fated vessel, like the _Royal
George_, two centuries later, capsized and sank with all on board.
His son, Richard, was then but two years old. The story of his boyhood
has yet to be discovered, but he first gave vent to his fierce fighting
spirit when, a stripling of some eighteen summers, he took service under
the Emperor Maximilian against the Turks, obtaining therein the
commendation of foreign historians for his intrepidity and early
knowledge of the art of war. Next we find him taking part in suppressing
the Irish rebellion, and though after this he settled for a while on his
English estates, his restless spirit and natural thirst for distinction
led him to participate in the perils and glories of the brilliant
engagement at Lepanto in 1572, when Don John of Austria, with the
combined squadrons of Christendom, defeated the Ottoman fleet. On his
return to England he was knighted.
One of the features of the Elizabethan era was the zeal for colonization
which pervaded the West of England. In common with Gilbert, Raleigh, and
many others, Grenville petitioned the Queen to allow an enterprise for
the discovery of “sundry ritche and unknowen landes.” Their request was
granted, and in 1584 two ships, provided by Raleigh and Grenville,
discovered Virginia; and the following spring, Sir Richard took command
of seven ships fitted with the first colonists of that country. On his
return journey he sighted a Spanish vessel of 300 tons, and his ship,
the _Tiger_ (which was but 140 tons), out-sailing the rest of his little
squadron, had nearly overhauled the chase, when the wind suddenly
dropped, and the little _Tiger_ and her big quarry lay becalmed. Sir
Richard’s boats had all been carried away in a gale of wind, but,
determined not to lose his prize, he “boarded her,” says Hakluyt, “with
a boat made with the boards of chests, which fell asunder and sank at
the ship’s side as soon as ever he and his men were out of it.” The
Spaniard proved richly laden, and Grenville’s dare-devilry won him
£50,000 in prize money.
But his δαιμονίη ἀρετὴ (as Froude calls it) was soon to be exemplified
in a still more striking manner in that last great service for his Queen
and country, in which he so nobly sacrificed his life, and which has
been told by Raleigh and Tennyson in “Letters of Gold.” To his great
mortification, he had been prevented from sharing in the glories of the
defeat of the Armada, having received the Queen’s special commands not
to quit Cornwall during the peril; but in the summer of 1591 he was
appointed Vice-Admiral, under Lord Thomas Howard, and despatched to the
Azores to intercept an unusually rich treasure fleet, which was lying at
Havannah ready for the homeward voyage. Grenville’s ship was the
_Revenge_, a second-class galleon, carrying twenty-two heavy guns,
twelve light ones, and twelve small pieces used for repelling boarders.
She had carried Drake’s flag against the Armada three years before, and
was considered one of the best types of a fighting ship.
On the 31st of August, Lord Thomas Howard’s squadron, consisting of six
men of war and nine or ten victuallers and pinnaces, was riding at
anchor in the bay of Flores; many of the crews were ashore digging for
ballast, filling water casks, and obtaining fresh provisions and fruit
for the sick, who numbered nearly half the strength of the fleet, for
fever and scurvy had made havoc among the ships’ companies. Suddenly an
English pinnace, the _Moonshine_, swept round a headland into the bay
with the alarming intelligence that an armada of twenty Spanish
men-of-war and over thirty transports and smaller craft were close at
hand, despatched by Philip II. to protect his treasure ships.
Howard at once determined that he was in no condition to fight a force
so superior, and accordingly made signal to weigh anchor instantly. All
obeyed but the _Revenge_, Grenville being delayed, according to Raleigh,
in getting his sick men brought on board from the shore; and when at
last she got under way, she had lost the wind, and was unable to follow
the other vessels as they ran past the Spanish fleet to windward. A
second line of retreat was still open to him: by cutting his mainsail,
he could run before the wind, pass the Spaniards to leeward, and rejoin
the flag in the open sea. But to pass an enemy to leeward was a
confession of inferiority to which Grenville would not stoop, and,
though urged to this course by his officers and crew, he scornfully and
passionately refused, and, sword in hand, drove his men to their posts,
swearing that he would hew his way single-handed through the whole
Spanish fleet, or perish in the attempt.
For a while he prevailed, compelling several of the foremost to give
way, who sprang their luff and fell under the lee of the _Revenge_. But
his success was short-lived; the _Revenge_, coming under the lee of the
great _San Philip_, of 1,500 tons, was becalmed. This was about three
o’clock in the afternoon; and while the _Revenge_ was hotly engaged with
this gigantic adversary, four more Spanish ships-of-war ranged
alongside, and, after a furious cannonade, attempted to board her, but
in vain; and the _San Philip_, after receiving from the lower tier of
guns of the _Revenge_ an especially deadly salvo, “discharged with
cross-bar shot, shifted herself with all diligence from her sides,
utterly misliking her first entertainment.” But her place was at once
taken by another Spaniard, and, indeed, through the twelve or fifteen
hours during which the battle lasted, Grenville’s ship was constantly
fighting against overwhelming odds. All through the August night the
fight continued under the quiet stars, ship after ship washing up on the
_Revenge_ like clamouring waves upon a rock, only to fall back foiled
and shattered amidst the roar of artillery:—
Ship after ship, the whole night long, their high-built galleons came,
Ship after ship, the whole night long, with their battle-thunder and
flame,
Ship after ship, the whole night long, drew back with her dead and her
shame,
For some were sunk, and some were shattered, and some would fight no
more;
God of battles! was ever a battle like this in the world before?
Though wounded early in the day, Grenville was able to fight his ship
from the upper deck till an hour before midnight, when he was again
wounded, this time in the body, with a musket ball. The sailors carried
him below, and as his wounds were being dressed, a shot crashed through
the _Revenge_, stretched the doctor lifeless, and inflicted an injury to
Sir Richard’s head from which, in two or three days, he died.
And still the battle raged; and still ship after ship drew out of
action, utterly defeated by the splendid gunnery and desperate courage
of Grenville’s men. Gradually the fire slackened; before daylight it
ceased altogether, for the Spaniards abandoned their attempts to sink
the _Revenge_ or carry her by board. Yet fifteen out of their twenty
men-of-war had been hotly engaged with her: two of them she had sunk
outright; a third was so damaged that her crew ran her on shore to save
their lives; a fourth was in a sinking condition. Dawn found the enemy’s
immense fleet encircling the one English ship like wolves round a dying
lion, and wary of approaching him in his last agony. When the sun rose,
the survivors of the crew began to realise their desperate plight. Sir
Richard commanded the master-gunner to split and sink the ship, that
thereby nothing might remain of glory or victory to the Spaniards, and
endeavoured to persuade the crew “to yield themselves to God and to the
mercy of none else, but as they had, like valiant resolute men, repulsed
so many enemies, they should not now shorten the honour of their nation
by prolonging their own lives by a few hours or a few days.”
The chief gunner and a few others consented; but the rest having dared
quite enough for mortal men, refused to blow up the ship, and
surrendered to the enemy. Grenville was carried in a dying condition to
the ship of the Spanish Admiral, and as he lay upon his couch on the
deck, the captains of the fleet crowded round to see the expiring hero,
who, feeling his end approaching, showed not any sign of faintness, but
spake these words in Spanish, and said: “Here die I, Richard Grenville,
with a joyful and quiet mind, for that I have ended my life as a true
soldier ought to do, that hath fought for his country, Queen, religion
and honour. Wherefore my soul most joyfully departeth out of this body,
and shall always leave behind it an everlasting fame of a valiant and
true soldier that hath done his duty as he was bound to do.”
Such was the fight at Flores in that August of 1591—“a fight memorable
even beyond credit and to the height of some heroic fable.” It has been
called “England’s naval Thermopylæ.” It was from the first as hopeless a
battle as that of the Spartans under the brave Leonidas, and its moral
effects at the time were hardly less than that of Thermopylæ. Froude
tells us it struck a deeper terror, though it was but the action of a
single ship, into the hearts of the Spanish people—it dealt a more
deadly blow upon their fame and moral strength than even the destruction
of the Armada itself, and in the direct results which arose from it it
was scarcely less disastrous to them. Men may blame Sir Richard
Grenville for his obstinacy, and what they deem his false notion of
honour in scorning to turn his back upon the foe when the odds were so
overwhelmingly against him, but at least it must be conceded that his
courage and that of his crew have immortalised his name.
[Illustration:
SIR BEVILL GRENVILLE.
(_From an Oil Painting._)
]
Passing over Sir Richard’s son, John, who followed Drake and was drowned
in the ocean, “which became his bedde of honour,” and also another son,
Sir Bernard, we come to the latter’s famous son, Sir Bevill—a man no
whit inferior in loyalty and courage to his illustrious grandsire, and
whom men called the English Bayard. When Charles I., in 1639, raised an
army against the Scots, Bevill Grenville joined the Royal Standard at
the head of a troop of horse at York. “I cannot contain myself within my
doors,” he wrote, “when the King of England’s standard waves in the
field upon so just an occasion, the cause being such as must make all
those that die in it little inferior to martyrs. And for my own part, I
desire to acquire an honest name or an honourable grave. I never loved
my life or ease so much as to shun such an occasion, which if I should,
I were unworthy of the profession I have held, or to succeed those
ancestors of mine who have so many of them in several ages sacrificed
their lives for their country.”
History shows this to have been a bloodless campaign, but the above
extract proves Grenville’s hereditary spirit, and the King, in token of
his approval, knighted him at Berwick-on-Tweed before the army broke up;
and when, three years later, the storm at last burst over England, which
had been so long threatening, Charles I. had no more loyal supporter
than Sir Bevill Grenville. Clarendon says he was “the most generally
loved man in Cornwall.” He was the soul of the Royalist cause there, and
his influence was so great that he readily raised a body of volunteers
fifteen hundred strong. At Bradock Down, near Liskeard, where the first
important encounter with the Parliamentarian troops took place, Sir
Bevill led the van. Describing the fight to his wife, he writes: “After
solemn prayers at the head of every division, I led my part away, who
followed me with so great a courage, both down the one hill and up the
other, that it struck a terror into them,” with the result that twelve
hundred prisoners were captured, and all the guns. The next engagement
took place at Stratton (distant only a few miles from Grenville’s own
home in the adjoining parish of Kilkampton) on May 16th, 1643, where he
was again conspicuous for his personal courage. The Earl of Stamford,
who commanded the Parliamentarian troops, which numbered close on 6,000,
all perfectly equipped and victualled, had encamped in a very strong
position on the top of a hill, now called Stamford Hill, near the
village of Stratton. It is an isolated grassy hill on a ridge which runs
nearly due north and south. The sides on the east and south are the
steepest, whilst the western slope has an ancient earthwork near the
summit, which Stamford had defended with guns that ought to have
rendered it impregnable. The Royalist troops, less than half their
number, short of ammunition, and so destitute of provisions that the
best officers had but a biscuit a day, lay at Launceston. They
nevertheless marched the twenty miles to Stratton “with a resolution to
fight with the enemy upon every disadvantage of place or number.” In the
evening they halted, footsore and hungry, a mile from the base of the
high hill on which the Parliamentarian troops lay in overwhelming
strength, and determined to attack them at daybreak. Weary as they were,
the men stood to their arms all night, for the enemy were too near to
make rest possible, and with the first light, Sir Bevill, to whom every
inch of the ground was, of course, perfectly familiar, and to whom,
consequently, was committed the ordering of the fight, divided the
troops into four storming parties. The little army was too small to
merit, when divided into such parts, any other designation. In the
morning the fight commenced, and continued till the afternoon was well
advanced, but no impression could be made by the gallant Cornishmen, who
were repulsed again and again. At last powder began to fail, and it
became a question between retreat, which implied certain disaster, or
victory. A final and heroic effort was made; muskets were laid aside,
and, trusting to pike and sword alone, the lithe Cornishmen pressed
onwards and upwards. Grenville led the party on the western slope, and
Sir John Berkeley that on the northern, while Hopton and the other
commanders scaled the south and east sides. Their silent march seems to
have struck their opponents with a sense of power, and the defence grew
feebler. Grenville first reached the crest, and seized the entrenchment,
and captured the thirteen brass field-pieces and one mortar by which it
was defended; and when Berkeley prevailed on the north side, the
Parliamentarian horse fled from the hill headlong down the steep
descent, and made off. This had its moral effect on the defenders of the
other two sides of the camp, and their resistance perceptibly slackened.
Soon the other two storming parties, who had had the steepest climb,
pressed upward, and the enemy, despite the efforts of their officers to
rally them, made off to the adjoining heights. The victorious commanders
embraced one another on the hard-won hilltop, thanking God for a success
for which at one time they had hardly ventured to hope. It was no time
to prolong their rejoicings, as the enemy, demoralised though they were,
appear to have rallied somewhat, and to have shown a disposition to
renew the combat; but Grenville quickly turned their own captured cannon
on them, and a few rounds sufficed to dislodge them. Panic ensued, and a
general stampede, in which arms and accoutrements were flung aside,
concluded the fight of Stratton. By this decisive victory, not only was
Cornwall cleared of the enemy and secured for the King, but the whole of
Devon, excepting a few of the principal towns, fell into the hands of
the Royalists. The King was not unmindful of the gallant Sir Bevill’s
share in the fight, but wrote him a gracious letter promising further
proofs of his bounty and favour.
The following June, the Cornish army joined that under Prince Maurice
and the Marquis of Hertford at Chard, and soon Taunton, Bridgwater,
Glastonbury, and Dunster Castle were taken. They then proceeded to
attack Sir William Waller, who had occupied an extremely strong position
on the lofty ridge of Lansdown, near Bath. There he had raised a
breastwork behind which his guns were posted, and he had so distributed
his foot and horse as to defend all points of access. Realising the
tremendous strength of his position, the Royalists wisely resolved not
to break themselves upon it, and were actually turning to resume their
march when the whole body of Waller’s horse came thundering down the
hill upon their rear and flank, striking them with a crash they could
not withstand, and throwing them into disorder from which they could not
recover, till Slanning came up with a party of three hundred Cornish
musketeers, and with his aid the enemy were beaten off and chased back
to the hill again. Hopton now assumed the offensive. The blood of the
whole army was beating hotly. It is said that the Cornishmen, under Sir
Bevill, coveted Waller’s cannon, and begged at least to be allowed “to
fetch off those cannon.” Leave was given, and up the steep height the
Cornishmen went with a rush: the horse on the right, the musketeers on
the left, and Sir Bevill himself leading the pikes in the centre. In
this order the Cornish moved forward, much as they had moved at
Stratton, slowly and doggedly. In the face of the enemy’s cannon and
small shot from their breastworks, they at length gained the brow of the
hill, having sustained two full charges from Waller’s horse, but in the
third charge Sir Bevill’s horse had given way; the cohesion of the pikes
was broken, and instantly the enemy was in among them, hewing them down;
the officers were falling fast, and Sir Bevill himself, sorely wounded
and fighting valiantly, was struck out of his saddle by a pole-axe, of
which hurt he died very shortly. Young John Grenville, a lad of sixteen,
sprang, it is said, into his father’s saddle, and led the charge, and
the Cornishmen followed with their swords drawn and with tears in their
eyes, swearing they would kill a rebel for every hair of Sir Bevill’s
beard; and at last the whole Royalist force surged over Waller’s
breastworks, and the victory was theirs.
Never was a man more universally or deservedly beloved than Sir Bevill,
and it is said that his untimely death was as bitterly lamented by the
Parliamentarian troops as it was by his own followers.
Of a very different character and temperament was his brother, another
Sir Richard Grenville, of whose life as a soldier only the very briefest
sketch can be given. He seems to have had little in common with the long
line of his illustrious predecessors, except their just pride of
ancestry and their appetite for fighting; for he was undoubtedly a brave
soldier of no little experience and skill. He entered the army at an
early age, and left England when he was eighteen, and saw much service
in France, Holland, Germany, and the Netherlands. Next he took part in
the disastrous expeditions to Cadiz and the Island of Rhe, in both of
which he was accompanied by his young cousin, George Monk, who always
regarded him as his father-in-arms. Like Sir Bevill, he accompanied
Charles I. to Scotland, having also raised a troop of horse; and in 1641
he took a prominent part in suppressing the rebellion in Ireland, when
in fire and blood the wretched Irish were made to do penance for their
outburst of savagery, to which they had been goaded by Strafford’s
imperious rule. Having been recalled to England in 1643 for
insubordination to the Marquis of Ormond, Sir Richard pretended to adopt
the Parliamentarian cause, and was made a Major-General of Horse; but
having learnt all the secrets of their campaign, he treacherously
marched his soldiers to Oxford, and joined the King. For such abominable
treachery he was rightly denounced, and no epithets were too choice to
apply to him. He was, moreover, excepted from all pardon, both as to
life and estate. Shortly afterwards he was placed by Prince Rupert in
command of the troops that were besieging Plymouth, and it was mainly by
his successful tactics that Lord Essex was utterly defeated in Cornwall
in 1644, when the King commanded the Cavaliers in person.
After this he was appointed “The King’s General in the West,” a title of
which he was justly proud, and which was eventually carved on his
tombstone at Ghent. Considering himself thus constituted
Commander-in-Chief, he afterwards refused, when called upon to do so by
the Prince’s Council, to act in any subordinate position; and hence
arose those unhappy dissensions and jealousies which finally wrecked the
royal cause in the West. Grenville was placed under arrest, and
cashiered from his command without any court-martial. In spite of his
overbearing manners and tyrannical conduct, of which frequent complaints
had been made, public opinion was strongly in his favour and clamoured
for his release, whilst the soldiers refused to be commanded by Hopton
or anyone else, and both officers and men, to the number of four
thousand, petitioned the Prince in his favour. Sir Richard’s
imprisonment and the dissensions that arose in consequence undoubtedly
gave the finishing stroke to the war in the West; the service everywhere
languished; the soldiers gradually deserted, and Lord Hopton was
compelled, after some faint resistance, to disband, and accept of such
conditions as the enemy would give. Sir Richard, it must be confessed,
represented the worst type of Cavalier. He was frequently actuated by
the dictates of a violent and revengeful disposition, and was intriguing
and unscrupulous. He died abroad in exile in 1659.