Granville

“ SHE was the daughter of John Granville, first Earl of Bath, by Jane, daughter of Sir Peter Wyche. The Granvilles, or Grenvilles, as they were originally called, were a noble and heroic race; witness the exploits by sea of Sir Richard, immortalised in history and poetry, who lived in the time of Queen Elizabeth, and of the brave Sir Bevil, who perished in arms for King Charles I. at the battle of Lansdowne, he on whose death it was written—
‘Where shall the next famed Grenvil’s ashes stand? ”

“ The heart of Granville Sharp, shrunk like the sensitive plant, from the very touch of pollution—and it responded buoyantly to every call of truth and law, as the damask rose expands when heaven with the returning summer again showers life and beauty over the earth. ”

“ Lord Granville stood high both in the eyes of the King and the Publick, and could not have been passed by. He was the opposite of Sir Robert Walpole. He had been bred a Tory, was a great scholar, brilliant, witty, despised the House of Commons, loved society when he shone, could not stoop to cultivate. He was ambitious, but with a mixture of love of ease and of letters. He looked to the crown, and to the brilliancy of his own actions for support. [50] He had served in foreign embassies, [51] when very young, was the favourite of the favourite, Lord Sunderland. ”

“ Lady Granville [13] has a great deal of genial humour, strong feelings, enthusiasm, delicacy, refinement, good taste, naïveté which just misses being affectation, and a bonhomie which extends to all around her.
[13] [Henrietta Elizabeth, daughter of William, fifth Duke of Devonshire, married in 1809 to Lord Granville Leveson Gower, created Viscount Granville in 1815, and Earl Granville in 1833, during his embassy at the Court of France.]
Nothing could exceed the agreeableness of the life we led at Tixall. ”

“ There was Kelmscott in the leap. Granville knew in a second it was indeed Guy Waring.
The Namaqua recognised him too, and pointed enthusiastically forward. Granville saw what he meant. To the front! To the front! If there was fighting to be done, let them help their friends. Let them go forward and claim the great reward offered.
Next moment, with a painful thrill of shame and remorse, the Englishman saw what was the nature of the object they were so jealously guarding. His heart stood still within him. It was a sort of sedan chair, or invalid litter, borne on poles by four native porters. ”

“ Now, in the fashion of her stateliness and in the hue and texture of her garments, there was none among the maidens of old Cornwall like Alice of the Combe. Men sought her far and near, but she was to them all, like a form of graven stone, careless and cold. Her soul was set upon a Granville’s love, fair Sir Beville of Stowe—the flower of the Cornish chivalry—that noble gentleman! ”

“ The rhodomontade, to which he was addicted, was set off by parts and wit, or forgiven to his good-humour. It was very unlike the presumptuous ascendant of Pitt, or the lofty ignorance of Lord Bute. Pitt, unsociable and muffled in clouds, was adored from the terror imprinted by his lightnings. Bute thought distance and obscurity sufficient characteristics of divinity; but Granville, like Bacchus, rattled his car among men, and was but the more admired the more he familiarized himself with mortals. ”

“ Well, let the fellow follow him if he liked! He would reward him himself if ever they reached the coast in safety. And in any case, it was better to go attended by a native. An interpreter who can communicate in their own tongue with the people through whose territory you are going to pass is always, useful in a savage country.
How Granville got over that terrible journey seaward he could never tell. He crawled on and on, supported by the faithful Namaqua with unfailing good-humour, over that endless veldt, for three long days of wretched footsore marching. ”

“ Of the former, his historical performances afford some pleasing proofs; 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 ”

“ For it was the robbery, not the desertion, Granville could never forgive. The man who was capable of doing that basest of acts was capable also of murder or any crime in the decalogue.
So the fevered white man rose at last one morning on his shrunken limbs, and staggered, as best he might, from his protector’s hut in a wild impulse of resolution, on his mad journey seaward. When the Namaqua saw nothing on earth would induce him to remain, he shouldered his arms and went out beside him, fully equipped for fight with matchlock and assegai. ”

“ An heir-apparent, therefore, who wishes to enjoy, in the highest perfection, all the pleasure that can be derived from eloquent flattery and profound respect, will always join those who are struggling to force themselves into power. This is, we believe, the true explanation of a fact which Lord Granville attributed to some natural peculiarity in the illustrious House of Brunswick. “This family,” said he at Council, we suppose after his daily half-gallon of Burgundy, “always has quarrelled, and always will quarrel, from generation to generation.” ”

“ For fifty years, Lord Jersey's Countess reigned supreme in the social world, carrying her autocracy and her charms into old age. As was inevitable to such a dominant personality she made enemies, who resented her airs and scoffed at her graces. Lady Granville called her "a tiresome, quarrelsome woman"; the Duke of Wellington, one of her most abject slaves, once exclaimed, "What —— nonsense Lady Jersey talks!" and Granville declared that she had "neither wit, nor imagination, nor humour." ”

“ As the Muses themselves did not disdain to watch over the grave of one who had done well on earth, so do the poets of England keep watch over the monument of Granville Sharp. Nor is his place in that goodly company without poetical title. The poet is simply creator; and he who was inspired to create freemen out of slaves was poet of the loftiest style. Not in the sacred Abbey only was our philanthropist commemorated. The city of London, centre of those Slave-Hunting merchants over whom his great triumph was won, now gratefully claimed part of his renown. ”

“ His life had been a proof that even in a free country great abilities are not necessary to govern it. Industry, perseverance, and intrigue, gave him that duration of power which shining talents and the favour of the Crown could not secure to Lord Granville, nor the first rank in eloquence and the most brilliant services to Lord Chatham. Adventitious cunning repaired Newcastle’s folly, rashness overset Lord Granville’s parts, and presumptuous impracticability Lord Chatham. ”

“ GRANVILLE, JOHN CARTERET, Earl (1690–1763) , English statesman, commonly known by his earlier title as Lord Carteret, born on the 22nd of April 1690, was the son of George, 1st Lord Carteret, by his marriage with Grace Granville, daughter of Sir John Granville, 1st earl of Bath, and great grandson of the Elizabethan admiral, Sir Richard Grenville, famous for his death in the “Revenge.” The family of Carteret was settled in the Channel Islands, and was of Norman descent. John Carteret was educated at Westminster, and at Christ Church, Oxford. ”

“ From 1855 Lord Granville led the Liberals in the Upper House, both in office, and, after Palmerston’s resignation in 1858, in opposition. He went in 1856 as head of the British mission to the tsar’s coronation in Moscow. In June 1859 the queen, embarrassed by the rival ambitions of Palmerston and Russell, sent for him to form a ministry, but he was unable to do so, and Palmerston again became prime minister, with Lord John as foreign secretary and Granville as president of the council. ”

“ It was one of my crimes, [90] in Lord Hillsborough’s [387] garden, that Lord Granville was my friend, who was so much his, (that is) Pitt’s enemy. Well, the scheme is this: to gain Lord Egmont with Yonge’s place; to try, by Lord Chancellor, to gain Pitt; to trust to my acquiescence, from the influence H. R. H. has over me, and to carry every thing through, without parting (as Lord Granville expresses it) with the least emanation of his power to any body.
Extract of a Letter from the Duke of Newcastle to the Marquis of Hartington, August 30, 1755. ”

“ During 1813 Granville translated many Peninsular bulletins for distribution in Italy to excite a rising against the French, which were republished in ‘L'Italico,’ a journal which he conducted in London. In 1814 Granville went with Hamilton to the Paris congress, and thence to Milan with despatches, revisiting his father. He travelled through Italy, meeting many eminent men, and promoting the movement for independence. ”

“ Grenville died in 1658; of the last four years of his life Lord Lansdowne writes (with some exaggeration) : ‘He retired from all conversation with mankind, shut himself up from the world to prepare himself seriously for another, never so much as suffering his beard to be shaven from that moment to his dying day, which followed soon, his great heart not being able to hold out any longer. He lies buried in a church in Ghent, with this inscription only upon a plain stone, “Sir Richard Granville, the King's general in the West”’ (Lansdowne, Works, i. 560) . ”

“ He also took part in the constant reprisals, which marked the reign of William III., by the English and French upon one another’s shores; and in one of these assisted in the bombardment of his ancestral Norman town, Granville, and in another in the defence of Teignmouth and Torbay.
The fighting spirit of the family was still handed on in another member of the family—a second Sir Bevill, 113the eldest son of the Honourable Bernard Granville (as the name was now spelt) , who appears to have inherited all the courage of the grandfather whose name he bore. ”

“ Pointed arches, and buttresses against the piers, are what we are not used to in such buildings. A road by a few small churches leads to Granville on its peninsula, with its strange church where Flamboyant and Renaissance die away into a kind of Romanesque most unlike that of Ragusa, and the Côtentin has been gone through from north to south. ”

“ Lord Granville’s name is mainly associated with his career as foreign secretary (1870–1874 and 1880–1885) ; but the Liberal foreign policy of that period was not distinguished by enterprise or “backbone.” Lord Granville personally was patient and polite, but his courteous and pacific methods were somewhat inadequate in dealing with the new situation then arising in Europe and outside it; and foreign governments had little scruple in creating embarrassments for Great Britain, and relying on the disinclination of the Liberal leaders to take strong measures. ”

“ Sir John Grenville’s future career and the prominent part he took, in conjunction with his cousin, George Monk, in the Restoration of Charles II., who created him Earl of Bath, and showered countless honours and endowments upon him, do not belong to a paper confined to giving the fighting qualities of the family. These, however, found expression in his two sons, Charles, Lord Lansdown, and John, afterwards created Lord Granville of Potheridge. ”

“ He was educated at Durham grammar school, but his father, though archdeacon of Northumberland, was possessed of small means and a large family, and in May 1750 Granville was apprenticed to one Halsey, a quaker linendraper of Tower Hill, London. He served successively under a quaker, a presbyterian, an Irish Roman catholic, and an atheist. During his scanty leisure he taught himself Greek and Hebrew, and in August 1757 he became a freeman of the city of London as a member of the Fishmongers' Company. ”

“ Life at Avranches is a strange contrast to Granville. In a few hours we pass from the contemplation of fishermen's lives to a curious kind of civilization—an exotic plant, which some might think was hardly worth the transplanting. ”

“ Granville knew his Thames better than most men—it was one of the things he did know. But he had a scholar's reverence for classic ground; and in a young man who revered so very little, this was remarkable, if it was not affectation. ”

“ Will you never come into England, and make Hawnes [2] your road? You will find nothing here to offend you; for I am a hermit, and live in my chimney corner, and have no ambition, but that you will believe I am the charming dean's
Most obedient humble servant,
GRANVILLE.
↑ Grace, widow, and relict of George, lord Carteret, and daughter of John Granville, earl of Bath. She was created viscountess Carteret, and countess Granville, 1st Jan. 1714-15, with limitation of those honours to her son John, the late earl. ↑ A seat of lord Carteret, afterward earl Granville, in Bedfordshire. ”

“ You’ve got an easy job for a man of your ability. I’ll meet you at Granville! Now, get over to St. Heliers, and work the whole trick in your own way! Send me your secret address in Jersey at once to Hotel Faucon, Lausanne, and run over to the French coast at Granville and find a safe nest there for us. There we are within seventeen miles of each other, with two mails a day, and the telegraph. It’s a wonderful plant, so it is. ”