Grenville

“ The Mormons, having disposed of Myzukulwa, ordered Grenville to follow them back to East Utah, which he did, first kneeling down and taking from round the dead chief’s neck a curious amulet which he always wore, and which Grenville transferred to his own.
One of the guards, more inquisitive than the rest, asked why he did this, and our friend boldly answered, “I’m not dead yet, you know; and if I do get away, I swear to you I will kill a man of you for every drop of blood that it has taken fifty of you cowards to draw from yonder brave and true-hearted man.” ”

“ They made a splendid noise and smoke, scattering fragments of the tufa far and wide, till a rain of the smaller pieces spattered thickly down in the jungle. Grenville arose from his hiding-place, quite unharmed, and ran about on the terrace crazily, holding his head between his hands for the distant rifleman to witness his discomfort. ”

“ Unable to distinguish the slightest thing in all that Stygian darkness, Grenville paused, with his brand slightly shielded from the creature's possible notice, waiting a moment to confirm the fact that a banqueter was present before he touched the fuse.
A tremendous roar instantly startled the silence, a few feet beyond the boar's remains. Before the man could move a hand, either to light the ready fuse or steady himself in the branches, some heavy form was hurled against the tree in which he sat—and that something was climbing madly upward! ”

“ As member of Parliament, first for Cornwall, then for Launceston, Grenville supported Sir John Eliot and the opposition, and his intimacy with Eliot was life-long. In 1639, however, he appears as a royalist going to the Scottish War in the train of Charles I. The reasons of this change of front are unknown, but Grenville’s honour was above suspicion, and he must have entirely convinced himself that he was doing right. At any rate he was a very valuable recruit to the royalist cause, being “the most generally loved man in Cornwall.” ”

“ The members of the House of Commons can cough an orator down, or can walk away to dinner; and they were by no means sparing in the use of these privileges when Grenville was on his legs. But the poor young King had to endure all this eloquence with mournful civility. To the end of his life he continued to talk with horror of Grenville’s orations. ”

“ With a horribly disquieting comprehension of the fact he had doubtless been stalked for the past half hour, which fully accounted for the absence of game along the trails, Grenville retreated from the place. Why he had not been leaped upon and instantly slain was too much to understand—unless the unknown beings who had placed a collar, like a badge of inferiority, upon the animal's neck, had so impressed him with a dread of man that he dared not make an attack. ”

“ Waiting for the next flash, Grenville sprang upon the sentry and felled him like a log with a blow from Amaxosa’s war-club, and with a second blow from the same weapon burst open the door and dragged the man’s body inside. ”

“ In February 1782 Grenville was returned to parliament as member for the borough of Buckingham, and in the following September he became secretary to the lord lieutenant of Ireland, who at this time was his brother, Earl Temple, afterwards marquess of Buckingham. He left office in June 1783, but in the following December he became paymaster-general of the forces under his cousin, William Pitt, and in 1786 vice-president of the committee of trade. ”

“ Blessed or cursed with a solemnity that never was enlivened by a gleam of humor, a ray of fancy, or a flash of eloquence, Grenville regarded the House of Commons with the cold ferocity of a tyrannical and pompous schoolmaster. A style of speech that would have made a discourse upon Greek poetry seem arid and a dissertation upon Italian painting colorless—if it were possible to conceive Grenville as wasting time or thought on such trifles—added no grace to the exposition of a fiscal measure or charm to the formality of a phalanx of figures. ”

“ Coolly turning his back upon them with a gesture of ineffable contempt, Grenville found himself face to face with the Mormon Trinity, and for a few moments the Holy Three gazed wonderingly upon this man who had penetrated their secret kingdom, worsted and defeated them at every turn, held them up to the ridicule of their own people, slaughtered at least one-fourth of the whole nation, and finally had, single-handed, almost entirely destroyed their town, and at one fell swoop wrested from their grasp the precious gunpowder which was to have sustained and defended them for many years to come. ”

“ She could not doubt that Grenville knew, far better than herself, how meager were their hopes of immediate rescue or escape from this exile in the sea. More than anything else, however, she wished to be worthy of and loyal to the man to whom her plighted word had been given. That she owed so much to Grenville already was an added irritation. A braver, finer spirit than she summoned to her needs never rose in a woman's breast. ”

“ In one important qualification Grenville himself acknowledged his deficiency. ‘I am not competent,’ he says in a letter to his brother, ‘to the management of men. I never was so naturally, and toil and anxiety more and more unfit me for it’ (The Court and Cabinets of George III, iv. 133) . Though not a great orator, Grenville was a successful speaker in the House of Lords, where his weighty and sonorous speeches, though sometimes long and tedious, were listened to with attention. ”

“ Conway’s or my own sentiments, Grenville persisted in the interview. I went accordingly to Mr. Thomas Pitt’s. It happened to be the evening of the riot on burning the North Briton. Grenville arrived in the most ridiculous and extraordinary disorder I ever saw. He could scarce articulate for passion. One would have thought the City had been taken by storm and the guards cut to pieces. Yet this was not a panic. It was rage to see authority set at nought while he was minister. His subsequent conduct gave evidence that this was his sensation: no man ever bore power with more pride. ”

“ Grenville had leave to visit Charles and return to England within twelve months following the surrender. In case the king should not take him into his service he had also power to raise a regiment of fifteen hundred Irish for service abroad (ib. 1651, pp. 214-17) . Grenville decided to stay in England and disarm suspicion by submissive conduct. By an order in parliament made 11 July 1651 the council of state granted him leave ‘to pass up and down in England, without doing anything prejudicial to the state’ (ib. 1651, p. 285) . ”

“ On 23 June 1747 Grenville became a lord of the treasury. On the death of Henry Pelham Grenville was appointed treasurer of the navy in the Duke of Newcastle's administration, and was sworn a member of the privy council on 21 June 1754. By untiring industry Grenville had already made a mark in the House of Commons. Pitt, writing to the Earl of Hardwicke in the previous April, says: ‘Mr. Grenville is universally able in the whole business of the house, and after Mr. Murray and Mr. Fox is certainly one of the very best parliament men in the house’ (Chatham, Correspondence, i. 106) . ”

“ Lysons’s Cornwall is the best account that the Editor can give of the distinguished family of Grenville.
The manor of Kilkhampton is supposed to have belonged to the Grenville family from nearly the time of the Conquest; 344 Dugdale says, that they were seated here in the reign of William Rufus. Richard de Grenville, who came over with William the Conqueror, is said in the pedigrees of the family to have been a younger brother of Robert Fitzhamon, Earl of Carbill, Lord of Thurigny and Grenville, in France and Normandy, and to have been lineally descended from Rollo, Duke of Normandy. ”

“ At the battle of New Ross, however (18 March 1643) , the cavalry of Ormonde's army ran away, and one eye-witness gravely impugns Grenville's own conduct (ib. ii. 432; Meehan, Confederation of Kilkenny, Creightons Narrative, p. 293) . Grenville is said to have opposed the cessation of arms concluded in the summer of 1643, and left Ireland in August 1643, ‘importuned,’ he says, ‘by letters to come to England for his Majesty's service’ (Lansdowne, ii. 548) . He landed at Liverpool, but was immediately arrested by the parliamentary commander there, and sent up to London under a guard. ”

“ The brute, even then, refused to retreat towards the trail by which it had come. It leaped towards the place where Grenville made his bed—a shadowy form that he knew at last was not the arrogant tiger.
It turned for a moment in the mouth of the cave, as if aware this smaller retreat was too shallow for adequate shelter. But before the man could crack his fiery brand upon the creature's head, it leaped wildly past him, growling a savage protest, and reluctantly retreated towards the trail. ”

“ August 17, the colony was landed on Roanoke Island, and eight days later Grenville weighed anchor for England. On the way back Grenville met a Spanish ship "richly loaden," and captured her, "boording her with a boate made with boards of chests, which fell asunder, and sunke at the ships side, as soone as euer he and his men were out of it." October 18, 1585, he arrived with his prize at Plymouth, in England, where he was received with great honor and rejoicing.9
The American loves to connect the beginnings of his country with a hero like Grenville. ”

“ This she thrust forth for Grenville to take, and then, with deliberate care, she wormed her way out through the jagged hole with the confident skill of a child.
"Not there!" called Grenville, as she hastened ahead to gain the forward companionway. "Everybody's there, all fighting for their lives!"
He caught her actively about the waist, as a further lurch and settling of the "Inca" would have hurled her to the floor. Down through a shorter passage and up a strangely tilted stair he drew her rapidly, his heart assailed by a sickening fear of what their delay might have cost them. ”

“ Dick Grenville, aetat. thirty, and his cousin, Alf Leigh, were a pair which any three ordinary mortals might well wish to be excused from taking on.
The third person—singular he certainly looked—was a magnificent creature, a pure-blooded Zulu chief, descended from a race of warriors, every line of his countenance grave and stern, with eyes that glistened like fiery stars under a lowering cloud, the man having withal a general “straightness” of appearance more easily detected than described. ”

“ Elliot told Grenville that, had he not entered into factious combinations, he knew Grenville would have been entreated to save his country. That Grenville was not pardoned and again received into favour, proved how much more78 the King and his mother were swayed by their passions than by their interest.52
Frederic Lord North, eldest son of the Earl of Guilford, was now in the thirty-eighth year of his age. Nothing could be more coarse or clumsy or ungracious than his outside. ”

“ Grenville represented Cornwall in the parliaments of 1621 and 1624, and Launceston in the first three parliaments of Charles I (Return of Names of Members of Parliament, 1878) . During this period he sided with the popular party, and was the friend and follower of Sir John Eliot. Grenville's letters to his wife in 1626 show with what anxiety he regarded Eliot's brief imprisonment in that year (Forster, Life of Cromwell, p. 99) . ”

“ The men were all so utterly worn out that the girls, upon their own earnest entreaty, were for once allowed to keep guard whilst the fighting brigade took their much-needed repose. Grenville felt that the watch was a mere matter of form, and so the result proved, for it was ten in the morning before he was awakened by the soft hand of Rose, who came with the astounding news that a Mormon had appeared on the edge of the forest belt, where he now stood waving a white flag, and signifying his desire to communicate with the besieged. ”

“ The party then indulged in their customary frugal breakfast of dried meat and water, into which last—in consideration of the night’s exposure—Grenville introduced a dash of brandy from their carefully-husbanded store; then after enjoying their one luxury—a good lazy smoke—the cousins settled down to sleep, leaving Myzukulwa to keep watch, Grenville relieving him a few hours later, as the trio had resolved—at all events, until they knew more about the strange country they were operating in—to confine their travels strictly to the night-time. ”

“ In the history of Bideford the name of Grenville shines on many occasions. Both Devon and Cornwall claim this eminent family, their 'chiefest habitation' of Stow being in Cornwall, while, according to some authorities, their first dwelling-place in this part of the world was at Bideford.
Richard de Grenville, near the end of the fourteenth century, for his valour and courage in the Welsh wars was awarded the town and county of Neath, in Glamorgan. Being pious as well as brave, he devoted all this wealth to the Church, building and endowing a monastery for Cistercian monks. ”

“ On Grenville's death in November 1770 Whately attached himself to Lord North, and acted as the ‘go between’ for his old patron's friends. Junius thereupon denounced him as possessing ‘the talents of an attorney’ and ‘the agility of Colonel Bodens’ (an unwieldy man who could scarcely move) , and as ‘deserting Grenville's cause when he was hardly cold in his grave’ (letter, 9 Jan. 1771, in ed. 1812, iii. 310–11) . ”