Richard Grenville

“ 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. ”

“ Mr. Murray announces The Grenville Papers; being the Private Correspondence of Richard Grenville Earl Temple, his brother George Grenville, their Friends and Contemporaries, as in the press. It will contain some letters from Junius, and Mr. Grenville's Diary, particularly during his premiership, from 1763 to 1765. The fifth and sixth volumes of Lord Mahon's History of England from the Peace of Utrecht are also at press.
Lady Theresa Lewis is nearly ready with a work which cannot but be of great interest. ”

“ The excellent effect produced by the presence of the English Militia in Ireland, led Lord Grenville to desire the extension of a service which, in many points of view, was admirably calculated to check the insubordinate temper of the people. The English character offered an example of steadiness and discipline which could hardly fail to make some impression on the disordered masses of the population; while the independence of all local interests and sectarian prejudices displayed by those troops might be reasonably hoped to exercise a beneficial influence on the minds of dispassionate people. ”

“ My mother expects him every hour in London, and before this time I should hope that he had himself waited on you. Once more, my dear Lord, before I close this part of my letter, let me thank you most warmly for this flattering instance of your friendship. Grenville, I hope, has shown you my letter, in which I declare that I would not have asked you for this favour, knowing your inclination to attend to my requests, and apprehending that you might suffer your regard for me to interfere to the prejudice of your Government ”

“ I trust the eyes of the nation will soon be opened, as my sorrow may prove fatal to my health if I remain long in this thraldom. I trust you will be steady in your attachment to me, and ready to join other honest men in watching the conduct of this unnatural combination, and I hope many months will not elapse before the Grenvilles, the Pitts, and other men of abilities and character will relieve me from a situation that nothing could have compelled me to submit to, but the supposition that no other means remained of preventing the public finances from being materially affected. ”

“ 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) . ”

“ The American war—for the management of which the severest reproaches were cast upon the Government—the state of Ireland, and Parliamentary Reform, were the principal public questions that agitated the term of Lord North's Administration. Amongst the Whigs who took a prominent part in these proceedings were the Grenvilles. Connected by marriage with the Pitt family, and distinguished by their own hereditary claims and high talents, they exerted as conspicuous an influence out of office as they had previously done when they had the reins of Government in their hands. ”

“ The answer to the King was not sent till the day after his summons had been received, but 'if not speedy, it was decided—"Never."' A second futile assault was made by the Royalists, and then the King and Prince Maurice with their troops, turned their backs on Plymouth. For four months longer the blockade was continued, and at the end of that time Sir Richard Grenville made a very [Pg 175] determined effort, attacking at four points simultaneously. A desperate struggle ensued in which he gained nothing and lost three hundred men killed, and many hundreds wounded. ”

“ Lord King's conduct is worse than your brother's, who was not at the moment aware of "his honourable friend's" intention, and really does not know the details of your father's conduct as teller. I find from Charles W—— that Lord Grenville is equally outrageous with Lord King. It is evident that the Mountain are moving heaven and earth to lower you and your friends, but it will not do. I dread all the discussions arising from the Catholic question; Canning consulted no one, and I really believe not a soul was aware of his intention previous to his giving the notice. ”

“ He has been bled twice or three times; the greatest pains are taken to keep this illness from the public; but my authority is good, and what I can depend upon. He looked very ill when I last saw him, and I think Lord Grenville must have found his appearance much altered. The impression of my mind is that the complaint is in the head. He has been agitated to a degree by the birth of this Clarence child, and by all the difficulties surrounding him; and not less from finding that he has no resource, but must submit to whatever his Ministers may decide as to the Queen. ”

“ Grenville participated so strongly in his feelings that he indicated his determination of following his example. After stating in a subsequent letter that he thought he saw in the King's mind "a strong wish to take into his own hands this piece of military patronage whenever it falls," he proceeds to observe upon the consequences.
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The whole transaction gives me the greatest uneasiness, because I am not afraid to say to you, fairly and openly, that the measures to which, I fear, you may ultimately be driven in consequence of it are of a nature which I fear extremely ”

“ He appears to have been a man of much pride and ambition. Of his bravery there can be no doubt. In 1585 he commanded the fleet of seven vessels by which the colonists sent out by his cousin, Sir Walter Raleigh, were carried to Roanoke Island in the present North Carolina. Grenville himself soon returned with the fleet to England, capturing a Spanish vessel on his way, but in 1586 he carried provisions to Roanoke, and finding the colony deserted, left a few men to maintain possession. ”

“ He was resolute to withstand the people as he had withstood the Crown. His one standard of conduct was the approval of Parliament; his one aim to enforce the supremacy of Parliament over subject as over king. With such an aim as this, it was inevitable that Grenville should strike fiercely at the new force of opinion which had just shown its power in the fall of Bute. He was resolved to see public opinion only in the voice of Parliament; and his resolve led at once to a contest with Wilkes as with the press. ”

“ The French Republic sent over an ambassador extraordinary, under the title of Minister Plenipotentiary, to demand of England whether France was to consider her as a neutral or a hostile power. Lord Grenville refused to negotiate with him in a character which England could not acknowledge; but intimated that if France was desirous of maintaining peace with Great Britain, she must renounce her views of aggression and aggrandizement, and confine herself to her own territory, without insulting other Governments, without disturbing their tranquillity, without violating their rights. ”

“ Grenville that he saw no reason for proscribing all Lord North's people from office, although he objected to giving them any share in the Government. The meaning of this ingenious distinction is clear. The Administration was tottering, and the only chance they saw of strengthening their position was to buy off the opposition of the followers of the late Cabinet. To swamp their opponents and at the same time keep the actual power in their own hands, was a piece of strategy which might be expected from the general character of Lord Shelburne's tactics. ”

“ The formation of the Grenville ministry indeed was laughed at as a joke. Charles Townshend and the Duke of Bedford, the two ablest of the Whigs who had remained with Bute after Newcastle's dismissal, refused to join it; and its one man of ability was Lord Shelburne, a young Irishman, who had served with credit at Minden, and had been rewarded by a post at Court which brought him into terms of intimacy with the young sovereign and Bute. ”

“ Lord Spencer writes to Lord Grenville by the same opportunity. Neither he nor I see much prospect of making ourselves useful in the shape and with the views proposed, and we are therefore naturally anxious to see the ordinary course resumed in some other person, and any such arrangements taken as may admit of our return as soon as without inconvenience might be. ”

“ As I understood that Sir W. Young and Bernard wrote you an account of the division last night, which placed Grenville so honourably in the Chair of the House of Commons, I did not trouble you with any letter by the post of yesterday; but I [Pg 89] cannot deny myself the pleasure of acquainting you, that nothing could be more perfectly satisfactory to all our friends than the conduct of the new Speaker on an occasion naturally distressing ”

“ The rash and impolitic ambition of France had awakened an angry resistance on the part of Austria, who had recently entered into an alliance with the Court of St. Petersburg; and England, desiring to avail herself of these events, employed Mr. Grenville to ascertain the views of Prussia and Austria with reference to the formation of a general combination against the common enemy. "He will have, if I mistake not," observes Lord Grenville, "very much the glory of signing the overthrow of Jacobin France."
MR. T. GRENVILLE TO THE MARQUIS OF BUCKINGHAM. ”

“ Lord Grenville strongly objected to the exception even of the English Chancellor, as justifiable upon no principle, when the exercise of ecclesiastical patronage had been provided for in the other part of the Bill; and it is difficult to discover what principle can justify the exclusion of the Chancellor of Ireland, which would not also extend to every other judicial situation. ”

“ Grenville, who very politely acquainted me with your Lordship's sentiments, and readiness to give every communication which might be of service to a successor. These assurances I was happy to receive, although I could entertain little doubt that a man of your Lordship's honour and liberality of mind would feel a pleasure and satisfaction in doing that which others, not with the same liberality of sentiment, might consider only as a duty upon them. ”

“ The clandestine manner of carrying on a separate negotiation, which we complain of, would be equally practicable and equally blameable if Lord Fitzwilliam was Ambassador, as it is now that Mr. Grenville is Plenipotentiary. I must therefore again entreat you, as a matter of personal kindness to me, to remain a little longer at [Pg 42] Paris; if you were to leave it, all sorts of suspicions would be raised. It is of infinite consequence that we should have it to say that we have done all in our power to make peace, not only with regard to what may be expected from America, but from Europe. ”

“ MR. W. W. GRENVILLE TO THE MARQUIS OF BUCKINGHAM.
Whitehall,
Nov. 5th, 1788, Five o'clock.
My dear Brother,
I have delayed till this hour writing to you to-day, as I have nothing of any consequence to write about, excepting the King's health; and I wished to send you the account which I have just received from Pitt, and which I now enclose. The general alarm on the subject is very great, and it is impossible not to feel that so long an illness without much amendment, if any on the whole, and without coming to any crisis, has a most serious appearance. ”

“ Grenville pursued his object with Ministers in reference to the Renunciation Bill, and the consistency he observed in maintaining the policy which he and Lord Temple knew to be essential to the security of the [Pg 118] British power in Ireland. If that policy was not carried out, Lord Temple was relieved from all responsibility, and was prepared to relinquish into other hands the confusion and disorder which he could not obtain the means of ameliorating. As Mr. Grenville observes in the following letter, he was "completely master of his own ground;" ”

“ Grenville judged it prudent to withhold Lord Buckingham's letter of resignation, till the solution, either way, should have been ascertained. The conflicting difficulties of the situation, looking at it from all sides, are ably stated in a letter of the 15th of February.
You cannot come away, without appearing to desert your trust, while the King's servants here abide by theirs; nor without giving the Regent an opportunity to object to the nomination of any person who may be proposed to him by Pitt to succeed you. ”

“ GRENVILLE (or Greynvile) , SIR RICHARD (c. 1541-1591) , British naval commander, was born of an old Cornish family about 1541. His grandfather, Sir Richard, had been marshal of Calais in the time of Henry VIII., and his father commanded and was lost in the “Mary Rose” in 1545. At an early age Grenville is supposed to have served in Hungary under the emperor Maximilian against the Turks. In the years 1571 and 1584 he sat in parliament for Cornwall, and in 1583 and 1584 he was commissioner of the works at Dover harbour. He appears to have been a man of much pride and ambition. ”