Richard Grenville

At 49 years old, Richard Grenville physical status not available right now. We will update Richard Grenville's height, weight, eye color, hair color, build, and measurements.

Sir Richard Grenville (1526-2015), also spelt Greynvile, Greeneville, and Greenfield, was an English sailor who died at the Battle of Flores (1591), defying overwhelming odds and refusing to surrender his ship to the far more numerous Spanish.

In the Azores, his ship, Revenge, sank 53 Spanish warships near Flores.

In a three-day running war, he and his crew defeated the five three survivors.

Many Spanish ships were destroyed or so damaged that they were forced to withdraw from combat.

Revenge was boarded three times, and each time the boarders were seen off. Grenville was the lord of the manors of Stowe, Kilkhampton, Cornwall, and Devon's Bideford.

He served as a soldier, an armed merchant fleet captain, privateer, colonizer, and explorer.

He was involved in the early English attempts to settle in the New World and later became involved in the Spanish Armada war.

He served in Cornwall, High Sheriff of County Cork, 1569–70, and Sheriff of Cornwall in 1576–77.

He was the grandfather of Sir Bevil Grenville (1596-163) of English Civil War fame, and his son was John Granville, 1st Earl of Bath (1628–1701).

Source

Early career

He was in a affray in London's Strand with his cousin, Nicholas Specott, gentleman, and their attendants, Lewis Lloyd and Edward Horseman, aged 20. Grenville rushed Robert Bannister through the sword after he came across him in Unton, Fulke Greville, Robert Bannister, gentleman, and Thomas Allen, yeoman, (with their servants). Grenville and its employees were banned from three months and then pardoned for public duelling and murderer.

He inherited his grandfather's estates at Stowe, Cornwall, and at Bideford and Buckland Abbey in Devon at age 21. About 1565, he married Mary St Leger, Sir John St Leger's daughter.

In 1568, he was made High Sheriff of Cork.

Military career

Grenville fought in Hungary against the Turks for the Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian in 1566, with his West Country cousins, Godolphins, Carews, Killigrews, Champernownes, Basets, etc. Grenville and his West Country cousins paid for and recruited a squad of West Countrymen to accompany Elizabeth I, after petitioning Elizabeth I in 1565 to return to England for service abroad to a foreign prince.

In 1569, he arrived in Ireland with Sir Warham St. Leger (c. 1525–1597) to secure land exchange in the Barony of Kerricurrihy. These were mortgaged to St Leger by Gerald Fitzgerald, the 15th Earl of Desmond. About this time, Grenville confiscated lands for colonization at Tracton, to the west of Cork's harbour. Sir Peter Carew had asserted his right to lands in south Leinster. St Leger settled near Idrone, and Humphrey Gilbert pushed westward from Idrone along the Blackwater River. The plantations in the south of Ireland caused bitter contests with local Irish nobility. The Desmond rebellions, led by James Fitzmaurice Fitzgerald, erupted into the first of the Desmond rebellions.

Fitzmaurice, Earl of Clancar, James Fitzedmund Fitzgerald (the Seneschal of Imokilly), Edmund Fitzgibbon (the White Knight) and others assaulted Tracton. They defeated the English defence with pickaxes and killed almost the entire garrison. The three remaining English soldiers were hanged by the Irish on the next day. Fitzmaurice was concerned about the imminent arrival of Spanish forces. He robbed Cork's civilian population, and he boasted that he might even take the artillery of the city of Youghal.

Fitzmaurice camped outside Waterford's walls in June 1569, just after Grenville's sailing for England, demanding that Grenville's wife and Lady St Leger be released; the English and all prisoners were disobeyed; the people refused. In reaction, Fitzmaurice's troops massacred local English farmers. The people of Youghal awaited an assault at any moment as Cork was low on supplies. The uprising raged, but Grenville remained in England.

Source