From Grenneville in the Côtentin, a fief of the Barons of St. Denis-le-Gaste: “not to be confounded with Granville, and unquestionably,” says Sir Francis Palgrave, “the cradle of the Grenvilles.” “The late Marquess of Buckingham,” writes M. de Gerville, in his Anciens Châteaux de la Manche, “used often to visit the ecclesiastics residing at Winchester Castle” (during the first French Revolution), “and constantly spoke to them of the Norman origin of his family, regretting that son curd de Grenneville was not among them. He was well acquainted with the site of the old castle, and described it accurately.” The name continued to be written Grenville until the Earls of Bath, in the seventeenth century, adopted the form of Granville. In Dugdale’s Baronage it is given “Grenevil;" and without adducing a shred of evidence, he proceeds to derive the family from Hamon Dentatus Earl of Corboil, “lineally descended from the Warlike Rollo.” The “Norman People” furnishes them with a different ancestor: “Meurdrac, a Scandinavian Viking, who was seated at St. Denis le Gaste c. 930. It is believed that the families of Meurdrac, Trailly, Grenville, Beauchamp, and Montagu, whose arms were closely related, and whose fiefs formed part of the barony of St. Denis, were of the same origin.” There was clearly a close connection between the Grenvilles and the Giffards; for William de Grenville, with Robert his son, witnessed Walter Giffard’s charter to Bolbec Abbey in 1061 (Neustria Pia, 402); and the latter, who accompanied the Conqueror, received of the said Walter three knights’ fees in his county of Buckingham. Robert’s son, Richard de Grenville, married Isabel Giffard, the second daughter and eventual co-heir of this same Earl of Buckingham. Her elder sister, Rohais, w as the wife of Richard de Bienfaite, Lord of Clare and Tonbridge; and Richard de Grenville, very soon after the Conquest, was enfeoffed by his brother-in-law of three and a-half knight’s fees at Bideford in Devonshire, where he took up his residence. His descend­ants continued to hold of the De Clares, and adopted the three clarions of their suzerains in lieu of the cross, charged with five roundels, that had been their original coat, and is still borne by the Duke of Buckingham and Chandos, the last remaining Grenville. "These clarions, organ-rests, or sufflues, as they have been variously called, were a rebus of the De Clares, Earls of Gloucester, and probably their badge. The earliest example of them is to be found on the seal and encaustic tiles of Neath Abbey, Glamorgan.”—The Norman People. In the time of William Rufus, Richard de Grenville went with Robert Fitz Hamon to the conquest of Glamorgan, and was one of his "Douze Peres,” among whom the territory was divided. "But our bounteous and noble-minded knight, having Neath in Glamorgan allotted to his part, builded there a monastery dedicated to the Virgin Mary, gave all his conquered lands to the perpetual maintenance thereof, and returned back again to his house here at Bideford.”—Westcote's Devon. Dugdale says that he settled in the course of the same reign at Kilkhampton in Cornwall, which is believed to have belonged to the Grenvilles from the time of the Conquest, and is at all events mentioned in a quo warranto roll of Henry II. as having at that time been long in the family. Here, for many successive generations, they dwelt in their old manor-house of Stowe, ever true to its kindly motto — "An open door and a greeting hand:”

in honour and renown, and are still remembered to the present day. Here, too, the first I xml Bath built “by far the noblest house in the West of England,” which was pulled down soon after the death of his grandson in 1711, and its contents dispersed. “It used to be said that almost every gentleman’s scat in Cornwall had received embellishments from Stowe. The cedar wainscot, which had been brought out of a Spanish prize, and used by the Earl of Bath in fitting up a chapel in this mansion, was purchased by Lord Cobham at the time of its demolition (the house being then sold piece-meal), and applied to the same purpose at Stowe, the magnificent scat of the Grenvilles in Buckinghamshire.” - Gilbert's Cornwall.

There would appear also to have been a Somersetshire branch, for Sir Thomas Grenville was of that county temp. Henry II., and gave his name to his manor of Grenevyleswick.

Two of the Grenvilles are memorable in their country’s annals—Queen Elizabeth’s gallant Admiral, Sir Richard, and his chivalrous grandson, Sir Bevill. Sir Richard was one of the daring and dauntless spirits that have made the navy of England what it is, and won for her triumphant flag the dominion of the seas. To him strife and adventure were as the breath of his nostrils, and danger the fairest mistress that ever lover wooed and won. A born sea-farer, thirsting for fresh fields of enterprise and eager for the fray, he was ill at ease on shore, and spent most of his years on active service.

“Home is very calm — But Honour rides upon the crested wave.”

He was the kinsman and companion of Sir Walter Raleigh; had carried out his earliest colonists to Virginia; and was entrusted with the defence of Cornwall on the approach of the Armada. He lost his life in the crowning exploit of his career, the famous sea-fight in the Azores, “admirable even beyond credit and to the very height of some heroical fable,” that has been nobly sung by Tennyson. In 1591, he commanded the Revenge in the English squadron under Lord Thomas Howard, then lying off Flores, when a fleet of fifty-three Spanish ships of war was reported to be bearing down upon them. The English had only six sail of the line, all told: and Lord Thomas, seeing the hopeless disproportion of his forces, weighed anchor and put to sea. But Sir Richard Grenville, who had ninety of his men sick on shore, swore that he would not leave them to “the thumb-screw and the stake” of the Spaniard, and refused to follow till they were all safe on board. Being “last to weigh, he lost his wind: whereupon some of his officers advised him to cut his main sail and cast about, and trust to the sailing of his ship, as the Spanish squadron had already got on his weather-bow. This Sir Richard peremptorily refused, saying, ‘He would much rather die than leave such a mark of dishonour on himself, his country, and the Queen’s ship.’” The little Revenge carried no more than one hundred fighters, and they knew they could only fight to die, but they cheered his brave words, and steered straight into the enemy’s fleet Several of their ships he forced to luff, and fall under his lee: but at three o’clock of the sultry tropical afternoon the conflict began in bitter earnest. The Spanish Admiral, in his huge sea-castle, the San Felipe, “principall of the twelve sea-apostles, that carried three tiers of ordnance on each side,” took the wind out of his sails and immediately boarded, no doubt counting on a speedy surrender. He had to learn that the Englishmen were of far other mettle; for the San Felipe, “having receiv’d the lower tier of the Revenge, discharged with cross-bow shafts, shifted herself with all diligence from her side, utterly disliking her entertainment” Then four more heavily armed vessels, two on the starboard, and two on the larboard, closed in round the devoted English ship. But she met her assailants undismayed, and fought them as they came, one with the other, hour after hour, till the day turned to night, and the night again to day, shaking them off “As a dog that shakes his cars When he leaps from the water to the land.

And the sun went down, and the stars came out far over the summer sea, But never a moment ceased the fight of the one and the fifty-three: Ship after ship, the whole night long, their high-built galleons came; Ship after ship, the whole night long, with her battle-thunder and flame; Ship after ship, the whole night long, drew back with her dead and her shame; For some were sunk, and many were shattered, and so could fight no more— God of battles! was ever a battle like this in the world before?”

By daybreak the next morning, Sir Richard had repulsed the enemy no less than fifteen times, two of their vessels had gone down alongside, two more had taken refuge on shore in a sinking state, and little more than a hulk was left of the gallant Revenge. She had endured, according to Raleigh’s computation, “eight hundred shot of great artillery, besides many assaults and entries;” her masts were shot overboard, and her rigging cut to pieces: “nothing left overhead either for flight or defence:” she had six feet of water in her hold, and ‘‘resembled a slaughter-house rather than a ship.” Two-thirds of her crew were dead or disabled. Sir Richard had been hit early in the action, but kept the deck notwithstanding till eleven at night, when he received a shot in the body, and was carried down to have his wound dressed. While this was being done, he received another dangerous wound in the head, and the surgeon was killed by his side. The battle only ended when the English wanted powder, and their pikes were all broken: then “Sir Richard exhorted his men to yield themselves to the mercy of Heaven rather than to the Spaniard, and gave orders to his gunner, a resolute and bold fellow, to split and sink the ship.” The other officers, however, interposed, locked the master gunner into his cabin, and made terms with the enemy, surrendering the blood-stained ship that had kept the whole Spanish fleet at bay, and the wounded lion, who only survived his capture three days. His last words were spoken in Spanish: “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, fighting for his country, Queen, religion, and honour: my soul willingly departing from this my body, leaving behind the lasting fame of having behaved as a valiant soldier is in duty bound to da” Even his enemies mourned him; and John Evelyn, recording the action, cries out, “Than this, what have we more? What can be greater? "

Sir Bevill, the “Bayard of England,” was not unworthy of such an ancestor. “Where,” asks Martin Llewellyn “shall the next fam'd Grenvill's ashes stand? Thy grandsire fills the sea, and thou the land."

“A brighter courage and a gentler disposition,” says Clarendon, “were never married together.” When the troubles of the great Civil War began, he raised a troop of horse at his own expense. “I cannot,” he wrote to Sir John Trelawny, “contain myself within my doors when the King of England’s standard waves in the field upon such just occasion. The cause being such as must make all that die in it martyrs. And for my own part I desire to acquire an honest name or an honourable grave.” Both his prayers were granted. He was one of the boldest and most successful of the Cavalier leaders, triumphantly cleared his own county of rebels, and led his stout Cornishmen from victory to victory, till he fell in his last and most brilliant field at Lansdowne Hill. “In 1643, a little band of Cornishmen gathered round the chivalrous Sir Bevill Grenville, ‘so destitute of provisions that the best officers had but a biscuit a day,’ and with only a handful of powder for the whole force: but, starving and out­numbered as they were, they scaled the steep rise of Stratton Hill, sword in hand, and drove Stamford back on Exeter with a loss of 2,000 men, his ordnance and baggage train. Essex despatched a picked force under Sir William Waller to check their advance: but Somerset was already lost ere he reached Bath, and the Cornishmen stormed his strong position at Lansdowne Hill in the teeth of his guns.”—Green's History of the English People. His intrepidity alone assured the wavering fortunes of the day. When the rebels seemed to be carrying all before them — “Grenville stood, And with himself oppos’d and check’d the flood.

His courage work’d like flame, cast heat about, Here, there, on this, on that side, none gave out.

Not any pike in that renowned stand But took new force from his inspiring hand; Soldier encourag’d soldier, man urged man, And he urged all, so far example can.

Hurt upon hurt, wound upon wound, did call, He was the butt, the mark, the aim of all.”

It was at the third charge of the enemy’s troopers that “his horse failing and giving ground, he received, after other wounds, a blow on the head from a poleaxe, with which he fell.” His loss would have clouded any victory.

He left a large family—six daughters and seven sons. The eldest, Sir John, was not more than sixteen when he took his father’s place in the command of his regiment, and fought in all the considerable battles of the West of England. He was afterwards one of the negotiators of the Restoration, and in acknowledgment of his own and his family’s services, created Earl of Bath, Viscount Lansdowne, and Baron Granville of Bideford and Kilkhampton in 1661. His son Charles, who served under Sobieski at the siege of Vienna, and was made a Count of the Holy Roman Empire by the Emperor Leopold, only bore the title for a few days, being killed by the accidental discharge of a pistol while the preparations for his fathers funeral were going on, in August 1701. The third and last Earl died of the small-pox ten years later, unmarried: and the inheritance reverted to three aunts, Lady Jane, married to Sir William Leveson Gower (ancestor of the Duke of Sutherland): Lady Catherine, married to Craven Peyton: and Lady Grace, married to Lord Carteret, who was created Countess Granville in her own right in 1714. This title has been revived in our own time in favour of a descendant of Lady Jane’s, Lord Granville Leveson Gower.

A brother of the second Earl of Bath’s had been created Lord Granville of Petheridge by Queen Anne in 1702, but died childless; and a similar failure attended a second peerage, granted a few years afterwards. Bernard, third surviving son of the renowned Sir Bevill, who was a mere child when he lost his father, and ran away from school to join his brother John in the defence of the Scilly Isles, had been very active in the King’s service at home and abroad, and received an appointment in the Royal household after the Restoration. His son George became in 1712 Baron Lansdowne. But the title expired with him in 1734, for he left only daughters behind him; and the last heir male of this famous Cornish house was his nephew Bernard, who, dying unmarried in 1775, bequeathed his property to the son of his sister Anne, John D’Ewes, thence­forward known as John Granville. His other sister was Queen Charlotte’s favourite, Mrs. Delany.

But the lineage of the Grenvilles was far from having died out in its original habitat. They had never removed from Buckinghamshire, but were still seated at Wotton, one of the manors dependent on the great Honour of Giffard, of which their ancestor had been enfeoffed at the Conquest. They descended fro m a brother of the Richard de Grenville who sought and found his fortune in the West; an elder brother, it may fairly be assumed, holding this fief as the head of the family. Gerard de Grenville, his brother Robert, and Ralph de Grenville, all appear in various charters of the time of Henry II. One of these, witnessed by Gerard, is a grant by his suzerain Walter III., Earl of Buckingham, of the tithes of Wotton, and several other places in the county, to the Cluniac Abbey, founded by his father at Newton-Longueville. To this day - seven hundred years and more after that grant was made -”there are tythes at Wotton called Longeville tythes.” - Collins. Gerard is mentioned in the Pipe Rolls of 1130 and 1158, and held three fees de veteri feoffamento of the Honour of Giffard in 1165. - Liber Niger. The next in succession, Eustace, “in 32 Hen. II. gave 100 marks to obtain the lands that were Gerard de Grenville’s, his uncle, then in the hands of the King, which debt was not discharged till 2 Ric. I.”—Collins. He was Constable of the Town and Seneschal to King John in 1214, and did homage as a baron in 1230, having married the daughter and co-heir of Robert Arsic, Baron of Coges (Roberts, Excerpt, i. 193). His line terminated with his great-grandson, and the progenitor of the present family was his uncle Richard.

From this Richard fifteen descents, in unbroken succession, are counted to another Richard Grenville of Wotton, born in 1677, who married Hester Temple, the heiress of Stowe. This auspicious match first inaugurated the brilliant political career of the Grenvilles, who, till then plain Buckinghamshire squires, rapidly rose to be a power in the State. “A writer of our own day has computed that, within the space of fifty years, three First Lords of the Treasury, three Secretaries of State, two Keepers of the Privy Seal, and four First Lords of the Admiralty were appointed from among the sons and grandsons of the first Countess Temple.” - Earl Stanhope's History of England.

Hester Temple represented an illustrious Saxon house. Her father, Sir Richard Temple of Stowe, Sir Richard’s grandmother, Dame Hester Temple, was the mother of four sons and nine daughters, who all married but one, and multiplied so exceedingly that she lived to see—and she is believed to be the only woman on record that ever did so - 700 of her descendants! bore the black eagle of Mercia by right of descent from Earl Leofric himself (the same Leofric who, as the story goes, “set Coventry toll-free” for the love of Godiva This familiar legend is stigmatized by Freeman as a disgrace to English history. The town of Coventry, we are now told, was not then in existence: there was only a vill so named, chosen by Earl Leofric and his wife, as the site of their projected monastery; and Godiva stripped herself, not actually of her clothes, but allegorically of all her earthly possessions, for its endowment.); and her only surviving brother being childless, obtained, when he was created Viscount Cobham in 1718, a remainder to her and her heirs male. Accordingly, at his death in 1749, the title, as well as the great Buckinghamshire estate, devolved upon her, and, in the following month, she was created Countess Temple. She had then been for many years a widow, and died in 1752, leaving one daughter and four of her seven sons surviving: 1. Richard, Earl Temple; 2. George, of whom presently; 3. James, whose son of the same name was created Baron Glastonbury in 1797, but died s. p.; and 4. Henry, Governor of Barbadoes and Ambassador to the Porte, who left an only child, Louisa, the wife of Charles, third Earl Stanhope. Their sister Lady Hester, Baroness Chatham in 1761, will ever be held in honoured remembrance as the wife and mother of two of England’s greatest statesmen. She was the youngest of the family, and married William Pitt in 1754, “a marriage which, while securing his domestic happiness, strengthened his political connexion.”— Ibid; The eldest son, Richard, second Earl, a man of considerable ability, who was a prominent member of Pitt’s great administration, left no children; and the inheritance passed to the son of his next brother George, the well-known minister of George III. George Grenville had early entered political life under the auspices of his uncle, Lord Cobham, and successively passed through the different gradations of office till he became First Lord of the Treasury in 1763. He was, however, “virtually no more than a tool of Bute’s and the King’s:" and his name is unhappily associated with the ill-starred Stamp Act that led to the American war. He married Elizabeth Wyndham (a grand-daughter of the Percy heiress), who brought him, besides four daughters, three sons, who all took a prominent part in political life: 1. George, third Earl Temple; 2. Thomas, an eminent classical scholar, and most accomplished and amiable man, who, having attained the great age of ninety-one, is still affectionately remembered by a few surviving friends and relations; and 3. William Wyndham, created Lord Grenville in 1790, the distinguished statesman who, after being Mr. Pitt’s principal colleague, was himself named Premier when, on the death of the great minister, “All the Talents” came into office in 1806. This was the last post he would ever accept under the Crown; and he ended his life in complete retirement among the beautiful gardens and groves he had planted at Dropmore. His wife Anne, the sister and heir of Lord Camelford, lived to be the last survivor of all who had borne the illustrious name of Pitt. She died in extreme old age in 1864.

George, third Earl Temple, married the daughter and heir of Robert Earl Nugent, whose Irish Earldom he received in 1776; and his wife was created Baroness Nugent in 1800, with remainder to their second son, Lord George, who bore the title for thirty-six years, but died s. p. in 1848. Lord Temple had further sought to obtain a Dukedom; but only succeeded in becoming Marquess of Buckingham in 1784. His son Richard was more fortunate. He, too, had married an heiress, and a far greater one than his mother had been, for his wife was Lady Anna Eliza Brydges, daughter and sole heir of the last Duke of Chandos, by which alliance the Grenvilles became the representatives of Mary, Duchess of Suffolk, the youngest sister of Henry VIII., and added two more to their already numerous patronymics. The Marquess thenceforward bore the names of Temple-Nugent-Brydges-Chandos-Grenville, and the long-coveted Dukedom fell to his share in 1822, when he was created Duke of Buckingham and Chandos. At the same date, he received not only the Marquessate of Chandos, but a fresh grant of the Earldom of Temple of Stowe, with remainder (failing heirs male) to his grand-daughter, Lady Anna, afterwards married to William Gore Langton, of Newton Park, Somerset These last additions made up the astounding sum of eleven different titles of honour granted to the descendants of Hester Countess Temple within seventy years of her death. But not long after they had reached the culminating point of their prosperity, the scales slowly began to turn, and the shadow of a boding cloud to appear on the horizon. There had been profuse expenditure, and there were soon formidable debts. The vast and continually enlarged palace of Stowe, with its 500 acres of pleasure ground and their galaxy of emblematical temples; the splendid household and grand receptions - especially a most magnificent entertainment given to the exiled King of France - and, above all, the enormous election expenses, had already obliged the first Duke to practise economy by going abroad, and the second Duke completed his ruin by reckless purchases of land upon borrowed money. Then came the still-remembered catastrophe, with the great sale at Stowe, and the dispersion of all its far-famed collections. The young Marquess of Chandos, disdaining to take advantage of the entail, nobly relinquished to his father’s creditors the greater part of his inheritance. Since his accession to the Dukedom, he has in some measure retrieved the disaster, and Stowe is once more tenanted by the descendant of its ancient lords, now their last living representative in the male line.