June 26th Sir Richard Grenville (Birth)
     

The younger brother of  Sir Bevil Grenville (March 23rd), Sir Richard Grenville (1600 – 1658) fought in the Netherlands at the age of eighteen and performed well in the Cadiz and Île de Ré expeditions serving under the Duke of Buckingham.  

The fourth husband of the tragic Lady Mary Howard (Volume I in the Second Series of ‘Q’s Historical Legacy – Lady Mary’ by the compiler of this almanac), Grenville was notorious for his arrogance, violent temper and his abusive behaviour towards his wife. In February 1631, he was  convicted in the Star Chamber after accusations by the father of Lady Mary’s third husband, fined £8,000 and six days later, Lady Mary divorced him and was awarded £350 per annum alimony. These two penalties ruined him financially and he was confined in the notorious Fleet Debtor’s Prison.  

Escaping in 1633, he fled to the continent but returned, in 1639, to join in at the start of the ‘Bishops’ War with Scotland’,  King Charles I’s attempt to force alignment between the Kirk and the Church of England.  However the Irish Rebellion occurred and Grenville served there instead.  Upon his return to England in 1643 he was arrested by the Parliamentarians but was released and made his way to Oxford to join the Royalist forces, playing important roles in the battles of Plymouth and Lostwithiel but was wounded at Taunton.  In another example of his viciousness, he ordered the execution of the lawyer who had represented Lady Mary at the Star Chamber.

Grenville was captured by the Parliamentarians but released by order of the Earl of Essex and he escaped to the continent where he lived out his final years dying, an embittered man, in Holland.


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