Part 2

Sir Richard, then, was born in 1540; and, when only sixteen years of age, served in Hungary, under the Emperor Maximilian, against the Turks, and was present with Don John of Austria, at the battle of Lepanto. He afterwards assisted in the reduction of Ireland; and, whilst there, filled the office of Sheriff of Cork. When Sheriff of Cornwall in 1577, he arrested Francis Tregian for harbouring Cuthbert Mayne, a recusant priest (see _sub_ 'The Arundells'). In 1571 he represented his native county in Parliament, and was knighted. On 19th May, 1585, he sailed from Plymouth with the first colonists, on a voyage to the new-found land of Virginia, of which voyage Thomas Hariot gave a 'Briefe and True Report,' printed in 1588: on his homeward passage he fell in with a Spanish ship of 300 tons, richly laden, from St. Domingo, which he boarded on a raft, his own boats being lost or disabled; and in 1586 he made a second visit to Virginia, pillaging the towns of the Spaniards, and taking many prisoners. With Raleigh he seems to have made one or two similar expeditions, gathering much experience, if not much pecuniary advantage.[9]

When the Spanish invasion was projected, Sir Richard was, almost as a matter of course, elected on the Council for the defence of the country, and he received the Queen's special commands not to quit Cornwall during the peril. On this occasion, he is said to have provided '303 men at his own cost, armed with 129 shot, 69 corsletts, and 179 bows.' Of the result there is no need to speak here; but it has always been a matter of pride for West-country men to think how large a share in the destruction of the Invincible Armada was performed by the gallant sailors who quietly dropped out of Plymouth Sound, and harassed their huge opponents for days, till, what with shot, and storm, and tempest, scarce one of the Spaniards was left to tell the tale of their utter, and irretrievable defeat.

Kingsley has thus admirably described Sir Richard's appearance:[10]

'The forehead and whole brain are of extraordinary loftiness, and perfectly upright; the nose long, aquiline, and delicately pointed; the mouth, fringed with a short, silky beard, small and ripe, yet firm as granite, with just pout enough of the lower lip to give hint of that capacity of noble indignation which lay hid under its usual courtly calm and sweetness; if there be a defect in the face, it is that the eyes are somewhat small, and close together, and the eyebrows, though delicately arched, and without a trace of peevishness, too closely pressed down upon them; the complexion is dark, the figure tall and graceful; altogether the likeness of a wise and gallant gentleman, lovely to all good men, awful to all bad men; in whose presence none dare say or do a mean or a ribald thing; whom brave men left, feeling themselves nerved to do their duty better, while cowards slipped away, as bats and owls before the sun. So he lived and moved; whether in the Court of Elizabeth, giving his counsel among the wisest; or in the streets of Bideford, capped alike by squire and merchant, shopkeeper and sailor; or riding along the moorland roads between his houses of Stow and Bideford, while every woman ran out to her door to look at the great Sir Richard; or sitting in the low, mullioned window at Burrough, with his cup of malmsey before him, and the lute to which he had just been singing laid across his knees, while the red western sun streamed in upon his high, bland forehead and soft curling locks; ever the same steadfast, God-fearing, chivalrous man, conscious (as far as a soul so healthy could be conscious) of the pride of beauty, and strength, and valour, and wisdom, and a race and name which claimed direct descent from the grandfather of the Conqueror, and was tracked down the centuries by valiant deeds and noble benefits to his native shire, himself the noblest of his race. Men said that he was proud--but he could not look round him without having something to be proud of; that he was stern and harsh to his sailors--but it was only when he saw in them any taint of cowardice or falsehood; that he was subject, at moments, to such fearful fits of rage, that he had been seen to snatch glasses from the table, grind them to pieces in his teeth, and swallow them--but that was only when his indignation had been aroused by some tale of cruelty and oppression; and, above all, by those West Indian devilries of the Spaniards, whom he regarded (and in those days rightly enough) as the enemies of God and man.'[11]

And the noble old house at Stow, with its chapel licensed by Bishop Brantingham of Exeter, in 1386,[12] of which no vestige, alas! remains, was worthy of being the abode of such a hero. It would be but unprofitable labour to attempt a fresh description of it after the graphic account which Kingsley gives:

'Old Stow House stands,' says he, 'or rather stood, some four miles within the Cornish border, on the northern slope of the largest and loveliest of those coombes'--which he had just been describing in a memorable passage of a preceding chapter (the sixth) in 'Westward Ho!' 'Eighty years _after_ Sir Richard's time there arose a huge Palladian pile, bedizened with every monstrosity of bad taste, which was built, so the story runs, by Charles II. for Sir Richard's great-grandson, the heir of that famous Sir Bevil who defeated the Parliamentary troops at Stratton, and died soon after, fighting valiantly at Lansdowne over Bath. But like most other things which owed their existence to the Stuarts, it rose only to fall again. An old man who had seen, as a boy, the foundation of the new house laid, lived to see it pulled down again, and the very bricks and timber sold upon the spot; and since then the stables have become a farmhouse, the tennis-court a sheep-cote, the great quadrangle a rick-yard; and civilization, spreading wave on wave so fast elsewhere, has surged back from that lonely corner of the land--let us hope only for awhile.[13] 'But I am not writing of that great _new_ Stow House, of the past glories whereof quaint pictures still hang in the neighbouring houses; ... I have to deal with a simpler age, and a sterner generation; and with the _old_ house, which had stood there, in part at least, from grey and mythic ages ... a huge, rambling building, half-castle, half-dwelling-house.... On three sides, to the north, west and south, the lofty walls of the old ballium still stood, with their machicolated turrets, loopholes, and dark downward crannies for dropping stones and fire on the besiegers; ... but the southern court of the ballium had become a flower-garden, with quaint terraces, statues, knots of flowers, clipped yews and hollies, and all the pedantries of the topiarian art. And, towards the east, where the vista of the valley opened, the old walls were gone, and the frowning Norman keep, ruined in the wars of the Roses, had been replaced by the rich and stately architecture of the Tudors. Altogether, the house, like the time, was in a transitionary state, and represented faithfully enough the passage of the old middle age into the new life which had just burst into blossom throughout Europe, never, let us pray, to see its autumn or its winter.

'From the house on three sides the hills sloped steeply down, and from the garden there was a truly English prospect. At one turn they could catch, over the western walls, a glimpse of the blue ocean flecked with passing sails; and at the next, spread far below, range on range of fertile park, stately avenue, yellow autumn woodland, and purple heather moors, lapping over and over each other up the valley to the old British earthwork, which stood black and furze-grown on its conical peak; and, standing out against the sky, on the highest bank of the hill which closed the valley to the east, the lofty tower of Kilkhampton Church, rich with the monuments and offerings of five centuries of Grenvilles.'

Such were old Stow, and its gallant owner Sir Richard. And the women of the Grenville home seem, for the most part, to have been as fair and virtuous and accomplished as their husbands were sagacious and brave. Polwhele, in after-times, particularly noticed the remarkable beauty of Sir Richard's great-great-granddaughter Mary, the daughter of the Honourable Bernard Grenville, of Stow. Sir Richard married Mary, the daughter of Sir John St. Leger; but the lovely dame had, like the wife of her illustrious grandson, Sir Bevill, to give up what was dearest to her in the world, to the cruel necessities of the troubled times in which they lived.

Yet I cannot doubt that these women had the spirits of Roman matrons within them; and would have assented to Lovelace's lines had their husbands whispered the couplet to them:

'I could not love thee, dear, so much Lov'd I not honour more.'

To return to Sir Richard:--In 1591 we find him acting as Vice-Admiral of a squadron sent out to intercept the richly-laden Spanish fleet on its return from the West Indies; a service of the utmost importance, as, in capturing or sinking the Indian supplies, observes Mr. Arber, England 'stopped the sources of Philip's power to hurt herself.' How the English ships were surprised in their lurking-place 'at Flores[14] in the Azores,' and how valiantly Sir Richard Grenville fought and died for Queen and country, let Raleigh and Tennyson tell.

It was towards the end of August, whilst the Admiral, Lord Thomas Howard,[15] with six of her Majesty's ships and a few smaller vessels and pinnaces, was at anchor at Flores, when news suddenly came of the near approach of the great Spanish fleet. Many of the Englishmen were ill on shore, while others were filling the ships with ballast, or collecting water. Imperfectly manned and ballasted as they were, there was nothing for it--at least so Lord Howard appears to have thought--in the face of so enormously preponderating a force as they found was close at hand, but to weigh anchor, and escape as they best could: and so it became a complete _sauve qui peut_; some of the ships were even compelled to slip their cables. Sir Richard, as Vice-Admiral, was the last to start, delaying to do so till the final moment, in order to collect several of his sick crew who were on the island, and who, if he had left them there, must have been lost. This noble delay of his resulted in the safety of the remainder of the fleet; but it cost Sir Richard and his crew their lives; and the little _Revenge_, which had four or five times narrowly escaped shipwreck, her existence: but she was, as Admiral Hawkins described her, 'ever a ship loaden, and full fraught with ill successe.' Grenville refused to 'cut his mainsail, and cast about,' and so run from the enemy; but persuaded his crew that he would contrive to pass through the two great Spanish squadrons which intercepted him, 'in despight of them, and would enforce those of Sivil to give him way.' It was the story of the 300 Spartans at Thermopylæ acted over again. The huge _San Philip_ of 1,500 tons (carrying 'three tier of ordinance on a side, and eleven pieces on every tier; she shot eight forth right out of her chase, besides those of her stern ports'), however, loomed to windward of the small English ship; and 'becalmed his sails in such sort as the _Revenge_ could neither make way, nor feel the helm;' and then--

'Sir Richard spoke and he laughed, and we roared a hurrah, and so The little _Revenge_ ran on sheer into the heart of the foe, With her hundred fighters on deck, and her ninety sick below; For half of their fleet to the right, and half to the left were seen, And the little _Revenge_ ran on thro' the long sea lane between.'

What end could there be, but one, to courage so chivalric, so desperate, and so devoted as this? 'After the _Revenge_ was entangled with this _Philip_,' says Raleigh, 'four other boarded her--(_i.e._, laid her aboard)--two on her larboard, and two on her starboard. The fight thus beginning at three o'clock in the afternoon, continued very terrible all that evening. But the great _San Philip_ having received the lower tier of the _Revenge_, discharged with cross-bar shot, shifted herself with all diligence from her sides, utterly misliking her first entertainment. Some say that the ship foundered, but we cannot report for truth, unless we are assured. The Spanish ships were filled with companies of soldiers, in some two hundred, beside the mariners; in some five, in others eight, hundred. In ours there were none at all besides the mariners, but the servants of the commanders, and some few voluntary gentlemen only. After many interchanged vollies of great ordnance and small shot, the Spaniards deliberated to enter the _Revenge_, and made divers attempts, hoping to force her, by the multitudes of their armed soldiers and musketeers, but were still repulsed again and again, and at all times beaten back into their own ships, or into the seas.'

'And the rest they came aboard us, and they fought us hand to hand, For a dozen times they came with their pikes and musqueteers, And a dozen times we shook 'em off, as a dog that shakes his ears When he leaps from the water to the land.'

'In the beginning of the fight,' Sir Walter Raleigh continues, 'the _George Noble_, of London, having received some shot through her, by the armadas, fell under the lee of the _Revenge_, and asked Sir Richard what he would command him, being but one of the victuallers, and of small force; Sir Richard bade him save himself, and leave him to his fortune. After the fight had thus, without intermission, continued while the day lasted, and some hours of the night, many of our men were slain and hurt, and one of the great gallions of the armada, and the admiral of the hulks both sunk, and in many other of the Spanish ships great slaughter was made.'

The marvel is how a fragment of the brave little craft was still afloat, for

'Ship after ship the whole night long, their high-built galleons came, Ship after ship, the whole night long, with their battle-thunder and flame, Ship after ship, the whole night long, drew back with her dead and her shame. For some were sunk, and some were shattered, and some could fight us no more-- God of battles! was ever a battle like this in the world before?'

'Some write,' says Raleigh, 'that Sir Richard was very dangerously hurt almost in the beginning of the fight, and lay speechless for a time before he recovered. But two of the _Revenge's_ own company brought home in a ship of Lime (Lyme Regis) from the islands, examined by some of the lords and others, affirm that he was never so wounded as that he forsook the upper deck, till an hour before midnight; and then being shot into the body with a musket as he was a dressing, was again shot into the head, and withal his chururgion wounded to death. This agreeth also with an examination taken by Sir Francis Godolphin,[16] of four other mariners of the same ship being returned, which examination the said Sir Francis sent unto Master William Killegrue,[17] of Her Majesty's Privy Chamber.'

But to return to the fight; 'the Spanish ships which attempted to board the _Revenge_, as they were wounded and beaten off, so always others came in their places, she having never less than two mighty gallions by her sides, and aboard her: so that ere the morning, from three of the clock of the day before, _there had been fifteen several armadas assailed her; and all so ill-approved their entertainment, as they were by the break of day far more willing to hearken to a composition than hastily to make any more assaults or entries_. But as the day encreased, so our men decreased; and as the light grew more and more, by so much more grew our discomforts; for none appeared in sight but enemies, saving one small ship called the _Pilgrim_, commanded by Jacob Whiddon, who hovered all night to see the success; but in the morning bearing with the _Revenge_, was hunted like a hare amongst many ravenous hounds, but escaped.

'All the powder of the _Revenge_ to the last barrel was now spent, all her pikes broken, forty of her best men slain, and the most part of the rest hurt. In the beginning of the fight she had but one hundred free from sickness, and four score and ten sick, laid in hold upon the ballast. A small troop to man such a ship, and a weak garrison to resist so mighty an army. By those hundred all was sustained, the vollies, boardings, and enterings of fifteen ships of war, besides those which beat her at large (_i.e._, from a little distance off). On the contrary, the Spaniards were always supplied with soldiers brought from every squadron; all manner of arms and powder at will. Unto ours there remained no comfort at all, no hope, no supply either of ships, men, or weapons; the masts all beaten overboard, all her tackle cut asunder, her upper work altogether razed, and in effect evened she was with the water, but the very foundation of a ship, nothing being left overhead either for flight or defence.' Mr. O. W. Brierly's recently engraved picture of this stage of the fight, showing the little _Revenge_ with her mainsail down and lying over her 'like a pall,' surrounded by her over-towering enemies, still afraid to approach the dangerous little barque, gives a vivid, and probably accurate idea of the tremendous odds against which the devoted Englishmen had to contend.

'Sir Richard, finding himself in this distress, and unable any longer to make resistance, having endured, in this fifteen hours' fight, the assault of fifteen different armadas, all by turns aboard him, and by estimation eight hundred shot of great artillery, besides many assaults and entries; and that the ship and himself must needs be possessed of the enemy, who were now all cast in a ring round about him, now gave the order to destroy his gallant craft:

'"We have fought such a fight for a day and a night As may never be fought again! We have won great glory, my men! And a day less or more At sea or ashore We die--does it matter when? Sink me the ship, Master Gunner--sink her, split her in twain! Fall into the hands of God! not into the hands of Spain!"'

To this δαιμονίη ἀρετὴ [Greek: daimoniê aretê] (as Froude calls it) of the fiery Sir Richard the master-gunner readily assented; but, according to Raleigh's account, the captain and master pointed out that the Spaniards would doubtless give them good terms, and that there were still some valiant men left on board their little ship whose lives might hereafter be of service to England. Sir Richard was probably by this time too weak and wounded to contest the matter further; the counsels of the captain and master prevailed; and the master actually succeeded in obtaining for conditions _that all their lives should be saved, the crew sent to England, and the officers ransomed_. In vain did the master-gunner protest and even attempt to commit suicide: Tennyson has summed up the story in one sad line:

'And the lion lay there dying, and they yielded to the foe.'

Sir Richard was now removed to the ship of the Spanish admiral, 'the _Revenge_ being marvellous unsavoury, filled with blood and bodies of dead and wounded men like a slaughter-house.'

And now--

'How died he? Death to life is crown, or shame--'

There, on the deck of Don Alfonso Bassano's ship, in the midst of the Spanish captains, who crowded round to wonder at the man who had so long defied their deadly attacks, two or three days after the fight between 'the mastiffs of England and the bloodhounds of Spain,' the grand old Cornish warrior's spirit left the body, speaking his last words thus--in Spanish, so John Huighen van Linschoten (in 'Hakluyt's Voyages') tells us:

'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 body, leaving behind the lasting fame of having behaved as every valiant soldier is in duty bound to do.'

Lord Bacon says of the fight that it was 'Memorable euen beyond credit, and to the Height of some Heroicall Fable.'

And well might Ruskin, in his 'Bibliotheca Pastorum' (i. 33), class the Cornish hero with Arnold of Sempach, Leonidas and Curtius as a type of 'the divinest of sacrifices--that of the patriot for his country'! Well might the gentle Evelyn exclaim: 'Than this what have we more? What can be greater?' And well might gallant old Sir John Hawkins wish that this story might be 'written in our Chronicles,'--as it has been, by Raleigh and by Tennyson,--in 'letters of Gold.'

The Spanish fleet were not permitted to enjoy the fruits of this, their hard-earned and almost only capture during the war; for, a few days after the battle, a great storm arose from the west and north-west, dispersing their battle-ships, and also the West Indian fleet (the cause of the English Expedition) which had now joined them; and sinking, off the coast of St. Michael, fourteen sail, together with the _Revenge_--which seemed to disdain to survive her commander--with 200 Spaniards on board her.

'So it pleased them,' says Raleigh, 'to honour the burial of that renowned ship the _Revenge_, not suffering her to perish alone, for the great honour she achieved in her life-time.' A noble elegy! which even Tennyson's genius has been unable to surpass.

This is not perhaps the time or the place to consider how it was possible for this one little English vessel with a crew of 100 men, to contend so long against 50 (or according to some accounts 53) Spanish galleons with 10,000 men, sinking four of the largest, and slaying 1,000 Spaniards; but it was no doubt owing to more causes than one:--to the low and short hull, which made her more manageable--to superior gunnery and seamanship--but mainly to the stoutest, freest, and fiercest _hearts_ upon earth--the hearts of Englishmen. They _believed_ they were more than a match for their foes, and confidence begat victory; and if ever there was an English victory, in the fullest sense of the word, it was the triumphant loss of the '_Revenge_.'

The Spanish proverb ran

'Guerra con todo il mondo;--y paz con Inghilterra;'

and it has well been said that the episode of the _Revenge_ dealt a deadlier blow to the fame and moral strength of Spain, than even the defeat of the Armada itself.[18] But Sir Richard was not left without a witness. Passing over his son John, who, Carew says, followed Raleigh, and was drowned in the ocean, which 'became his bedde of honour;' and also another son Sir Bernard, who died in 1605, after having served as Sheriff of Cornwall and M.P. for Bodmin--as not being of such transcendent merit as either Sir Bernard's father or son--we come to the 'immortal' Sir Bevill Grenville, eldest son of the said Sir Bernard and his wife Elizabeth Beville of Killigarth near Polperro--(or, according to another account, of Brinn)--a man no whit inferior in loyalty and courage to his illustrious grandsire.

Sir Bevill was born, somewhat unexpectedly, on 23rd March, 1595, at Brinn--probably Great Brinn, the seat of the Bevills, but not a stone of the old mansion is now standing--in the little Cornish parish of Withiel; four years after the little _Revenge_ went down by the island crags,

'To be lost evermore in the main.'

He was doubtless carefully brought up at Stow--the _old_ Stow--which was in those days a sort of nursery for the better sort of young Cornishmen. The late Rev. R. S. Hawker, vicar of Morwenstow, has given us the following pleasant picture of it in Sir Bevill's days: