Grenville, SIR RICHARD, one of England's unforgotten worthies, sprang from an ancient Cornish family, and early distinguished himself under Elizabeth by his courage both on land and sea. He was knighted about 1577, and in 1585 commanded the seven ships which carried out Raleigh's first colony to Virginia, the ill-success of which, according to Ralph Lane, its leader, was mainly due to the commander's tyranny. Linschoten speaks of the fierceness of his temper, and how at table he would crush the glasses between his teeth till the blood ran out of his mouth. Grenville fought and spoiled the Spaniards like other heroes of his time, and while preparing another fleet for Virginia was stayed by the queen at Bideford to take his share in the glory of the Armada fight. In August 1591 he commanded the Revenge in Lord Thomas Howard's squadron of six vessels, when they fell in with a Spanish fleet of fifty-three sail off Flores, in the Azores. Grenville took off his ninety sick men from the island, and, while the admiral made good his escape, refused with splendid disobedi- ence 'to turn from the enemy, alleging that he would rather choose to die than to dishonour himself, his country, and her majesty's ship.' The great San Philip, of 1500 tons, towering in height above the Revenge, soon took the wind from her, and now she found herself in the midst of a ring of enemies, and a battle almost unequalled in the history of the world began. From three in the afternoon, and all through the night till morning the battle raged, the stars above blotted out by the sulphurous canopy of smoke, while as many as fifteen several Spanish ships were beaten off in turns, and no less than 800 shot of great artillery endured. Two ships were sunk by her side, two more so disabled that they soon foundered, while as many as 2000 men were slain or drowned. But the Revenge was by this time a helpless wreck, all her powder spent, the pikes broken, forty of her 100 sound men slain, and the most part of the rest hurt, the vice-admiral himself sore wounded, both in the body and in the head. Sir Richard would have had the master-gunner to blow up the ship, but was overborne by his surviving men, and carried on board one of the Spanish ships, where he died of his wounds the second or third day after, with the words on his lips, according to Linschoten's account: '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, that hath fought for his country, queen, religion, and honour. Whereby my soul most joyfully departeth out of this body, and shall always leave behind it an everlasting fame of a valiant and true soldier, that hath done his duty as he was bound to do.' 'What became of his body,' says Raleigh, 'whether it were buried in the sea or on the land we know not: the comfort that remaineth to his friends is, that he hath ended his life honourably in respect of the reputation won to his nation and country, and of the fame to his posterity; and that, being dead, he hath not outlived his own honour.' A few days after the fight a great storm arose from the west and north-west, in which fourteen Spanish ships, together with the Revenge and in her 200 Spaniards, were cast away upon the Isle of St Michaels, besides fifteen or sixteen more upon the other islands. 'So it pleased them to honour the burial of that renowned ship the Revenge, not suffering her to perish alone, for the great honour she achieved in her lifetime.' 'Hardly,' says Froude, 'as it seems to us, if the most glorious actions which are set like jewels in the history of mankind are weighed one against the other in the balance, hardly will those 300 Spartans who in the summer morning sat combing their long hair for death in the passes of Thermopylæ have earned a more lofty estimate for themselves than this one crew of modern Englishmen.'
This great exploit was told in noble English by Sir Walter Raleigh in A Report of the Truth of the Fight about the Isles of Azores, this last Sommer (1591); in good verse by Gervase Markham, in The Most Honorable Tragedie of Sir Richard Grinvile, Knight (1595); by Jan Huygen van Linschoten, in his diary (Dutch, 1596; Eng. 1598), the three reprinted together by Arber (1871); by Froude, in 'England's Forgotten Worthies,' in the Westminster Review for July 1852, since included in the first volume of his Short Studies on Great Subjects; and by Tennyson in The Revenge, the noblest heroic ballad in the English tongue—set not unworthily to music in Villiers Stanford's cantata produced at Leeds in 1886.
Sir Richard Grenville was grandfather of the English Bayard, Sir Bevil Grenville (born 1596), the hero of Hawker's spirited ballad, who was killed at the battle of Lansdown, near Bath, 5th July 1643.