The Right Honourable
John Granville, 1st Earl of Bath
PC
John Granville, 1st Earl of Bath
Lord Lieutenant of Devon
In office
December 1685 – April 1696
Lord Warden of the Stannaries
In office
October 1660 – August 1701
Lord Lieutenant of Cornwall
In office
October 1660 – May 1696
Governor of the Scilly Isles
In office
1649–1651
Personal details
Born
John Grenville

29 August 1628
Kilkhampton, Cornwall
Died22 August 1701(1701-08-22) (aged 72)
St James's, London
Resting placeSt James' church, Kilkhampton
NationalityEnglish
SpouseJane Wyche (1652–1692)
ChildrenJane (c. 1653 – 1696); Charles (1661–1701); John (1665–1707); Catherine (1666–?); Grace (1667–1744)
Parent(s)Sir Bevil Grenville (father); Grace Smythe (mother)
OccupationSoldier, landowner and courtier
Military service
RankColonel
Battles/warsWars of the Three Kingdoms
Lostwithiel; Second Newbury; Torrington;

John Granville, 1st Earl of Bath PC (29 August 1628 – 22 August 1701)[1] was an English landowner who served in the Royalist army during the First English Civil War and was rewarded for his services after the 1660 Stuart Restoration with a title and various appointments.

Personal details

John was born on 29 August 1628 at Kilkhampton in Cornwall, the third son of Sir Bevil Grenville (1596–1643) and Grace Smythe (died 1647). His aunt Elizabeth Smythe was the mother of George Monck who played a leading role in the 1660 Stuart Restoration and it was this connection that later resulted in Grenville being raised to the peerage as Earl of Bath.[2]

One of thirteen children, John's two elder brothers died prematurely, making him heir to his father's considerable estates when Sir Bevil was killed at the Battle of Lansdowne in 1643.[3]

Career

John Granville, 1st Earl of Bath (1628–1701), detail from one of two large stained glass windows depicting the genealogy of the Granville family, in the Granville Chapel, Church of St James the Great, Kilkhampton, Cornwall, erected jointly by his descendants in 1860
The Earl of Bath's Regiment of Foot, as it appeared circa 1685. Note it's characteristically blue uniform

During the 1638 to 1651 Wars of the Three Kingdoms, Granville fought in the regiment raised by his father for Charles I (1625–1649).[4] Created a knight after the Storming of Bristol in 1643, he was appointed Gentleman of the Bedchamber to the future Charles II and accompanied him into exile. When the Second English Civil War began in 1648, Charles appointed him Governor of the Scilly Isles, which had rebelled against its Parliamentary garrison. As a base for Royalist privateers attacking English and Dutch vessels in the Western Approaches, this was a vital source of funding for the exiled Court; in May 1651, Parliamentary forces under Robert Blake retook the islands and Granville was captured.[5]

On his release, Granville remained in England and continued to be active in Royalist conspiracies. In 1660, he served as an intermediary in the negotiations between Charles and his distant relative George Monck that led to the Restoration. To his disappointment, the Dukedom of Albemarle went to Monck, whom Charles also rewarded with the then-enormous pension of £7,000 per year. Instead, he was created Baron Granville, Viscount Granville and Earl of Bath in 1661, and a Privy Councillor in 1663.[6]

In 1665, he was appointed Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, although he never went there and spent large sums of time and money on rebuilding the family home of Stowe House in Cornwall. Widely admired, it was dismantled in 1739, although many of its ornamental features, including entire rooms, can be seen at the Guildhall in South Molton, Devon.[7] Albemarle also expanded his own ancestral seat of Potheridge, about 18 miles to the east; unfinished on his death, it was badly damaged by fire and demolished in 1734.[8]

Granville was a signatory to The Several Declarations of The Company of Royal Adventurers of England Trading into Africa, a document published in 1667 which led to the creation of the Royal Africa Company.[9][10] This is speculated to have been influenced by the fact that Granville was close friends with the Royal African Company's leader, the Duke of York (and future King James II), who was brother to Charles II.[11]

Under James II, Granville served as colonel of the Earl of Bath's Regiment, later 10th Foot, first during the June 1685 Monmouth Rebellion and again in 1688. During the November 1688 Glorious Revolution, he commanded the key ports of Exeter and Plymouth but defected to William III on 18 November.[12][13]

He was rewarded by being made Lord Lieutenant of Devon but again failed to gain the title of Albemarle and the legal dispute over the Albemarle estate almost bankrupted him. Two weeks after his death in August 1701, his son Charles shot himself, apparently overwhelmed by the debts he had inherited.[14]

Marriage and progeny

Arms of Wyche: Azure, a pile ermine, as seen in Kilkhampton Church

In October 1652 at Kilkhampton John Granville married Jane Wyche, a daughter of Sir Peter Wyche, English ambassador to the Ottoman Empire.[4] By his wife, he had five children:

Sons

Daughters

Haynes Park, Bedfordshire, the home of Barons Carteret, descendants of Lady Grace Grenville. In 1908 it still contained a collection of portraits of the Grenville family.

Death

He died in London in 1701, one week before his 73rd birthday.

Armorials

Heraldic achievement of John Granville, 1st Earl of Bath (1628–1701), south wall of Granville Chapel, Church of St James the Great, Kilkhampton, Cornwall. The arms are Gules, three clarions or (Grenville) impaling Azure, a pile ermine (Wyche). The Latin motto on a scroll beneath is Futurum invisibile ("The future is unseen").

The armorials of the family of Granville / Grenville of Glamorgan, Devon and Cornwall are of certain form but uncertain blazon. The charges appear in the form of musical pipes of a wind instrument, similar to pan-pipes. Authoritative sources on heraldry suggest the charges to be variously "clarions" (used by Guillim (d. 1621)), the most usual blazon, which are, however, generally defined as a form of trumpet; "rests" is another common blazon, denoting lance-rests supposedly used by a mounted knight; "organ-rests" is also met with, a seemingly meaningless term (Gibbon (1682)). Other terms are "clavicymbal", "clarichord" and "sufflue" (used by Leigh in his Armory of 1562 and by Boswell, 1572),[16] the latter being a device for blowing (French: souffler) air into an organ.[17] Guillim suggested the charge may be a rudder,[17] but in which case it is shown upside down, when compared to that charge used for example on the tomb at Callington of Robert Willoughby, 1st Baron Willoughby de Broke. Certainly in the brasses on the chest tomb of Sir John Bassett (d. 1529) in Atherington Church, Devon, the charges are engraved in tubular forms with vents or reeds as used in true organ pipes.

References

  1. ↑ Surname sometimes spelled Grenville
  2. ↑ Round 1930, p. 163.
  3. ↑ Stater 2004.
  4. 1 2 "Grenville, John" . Dictionary of National Biography. London: Smith, Elder & Co. 1885–1900.
  5. ↑ "The Scilly Isles, 1651". BCW Project. Retrieved 15 June 2016.
  6. ↑ Round, p.130
  7. ↑ "Stowe House". Lost Heritage. Retrieved 27 July 2019.
  8. ↑ "Great Potheridge". Lost Heritage. Retrieved 27 July 2019.
  9. ↑ Davies, K. G. (Kenneth Gordon) (1999). The Royal African Company. London: Routledge/Thoemmes Press. ISBN 0-415-19072-X. OCLC 42746420.
  10. ↑ Pettigrew, William A. (William Andrew), 1978-. Freedom's debt : the Royal African Company and the politics of the Atlantic slave trade, 1672-1752. Omohundro Institute of Early American History & Culture. Chapel Hill [North Carolina]. ISBN 978-1-4696-1183-9. OCLC 879306121.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
  11. ↑ Stater, Victor (3 January 2008). "Grenville, John, first earl of Bath". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/11492. ISBN 978-0-19-861412-8. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
  12. ↑ Webb, Stephen Saunder (1995). Garrett, Jane (ed.). Lord Churchill's Coup: The Anglo-American Empire and the Glorious Revolution Reconsidered. Alfred a Knopf Inc. p. 343. ISBN 978-0394549804.
  13. ↑ Stater, Victor (3 January 2008). "Grenville, John, first earl of Bath". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/11492. ISBN 978-0-19-861412-8. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
  14. ↑ "Sir John Grenville, 1st Earl of Bath, 1628-1701". BCW Project. Retrieved 27 July 2019.
  15. ↑ Risdon, Tristram (d.1640), Survey of Devon, 1811 edition, London, 1811, with 1810 Additions, p.419
  16. ↑ Boswell, Armorie of 1572, vol. 2, p. 124
  17. 1 2 "Clarion".

Sources

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