Cornish Worthies: Sketches of Some Eminent Cornish Men and Families, Volume 2 (of 2) — John Shaqi
Cornish Worthies: Sketches of Some Eminent Cornish Men and Families, Volume 2 (of 2)Tregellas, Walter H. (Walter Hawken)
History
Cornish Worthies: Sketches of Some Eminent Cornish Men and Families, Volume 2 (of 2)
Tregellas, Walter H. (Walter Hawken)
Cornwall (England : County) -- Biography
But, as it appears to me, Cornwall _could_ not, even if she would,
spare the Grenvilles--especially the two most celebrated of them, Sir
Richard and Sir Bevill--from her roll of Worthies. True it is that
the Grenvilles usually took the sea at Bideford (By-the-ford), for
it was their nearest port, though they always kept a keen eye upon
the possibility of utilizing Boscastle, Tintagel and other North
Cornwall ports; true also that Sir Theobald Grenville (probably with
the assistance of a priest named Sir Richard Gornard, or Gurney, and
others), who flourished in the reign of Edward III., mainly built the
famous great Bideford bridge of twenty-four arches; doubtless, too,
they had lands and knights' fees, and a house or houses at Bideford
in which they occasionally resided: but the _seat_ of the Grenvilles
was, from at least the time of William Rufus, at Stow (which even
Prince calls 'their chiefest habitation'[1]), in the parish of
Kilkhampton, well within the Cornish border, and separated, on the
northern side, from the fair sister county of Devon by the whole of
the broad parish of Morwenstow.[2] For five centuries or more their
monuments were placed in Kilkhampton Church, on which they bestowed
from time to time many benefactions, and of which parish many members
of the family were Rectors. Carew says that one of the Grenvilles was
parson of Kilkhampton, and that he lived so long as to see himself
uncle and great-uncle to more than 300 persons: this was probably
John Grenville, temp. Edward IV. Of another Rector of this parish the
Rev. C. W. Boase, in his 'Registers of Exeter College,' has recorded
that, shortly after the year 1316, Richard Grenfield founded a chest
of money for making loans to the poor scholars of that Society.
According to Lake's 'Parochial History of Cornwall,' the following
Grenvilles were Rectors of Kilkhampton, namely: Richard, son of Sir
Bart^w. Grenville, 1312; John Grenville, 1524, who also held Week St.
Mary; Dennis Grenville, 10th July, 1661; Chamond Grenville, 1711. The
Church Registers, as might be expected, abound in references to the
family. Their descent, too, is given in the 'Heralds' Visitations'
for _Cornwall_[3] (p. 217); and Tuckett rightly omits them from his
edition of the 'Devonshire Pedigrees' (p. 38, etc.). They commanded
the _Cornish_ forces during the Civil War; and, from their earliest
settlement in the county, they intermarried with such old Cornish
families as Tregomynion, Trewent, Vivian, Roscarrick, Killigrew,
Arundell of Lanherne, Basset, St. Aubyn, Bevill, Fortescue, Prideaux,
and Tremayne. That keen observer, the late Canon Kingsley, has,
moreover, not failed to detect, in the portrait of the great Sir
Richard, the thoroughly _Cornish_ type of face; and, finally, they
are rightly included in the 'Bibliotheca Cornubiensis.' It is, in
view of all these facts, probably unnecessary to dwell any further on
the supremacy of Cornwall's claims to the Grenvilles. But it must be
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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