[Illustration: SIR BEVILL GRENVILLE. (_From an Oil Painting._) ] Passing over Sir Richard’s son, John, who followed Drake and was drowned in the ocean, “which became his bedde of honour,” and also another son, Sir Bernard, we come to the latter’s famous son, Sir Bevill—a man no whit inferior in loyalty and courage to his illustrious grandsire, and whom men called the English Bayard. When Charles I., in 1639, raised an army against the Scots, Bevill Grenville joined the Royal Standard at the head of a troop of horse at York. “I cannot contain myself within my doors,” he wrote, “when the King of England’s standard waves in the field upon so just an occasion, the cause being such as must make all those that die in it little inferior to martyrs. And for my own part, I desire to acquire an honest name or an honourable grave. I never loved my life or ease so much as to shun such an occasion, which if I should, I were unworthy of the profession I have held, or to succeed those ancestors of mine who have so many of them in several ages sacrificed their lives for their country.” History shows this to have been a bloodless campaign, but the above extract proves Grenville’s hereditary spirit, and the King, in token of his approval, knighted him at Berwick-on-Tweed before the army broke up; and when, three years later, the storm at last burst over England, which had been so long threatening, Charles I. had no more loyal supporter than Sir Bevill Grenville. Clarendon says he was “the most generally loved man in Cornwall.” He was the soul of the Royalist cause there, and his influence was so great that he readily raised a body of volunteers fifteen hundred strong. At Bradock Down, near Liskeard, where the first important encounter with the Parliamentarian troops took place, Sir Bevill led the van. Describing the fight to his wife, he writes: “After solemn prayers at the head of every division, I led my part away, who followed me with so great a courage, both down the one hill and up the other, that it struck a terror into them,” with the result that twelve hundred prisoners were captured, and all the guns. The next engagement took place at Stratton (distant only a few miles from Grenville’s own home in the adjoining parish of Kilkampton) on May 16th, 1643, where he was again conspicuous for his personal courage. The Earl of Stamford, who commanded the Parliamentarian troops, which numbered close on 6,000, all perfectly equipped and victualled, had encamped in a very strong position on the top of a hill, now called Stamford Hill, near the village of Stratton. It is an isolated grassy hill on a ridge which runs nearly due north and south. The sides on the east and south are the steepest, whilst the western slope has an ancient earthwork near the summit, which Stamford had defended with guns that ought to have rendered it impregnable. The Royalist troops, less than half their number, short of ammunition, and so destitute of provisions that the