Page:Devonshire Characters and Strange Events.djvu/265

Rh How he fared in England we know not; he did secure his daughter and escaped with his life to Holland, but of his son we hear nothing more, and it is possible that he met his death while in England.

Lord Lansdowne, in his Vindication of his uncle, says, "His only son, unluckily falling afterwards into whose hands, was hanged."

In 1652 Sir Richard Grenville, being in the Low Countries, seized goods belonging to the Earl of Suffolk that were at Bruges, to the value of £27,000, as some abatement of the debt he considered was due to him out of Lady Howard's estate.

In 1655 that lady's son, George Howard, married Mistress Burnby, and by her had a son George who died young, and he had no more children, so that with this child died his grandmother's hopes of a descendant in the male line. If George Howard, the father, were born in 1634, he would have been one-and-twenty when he married.

Sir Richard Grenville died at Ghent about 1659, attended by his daughter Elizabeth, who shortly after married a privateer captain named Lennard, who cruised the Channel stopping and plundering English vessels, on the principle that all who did not fight for King Charles were his enemies and the enemies of his country. He was taken prisoner 8 February, 1659-60, and only escaped being hanged by the Restoration. He was set at liberty and given the post of captain of the Black Horse at Tilbury; but he did not long enjoy the post, as he died in 1665.

Something must now be said about this daughter, Elizabeth Grenville, concerning whom tradition has a good deal to say, but it is unsupported by documentary evidence.

The story is that Lady Howard hated the child with