Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 23.djvu/133

Grenville and at once began a new suit against his old enemy the Earl of Suffolk (Cal. State Papers, Dom. 1639-40, pp. 73, 414). He further petitioned the Long parliament against the Star-chamber sentence passed on him, and his case was referred to a committee; but before it was heard the Irish rebellion broke out (, viii. 137). Grenville took service in the army destined for Ireland as major in the regiment of Lord Lisle (ib.) He landed in Ireland with four hundred horse in February 1641, distinguished himself at the battle of Kilrush (15 April 1642), and on the capture of Trim (8 May 1642) was appointed governor of that place (, Ormonde, ed. 1851, ii. 183, 247, 256). In January 1643 he successfully relieved the Earl of Clanricarde, then besieged in Athlone, and, during his return from this expedition, gained a victory over the Irish at Rathconnell (7 Feb. 1643). On 8 March following the king wrote to Ormonde to give Grenville his special thanks for his great services ‘and singular constant affections’ (ib. ii. 312, 357, 387, v. 408). At the battle of New Ross, however (18 March 1643), the cavalry of Ormonde's army ran away, and one eye-witness gravely impugns Grenville's own conduct (ib. ii. 432;, Confederation of Kilkenny, Creightons Narrative, p. 293). Grenville is said to have opposed the cessation of arms concluded in the summer of 1643, and left Ireland in August 1643, ‘importuned,’ he says, ‘by letters to come to England for his Majesty's service’ (, ii. 548). He landed at Liverpool, but was immediately arrested by the parliamentary commander there, and sent up to London under a guard. On inquiry, however, the House of Commons voted him free from any imputation on his faithfulness, thanked him for his services, passed an ordinance for the payment of his arrears, and voted that a regiment of five hundred horse should be raised for him, to form part of the army under Sir William Waller (Commons' Journals, iii. 223, 259, 347).

Grenville's adoption of the parliamentary cause was merely a stratagem to obtain his pay. On 8 March 1644 he arrived at Oxford, bringing with him thirty-six of his troop, 600l. advanced to him to raise his regiment, and news of an intended plot for the surprise of Basing House (, viii. 139). Parliament proclaimed him ‘traitor, rogue, villain, and skellum,’ nailed their proclamation on a gibbet set up in Palace Yard, and promised to put him in the same place when they could catch him. In the parliamentary newspapers he is henceforth termed ‘skellum Grenville’ (, v. 384). On arriving at Oxford, Grenville addressed a long letter to Lenthall, in which he explained and justified his change of parties (ib. v. 385). A similar letter to the governor of Plymouth gives some additional details (A Continuation of the True Narrative of the most observable Passages about Plymouth, together with the Letter of Sir R. Grenville, 1644, 4to). Four days only after his arrival at Oxford, Grenville was despatched to the west to take part in the siege of Plymouth, and with a commission to raise additional troops in Cornwall (, Oxford Docquets, p. 198). Shortly afterwards Colonel John Digby, who commanded the besiegers of Plymouth, was disabled by a wound, and Grenville succeeded to his post (, viii. 142). In June 1644 the march of the Earl of Essex into the west obliged Grenville to raise the siege and retire into Cornwall. ‘Like a man of honour and courage, he kept a good body together and retreated in good order to Truro, endeavouring actively to raise a force sufficient to oppose Essex's farther advance’ (, Historical Discourses, 1707, p. 49). On 11 Aug. he joined the king's army at Boconnoc with eighteen hundred foot and six hundred horse, and took an important part in the final defeat of Essex (ib. pp. 62, 74). Grenville then resumed the siege of Plymouth, which, according to Clarendon, he promised to reduce before Christmas (, viii. 133;, v. 713). According to Walker, the force left under his command amounted only to three hundred foot and three hundred horse, a fact which helps to explain his failure to perform his promise. During the last year of the war Grenville's conduct was ambiguous and discreditable. In March 1645 he was ordered to march into Somersetshire and assist in the siege of Taunton. There, while inspecting the fortifications of Wellington House, he was severely wounded, and obliged for a time to resign the command of his forces to Sir John Berkeley (, ix. 13-15). This gave rise to a quarrel between Grenville and Berkeley. Grenville believed that Berkeley's intrigues had led to his own removal from Plymouth, and complained of Berkeley's conduct while in command of his forces, and of his encroachments on his own jurisdiction. Berkeley's commission as colonel-general of Devon and Cornwall clashed with his own as sheriff of Devon and commander of the forces before Plymouth. At the same time general complaints of Grenville's conduct arose from all parts of the west. Towards prisoners of war, towards his own soldiers, and all those under his command, he was severe and cruel, ‘so strong,’ says Clarendon,