Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 23.djvu/135

Grenville which followed soon, his great heart not being able to hold out any longer. He lies buried in a church in Ghent, with this inscription only upon a plain stone, “Sir Richard Granville, the King's general in the West”’ (, Works, i. 560).

[Boase and Courtney's Bibliotheca Cornubiensis, i. 193, iii. 1208 ; Clarendon's Rebellion, ed. Macray; State Papers, Dom.; Wood's Fasti. ed. Bliss, i. 352; Lloyd's Memoirs of Excellent Persons, 1668. Manuscript letters by Grenville are to be found among the Tanner MSS. in the Bodleian; others are enumerated by Boase and Courtney, p. 1208.]  GRENVILLE, RICHARD TEMPLE, afterwards (1711–1779), eldest son of Richard Grenville (1678-1728) of Wotton Hall, Buckinghamshire, by his wife Hester, second daughter of Sir Richard Temple, bart., of Stowe, near Buckingham, and sister and coheiress of Richard, viscount Cobham of Stowe, was born on 26 Sept. 1711. After receiving his education at Eton, he travelled about with a private tutor for more than four years. At the general election in 1734, shortly after his return to England, he was elected to parliament for the borough of Buckingham. In the parliament of 1741-7 he represented the county of Buckingham, but at the general election in the latter year was once more returned for the borough.

His mother succeeded as Viscountess Cobham on the death of her brother in September 1749, and was created on the following 18 Oct. Countess of Temple. On her death on 7 Oct. 1752, Richard succeeded to the House of Lords as Earl Temple. At the same time he inherited the large estates of Wotton and Stowe, and took the additional surname of Temple.

His career in the House of Commons appears to have been comparatively undistinguished. Walpole describes him as being at this period ‘the absolute creature of Pitt, vehement in whatever faction he was engaged, and as mischievous as his understanding would let him be, which is not saying he was very bad’ (Memoirs of the Reign of George II, pp. 135-6). In 1754 his only sister Hester was married to Pitt, and on 19 Nov. 1756 Temple was appointed first lord of the admiralty in the Duke of Devonshire's administration, being sworn a member of the privy council the same day. Having been absent from the council when the clause thanking the king for bringing the Hanoverian troops to England was added to the speech, Temple went down to the house at the opening of parliament (2 Dec. 1756), ‘as he told the lords, out of a sick bed, at the hazard of his life (indeed, he made a most sorrowful appearance), to represent to their lordships the fatal consequences of the intended compliment.… And having finished his oration, went out of the house with a thorough conviction that such weighty reasons must be quite unanswerable’ (, Memoirs, pp. 89-90). This is probably the only instance of a cabinet minister on his first appearance as a minister in the house opposing any part of the address in return to the king's speech. The ‘oration,’ however, had no effect, and the address was carried unanimously. Temple was greatly disliked by the king, who complained to Waldegrave that he ‘was so disagreeable a fellow, there was no bearing him; that when he attempted to argue, he was pert, and sometimes insolent ; that when he meant to be civil, he was exceeding troublesome, and that in the business of his office he was totally ignorant’ (ib. p. 95). According to Walpole, who is in a great measure confirmed by Waldegrave, Temple on one occasion actually ventured so far as to sketch a parallel between the king at Oudenarde and Admiral Byng at Minorca, in which the advantage did not lie with the former (Memoirs of the Reign of George II, ii. 378). Temple was dismissed from his post on 5 April 1757, and a few days after Pitt shared the same fate. On the formation of the Duke of Newcastle's administration in June they both returned to office, Pitt as secretary for state and Temple as lord privy seal. On 22 Dec. 1758 Temple was appointed lord-lieutenant of Buckinghamshire. Being refused the Garter he resigned the privy seal on 14 Nov. 1759, but at the request of the king resumed office two days afterwards, and was elected a knight of the Garter on 4 Feb. 1760. He resigned office with Pitt in October 1761 in consequence of the rejection of Pitt's proposal for an immediate declaration of war with Spain. On 9 Nov. following they made a triumphal entry into the city, their reception being a remarkable contrast to that given to the king and queen. Temple now became estranged from his brother George [q. v.], and figured as one of the most active of Bute's opponents. Owing to his ostentatious patronage of Wilkes he was dismissed from his post of lord-lieutenant on 7 May 1763. In May 1765 Pitt was dissuaded from forming an administration by Temple, who was on the point of becoming reconciled with his brother George and had conceived the idea of forming a ministry the principal members of which were to be of his own family. In his interview with the king on the 25th of