Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 23.djvu/169

 and among the smaller offices he is said to have held there was that of recorder of Stratford-on-Avon. His name frequently appears in the town records.

Brooke met a violent death. On 18 Feb. 1627-8 he made a will, leaving all his property to his cousin Robert Greville. Among those who witnessed the will was an old servant named Ralph Haywood. A few months later Brooke added a codicil granting annuities to many dependents, but he omitted to make any provision for Haywood. The neglect rankled in Haywood's mind, and on 1 Sept. following, while waiting on his master as he lay in bed at his London house in Holborn, Haywood charged him with injustice. Brooke severely rebuked Haywood's freedom of speech, whereupon Haywood stabbed him with a sword. Haywood straightway withdrew to another room and killed himself. Brooke was seventy-four years old and did not long survive his wound. He died 30 Sept. 1628, after adding one more codicil to his will bequeathing handsome legacies to his surgeons and attendants in his illness. On 27 Oct. 1628 his body was carried to Warwick and buried in St. Mary's Church. The epitaph which he had himself composed was engraved on the monument which had been erected under his directions (, Parish Registers). It ran: 'Fulke Greville, servant to Queen Elizabeth, councillor to King James, and friend to Sir Philip Sidney. Trophæum Peccati.' A sympathetic 'Mourning Song' appeared in Martin Peerson's 'Mottuets or Grave Chamber Musique' (1630).

In Brit. Mus. Addit. MS. 4839, art. 27, is a tractate called 'The Patron' (quoted in Biog. Brit.), in which Brooke's murderer is defended on the ground that Haywood's grievance was real and just. A rhyming elegy, printed in Huth's `Inedited Poetical Miscellanies,' 1870, similar in tone, charges Greville with the most contemptible parsimony. But whatever may be the facts as to his neglect of Haywood, his relations with the literary men of the day do not confirm the accusation of penuriousness. Speed, the annalist, attributed to him his release 'from the daily employments of a manual trade,' so that he might devote himself to literature. Camden acknowledged 'extraordinary favours' from him, and left him by will a piece of plate. Greville's exertions obtained for Camden the post of Clarenceux king-of-arms in 1597. Similarly, Dr. John Overall owed the deanery of St. Paul's to his influence with together with ' The Tragedy of Mustapha ' the queen, and he obtained the secretaryship (London, for N. Butter, 1609), to complete of the navy for Sir [q. v.] To the poets he was a generous patron. Samuel Daniel writes that Greville

To Greville Daniel dedicated his 'Musophilus.' John Davies of Hereford wrote a high-flown sonnet in praise of 'Mustapha' 'as it is written not printed' (cf. Scourge of Folly, 1610). Bishop Corbet, in his `Iter Boreale,' describes a visit to Warwick Castle, and the genial welcome proffered him by 'the renowned chancellor.' Brooke also befriended William D'Avenant, and took him into his service as his page. With Bacon Brooke maintained friendly relations to the last. In Easter term 1618, when Sir Henry Yelverton,the attorney-general, submitted to the privy council an information against one Maynham for libellously defaming Bacon, Greville boldly defended his friend's character. The anecdote is often told, on the authority of Arthur Wilson, that when Bacon was in disgrace and was living in seclusion in Gray's Inn, he sent to Brooke for a bottle of beer, 'seeing that he could not relish that which was provided' in the Inn, and that Brooke told his butler to refuse the request. But this gossip may be safely rejected. In 1621 James I sent Brooke Bacon's manuscript history of Henry VII, and enjoined him to read it 'before it was sent to press.' This Brooke did, and returned it to the king with high commendations (Spedding, vii. 325-6). Brooke, by a codicil to his will, charged his lands in Toft Grange, Foss-dike, and Algakirk, in co. Lincoln, with an annuity of 100l. for the maintenance of a history lectureship at Cambridge, which he directed to be first bestowed on [q. v.], at one time his 'domestic' (Cal. State Papers, Dom. 1627-8 p. 470, 1628-9 p. 438). Baker, writing early in the eighteenth century, mentions that the lectureship 'has been lost by the iniquity of the times,' Nothing seems now known of it at Cambridge.

Brooke, who as a youth was the friend of Spenser and Sidney, and as an old man was the patron of D'Avenant, was a student of literature throughout his life, but his literary work was mainly done in his early years, and little of that was published in his lifetime. An elegy on Sidney in the miscellany called the `Phœnix Nest' (1593), a poem in Bodenham's 'Belvedere' (1600), and two poems assigned to him in the first edition of England's Helicon' (1600), seem, together with `The Tragedy of Mustapha' (London, for N. Butter, 1609), to complete the list of works which were printed while he lived, and none of these appear to have been issued under his direction. 'Mustapha'