Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 23.djvu/269



member of parliament for St. Albans, the seat formerly held by Sir Samuel Grimston, and again in 1713 and 1715. On the death of his elder brother Sir Harbottle Luckyn in 1710, the Luckyn baronetcy devolved on him, and on 29 May 1719 he was created a peer of Ireland, with the titles Baron Dunboyne and Viscount Grimston. Grimston is best known by a play which he published in 1705, 'The Lawyer's Fortune, or Love in a Hollow Tree.' This composition, in which occurs the line, 'Let's here repose our wearied limbs till wearied more they be,' was deservedly ridiculed. Swift introduced the author in his verses 'On Poetry, a Rhapsody,' and Pope in his lines on Gorhambury (Sat. ii. 176) calls him 'booby Lord.' Grimston himself, after publishing two editions of the play, one anonymously, withdrew the book from circulation. It was, however, reprinted at Rotterdam in 1728, and again in London in 1736. The story goes that the Duchess of Marlborough, when using her influence to oppose Grimston at an election for St. Albans, was responsible for this last edition, which she distributed broadcast among the electors. The author's name was not printed, but the edition was embellished by a dedication to 'The Right Sensible, the Lord Flame,' a frontispiece showing an ass wearing a coronet, and a head-piece depicting an elephant on a tight-rope. Forty-five years afterwards Johnson related the story to Lord Charlemont. The truth of the anecdote is very doubtful. The Duchess of Marlborough certainly quarrelled with Grimston over the election of 1734, but there was no vacancy at St. Albans in 1736. There is no doubt that the edition of that year was due to somebody's malice. 'Walpole, Baker, Whincop, Nichols, and others, who have wished to set off Grimston's parliamentary and domestic virtues against his literary folly, have urged in his defence that the play was written when he was only thirteen years old, and that its publication was probably due to his parents' vanity. They give as the date of his birth 1692, but he was certainly born in 1683. Grimston died 15 Oct. 1756, aged 73. He married Jane, daughter of James Cooke, citizen of London, and by her, who died 12 March 1765, he was the father of nineteen children. He was succeeded in the title and estates by his second son, James (1711-1773). His grandson, James Walter (1775-1845), was created first Earl of Verulam 24 Nov. 1815.

[Lodge's Peerage of Ireland, v. 188; Collins's Peerage, ed. Brydges, viii. 221; Walpole's Royal and Noble Authors, ed. Park, v. 263; Baker's Biog. Dram. ii. 302; Whincop's Compleat List of English Dramatic Poets; Swift's Works, ed. 1803, xi. 297 n.; Boswell's Johnson, ed. Birkbeck Hill, iv. 80; Cussans's Hertfordshire, Hundred of Cashio, iii. 248; Members of Parliament; see Notes and Queries, 5th ser. vii. 27, 93, 155, 301.]  GRINDAL, EDMUND (1519?–1583), archbishop of Canterbury, was the son of William Grindal, a well-to-do farmer who lived at Hensingham, in the parish of St. Bees, Cumberland, a district which Grindal himself described as 'the ignorantest part in religion, and most oppressed of covetous landlords of anyone part of this realm' (Remains, p. 257). He went at an early age to Cambridge, where he entered first at Magdalene College, and then removed to Christ's College where he was scholar in 1536-7, and afterwards to Pembroke Hall, where he took his B.A. degree in 1538, and in the same year was elected fellow. He took the degree of M.A. in 1541, was ordained deacon in 1544, and was proctor of the university for 1548-1549, in which year he was appointed Lady Margaret's preacher. In the year of his proctorship commissioners were appointed by Edward VI to hold a visitation at Cambridge. At the head of the commission was Nicholas Ridley, bishop of Rochester, who had formerly been master of Pembroke Hall, and probably it was owing to his influence that Grindal was selected on 24 June 1549 to argue on the protestant side in one of a series of disputations in which the commissioners used the old scholastic system as a means to advance the cause of the reformed theology (, Acts and Monuments, ed. 1846, vi. 322-7). After this Ridley frequently employed him in similar disputations elsewhere, and especially in some which were held at the houses of Sir William Cecil and Sir Richard Morysin (Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, MSS. cii. 12). When Ridley became bishop of London he chose Grindal as one of his chaplains, and in August 1551 collated him to the precentorship of St. Paul's. In the following December he was made one of the royal chaplains, in June 1552 received license to preach within the province of Canterbury, and in July was installed as a prebendary of Westminster. In the following October the articles of religion were submitted to him as one of the royal chaplains before they were introduced into convocation. It was rumoured that he was to be made a bishop, but Edward VI's death prevented his appointment, and on Mary's accession Grindal found it wise to leave England, abandoning all his preferments. He settled at Strasburg, where he attended the lectures of Peter Martyr. Thence he passed on to Wasselheim, Speier, and Frankfort, where he strove to allay the disputes which had arisen among the English 