page_title: Sir Richard Grenville, 1st Baronet
section_title: 1646 to 1659; Exile and death
hierarchical_section_title: Sir Richard Grenville, 1st Baronet / Career / 1646 to 1659; Exile and death
context_page_description: Sir Richard Grenville was a professional soldier from Cornwall, who served in the Thirty Years War, and 1638 to 1651 Wars of the Three Kingdoms. He was the younger brother of Sir Bevil Grenville, who died at Lansdowne in 1643, and grandson of Admiral Sir Richard, killed at Flores in 1591.
  He began his military career during the 1618 to 1624 Bohemian Revolt, an early phase of the Thirty Years War, then served under the Duke of Buckingham. In 1628, he became MP for Fowey, and married Mary Fitz, a well-connected and wealthy widow; they divorced in 1632, and he was imprisoned for debt.
  In 1633, he escaped to Europe; from 1634 to 1639, he fought with the Swedes, then the Dutch Republic, before returning home to take part in the Bishops Wars. He served in Ireland from 1642 to 1643, followed by a brief spell with the Parliamentarian army, before defecting to the Royalists in March 1644.
  He spent the rest of the war in the West Country; arrested for insubordination by Sir Ralph Hopton in early 1646, he was released when the Royalists surrendered in March. His feud with the Earl of Clarendon meant he was barred from the exiled court of Charles II; he died in Ghent on 21 October 1659.
context_section_description: He joined the exiled Court in Jersey, and was one of those excluded by Parliament from pardon. After the execution of Charles I in 1649, Charles II appointed him Lieutenant-General under the Marquess of Hertford for a proposed Western Rising that never took place. In 1653, he became involved in an unsuccessful conspiracy against the Earl of Clarendon, and banished from court.
  He spent the next few years in Italy and the Netherlands, and made a secret visit to England, apparently in hopes of retrieving his property. In 1654, he published his Single defence against all aspersions of all malignant persons, giving his version of events in the West; in 1736, it appeared in the Works of George Grenville, Lord Lansdowne. It was intended to offset Clarendon's The History of the Rebellion, although the first volume of the 'History' only covered the period to March 1644; the second volume, with details of Grenville's service, was not completed until 1671.
  At some point in the 1650s, his son Richard died, and in 1657, he was joined in exile by his daughter Elizabeth, who thus became involved in his ongoing legal battle with the Howards. He died on 21 October 1659, and was buried at Ghent, in the Spanish Netherlands; the grave has since disappeared.
  His nephew John Granville (1628-1701), was a leading figure in the 1660 Restoration. Like his uncle, he incurred enormous debts in a legal dispute; his heir committed suicide on discovering their extent. Elizabeth was still alive in 1671, when she appears in her mother's will; it is suggested she married a Royalist sea-captain, but details are scarce.
caption: The Earl of Clarendon; Grenville's feud led to his banishment from the exile Court
exif: {"Image PhotometricInterpretation": "2", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "72", "Image YResolution": "72", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image ExifOffset": "102", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "895", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "1091"}