Bevil Grenville Sir Bevil Grenville ( 1596 – 5 July 1643 ) was MP for Cornwall 1621 – 1625 and for Launceston 1625 – 1629 , in 1640 and 1640 – 1642 . He was a Royalist soldier in the Civil War and was killed in action in heroic circumstances at the Battle of Lansdowne in 1643 . Early life . Grenville was born near Withiel , west of Bodmin , Cornwall , the son of Sir Bernard Grenville by his wife Elizabeth Bevil , and was a grandson of Sir Richard Grenville ( 1542 – 1591 ) , the heroic Elizabethan naval captain , explorer , and soldier . The Grenville family had for centuries been lords of the manors of Stowe in the parish of Kilkhampton in Cornwall , and of Bideford in Devon . He was educated at Exeter College , Oxford . Political career . Granville was elected Member of Parliament for Cornwall in 1621 and remained so until 1625 . Under King Charles I he became MP for Launceston in 1625 where he remained until King Charles decided to rule without parliament in 1629 . In parliament , Grenville supported Sir John Eliot and the opposition , and his intimacy with Eliot was lifelong . In 1639 , however , he appeared as a royalist going to the Bishop ' s War against Scotland in the train of King Charles I . The reason for this change of allegiance is unknown , but Grenville ' s honour was above suspicion and he must have been convinced that he was doing right . At any rate he was a very valuable recruit to the royalist cause , being " the most generally loved man in Cornwall " . When parliament reassembled for the Short Parliament in April 1640 , Grenville was chosen as MP for Launceston again . In November he was re - elected MP for Cornwall for the Long Parliament . He was disabled in 1642 for supporting the Royalists . Civil War . At the outbreak of the Civil War , Grenville together with others of the gentry not only proclaimed the king ' s Commission of Array at Launceston assizes , but also persuaded the grand jury of the county to declare their opponents guilty of riot and unlawful assembly , whereupon the " posse comitatus " was called out to expel them . Under the command of Sir Ralph Hopton , Sir Bevil took a distinguished part in the Battle of Braddock Down and , at Stratton ( 16 May 1643 ) , where the parliamentarian Henry Grey , 1st Earl of Stamford was completely routed by the Cornishmen , he led one of the storming parties which captured Chudleigh ' s lines . He then led his men on a victorious march through Devon into Somerset . Death at Lansdowne . A month later , the endeavour of Hopton to unite with Prince Maurice and the Marquess of Hertford from Oxford brought on the Battle of Lansdowne ( 1643 ) , near Bath in Somerset . Here Grenville was killed on 5 July 1643 at the head of the Cornish infantry as it reached the top of Lansdown Hill . He received a blow to the head with a pole - axe and was taken to the rectory at nearby Cold Ashton where he died . His death was a blow from which the king ' s cause in the West never recovered , for he alone knew how to handle the Cornishmen . Hopton they revered and respected but Grenville they loved as peculiarly their own commander and , after his death , there is little more heard of the reckless valour which had won Stratton and Lansdown . Family . He married Lady Grace Smythe , daughter of Sir George Smythe , by whom he had fourteen children , one of whom was John Grenville , 1st Earl of Bath ( 1628 – 1701 ) . The other children were by Royal Warrant of Precedence granted the rank and title of Earl ' s children by King Charles II on 20 August 1675 , in recognition of their father ' s services . Monuments . Mural monument , Kilkhampton Church . According to the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition : " Grenville was the type of all that was best in royalism . He was neither rapacious , drunken nor dissolute , but his loyalty was unselfish , his life pure and his skill no less than his bravery unquestionable . " His giant servant Anthony Payne , about whom Alan M . Kent wrote a poem " Oogly es Sin : the Lamentable Ballad of Anthony Payne , Cornish Giant " , brought his body back to Kilkhampton . His Cornish soldiers refused to fight under any other leader and returned home , carrying the body of Sir Bevil . It was buried in a tomb in Kilkhampton Church . Sir Bevil Grenville ' s Monument , Lansdown Hill . Sir Bevil Grenville ' s Monument was erected in his memory on the field of Lansdown to commemorate the heroism and that of his Cornish pikemen at the Battle of Lansdown . Further reading .