Sir Richard Grenville (b. 1542 – d. 1591), also spelt Greynvile, Greeneville, and Greenfield, was an English privateer and explorer. Grenville was lord of the manors of Stowe, Cornwall and Bideford, Devon. He subsequently participated in the plantations of Ireland specifically the Munster plantations, the English colonisation of the Americas and the repulse of the Spanish Armada.
Grenville also served as Member of Parliament for Cornwall twice, High Sheriff for County Cork and Sheriff of Cornwall. In 1591, Grenville died at the battle of Flores fighting against an overwhelmingly larger Spanish fleet near the Azores. He and his crew on board the galleon Revenge fought against the 53-strong Spanish fleet to allow the other English ships to escape. Grenville was the grandfather of Sir Bevil Grenville, a prominent military officer during the English Civil War.
Richard Grenville was the eldest son and heir of Sir Roger Grenville (d. 1545), who was captain of Mary Rose when she sank in Portsmouth Harbour in 1545, by his wife Thomasine Cole, daughter of Thomas Cole of Slade. Thomasine remarried to Thomas Arundell. The ancient Grenville family were lords of the manors of Bideford in Devon and of Stowe, Kilkhampton in Cornwall. He was a cousin of Sir Walter Raleigh and the privateer and explorer Sir Humphrey Gilbert.
Grenville's birthplace is believed to have been at Bideford. His father (who had pre-deceased his own father Sir Richard Grenville (c. 1495–1550), the Member of Parliament (MP) for Cornwall in 1529) died when he was an infant, aged 3, and his mother remarried to Thomas Arundell of Clifton Arundell House, where Grenville spent much of his childhood. At age 17, Grenville began law studies at the Inner Temple.
On 19 November 1562, aged 20, he was in an affray in the Strand in London in the company of his cousin, Nicholas Specott, gentleman, with Lewis Lloyd and Edward Horseman, their attendants. Upon encountering Sir Edmound Unton, Fulke Greville, Robert Bannister, gentleman, and Thomas Allen, yeoman, (with their servants), Grenville ran Robert Bannister through with his sword, then left him to die. Grenville and company were outlawed for three months and then pardoned for public duelling and manslaughter.
At age 21, he inherited his grandfather's estates at Stowe in Cornwall, and at Bideford and Buckland Abbey in Devon. About 1565, he married Mary St Leger, daughter of Sir John St Leger.
He was appointed High Sheriff of Cork in 1568.
In pursuit of his military career, with his West Country cousins, Godolphins, Carews, Killigrews, Champernownes, Basets, etc., Grenville fought against the Turks in Hungary for the Holy Roman Emperor, Maximilian in 1566. After petitioning Elizabeth I in 1565 to leave England for service abroad to a foreign prince, Grenville and his West Country cousins paid for and recruited a troop of West Countrymen to accompany them.
In 1569, he arrived in Ireland with Sir Warham St Leger (c. 1525–1597) to arrange for settlement of lands in the Barony of Kerricurrihy. These had been mortgaged to St Leger by Gerald Fitzgerald, 15th Earl of Desmond. At about this time Grenville also seized lands for colonisation at Tracton, to the west of Cork harbour.
Sir Peter Carew had asserted his claim to lands in south Leinster. St Leger settled nearby, and Humphrey Gilbert pushed westward from Idrone along the Blackwater River. The plantations in the south of Ireland led to bitter disputes with local Irish nobility. They escalated into the first of the Desmond rebellions, led by James Fitzmaurice Fitzgerald.
As Sheriff of Cork, Grenville witnessed the rebellion in which Fitzmaurice, along with the Earl of Clancar, James Fitzedmund Fitzgerald (the Seneschal of Imokilly); Edmund Fitzgibbon (the White Knight); and others, attacked Tracton. They overcame the English defence with pickaxes and killed nearly the entire garrison. The three surviving English soldiers were hanged the next day by the Irish. Fitzmaurice threatened the imminent arrival of Spanish forces. Having plundered the citizenry of Cork, he boasted that he could also take the artillery of the city of Youghal.
In June 1569, soon after Grenville's sailing for England, Fitzmaurice camped outside the walls of Waterford and demanded that Grenville's wife and Lady St Leger be given over to him, along with all the English and all prisoners; the citizens refused. Fitzmaurice's troops massacred local English farmers in response. As Cork ran low on provisions, the people of Youghal expected an attack at any minute. The rebellion continued, but Grenville remained in England.
Grenville sided with the Earl of Arundel and the Duke of Norfolk in 1569 against the Queen's secretary. He was elected MP for Cornwall in 1571 and appointed High Sheriff of Cornwall for 1576. "Undeviatingly Protestant", he arrested the Catholic priest Cuthbert Mayne at the home of the Tregians in 1577. Mayne was martyred as a result.
In 1575–76, Sir Richard was back home at Bideford expanding his holdings, businesses and properties after his expedition plans were scuppered. He finished remodeling the rest of the interior of Buckland Greynvile Abbey into a suitable home for his growing family. He decorated it with navigational themes in the plaster on the ceilings, the Greynvile coat of arms on the mantle pieces, as well as a knight in repose against a tree.
Grenville played a major role in the transformation of the small fishing port of Bideford in north Devon into what became a significant trading port with the new American colonies, later specialising in tobacco importation. A charter had been granted to his ancestor Richard Grenville in 1272, creating the town's first council. Three centuries later, Grenville would seek a new charter for the town, hoping to develop it into a port that would trade with his estates in Munster. The charter was officially granted of 16 December 1572. Grenville would also revitalise the market and restore the town's fair.
In 1575, he created the port of Bideford. Grenville was never elected as Mayor of Bideford, preferring instead to support John Salterne in that role, but he was Lord of the Manor, a title held by the Grenvilles since 1126 and finally ceded by his descendants in 1711 to the town council he established. He was again elected as MP for Cornwall in 1584 (sitting until 1586).
Following a period of supporting Sir Walter Raleigh's venture in North America (see below) he returned to Munster to arrange the estate granted him under the plantation of the province. Following the suppression of the Second Desmond Rebellion in 1583, he had purchased some 24,000 acres (97 km2) in Kinalmeaky and brought settlers over. His renewed efforts beginning in 1588 yielded little success, and Grenville returned to England late in 1590.
Privateering plan and sailing around the world