| Nationality | Greville, Fulke, first Baron Brooke of Beauchamps Court (1554–1628), courtier and author, was born on 3 October 1554, the first of two children of Sir Fulke Greville (1536–1606) and Lady Anne (d. 1583), daughter of Ralph Neville, earl of Westmorland. He was probably born at Beauchamp's Court in Alcester, Warwickshire, the home of his paternal grandfather, Sir Fulke Greville (d. 1560), the second son of Sir Edward who married Elizabeth, one of three daughters and coheirs of Edward Willoughby, the only son of Robert, Lord Willoughby. As the sole heir of the Willoughby family Elizabeth—de jure Baroness Willoughby de Broke—brought to the younger branch of the Grevilles not only the right to a title but also thirty-two manors (including Beauchamp's Court) in eight counties. The youngest of the three Fulke Grevilles was thus a member of an influential landowning Warwickshire family with ties to the aristocratic families of Willoughby, Beauchamp, Neville, Ferrers, Grey, Talbot, Devereux, and Dudley.
Friend of Sir Philip Sidney (1554–1586)
At ten Greville was sent, on 17 October 1564, to join Philip Sidney at the newly founded Shrewsbury School. Three years together at school cemented the friendship of the two boys, and Sidney's influence remained for the rest of Greville's life. The two boys were parted when Greville went to Jesus College, Cambridge (where he matriculated at Easter 1568), and Sidney to Christ Church, Oxford. Greville left Cambridge in 1571 or 1572 without taking a degree. Nothing is known of his activities during the period of Sidney's continental travels from 1572 to 1575.
On Sidney's return to England Greville joined him at court, imbued with the humanist notion of service to one's prince, and with a desire to establish his autonomy; it would be many years before he could expect to come into his inheritance. Greville attached himself to the radical or 'forward' protestant faction of Sidney's uncle, Robert Dudley, earl of Leicester. Like Sidney's, his political ambitions were frustrated by his failure to secure any significant office during these early years. What little he achieved he owed to his connection with the Sidneys. In February 1577, with the support of Sir Henry Sidney, Greville was granted the reversion of two sinecure Welsh offices: clerk of the council and clerk of the signet. (By 1583 he was granted the reversion of the office of secretary to the council in the marches. Within a few years, this monopoly of the Welsh administrative offices provided him with the major source of his public income.) Later in 1577, when Sidney was sent as ambassador to condole the death of the emperor, Maximilian II, Greville, along with Sir Edward Dyer, accompanied him. They had meetings with Don John of Austria in Louvain, John Casimir, count palatine, in Heidelberg, Emperor Rudolph II and his brother Ernest in Prague, Ludwig VI, the elector palatine, in Neustadt, and William of Orange in Gertruidenburg. In 1579 Greville escorted John Casimir and Sidney's friend Hubert Languet back to Germany, and on his return met William of Orange. A similar ceremonial duty was assigned to him in 1582, when he, Sidney, and Sir Walter Ralegh accompanied the duke of Anjou back to Antwerp at the end of the protracted French courtship of Elizabeth.
Greville's attempts at significant actions were met with frustration. In 1578, when he tried to join an expedition designed to discourage the Dutch from allying themselves with the French, he was expressly forbidden from doing so by the queen. Soon afterwards he accompanied Sir Francis Walsingham to the Low Countries without the queen's permission, and was reprimanded for his pains. In 1585 he and Sidney attempted to join Sir Francis Drake's expedition to the West Indies. But he and Sidney were recalled in disgrace, though not before the perspicacious Greville had detected Drake's disingenuous conduct of using Sidney's status to hasten the fitting out of the fleet. In the same year Sidney was allowed to accompany the earl of Leicester on the Low Countries expedition, but Greville was ordered to remain in England. In 1587 Greville departed without permission to witness the battle of Coutras (20 October) between the forces of Henri of Navarre and those of Henri III under the command of the duke of Joyeuse. On his return the queen kept him in disgrace, but gave out that he had been on a secret mission. When he did manage to engage in official military or naval actions these also met with frustration. In 1580, for example, he was appointed captain of one of three ships sent to protect the Irish coast. He spent five uneventful months at sea without seeing any action, and discovered on his return that the enemy fleet of four ships had eluded them.
The chronology of Greville's literary works is unclear, though it appears that he began writing in a spirit of collaborative emulation with Sidney and, to a lesser extent, with Sir Edward Dyer. The first seventy-six sonnets of Greville's sequence entitled Caelica appear to have been written after 1577, when the three friends were experimenting with verse forms. The nature of Sidney's and Greville's friendly rivalry is revealed by the name of the central female figure in each collection: Sidney's mistress is Stella (a single star), Greville addresses his poems to the entire sky (Caelica). Both sonnet sequences can be seen as responses to the challenge presented by the practice of Petrarchan love. While Sidney fails to resolve the conflicting demands of selfless adoration and physical desire in the lover, Greville turns from exploring the psychological consequences of the conflicting demands to a cynical rejection of ideal earthly love. For him, women are unfaithful and men are inevitably self-deceiving.
Servant to Queen Elizabeth, 1586–1603
The great crisis of Greville's life came with the death of Sir Philip Sidney on 17 October 1586, twenty-five days after being wounded at the battle of Zutphen. In many ways the remainder of Greville's life can be seen as an attempt to come to terms with his memory of Sidney. In this respect his first obligation was to prevent unauthorized publication of what is now known as Sidney's Old Arcadia in November 1586. Eventually, in 1590, he oversaw the publication of the significantly revised torso of the work, with his own chapter divisions, chapter summaries, and rearrangement of the eclogues. Three years later, under the auspices of Sidney's sister the countess of Pembroke, his act of homage was replaced by a hybrid edition consisting of two and a half books of revised text and a slightly modified text of the earlier version. Nevertheless, as late as 1615 Greville cherished plans for a double tomb with Sidney. Greville's bond with Sidney would have obliged him to maintain contact with the immediate members of his friend's family, but it is clear that the acrimony between the editors of the 1590 and 1593 editions of the Arcadia in some measure reflected the relationship between Greville and the countess of Pembroke, who each saw themselves as custodians of Sidney's memory. Evidence for the breach between the two can be found in the fact that when Samuel Daniel lost the countess's patronage in the mid-1590s, he was immediately taken under Greville's wing.
During the next fifteen years Greville wrote few poems. In Caelica, sonnets 77–81, he had already turned from concerns with human love to political and religious questions which preoccupied the Senecan closet-dramas—Mustapha, Alaham, and Antony and Cleopatra—written between about 1595 and 1600. In these fundamentally pessimistic plays Greville was concerned with the dangers and evils of power and intrigue in an absolute monarchy, and with the corrupting effect of this on the individual. The works are modelled on ones by Robert Garnier, whose plays enjoyed a vogue among writers of the countess of Pembroke's circle in the 1590s: dramas not intended for stage performance provided a covert figuration of English political circumstances. The countess herself translated Marc Antoine and Samuel Daniel provided a sequel in Cleopatra. By 1601 Greville had probably also completed 'A Letter to an Honourable Lady'. This prose consolatio in the form of a Senecan epistle has much in common with the other works written in the 1590s, advocating patience in the face of the vicissitudes of life and trust in the consolation of Heaven. In it one can see Greville coming to terms with the main issue of his life and writings, the frustration at the lack of personal autonomy.
Greville found no way of advancing his political career in the years following Sidney's death, apart from representing Warwickshire in all the remaining parliaments of Elizabeth's reign, and continuing to hold the lucrative Welsh offices. He did, however, attach himself to Sidney's political heir, Robert Devereux, earl of Essex, who had inherited Sidney's sword and married his widow. In 1599, after many years of unwilling submission to the queen's restraints, Greville obtained, with Essex's support, the treasurership of the navy. He was also appointed a rear-admiral in expectation of the second armada. These were his first significant appointments, and he retained the treasurership despite his patron's disgrace and subsequent execution in 1601. Greville counselled Essex to avoid confrontation with Elizabeth, and ensured that he himself did not alienate Essex's great enemy, Sir Robert Cecil. He also took the further precaution of destroying all copies of his play Antony and Cleopatra to prevent it from being read in terms of current events. The queen, moreover, had taken the measure of Greville's independent actions and knew that his loyalties lay with her. For this reason Greville had some success in moderating proceedings against Essex and his immediate followers after the Essex uprising on 8 February 1601. In order to remove his influence from the queen Cecil arranged for Greville to be posted at Rochester until after Essex's execution on 25 February. Greville avoided the immediate retaliation of the ever-distrustful Cecil. He was made a knight of the Bath on James I's accession in 1603 and his position as secretary of the council in the marches of Wales was confirmed, but Cecil ensured that he surrendered his naval office because of the embarrassment he suffered when Greville refused to connive at the corruption of his fellow administrators. At the age of forty-nine Greville retired to Warwickshire, seemingly at the end of his career.
Councillor to King James, 1603–1625
Despite the loss of his naval office Greville was neither impoverished nor idle. Though he was financially independent, he did his best to ingratiate himself with Robert Cecil. With a substantial annual income he was able to occupy himself not only with the practical affairs of maintaining his six residences, but from 1604 with refurbishing at the enormous cost of £10,000 over several years his seventh residence, Warwick Castle. He was also at liberty to engage in his most productive period of authorship.
From 1603 the bulk of Greville's writing consisted of lengthy philosophical poems. 'A Treatise of Monarchy', completed by 1610, focuses on the problematic origin and nature of monarchy and on the practicalities of cautious but effective rule. Some time between 1610 and 1612 he completed the work for which he is best known, 'A Dedication to Sir Philip Sidney'. Greville intended it as a preface to his then completed philosophical poetry. The first part consisted of an account of Sidney as an ideal subject, and the second of an encomiastic account of Elizabeth's reign designed to reveal the shortcomings of James I. It is likely that the work was intended for the eyes of Prince Henry, since Greville lost interest in it after Henry's death in November 1612. The 'Dedication' is not found in the collection of manuscript fair copies of his works whose preparation Greville supervised. It was first published in 1652 as The Life of the Renowned Sir Philip Sidney, and as such became the major source of the Sidney hagiographic tradition.
In the second part of the 'Dedication' Greville attempts to write a form of the new civil history that was being pioneered by his friend and client William Camden. Greville claims that he had originally intended to write a history of Elizabeth, but had been denied access to state papers by Robert Cecil. For his material on the queen he simply translated passages from the Latin of Camden's manuscript 'Annals' (published in 1625). This collaboration with Camden should be seen as a continuation of the tradition of patronage which Greville and the countess of Pembroke inherited from Sidney. Through Greville, Camden was appointed Clarenceux king of arms in the herald's office, which freed him from schoolmastering to take up his historical researches. Others who benefited from Greville's patronage were John Coke (later secretary of state), John Speed, Bishop Joseph Hall, Lancelot Andrewes, John Overall, Samuel Daniel, William Davenant, and Martin Peerson, the musician.
Robert Cecil's death in May 1612 cleared the way for Greville's return to office, but Greville did not succeed Sir Julius Caesar as chancellor and under-treasurer of the exchequer until October 1614. During the period of waiting he wrote 'An Inquisition upon Fame and Honor', in which he proposes that virtue grounded in faith is the only possible alternative to the delusion of opinion ('fame') and worth ('honor'). Sonnets 85–105 of Caelica share the sense of religious disillusionment in this poem. Ronald Rebholz sees in the stern Calvinistic views of the 'Inquisition' evidence for a major religious conversion some time before 1614, but Greville's views were Calvinist throughout his life.
Greville owed his return to major office to the pro-Spanish Howard faction. His immediate superior was the lord treasurer, Thomas Howard, earl of Suffolk, whose incompetence and lack of probity doomed to failure any efforts by Greville to balance the king's ordinary income with his expenditures, let alone find new sources of revenue. In July 1618 Suffolk was expelled from office and was replaced by a treasury commission headed by Greville until the end of 1620. The efforts of the commission produced a slight surplus of revenues over expenditure, but were incapable of persuading the king to restrain his extravagance. In December 1620 Greville's hopes for the office of lord treasurer were dashed by the appointment of Henry Montague, Viscount Mandeville. During the course of the following year, in compensation for his disappointment, Greville was created Baron Brooke of Beauchamp's Court and granted all fines for licences of alienations in chancery for seven years. His claim to the barony of Willoughby de Broke was denied.
In October 1621 Greville lost his treasury office to Sir Richard Weston, a member of the pro-Spanish court party headed by George Villiers, duke of Buckingham, the new royal favourite. He retained his seat on the privy council and was made gentleman of the bedchamber, but because of his known protestant views he had to devote much time and energy ingratiating himself with Buckingham. Towards the end of 1623, with the failure of the Spanish marriage plans for Prince Charles, Buckingham's political views became more congenial to Greville, who was now faced with the dilemma of having to choose loyalty either to the ageing king or to Buckingham. Instead he opted for a strategy of evasion, while yet retaining the good will of both parties. On the accession of Charles I in March 1625 Greville was reinstated as a privy councillor, but his illness in the following autumn prevented him from contributing much to the management of public affairs.
Later writings and death
Following the loss of his treasury office in 1621, Greville once again turned to writing philosophical poems. 'A Treatise of Humane Learning', 'A Treatise of Wars', and 'A Treatise of Religion' probably date from this period. Between 1619 and 1625 he supervised the preparation of manuscript fair copies of his literary works, excluding the 'Dedication'. These are now known as the Warwick manuscripts in the British Library. He indicated in a note the order in which the poems were to be placed: '1. Religion. 2. Humane learning. 3. Fame and Honor. 4. War' (BL, Add. MS 54567, fol. 3). There is no mention of 'A Treatise of Monarchy'. This is because Greville probably realized that even if published posthumously a work which argued that monarchy is the product of human fallibility would be unacceptable. He had already run foul of the authorities over his attempt to establish a lectureship in history at Cambridge in 1627. The first appointee, Isaac Dorislaus, whose opinions on monarchy were similar to Greville's, had been examined by Laud and others, and the lectures on Tacitus discontinued. (Greville attempted to make provision for the lectureship in his will, but failed to have the codicil witnessed.) When Greville's Certaine Learned and Elegant Workes was published in 1633 under the supervision of Sir John Coke and Sir Kenelm Digby a further poem was omitted. It would appear that 'A Treatise of Religion' was removed from all copies on the orders of Laud, who was then bishop of London, on account of the slur on episcopacy and criticism of the established church. The two potentially subversive poems had to wait until 1670, when they were published in a volume entitled The Remains of Sir Fulke Greville. 'A Dedication to Sir Philip Sidney' (retitled The Life of the Renowned Sir Philip Sidney) was not published until 1652, when its implicit criticism of Stuart monarchy and advocacy of an aggressive, anti-Catholic foreign policy would find a ready Commonwealth readership. In addition to the editio princeps derived from an unknown manuscript source it survived in four scribal copies, two of which represent a significantly earlier form of the work.
The 'Dedication' remains Greville's most influential work, largely because it is the only source for the anecdotes central to the development of the Sidney myth. In particular Greville provides the story of the water bottle which made Sidney the icon of self-sacrifice from the nineteenth century onwards. At the battle of Zutphen the severely wounded Sidney is reported to have forgone slaking his thirst in favour of a wounded common soldier with the words, 'Thy necessity is yet greater than mine' (Prose Works, 77). These words received an almost proverbial status. At the time of the supposed event Greville was in England. His source for the anecdote has not been traced.
As a poet Greville has always been admired for the difficulty of his writing, but his reputation was never higher than in the twentieth century, especially in the United States, where his standing as a poet of the plain style could be attributed to the writings of Yvor Winters and his followers. Winters regarded Greville as a poet who 'should be ranked with Jonson as one of the two great masters of the short poem in the Renaissance' (Winters, 44). This view has not met with general assent, but it has encouraged others to take Greville seriously for his own sake, especially those on either side of the Atlantic who regard themselves more as cultural, rather than simply literary, critics. The circumstances of Greville's life and career, the political and material conditions of his authorship, and the thematic concerns with the exercise of power and with the predicament of the individual in an absolute monarchy render them readily accessible to new historicists and cultural materialists, or to proponents of any other approaches concerned with matters of ideology and power. The spiritual or religious dimension of Greville's work is in consequence occluded.
The duke of Buckingham, the despised favourite of both James I and Charles I, was assassinated on 23 August 1628. Soon afterwards, on 1 September at Brooke House in Holborn, Greville was attacked by his servant Ralph Hayward, who acted it would seem not from political motives, but from dissatisfaction at the terms of Greville's will. Greville was stabbed in the stomach while Hayward was assisting him to fasten his breeches. Greville forbade anyone from pursuing Hayward. Immediately after the attack Hayward committed suicide. Greville died of gangrene on 30 September, physicians having replaced the depleted natural fatty membrane around their patient's intestines with animal fat. The bulk of his estate and his title went to his adopted heir, Robert Greville, the son of his cousin Fulke Greville (d. 1632) and Mary Copley. At the time of his death Greville's annual income from both lands and offices was probably about £7000, with ordinary expenses running between £2000 and £3000. He owned several properties, including Warwick Castle, Beauchamp's Court, and three London houses (at Austin Friars, Hackney, and Holborn). The title of Baron Willoughby de Broke eventually went to the descendants of Greville's sister Margaret (1561–1631/2), who married Sir Richard Verney.
Greville never married and it has been suggested that he was homosexual. There is no evidence for this. He was however given to close, almost possessive friendships: for example, with Sidney and Sir John Coke. By nature introverted, circumspect, even over-cautious—an observer rather than the man of action he admired so much in Sidney—he often failed to take assertive action in times of crisis. His instinct for self-preservation allowed him to maintain a remarkably extended career at court. His portrait presents him as sombrely dressed, aloof, and intelligently sensitive, with a long face and the thin hands of a mandarin. Sir Francis Bacon described him as an elegant speaker (Rebholz, 269).
Greville was buried in the family crypt in St Mary's Church, Warwick. Nearby, enclosed in a small room, is a tomb Greville prepared for himself. It bears the inscription: 'Fulke Greville, Servant to Queen Elizabeth, Councillor to King James, and Friend to Sir Philip Sidney. Trophaeum Peccati'. Greville often thought of himself as an adjective rather than a substantive, and the inscription emphasizes the sense of his derivative identity. The ambiguous awareness of the wages of sin underscores the complexity of his Calvinist attitude to life in general, and to public service in particular. The tomb, enclosed in a small room, emphasizes the dominant mode of his life: frustration. |