| Title | Sir Richard Greenuile |
| Origtitle | Sir Richard Grenville |
| Variants | Sir Richard Grenville englischer Entdeckungsreisender. Porträt aus "Heroologia Anglica" |
| Caption | Here is Sir Richard in all his glory. Not only was he the leader of one of the expeditions, but he was the author of an account describing his encounters in the New World. |
| Source | British Library |
| Date | 1620 |
| URL | http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:WP_Richard_Grenville.jpg |
| Creator | Anonymous |
| Type | Engraving |
| Origin | Internet |
Grenville, Sir Richard (1542-1591):; Sir Richard Grenville was a prideful, brash, and courageous courtier, soldier, MP, investor, sea dog and privateer of the sort that seem to shine most brilliantly and briefly in the adventurous age of Elizabethan England. Born from a wealthy family of social prominence, Grenville spent his early years studying at the Inner Temple in London, briefly running from the law after he stabbed a man to death in a brawl, and (post pardon from his family’s influence) possibly fighting as a volunteer in Hungary. After spending a number of years putting down Irish uprisings as the Sheriff of Cork, Grenville began investing in maritime adventures abroad, first buying a privateering vessel jointly with Hawkins in 1574, and then investing in Sir Humphrey Gilbert’s 1578 and 1583 voyages to the New World. In 1585 Grenville left for the New World himself as naval commander of the voyage to Roanoke Island, which is thought by some to have been originally intended more as a base of operations for privateering than a colony. Indeed, after dropping off the colonists, Grenville took his ships and mounted a fairly lengthy privateering expedition in which he took a number of valuable prizes. These privateering voyages continued until the Spanish Armada rather rudely interrupted in 1588, necessitating a donation of the majority of his fleet to the cause of British defense. By 1589 he was raiding Spanish ships again in the Azores, only to be killed in a spectacularly dramatic, dashing and foolish fashion in 1591, when he sailed his ship, the Revenge, right through the middle of a Spanish fleet of fifty ships, sinking one of their ships, and being blasted simultaneously into oblivion and immortality through his daring deed, which was later turned to verse in Tennyson’s “The Revenge: A Ballad of the Fleet.”;
Works Cited:; David Loades, ‘Grenville, Sir Richard (1542–1591)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, Jan 2008 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/11493, accessed 19 Sept 2011];