GREVILLE, Sir Edward (1566-1634), of Milcote, Warws.; later of Pishobury, Herts. and Fulham, Mdx.

It has sometimes been assumed that this Member, who twice represented Warwickshire in Parliament, was the third son of Sir Fulke Greville† (d.1559) of Beauchamp’s Court, Alcester, Warwickshire. N and Q (ser. 8), viii. 471. A gentleman pensioner from about 1577 until his death in 1615, E407/1/8-41; Index to Admons. in PCC v. 1609-19 ed. M. Fitch (Brit. Rec. Soc. Ixxxiii), 55; HP Commons 1558-1603 sub Sir Edward Greville incorrectly assumes that the gent. pensioner was the Milcote man, but in 1577 the latter was aged just 11. We are grateful for this observation to W.J. Tighe. the Alcester man was knighted in 1603, Shaw identifies the man kntd. in 1603 as being of Milcote: Shaw, Knights of Eng. ii. 104, but is disproved by Whitfield, 88. The record of the 1603 knighthood in Cott., Claudius CIII, f. 243, does not state which Sir Edward Greville received the honour (ex inf. W.J. Tighe). and received an MA from Oxford in 1605. Al. Ox. However, it seems improbable that he ever served as a Warwickshire knight of the shire because, from 1575, when he married the widow of Henry Denny (father of Sir Edward*), he lived at Harold’s Park, in western Essex, and was thus no longer a Warwickshire resident. At least two of his eight daughters married into the Essex gentry, and he himself was buried near his seat at Waltham Holy Cross. Cal. Assize Recs. Essex Indictments, Eliz. ed. J.S. Cockburn, 339, 554; Vis. Essex (Harl. Soc. xiii), 446; xiv. 606; C181/2, f. 94; W. Winters, Waltham Holy Cross, 33, 195-6. A more plausible candidate is his distant cousin and namesake, Sir Edward Greville of Milcote. Head of the senior branch of the Greville family, and inheritor of 10,500 acres in Warwickshire and Gloucestershire, Whitfield, 84. the Milcote man was better placed than his Essex cousin to secure election to Parliament for the county in both 1593 and 1604. The only serious difficulty with this identification lies in a document dated 29 Mar. 1610, which places Greville at Stratford-on-Avon sitting on a commission of inquiry into a former ecclesiastical property, whereas the Commons Journal shows that he was then in the Commons, where he was appointed to a legislative committee. E178/4673; CJ, i. 416b. The solution to this apparent contradiction is that Greville did not sit with his two fellow commissioners as their return alleges. Instead, he signed the document at a later date, the ink in which his signature is written being identical to that used to fill spaces that the other two commissioners had left blank. Moreover, although Greville was the senior commissioner, and should have signed first, he actually signed last, the initial letter of his surname overlapping the signature of one of his colleagues. As the commission undoubtedly dealt with property owned or leased by Greville, the latter presumably insisted on his right to participate in its business despite his absence at Westminster. As the return was not filed with the Exchequer until 19 May there would have been ample time in which to send Greville the return for him to complete and sign.

The Greville family fortunes were laid in the fourteenth century by a wealthy wool merchant, William Greville (d.1401) of Chipping Campden, Gloucestershire, who purchased the Milcote estate, close to the Gloucestershire border. Whitfield, 82; J. Rees, Fulke Greville, Ld. Brooke, 1554-1628, p. 10. In 1567 William’s direct descendant, Lodovick Greville, was licensed to build and embattle a new house at Milcote, to be known as Mount Greville, but lacking the funds to complete the project he carried out a bizarre murder plot to obtain the property from one his former servants. Ultimately tried as an accessory to murder, he prevented the Crown from seizing his estates by refusing to plead, and was accordingly pressed to death in the gaol of King’s Bench. VCH Warws. v. 200; W. Dugdale, Antiqs. of Warws. (1730), ii. 710-11; J. Stow, Annals, 757; CSP Dom. 1581-90, p. 626; 1598-1601, p. 226. A vast but debt-ridden estate therefore devolved upon his 23-year old son Edward, who inherited the profligate habits, if not the homicidal tendencies, of his father. Throughout the 1590s Edward was a prominent member of Warwickshire society, serving as a magistrate (from 1592), knight of the shire (1593) and sheriff (1594-5). His apparent wealth attracted the attention of his distant kinsman, the 2nd earl of Essex, who in 1596 asked him to employ his credit in raising men for the Cadiz expedition and persuaded him to act as co-surety for victuals worth £1,620. HMC Hatfield, vi. 118; CSP Dom. 1595-7, p. 231. In the following year Greville accompanied Essex to the Azores, where the earl repaid his previous kindness by knighting him. Shaw, ii. 94, where his name is incorrectly recorded as ‘Lodovick’.

Greville’s estates ‘stretched from the Avon to the Stour’, and, despite the encumbrances laid upon them by his father, might have provided an enormous income had they been properly managed. In 1624 their new owner, Lionel Cranfield, 1st earl of Middlesex, gave the estate a capital value of £35,000. However, Greville was a spendthrift and a rake, M. Prestwich, Cranfield, 401, 403. and by the closing years of Elizabeth’s reign he was in severe financial difficulty. He borrowed £2,000 from Sir Horatio Palavicino, and in 1600 begged a wardship from Sir Robert Cecil†. L. Stone, Sir Horatio Palavicino, 190; HMC Hatfield, x. 107. At around the same time, he exercised his rights as lord of the manor of Stratford to enclose the town’s common lands, thereby provoking violent local opposition. Three years later he sold one of his manors to the son of his former steward, from whom he also borrowed £2,000. VCH Warws. iii. 249; Whitfield, 93-4.

Greville re-entered the Commons in 1604 and was appointed to the committee for privileges. Although there is no direct evidence to suppose that he sought election in order to escape his creditors, once at Westminster he exploited his position to try to ameliorate his worsening financial condition. On 26 Mar. 1606 he introduced a bill to reduce the interest rate from ten to eight per cent, which received two readings. It emerged from committee on 1 May, but ran into severe opposition and was only engrossed after a division. Thereafter the House showed no further enthusiasm for the bill. CJ, i. 150a, 290a-b, 292b; Bowyer Diary, 141. The precarious state of his finances probably prompted Greville’s appointment to several other legislative committees over the course of the Parliament, especially those which dealt with the conveyance of property (29 Jan. 1606), legal fees (14 Feb. 1606), the breaking of entails (22 Feb. 1610) and the assignment of debts (15 Mar. 1610). CJ, i. 261a, 268b, 398b, 411b. They may also explain why he took such a close interest in the case of the imprisoned Member Sir Thomas Shirley I, who had been arrested for debt. Ibid. 203a, 208b, 209b, 966b.

Greville’s financial condition continued to deteriorate during the course of the Parliament. Shortly before the opening of the third session in November 1606, he enlisted the legal services of the future Speaker, Thomas Crewe, in an effort to discard his responsibilities as surety for the debts of one James Bankes. C33/112, f. 44. In the following year he sought to alleviate his financial problems by speculating in the manufacture of starch from bran. At the same time a bill was introduced into the Commons which aimed to prohibit the manufacture of starch from wheat. Its author was almost certainly Greville, who acted as a teller in favour of the bill on 29 May 1607. Although the measure was rejected by a majority of two to one, CJ, i. 342b, 376b. It is commonly asserted that Greville introduced the bill, but the Journal does not record who was responsible: ibid. 339b; M. Prestwich, Cranfield, 70; Whitfield, 96. Upton, 19, says that Greville and Richard Martin jointly introduced the bill. Greville’s associates, most notably Arthur Ingram, subsequently obtained a Proclamation banning the manufacture of starch from edible grain. However, profits from the starch monopoly proved disappointing, causing Greville heavy losses and forcing him to borrow from the collectors of the imposition on starch, led by Lionel Cranfield, and to mortgage some property. HMC Sackville, i. 156; Bodl. ms Eng.hist./c.484, f. 80. Unable to pay off his debts in cash, Greville surrendered part of his estate to Cranfield in 1609. Cent. Kent. Stud. U269/1/B7. A further large slice of property was handed over at around the same time to another creditor in lieu of a debt of £8,000. C2/Jas.I/S38/40.

These payments failed to stem the advancing tide of creditors, whose demands now threatened to engulf Greville. In March 1610 he sold Stratford manor, thereby relinquishing the source of his power and influence at Stratford-on-Avon. VCH Warws. iii. 259. At the same time he agreed to part with part of his Gloucestershire estate to Cranfield for £800. Cent. Kent. Stud. U269/1/T19. By May Greville’s losses from the starch farm amounted to £900 and, fearful of imminent arrest, he obtained confirmation of his parliamentary privilege. This proved timely, as in the following month the Exchequer authorized the seizure of his person and goods for debt, while Chancery ordered him to pay off a debt of £1,100 within the next eight months. HMC Sackville, i. 158, 216; CJ, i. 426a; C78/172/4. However, Greville could not rely upon Parliament continuing to sit indefinitely, and by the spring of 1610 he may have made up his mind to ingratiate himself with the king in the hope of receiving royal protection. On 22 May he defended the king’s right to levy impositions on the grounds that James was only doing what his predecessors had done. CJ, i. 430b, 432b. Three weeks later, on 13 June, he called for a vote of two subsidies and four fifteenths rather than the single subsidy and one fifteenth which the Commons eventually agreed. Ibid. 438a. These interventions were calculated to please no one but the king, and have about them the whiff of a man desperate for office. Prestwich, 401, states as fact that Greville was engaged in the pursuit of office.

Although his financial problems were an ever-present reality, Greville, who regularly attended the House, was not preoccupied with them to the exclusion of all else. Indeed, he was frequently named to committees and made several speeches. Over the course of the fourth session, for instance, he was appointed to 37 bill committees, two non-legislative committees and one joint conference with the Lords; he also made ten speeches and reported one bill. Many of the committees to which Greville was named reflected his position as a west Midlands landowner. For instance, he was appointed to consider measures to assure the lands of Walter Walsh of Little Sodbury, Gloucestershire (10 Mar. 1606), to establish the estates of the late Lord Chandos of Sudeley (7 Apr. 1606) and to sell lands belonging to Henry Boughton of Coughton, Warwickshire (15 Dec. 1606). CJ, i. 281b, 294b, 331a. Greville’s inclusion on the committee for the bill to confirm the leases and estates made by Robert, Lord Spencer (Robert Spencer†), whose principal seat lay at Althorp, Northamptonshire, should probably be viewed in the context of Lord Spencer’s ownership of an estate at Wormleighton, Warwickshire (7 Feb. 1606). Ibid. 265a. A further bill which attracted Greville’s interest aimed to clarify an Act of 1601, which had authorized the Neville family of Birling, Kent, to dispose of various copyhold lands, including two Warwickshire manors (14 May and 14 June 1604). Ibid. 210a, 238b; HLRO, O.A. 1 Jas.I, c. 68. On one occasion Greville took charge of a Warwickshire land bill. This sought to enable George Ognell to establish his title to Cruelfield manor. Greville subsequently reported the measure, but it was voted down (7 Mar. 1606). CJ, i. 271a; Bowyer Diary, 64. On another occasion Greville was appointed to the committee for a bill to allow Thomas Throckmorton† of Coughton to settle his debts by selling two manors (26 May 1604). Greville was connected with the Throckmortons, Whitfield, 84. and a close interest in their affairs presumably explains why he was subsequently included on the committee for the bill to allow the sale of a Norfolk manor by Henry Jernegan (7 June 1604), whose mother was a Coughton Throckmorton by birth. CJ, i. 227a, 233b; HLRO, O.A. 1 Jas.I, c. 60. On 2 May 1610 Greville moved to exclude Warwickshire from the provisions of the bill to prevent the deliberate burning of moorland, but his motion was defeated after a vote. However, when the bill was enacted, Warwickshire was listed among the counties excluded from its terms. CJ, i. 423a; SR, v. 1172.

Family connections probably explain several of Greville’s legislative appointments. His inclusion on the committees for the two land bills regarding Sir Christopher Hatton* of Barking, Essex (29 June 1604 and 4 Apr. 1606) probably reflected the interests of his mother’s family, the Petres of Ingatestone Hall, or perhaps those of his distant cousin, Sir Edward Greville of Harold’s Park. CJ, i. 249a, 293b. Greville’s distant kinship with his neighbour Sir Fulke Greville of Beauchamp’s Court undoubtedly lay behind his appointment on 10 May 1604 to committees for bills concerning the maintenance of the Navy and the manufacture of sail cloth, the first of which he reported on 25 May. Until 26 Apr. 1604 Sir Fulke was treasurer of the Navy, and despite his resignation, it seems likely that he had earlier approached his cousin Sir Edward to help smooth their passage in the Commons. Ibid. 205a, 225b, 968b.

Business links, rather than family ties, probably explain why Greville was twice named to committees regarding the sale of the dyestuff known as logwood (15 May 1606 and 29 Mar. 1610) and why he reported the second of these measures himself (1 June 1610). Ibid. 416b, 434b, 1045a. From 1608 the farmer of the duties on logwood was none other than Lionel Cranfield, upon whom Greville became increasingly dependent for loans. Greville was desperately anxious to please Cranfield, who in July 1610 thanked Greville for using his influence with Sir Thomas Parry*, the chancellor of the duchy of Lancaster and one of Greville’s distant relatives, to obtain for him the grant of some concealed meadowland. HMC Sackville, i. 218. Greville took a close interest in the parliamentary affairs of Sir Roger Aston, Member for Cheshire. The reason is unclear, as Greville is not known to have been related to Aston, nor were the two men business partners. Nevertheless, Greville was appointed to committees for bills to naturalize Aston’s wife and children (12 May 1604) and to confirm Aston’s grant of Soham manor, Cambridgeshire (13 Dec. 1607). Moreover, on 15 Apr. 1606 Greville participated in the debate over the patent granting Aston control of the Greenwax. CJ, i. 208b, 298b, 330b.

Greville’s religious outlook was undoubtedly coloured by the fact that his mother was a recusant, as were many of his Warwickshire neighbours, including the Throckmortons. Following the second reading of the bill to prevent popish books from being imported (6 June 1604), he argued ‘that freedom is taken away; and concludeth against the bill’, a stance which is unlikely to have endeared him to the hotter sort of Protestants in the House. Ibid. 986b. W. Notestein thought Greville ought to be remembered as an early Liberal for this speech: House of Commons, 14, 507. Greville may also have stirred up animosity by his opposition to puritan attempts to legislate for a stricter observance of the Sabbath. A member of the committee appointed to consider the Sabbath bill (29 Jan. 1606), he participated in the debate which followed the bill’s third reading (17 Feb. 1606) when, with Sir Robert Drury, he emphasized the need for ‘cessation from labour’, and ‘sufficient recreation’. CJ, i. 269b. As someone who did not share the same preoccupations and concerns of many of his puritan colleagues, it is unlikely that Greville was a willing member of the committee appointed to draft a petition to the king calling for greater freedom in preaching and the better execution of the laws against Jesuits, non-residence and pluralism (18 May 1607). It was not until the king forbade the House from proceeding any further in the matter that Greville was afforded the opportunity to express his opposition to the petition, albeit in coded form, by taking issue with those who wished to press ahead regardless: ‘It will be labour lost if we read it and allow it, and afterwards the king reject it’ (16 June 1607). Ibid. 375a; Bowyer Diary, 332.

Greville was nominated to attend a joint conference with the Lords on recusancy on 3 Feb. 1606, and was subsequently appointed to the committee for the bill to enforce the penal laws with greater rigour (3 Apr. 1606). CJ, i. 263a, 294a. He was also appointed to the cttee. for a recusants’ explanation bill on 8 May 1610: ibid. 426a. His views on this subject may have been complicated by personal financial interest, as he served as a member of a commission for discovering recusants’ goods in the late 1590s, and in February 1610 he obtained the benefit of the fines of four Warwickshire recusants, including the fines payable by his own mother. Add. 34765, f. 33. The grant was renewed in June 1611: CSP Dom. 1611-18, p. 45. Many other religious issues caught Greville’s attention during the Parliament, judging by his committee appointments. Their subjects included the lawfulness of clerical marriage (11 May 1604), the quality of ecclesiastical government (25 Feb. and 1 Apr. 1606), the restoration of deprived ministers (7 Mar. 1606), and the workings of Church courts (29 Nov. 1606. CJ, i. 206b, 261b, 279a, 291b, 294a, 326b. On 18 Apr. 1606 Greville was named to a joint conference with the Lords to consider grievances against the Church. Ibid. 296b.

While religion clearly formed a large part of Greville’s concerns in Parliament, other issues, such as purveyance, also attracted his interest. On 27 Apr. 1604 he was named to the select committee for presenting the Commons’ petition regarding the abuses of purveyors to the king, and on 30 Jan. 1606 he was appointed to the committee for the bill to improve the enforcement of existing laws regarding purveyors. During a debate on purveyance on 23 May 1604 he reminded the House of its promise ‘to acquaint the king before we proceeded’, while on 17 Feb. 1606 he expressed his opposition to composition. Ibid. 187b, 261b, 978a; Bowyer Diary, 60. The proposed abolition of wardship elicited little apparent enthusiasm from Greville who, though named to two joint conferences on the subject (26 Mar. and 22 May 1604), seems never to have spoken on the subject. CJ, i. 154b, 222b. By contrast, the proposed Union with Scotland did draw Greville’s attention. On 14 Apr. 1604 he attended the first joint conference with the Lords regarding the Union, and two days later was appointed to a small committee to draft the report concerning the Lords’ declaration. Greville presumably held strong views on the Union, as he initiated a debate in the Commons on the subject on 18 April. Ibid. 172a-b, 176b. When the House turned to consider the repeal of the hostile laws during the third session, Greville jumped in ahead of Richard Martin on 26 Nov. 1606 with a speech condemned by Sir Robert Harley* as ‘confused and distracted’. On a subsequent occasion (30 Apr. 1607) he criticized the proposed bill as unnecessary, arguing that ‘the hostile laws die of themselves’. This was despite having earlier spoken in favour of one of the bill’s central provisions, the remanding of prisoners who fled from one country to the other to escape justice (28 Mar. 1607). Greville was also named to the Union conference on 26 Nov. 1606 and participated in a debate on the hostile laws bill on 18 Feb. 1607. Ibid. 324b, 1016b, 1038b, 1047b.

Harley’s unflattering description of Greville’s speech of 26 Nov. 1606 perhaps ought to be taken with a pinch of salt. There can have been little love lost between Harley, one of the most passionate puritans in the House, and Greville, who did not conceal his disdain for godly Protestantism. On the other hand, Greville had never enjoyed a university education or a legal training and was clearly not possessed of a first-rate mind. Robert Bowyer noted that when he spoke to condemn composition for purveyance (5 Mar. 1606), he failed to advance any ‘great reason’ for doing so. Bowyer Diary, 60, 192. A lack of substance or clarity may explain why so many of Greville’s speeches are merely alluded to in the Commons Journal, without any indication of their content, CJ, i. 209b, 234a, 285a, 298b, 303a, 372a, 403a, 408a, 413a. and why some Members found it difficult to remember Greville’s name correctly: Harley referred to him as ‘Sir Edmond’, while the authors of the scurrilous ‘Parliament Fart’ poem of 1607 termed him ‘Sir Henry’. Bowyer Diary, 192; Add. 34218, f. 20; Hants RO, 9M73/G3(6).

When in London, Greville usually lodged at the Swan with Two Necks in Milk Street, Whitfield, 97. close to the hall of the Salters’ Company, situated in nearby Bread Street. His proximity to the Salters may explain his appointment to the committee for the bill to confirm the title to their lands (20 Feb. 1610), CJ, i. 397b. although since he regularly resided in London, even when Parliament was not sitting, he naturally took a broad interest in the City’s affairs. Other London measures he was appointed to consider concerned the charter of Bridewell Hospital (9 June 1604), overcrowding in tenements (2 July 1604), the Pinners’ Company’s letters patent (1 Apr. 1606), the livery companies’ title to their lands (4 May 1607) and Chelsea College (22 June 1610). Ibid. 235b, 251a, 291b, 368b, 442b.

Greville contributed to the debate following the third reading of a bill for the true manufacturing of woollen cloth on 11 May 1607, but his words went unrecorded. Ibid. 372a. Much of his income may have depended on sheep farming, His sheep flocks were handed over to Cranfield in 1625: Cent. Kent. Stud. U269/1/1/E111, 18 Sept. 1625, Thomas Catchmay to Middlesex. so it is no surprise that he had something to say. It is rather more difficult to see why he should have opposed the bill to allow sea sand to be used to improve the soil in Devon and Cornwall (4 May 1610). CJ, i. 424b. For the bill, which was enacted, see SR, v. 1172-3. Many of the committees to which Greville was named dealt with issues which did not concern him or his constituents directly, such as the draining of fenland in the Isle of Ely (4 Mar. 1606), the copyholders of the Crown manor of Wakefield, Yorkshire (1 Mar. 1610) and East Anglian salt marshes (20 Mar. 1610), to mention but a few. Ibid. 277a, 403a, 413a.

Following the dissolution Greville slid further into debt. By 1615 he owed the newly knighted Arthur Ingram £4,000, and the London alderman Sir Thomas Bennett £10,000. Unable to repay these huge amounts without liquidating his assets, Greville sold to Ingram his Milcote estate in return for a lump sum of £21,000 and an annuity of £900 arising out of Milcote’s revenues. This bargain formed part of a complex marriage settlement, whereby Ingram married Greville’s daughter Mary and agreed to allow Greville to remain at Milcote as his estate manager. Despite this arrangement, Greville continued to run up large debts. This was partly because he proved such an incompetent estate manager that the annual yield from the Milcote estate frequently fell short of the £900 needed to pay his annuity. Upton, 71, 157. As early as February 1616 the Court of Requests ordered his arrest after he failed to answer a complaint from one of his creditors, Whitfield, 99. while in 1621 Mary Essex petitioned the Privy Council to allow her some means of redress against Greville, who had still not repaid the £1,700 he had borrowed from her late husband. CSP Dom. 1619-23, p. 266. Greville’s response was to continue borrowing from Ingram, who in 1621 paid off yet another of his father-in-law’s debts in return for a further slice of Greville’s estates, Upton, 157. and to devise elaborate, but hopelessly unrealistic money-making schemes, with which he bombarded Cranfield, now lord treasurer. Cent. Kent. Stud. U269/1/OE308, 9 Oct. 1621 and 15 Sept. 1623, Greville to Cranfield. He proved largely successful in evading arrest, perhaps because, from about 1616, he held a minor office at Court, but in February 1622 Ingram was summoned to appear before Star Chamber for allegedly procuring Greville’s escape from gaol. STAC 8/311/9.

In 1622 Ingram agreed to exchange the Milcote estate for property belonging to Cranfield in Lincolnshire. After a great deal of haggling over the details, Cranfield, now earl of Middlesex, assumed the title to Milcote in 1624, and with it the responsibility for payment of Greville’s annuity. That same year Middlesex unsuccessfully attempted to persuade the Sussex borough of Steyning to confer a parliamentary seat on Greville, who no doubt hoped to acquire the protection from arrest afforded by parliamentary privilege. R. Ruigh, Parl. of 1624, p. 331n., quoting Cent. Kent. Stud. ON 1177. In 1625 Middlesex, who was not bound to observe the terms of the agreement reached by Greville with Ingram, ordered Greville to relinquish control of the Milcote estate entirely. A smaller property was to be made available to him at Pishobury, Hertfordshire in return for £500 of his annuity. Greville, however, proved reluctant to quit his ancestral home, which he still regarded as very much his own, and spun out his time at Milcote, to the fury of the estate’s new bailiff, Thomas Catchmay, who caught up with him ‘in the hands of a chirurgeon for some veneral scar (as I suppose)’. Catchmay quickly concluded that Greville was not to be trusted. ‘There is no truth in him’, Catchmay reported to Middlesex, ‘nor is his meaning to be discerned by his words’. On another occasion he described his tormentor as ‘full of imaginations and inventions to loosen your lordship and every man else he hath to do with’. However, Greville could not postpone his departure indefinitely, and before the onset of winter he was gone. Cent. Kent. Stud. U269/1/E111, passim.

Though not as grand as Milcote, Pishobury provided Greville with a convenient seat from which to haunt London and the Court. In January 1627 he gained access to the duke of Buckingham, from whom he sought favours. Buckingham responded sympathetically to one of his requests, but told Greville that he would have to wait regarding the other. By exploiting his family’s kinship with secretary of state Sir Edward Conway I*, Greville even managed to secure a lengthy audience with the king at Hampton Court in December 1625. Cent. Kent. Stud. U269/1/E28, 3 Jan. 1626, Greville to Middlesex. For evidence of an earlier favour performed by Conway, see CSP Dom. 1623-5, pp. 370, 458. The purpose of the interview with Charles is unknown. Greville’s love of the capital proved useful to Middlesex, who retired to the country in disgrace following his fall from office in 1624. He frequently acted as Middlesex’s man of business in London, and in 1626 sent the earl a series of letters reporting news of developments in Parliament and abroad. Cent. Kent. Stud. U269/1/E150, passim. His unwillingness to curb his passion for extravagance, however, meant that by 1629 his annuity had shrunk to just £200 as he borrowed more and more money from Middlesex. Poverty, rather than principle, must therefore explain why he failed to contribute to the Forced Loan, for which he received a summons from the Privy Council in June 1627. APC, 1627, p. 374. In 1630 Greville’s debts obliged his wife to renounce her claims to Milcote, her jointure estate, and agree to a reduction in her own annuity. As a result, Middlesex no longer needed to allow the Grevilles to continue living in the fine surroundings of Pishobury, and in 1631 he resettled them at a more modest house in Fulham. Prestwich, 407, 533; Cent. Kent. Stud. U269/1/E28, 20 Feb. 1631, Greville to Middlesex.

Once at Fulham, Greville vowed to live within his means, but as ever this was a vain hope. He was soon begging Middlesex for more money, while privately bemoaning the strictness of the terms demanded by the former lord treasurer. By 1632 he was so desperate for cash that he sold his £200 annuity for £400 to George Lowe*, from whom he also borrowed heavily. Cent. Kent. Stud. U269/1/E28, 13 May 1631, Greville to Middlesex; U269/1/CB139. He died sometime in 1634, leaving a widow, Lady Joan, who was reduced to pawning her household effects for £27 to survive. He left no will, and it is not known where he was buried. When Lady Joan fell victim to the plague two years later, her estate proved insufficient to meet the costs of a decent funeral. Upton, 158.