Fulke Greville, 1st Baron Brooke

Fulke Greville, 1st Baron Brooke (born October 3, 1554 in Beauchamp Court near Alcester (Warwickshire) , Warwickshire , † September 30, 1628 in Warwick Castle ) was a British statesman, member of parliament and writer (poetry, drama, prose). He was the biographer of Philip Sidney .

Fulke Greville, Lord Brooke

Life

He was the son of Sir Fulke Greville (1536-1606), who was temporarily High Sheriff of Warwickshire, and of Ann Neville, daughter of the Earl of Westmoreland. From 1564 he went to school in Shrewsbury with Philip Sidney, studied from 1568 in Cambridge ( Jesus College ), which he left after a few years without a degree, and in 1577 went to the court of Queen Elizabeth I with his friend Philip Sidney , where he joined with Sidney the radical Protestant faction of Philip Sidney's uncle, Robert Dudley , Earl of Leicester. His career, like that of Sidney, was initially hampered by the distrust of William Cecil (Lord Burghley) and his son Robert Cecil . With Sidney he was active as a poet from the 1570s onwards in a circle of poets around Edmund Spenser , Gabriel Harvey and Edward Dyer (sometimes referred to as the Areopagus group), who endeavored to spread classical meters in English. He wanted to sail to the Caribbean with his friend Philip Sidney with Francis Drake in 1585 and later take part in Robert Dudley's expedition in the Netherlands, which the Queen prohibited on both occasions. Sidney took part in the campaign of his uncle in the Netherlands and fell there in 1586. Greville took part in the French wars of religion and fought in the Battle of Coutras in 1587 and again briefly in Normandy in 1591. He had a lucrative administrative post as secretary of the council of Wales (Council of the Marches of Wales), but he was only able to achieve his first important post in 1598 thanks to the influence of the Count of Essex Robert Devereux , who had succeeded Sidney as a high-ranking protégé of poets and whom he decided after the death of Sidney added: he became treasurer of the Navy. He still held this post in the early years of the reign of James I. 1614 to 1621 he was Chancellor of the Exchequer.

He was Member of Parliament several times, first in 1581 for Southampton , then 1592 to 1593, in 1597, 1601 and 1621 for his homeland of Warwickshire. In 1621, after long efforts on his part, he was raised to hereditary Baron Brooke , of Beauchamp's Court in the County of Warwick, and moved to the House of Lords . Since he had no children, he was given the title with the special note that it could also be passed on to his cousins ​​Robert and William Greville and their male descendants. From James I he received Warwick Castle in 1604 , which he extensively repaired. In 1606 he inherited the title of 5th Baron Willoughby de Broke de iure from his father . In 1628 he was stabbed to death at Warwick Castle on September 1st by a servant who felt he was left out of his will. The servant stabbed him in the stomach and then killed himself. Greville died four weeks later due to improper wound care (the doctors treated the wounds with lard and they became infected).

His successor as Baron Brooke was his cousin Robert Greville , the claim to the Barony Willoughby de Broke was inherited by his sister Margaret.

In addition to his biography of Sidney, he wrote poetry (sonnet sequence Caelica, published in 1633, but some already from the 1570s), closet dramas (Alaham 1633, Mustapha 1609), essays in verse (An Inquisition upon Fame and Honor in 1633, A Treatise of Humane Learning 1633, A Treatise of Wars 1633, A Treatise of Monarchy 1670, A Treatise of Religion 1670) and prose (for example, A letter to an honorable lady , possibly addressed to Margaret Clifford, Countess of Cumberland).

He is one of the contestants for the Shakespearean authorship speculation (set out in The Master of Shakespeare by AWL Saunders). However, Saunders' proposal has not found any other supporters. Greville is connected to Stratford upon Avon by the fact that he was a recorder (judge) of the city after the death of his father in 1606 until his death . In a book by David Lloyd from 1670 ( Statesmen and Favorites of England since the Reformation ) he is referred to as the patron saint of Shakespeare and Ben Jonson , for which there are no other references.

Fonts

• The Life of the Renowned Sir Philip Sidney, 1625
• Works, 4 volumes, Blackburn 1870 (Ed. Alexander B. Grosart), Volume 1, Archives , Volume 2 , Volume 3 , Volume 4
• Poems and Dramas of Fulke Greville, First Lord Brooke, 2 volumes (Ed. Geoffery Bullough), Oliver and Boyd 1939
• The Prose Works of Fulke Greville (Ed. John Gouws), Clarendon Press 1986, Oxford University Press 1997
• The Selected Poems of Fulke Greville (Ed. Thom Gunn), University of Chicago Press 2009

literature

• John Gouws, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography 2004
• Ronald Rebholz: The Life of Fulke Greville, First Lord Brooke, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971
• Joan Rees: Fulke Greville, Lord Brooke, 1554–1628, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1971 and University of California Press, Berkeley 1971
• Charles Larson: Fulke Greville, Boston 1980
• Richard Waswo: The Fatal Mirror: Themes and Techniques in the Poetry of Fulke Greville, University of Virginia Press 1972
• GA Wilkes: The Sequence of the Writings of Fulke Greville, Lord Brooke, Studies in Philology, Volume 56, 1959, pp. 489-503.
• Yvor Winters: Aspects of the Short Poem in the English Renaissance, in Winters: Forms of Discovery: Critical and Historical Essays on the Forms of the Short Poem in English, Chicago: Swallow Press, 1967, pp. 1-120.
• W. Hilton Kelliher: The Warwick Manuscripts of Fulke Greville, British Museum Quarterly, Volume 34, 1970, pp. 107-121
• Paula Bennet: Recent Studies in Greville, English Literary Renaissance, Volume 2 (Winter 1972), pp. 376-382
• John Gouws: Fact and Anecdote in Fulke Greville's Account of Sidney's Last Days, in Jan van Dorsten u. a. (Eds.), Sir Philip Sidney: 1586 and the Creation of a Legend, Leiden: EJ Brill / Leiden University Press, 1986, pp. 62-82.

Web links

• Biography by John Gouws, Poetry Foundation

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Drake probably only made promises to Sidney to ensure the equipment of his ships, but never wanted to share command with him and thwarted his involvement. Greville recognized this and warned Sidney, who refused to be stopped.
2. ↑ ^{a b} Brooke, Baron (E, 1620/1) at Cracroft's Peerage
3. ↑ ^{a b} Willoughby de Broke, Baron (E, 1491) ( Memento of the original from May 14, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. at Cracroft's Peerage  
4. ↑ Saunders, The Master of Shakespeare

predecessor	Office	successor
New title created	Baron Brooke 1554-1628	Robert Greville
Fulke Greville	Baron Willoughby de Broke 1606-1628	Margaret Greville