Fulke Greville, the future Lord Brooke of Beauchamp's Court, was born in 1554 and shared this birth year with his life-long friend, Philip Sidney. Both attended the Grammar School in Shrewsbury from 1564, and likely met here for the first time, at around the age of 10. After his first level of education was finished, Greville went to Jesus College in Cambridge to study and received his Master of Arts Degree there in 1588, the year of the Spanish Armada under Elizabeth I.
By this time however, Fulke had already embarked on a career at Elizabeth's court. In 1576 he joined the service of his friend's father Sir Henry Sidney before joining the royal court with Sir Philip in 1577. Known personally to Elizabeth, he was sent on a number of missions (although she did refuse him leave to travel on occasion), and was chosen to entertain the French nobility during negotiations for her marriage with the Duke of Anjou in 1581. On 5 May of that year Fulke and a number of English officials put on jousting and tournaments for their French guests, Greville particularly noted for his bravery.
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| Fulke Greville, used with permission of the National Portrait Gallery |
In 1587 Fulke's friend Sidney lost his life at Zutphen in the Netherlands while serving under Robert Dudley Earl of Leicester. Greville was present at his funeral at St Paul's on 16 February of that year, and he later wrote a book, Life of Sidney, which commemorated his friend's bravery and other qualities. Modern writers have sometimes used passages from this book to argue that Greville and Sidney had a romantic relationship, but there is no direct incontrovertible evidence for this and Elizabethan writing, particularly that driven by grief and loss, was characteristically exuberant and romantic in theme.
In the later years of Elizabeth's reign, Fulke served as Treasurer of the Wars, Treasurer of the Navy and was one of the men sent to arrest the Earl of Essex on 8 February 1601. He created a base in Warwick after Elizabeth's successor James I granted the by-then neglected castle to him in 1604, along with other lands in the town. He soon found greater favour with the new king, who also made him Knight of the Bath and Gentleman of the Bedchamber, a position that would have involved Fulke waiting on the king.
Perhaps partly as thanks for raising him to a position of wealth and power, Fulke entertained the king at Warwick in 1617 in the Great Hall of what is now Lord Leycester's Hospital, for three days. In 1620 he was created Lord Brooke. Fulke was said to have spent tens of thousands of pounds on developments at Warwick Castle, restoring it to much of what we see today. He was also a patron of Camden and the map-maker John Speede, and worked on his own poetry, tragedies and navigation.
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| Warwick Castle, Jo Romero |
As autumn fell upon England in 1628, Fulke would have only days to live. In his mid-seventies he drafted his Will but its contents were discovered by an old servant named Ralph Haywood. Ralph noticed that his master had completely left him out of the Will, and, while Fulke was at his London home in Holborn, went to him in his bedchamber and stabbed him in anger. The servant then went to an adjacent room and killed himself, probably with the same weapon he had used on his master.
The injury was not immediately fatal to Fulke, who lived for about a month before dying on 30 September 1628 at his London home of Brooke House. A striking but sombre tomb was built in St Mary's Church in Warwick, enclosed in a room of its own, surrounded by windows. The tomb is made of marble and contains no effigy, just a solid slab on a platform under a canopy. The epitaph is engraved around the black marble. It states, 'Fulke Greville, Servant to Queen Elizabeth, Councillor to King James, and Friend to Sir Philip Sidney, Tropseum Peccati'.
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| Entrance to Fulke Greville's tomb at St Mary's Warwick, Jo Romero |
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Notes and Sources
Charlotte Carmichael Stopes, Shakespeare's Warwickshire Contemporaries. 1907, Stratford Upon Avon.
Visit to Lord Leycester's Hospital and St Mary's Church, Warwick, May 2024.
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