Author: Greatheed, Bertie
Biography:
GREATHEED, Bertie (1759-1826: ODNB)
His full name was Bertie Bertie Greatheed. He was born at the family home of Guy’s Cliffe, near Warwick, to Samuel Greatheed (d 1765) and his wife Lady Mary Bertie (d 1774), daughter of the 2nd Duke of Ancaster. Samuel Greatheed was elected MP for Coventry in 1747; he was from a wealthy slave-owning family with a sugar plantation in St. Kitts which Bertie Greatheed inherited and, despite his expressed opposition to slavery, he retained ownership for his lifetime. He studied at the University of Göttigen and in 1780 married his first cousin, Ann Bertie. Their only child, Bertie Greatheed, was born in 1781. The family travelled in Europe 1782-86. At Florence, he was part of the group “gl’ Oziosi” which included Robert Merry and Hester Lynch Piozzi (qq.v.). Poems in The Arno Miscellany (1784) are sometimes erroneously attributed to him, including by the ODNB. He did contribute to the 1785 Florence Miscellany. By 1788 the family was back in England where his The Regent lasted just nine nights at Drury Lane despite performances by John Kemble and Sarah Siddons. Greatheed fell out with Robert Merry and was satirised by William Gifford (q.v.) as "Bertie Greathead" singing “namby-pamby madrigals of love” in The Baeviad (1791). In 1803 the family went to Paris but were taken prisoners of war. On their release in 1804 they travelled to Italy where Bertie Greatheed the younger became ill and died, leaving a wife and daughter. In 1810 a saline spring was discovered on Greatheed’s land on the river Leam; he donated the land to Leamington Spa and it was used for a new Pump Room. Greatheed died at Guy’s Cliffe on 16 Jan. 1826; Ann Bertie Greathead died later the same year. (ODNB 5 Mar. 2021; LBS 5 Mar. 2021; ancestry.co.uk 5 Mar. 2021)