Author: GREVILLE, Fulke
Biography:
GREVILLE, Fulke (1717-1806: ancestry.co.uk)
The eldest child of Algernon Greville and his wife Mary, daughter and co-heir of Lord Arthur Somerset, he was born on 3 Nov. 1717 and baptised at St. Anne’s, Soho, London, on 21 Nov. The baptismal record gives his name as Foulk Greville. He was educated at Winchester school and matriculated at Brasenose College, Oxford, on 3 Jan. 1734 but did not take a degree. Known in London as fashionable, wealthy, and witty, he eloped on 26 Jan. 1748 with Frances Macartney (b 1727?), daughter and heir of James Macartney of Ireland; they had six sons and one daughter. Frances was beautiful and talented; she wrote verse and became famous for her “Ode to Indifference” which she wrote in about 1757. Greville purchased Wilbury House, Newton Tony, Wiltshire, in about 1742 although the family spent time in Europe in the early 1750s. Fulke Greville represented Monmouth, Wales, as a Tory MP in 1747-54. In 1756 he published the first of several editions of Maxims, Characters, and Reflections; it includes verse which was likely written by his wife. In 1764-70 he served as envoy extraordinary to Bavaria and he was minister plenipotentiary to the Imperial Diet 1765-69. Greville was badly shaken by the sudden unexplained death of his son, Robert Greville, and he and Frances later separated. (She briefly retreated to Ireland to escape her husband.) In debt, he sold Wilbury in 1782 and seems to have lived in London during his final years. Frances died in 1789, leaving her estate to her daughter Frances Anne Crewe (1748-1818). Fulke Greville died in 1806 in Wandsworth, London, and was buried in St. Peter’s churchyard, Petersham. His will was proved on 18 June 1806. Soliloquy in a Thatched Building and Reflection were received by critics as oddities and Greville responded with A Letter to the Reviewers of the Monthly Review (1790). (ancestry.co.uk 14 Nov. 2024; ODNB [for Frances Greville and Frances Anne Crewe] 14 Nov. 2024; historyofparliamentonline.org; historicengland.org.uk [for Wilbury House]; H. J. Jackson, Marginalia: Readers Writing in Books [2001])