Manor of Bideford
[2] The unabbreviated Latin text of the entry, and a translation, follows: According to the account by the Continuator of Wace and others,[3] in his youth Brictric declined the romantic advances of Matilda and his great fiefdom was thereupon seized by her.
Whatever the truth of the matter, years later when she was acting as Regent in England for William the Conqueror, she used her authority to confiscate Brictric's lands and threw him into prison, where he died.
[4] The Exon Domesday[5] notes that Bideford and nearby Littleham were held at fee farm from the king by Gotshelm, a Devonshire tenant-in-chief of 28 manors and brother of Walter de Claville.
[9] The Grenville family held Bideford for many centuries under the overlordship of the feudal barons of Gloucester, which barony was soon absorbed into the Crown, when they became tenants in chief.
By tradition Richard de Grenville is said by Prince (died 1723),[12] (apparently following Fuller's Worthies)[13]) after he had founded Neath Abbey and bestowed upon it all his military acquisitions for its maintenance, to have "returned to his patrimony at Bideford where he lived in great honour and reputation the rest of his days".
He married Adelina de Beaumont, and during the reign of King Henry II (1154–1189) held 3 1/2 knight's fees from the Honour of Gloucester.
As arranged by his father, he married the daughter and heiress of Thomas de Middleton, whose wardship and marriage the former had acquired from King John in 1204.
He was buried at Kilkhampton, where in 1895 his armorials impaling Wortham (Sable, a chevron between three lion's paws argent) were said to survive.
Sir Theobald de Grenville I (1323 – c. 1377)[22] (son), the builder of Bideford Long Bridge and Sheriff of Devon.
3 April 1311 - d. 16 December 1391), daughter of Humphrey de Bohun, 4th Earl of Hereford (by his wife Elizabeth of Rhuddlan, a daughter of King Edward I)[24] Sir John Grenville (died 1412) (eldest son and heir),[25] Sheriff of Devon in 1395, Sheriff of Cornwall in 1411 and four times MP for Devon, in 1388, 1394, 1397 and 1402.
[28] Sir Thomas Grenville I (born by 21 January 1432 - died c. 1483) (son), the first member of the family to modernise his surname by omitting the particule "de".
[34] During the Wars of the Roses in his youth he was a Lancastrian supporter and took part in the conspiracy against King Richard III organised by the Duke of Buckingham.
[35] Sir Roger Grenville (1477–1523) (eldest son and heir by his father's first wife Isabel Gilbert).
one of the two daughters and co-heiresses of Richard Whitleigh (died 1509)[37] of Efford[37][38] in the parish of Egg Buckland on the south coast of Devon.
He died at the Battle of Flores (1591), fighting heroically against overwhelming odds, and refusing to surrender his ship to the far more numerous Spanish.
She outlived her husband and died aged about 80 on 9 November 1623 and was buried at St Mary's Church, Bideford.
The family initially lived at Buckland Abbey before moving to a newly built house at Bideford.
[citation needed] An escutcheon showing the arms of Grenville impaling St Ledger survives in Kilkhampton Church.
Sir Bevil Grenville (1596–1643) (eldest son and heir), a Royalist soldier in the Civil War, killed in action in heroic circumstances at the Battle of Lansdowne in 1643.
[48][49][50] Grace's half-sister Elizabeth Smythe was the wife of Sir Thomas Monk (1570–1627) of Potheridge, Devon, MP for Camelford in 1626, and mother of the great general George Monck, 1st Duke of Albemarle, KG (1608–1670).
It was largely due to his close kinship to his first cousin the Duke that Sir Bevil's son Sir John Granville was raised to the peerage in 1660 as Earl of Bath,[51] and was also granted the reversion of the Dukedom of Albemarle in the event of the failure of George Monck's male issue.
He was a major figure in effecting, in a subsidiary role to his cousin George Monck, 1st Duke of Albemarle, the Restoration of the Monarchy to King Charles II in 1660, for which service he was elevated to the peerage.
The advowson of the rectory of Bideford was sold to the Buck family (later Stucley) of Daddon House, which made their first presentation in 1783.
