Richard de Grenville
Sciatis nos dedisse et concessisse et presenti carta nostra confirmasse Deo et ecclesie sancte Trinitatis de Neth et monachis ibidem Deo servientibus locum ubi castellum Ricardi de Granavilla quondam fuit cum omnibus pertinentiis suis et totam terram quam idem Ricardus habuit inter Thawy et Neth, in bosco et plano cum omnibus partinentiis suis; habenda et tenenda in liberam puram et perpetuara elemosinam, quieta ab omni servicio sicut predictus Ricardus ea illis prius dedit et carta sua confirmavit.
To have and to hold in pure and perpetual frankalmoinage, free from all service just as the foresaid Richard gave to them before and as his charter confirmed.
She acted jointly with him in the founding of that Abbey, which suggested to Round that she may have been a native-born Welsh lady and the heiress of Neath.
[a] According to tradition and as confirmed retrospectively by the 1661 warrant of King Charles II, Richard de Grenville was claimed to have been the brother and heir male of Robert FitzHamon, who was supposed to have been Earl of Corboile and Lord of Thorigny and Granville in Normandy.
[8] It was from the 1661 royal warrant that the Granville family of Stowe and Bideford, who claimed to be descended from Richard, were granted licence to use these titles, even retrospectively on monuments they later erected to their ancestors.
By tradition Richard de Grenville is said by Prince (died 1723),[9] (apparently following Fuller's Worthies)[7]) 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".
A Grenville family pedigree dated 1639 stated that in his old age Richard undertook a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, in which city he died.
[4] This story appears to derive from the Gwentian Chronicle or Aberporgwm Brut, which adds that he brought back from the land of Canaan a man named Lalys who was "well-versed in the science of architecture, who erected monasteries, castles and churches" and who afterwards went to London as architect to King Henry I.
[11] An imaginary depiction of Richard de Grenville and his elder brother Robert FitzHamon (died 1107)[12]) is contained within one of the two Granville windows by Clayton and Bell[13] erected in 1860 by supposed descendants of the former within the Granville Chapel of the Church of St James the Great, Kilkhampton, Cornwall.
The Granvilles claimed in the 17th century to have been the heirs male of Robert FitzHamon (who left only a daughter as his sole heiress) in his supposed Earldom of Corboil.
