William Greville

[3]), of Chipping Campden in Gloucestershire and a Citizen of the City of London,[4] was a prominent wool-merchant and is the ancestor of the present Greville Earls of Warwick.

[5] The Latin inscription on his ledger stone in Chipping Campden Church, which he rebuilt at his own expense, describes him as flos mercatorum lanar(iorum) tocius (totius) Angli(a)e, "the flower of the wool-merchants of all England".

[6] This language is reminiscent of that used to describe certain prominent knights such as Edward, the Black Prince (d.1376) who was described by Froissart (d. circa 1405) as la fleur de toutte chevalerie dou monde ("the flower of all chivalry of the world")[7] and was likely intended to suggest a degree of equivalence between mercantile and martial activities".

[12] Leland (d.1552) stated: "Sum hold opinion that the Grevilles cam originally in at the Conquest",[13] but although the name appears Norman in style,[14] surviving records do not mention the family before the 13th century.

[27] He purchased more than 14 houses in the town,[28] as well as several nearby manors including: He signed his will on 2 April 1401 and desired to be buried in the "Church of the Blessed Mary of Campden" and bequeathed 100 marks to "the new work to be carried on there".

(Per Davis, 1899): The hair of William Grevel is short and removed from the temples like that of the reeve described by Chaucer in his Canterbury Tales.

He wears a tight-fitting tunic reaching to the ankles; from the waist it is fastened by buttons, of which three are visible above the girdle and eleven beneath it.

The author of the Romance of Sir Degrevant, in describing the dress of an earl's daughter, says: "to tell her botennes was toore" (i.e., dure, hard, to count her buttons would give much trouble).

The two outer pinnacles are continued down till their bases from the extremity of the diapered band at the bottom upon which the figures stand.