GREVILLE, CHARLES CAVENDISH FULKE (1794 1865) , diarist, a great-great-grandson through his father of the 5th Baron Brooke, and son of Lady Charlotte Bentinck, daughter of the 3rd Duke of Portland, formerly a leader of the Whig party, and first minister of the Crown, was born on April 2, 1794. Much of his childhood was spent at his grandfather's house at Bul strode. He was one of the pages of George III., and was educated at Eton and at Christ Church, Oxford; but he left the university early, having been appointed private secretary to Earl Bathurst before he was 20. The interest of the duke of Portland had secured for him the secretaryship of the island of Jamaica, which was a sinecure office, the duties being performed by a deputy, and the reversion of the clerkship of the council. Greville entered upon the discharge of the duties of clerk of the council in ordinary in 1821, and continued to perform them for nearly 4o years. He therefore served under three successive sovereigns,- George IV., William IV. and Victoria,—and although no political or confidential functions are attached to that office, it is one which brings a man into habitual intercourse with the chiefs of all the parties in the State.
Greville took an occasional part in the transactions of his day, and was much consulted in the affairs of private life. Until 1855 when he sold his stud he was an active member of the turf, and he trained successively with Lord George Bentinck and with the duke of Portland. His fame is entirely due to the posthumous publication of a portion of a Journal or Diary which it was his practice to keep during the greater part of his life. These papers were given by him to his friend Henry Reeve a short time before his death (Jan. 18, 1865), with an injunction that they should be published, as far as was feasible, at not too remote a period after the writer's death. The journals of the reigns of George IV. and William IV. (extending from 182o to 1837) were accordingly so published in obedience to his directions about ten years after that event. Five large editions were sold in little more than a year, and the demand in America was as great as in England. These journals were a faithful record of the impressions made on the mind of a competent observer, at the time, by the events he witnessed and the persons with whom he associated.
Greville records not so much public events as the private causes which led to them; and perhaps no English memoir-writer has left behind him a more valuable contribution to the history of the 19th century. Greville published anonymously, in 1845, a volume on the Past and Present Policy of England to Ireland, in which he advocated the payment of the Roman Catholic clergy; and he was also the author of several pamphlets on the events of his day.
His brother, HENRY GREVILLE (180171872), attache to the British embassy in Paris from 1834 to 1844, also kept a diary, of which part was published by Viscountess Enfield, Leaves from the Diary of Henry Greville (1883-84) .
See the preface and notes to the Greville Memoirs by Henry Reeve. The memoirs appeared in three sets—one from 1817 to 1837 (1875, 3 vols.), and two for the period from 1837 to 1860, three volumes in 1885 and two in 1887. When the first series appeared in 1875 some passages caused extreme offence. The copies issued were as far as possible recalled and passages suppressed. A new edition, containing some hith erto unpublished material from the ms. was prepared by P. W. Wilson in 1927.