GRENVILLE, SIR BEVIL (1596-1643), Royalist soldier in the English Civil War (see GREAT REBELLION), was educated at Exeter college, Oxford. As member of Parliament, first for Cornwall, then for Launceston, Grenville supported Sir John Eliot and the opposition, and his intimacy with Eliot was lifelong. In 1639, however, he appears as a royalist going to the Scottish War in the train of Charles I. The reasons of this change of front are unknown, but Grenville's honour was above suspicion, and he must have entirely convinced himself that he was doing right. At any rate he was a very valuable recruit to the royalist cause, being "the most generally loved man in Cornwall." Under the command of Sir Ralph Hopton, Sir Bevil fought at Bradock Down, and at Stratton (May 16, 1643 ), where the earl of Stamford was routed by the Cornishmen, he led one of the storming parties which captured Chudleigh;s lines (Clarendon, vii. 89). Grenville was killed at the head of the Cornish infantry as it reached the top of the hill on July 5, 1643, at Lansdowne, near Bath, where a monument to him has been erected.
See Lloyd, Memoirs of Excellent Personages (1668) ; S. R. Gardiner, History of the English Civil War (vol. i. passim).