In the Chapter House of St. Mary's church, Warwick, there stands a large tomb with this inscription:

FULKE GREVILLE, SERVANT OF QUEEN ELIZABETH, COUNSELLOR JAMES, FRIEND TO SIR PHILIP SIDNEY.

These few words sum up the life of a man who lived dose to the centre of national life when England was emerging into a new, post-medieval world. It was a time of change and development in the literary world too, as writers strove to absorb new influences coming from continental Europe. The most influential and one of the finest writers of the new poetry Philip Sidney . It was through Sidney that Greville became a poet as well as a courtier and a politician.

Fulke Greville was born in 1554, the same year as Sidney, in Beauchamp's Court, which is no longer standing. It was situated about half a mile north of Alcester, in whose church there is a monument to his grand-parents. Sir Fulke, Greville's father, applied to Queen Elizabeth for the grant of Warwick Castle, at that time `mightily in decay', but she refused him. A renewed appeal from the younger Fulke to James I in 1604 was successful and he proceeded to repair and beautify both house and gardens, at a cost of £20,000, a considerable sum at that time.

Greville was, by this time, a man of wide experience. Like all young men of family and ambition he had gone to court after school at Shrewsbury (which he entered on the same day as Sidney) and university (Cambridge) and he went on to serve Elizabeth as both soldier and sailor. In 1598 he was appointed Treasurer of the Navy. The following year Greville was made Rear-Admiral and given command of the largest vessel in the fleet. It was said of his relationship with Queen Elizabeth that he had:'the longest lease and the smoothest time without rub' of any of her favourites, but this had not always been so. During his early years at court he had fretted at the tight leash on which Elizabeth kept the headstrong young men about her. Several times, to the Queen's displeasure, he attempted to follow his own will; but he learned to restrain himself and thus to prosper.

After Elizabeth's death the sky was to darken for Fulke Greville. James 1 of England.Vl of Scotland had his own entourage, many of whom came with him from Scotland. He was also a very different character from Queen Elizabeth and Greville did not respect him as he had his predecessor. A series of reverses and humiliations followed and Greville was shut out from public affairs for eleven long years. In 1614, however, the way was once again clear and he became Chancellor and Under-Treasurer of the Exchequer. From that time onwards, for the rest of his life, Greville was always engaged in a multitude of state affairs. He was raised to the peerage as Baron Brooke in 1621.

In 1628, while in London, Fulke Greville was attacked by a servant who stabbed him twice and then killed himself. He did not die at once but lingered on for a month. His body was taken to Warwick and he was buried in St. Mary's in the tomb which he had himself designed. It is rather too big for its setting and has an unusual north/south orientation, instead of the usual east/west, probably because of the restricted space. He was seventy four. Sidney, the friend of his youth, had been dead since 1586, when he was fatally wounded at Zutphen, while fighting under the command of Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, in the Netherlands campaign. His influence on Greville, however, had never faded. Sidney believed strongly in the importance of poetry to a society seeking a place among the advanced cultures of modern Europe. Fulke Greville, in his youth, followed this example by writing a sonnet sequence. His lady is Caelica and her beauty, her virtue and her stubborn resistance in the face of her lover's pleadings are all celebrated in the fashionable style associated with the Italian poet, Petrarch; but there is a note of scepticism or irony in Greville's handling of this theme. Some poems strike deep notes and the pains and follies of love are put in a context which raises profound questions, in particular whether devotion to any worldly object is justified. At length the poet renounces earthly love and turns instead to love of the divine.

Greville's tomb

The sequence closes with a series of magnificent religious poems. Whether the focus is on secular or divine love, Greville's sequence stands out as the highly individual work of a complex and fascinating personality.

copyright Professor Joan Rees, FRSL Emeritus Professor of English Literature, Birmingham University, 2006