Greville, Fulke (1554-1628)

English poet and courtier Fulke Greville.

English poet and courtier. His biography of his friend Philip Sidney, the Life of Sir Philip Sidney (1652), enhanced the posthumous myth surrounding that figure. Greville's other works include Caelica (1633), a sequence of poems in different metres; and The Tragedy of Mustapha (1609) and The Tragedy of Alaham (1633), both modelled on the Roman Seneca. He was knighted in 1603 and was made a baron in 1621.

Greville was born at Beauchamp Court, Warwickshire, and educated at Shrewsbury School, where his lifelong friendship with Sidney began, and Jesus College, Cambridge. He entered the court in 1577, after travelling abroad, and combined a public career with his literary pursuits, being a member of Parliament, treasurer of the navy 1598-1614, and chancellor of the Treasury 1614-21. He was stabbed to death by a servant. The epitaph he composed for himself was: ‘Servant to Queen Elizabeth, Councellor to King James, Friend to Sir Philip Sidney. Trophaeum Peccati.’