George Grieve

George Grieve (1748–1809), or Greive (as he latterly spelled it), was an English lawyer who was best known as the persecutor of Madame Du Barry during the French Revolution.

Early life in England Grieve was the son of Richard Grieve, an attorney, of Alnwick, and Elizabeth Davidson.

His father Richard was the under-sheriff of Northumberland. George's grandfather, Ralph, a merchant, had been prominent at Alnwick in political contests, and George's elder brother, Davidson Richard, was high sheriff of Northumberland in 1788. Grieve, on coming of age, had to go to law with the town corporation to take up his freedom, their plea being that his father, who had died in 1765 at the age of eighty-four, had been temporarily disfranchised at the time of George's birth.

During the 1770s, he organised the Constitutional Club of Durham, Northumberland and Newcastle; the club supported parliamentary reform in England and America. In 1778 he headed a mob in levelling the fences of a portion of the moor which the town corporation had presented to the duke's agent.

Move to the USA In 1781 he emigrated to America, where he aligned with Washington and other founders of the republic. He is said to have been sent on a mission to Holland, and about 1783 he took up his abode at Paris. He probably represented America in revolutionary demonstrations.

Madame Du Barry In the winter of 1792, during Madame Du Barry's visit to London in search of her stolen diamonds, he took lodgings at an inn at Louveciennes, won over two of her servants to the side of the revolution. In particular, he worked with her servant Louis-Benoit Zamor, whose information was used during her trial.

Later life He eventually settled at Brussels, where he died 22 February 1809, the register describing him as a native of ‘Newcastel, Amérique.’ He appears to have been unmarried, and to have broken off all intercourse with his kindred. Vatel, who had examined some of his manuscripts in the National Archives, Paris, testifies to his thorough mastery of French, and his pamphlet, the copy of which in the French National Library contains autograph corrections, bespeaks a familiarity with the classics.