(1759 - 1826), dramatist, 2nd s. of Samuel Greatheed of Guy's Cliffe, War; Gottingen U. 1775; m. 1780 his cos. Ann Greatheed (1748 - c.1822), dau. of Marmaduke Greatheed of St Christopher, West Indies.
1784 - 6 Florence (1784 - Jun. 1785 - ), Naples (winter 1785 - 6), Rome (by Apr. 1786), Florence, Perugia (May), Padua, Venice (May - ) [England Sep.]
[1803 - 4 Italy]
Bertie Greatheed was the nephew of the 3rd Duke of Ancaster (his mother was the daughter of the 2nd Duke). He was in Florence with his wife in 1784 when, with William Parsons and Robert Merry, he published verses in The Arno Miscellany. In June 1785 Greatheed and his wife met the Piozzis and with Parsons, Merry, John Biddulph and the 10th Earl of Pembroke formed a coterie, within which there was a particular friendship between Mrs Greatheed and Mrs Piozzi. That summer Greatheed, Parsons, Merry and Mrs Piozzi contributed to The Florence Miscellany, another poetic anthology with contributions from several Italian poets (see Hester Piozzi). The Greatheeds met the Piozzis in Naples that winter and Henry Quin had noticed them in Rome by 1 April 1786.1 Dr Thomas Whalley met them in Florence in 1786 (probably about Easter) and in May they came from Perugia to Padua, thence sailing down the Brenta to Venice with the Piozzis, Charles Shard and Leonard Chappelow. By September the Greatheeds had left Lausanne for England.2 It was said that in Rome Greatheed had induced the Young Pretender to speak of the 1745 rising, 'but the emotion was too great and he [the Young Pretender] fell convulsed on the floor'.3
Greatheed was again in Italy in 1803 - 4, travelling with his only son, also Bertie Greatheed, who died in Vicenza in 1804, aged twenty-three (DNB).
1. Quin jnl.mss. 2. See Piozzi Letters, 1:157 - 9, 161, 165, 209. J.L. Clifford, Hester Lynch Piozzi, 249, 258, 279 - 80. 3. J.H. Jesse, Memoirs of the Pretenders, 2:319 - 20.