Further Research

The first priority is to find more of Neville’s letters, especially personal correspondence and letters written before 1599. The surviving collection is weighted towards diplomacy and the Tower crisis. Much of the work in the major archives has already been done; private letter collections, private libraries and foreign archives now offer the most promising directions. Following recipients, descendants and continental contacts may uncover material catalogued under other names—or not catalogued at all.¹

Anne Killigrew Neville’s life after her husband’s death deserves closer investigation. Her later marriage to George Carleton kept her within a literary and scholarly circle, but much remains to be learned about her activities, relationships and household.²

Neville’s travels with Savile also leave important gaps. Further discoveries could establish how long he stayed in particular places, whom he met and which books he read or acquired. Foreign correspondence, university records, friendship albums and private libraries are promising places to look. The existing itinerary provides the starting points; the aim is to recover new details of his European education.³

The annotated books at Audley End need further study and publication. Work already done on Tacitus, Dionysius and Theodosius provides a foundation for a fuller account of Neville’s and Savile’s reading. Bringing the images, transcriptions, translations and handwriting comparisons together would make this evidence more accessible and help establish the extent and character of their annotations.⁴

Finally, the Billingbear catalogue provides leads to books not yet located at Audley End. Private libraries, dispersed family collections and the book trade may preserve some of them. The Pliny set’s appearance at auction in 2025 shows the value of following books beyond the surviving household collection. Finding more copies with ownership marks or annotations could substantially enlarge our knowledge of Neville’s library.⁵