Inheriting Billingbear
Neville’s father died in January 1593, and Neville inherited Billingbear. He enlarged Billingbear with two wings.1
He returned to Parliament for New Windsor in 1593 and represented Liskeard in Cornwall in 1597. His marriage to Anne Killigrew had already connected him with the county through her father’s family, the Killigrews of Arwenack.1
County and forest office
Neville’s local responsibilities extended across the county’s courts, militia and royal estates. He served as a Berkshire justice of the peace from 1593 until the disgrace following the Essex rising in 1601, and was back in office by 1604. He also held the office of custos rotulorum, keeper of the county’s records, before his disgrace and again by 1604, continuing to his death. He was sheriff in 1595–96 and was appointed a deputy lieutenant in 1596. He was also keeper of the house at Windsor Castle and steward of Sonning manor. His forest offices had their own dates: Sunninghill Park is recorded from 1593, while Swinley Walk and Fines Bailiwick are documented by 1607.2
As a justice of the peace, Neville belonged to the body of local gentlemen responsible for keeping order and administering justice through Quarter Sessions, the county courts held four times a year. Royal government in the shires depended on such unpaid gentlemen.3
The commission calendared on 26 October 1596 makes the militia connection specific. Henry Lord Norris and Sir William Knollys were authorized to appoint four Berkshire deputies: Sir Francis Knollys, Sir Humphrey Forster, Sir Thomas Parry and Henry Neville. Deputy lieutenants helped organize county defence, including supervising musters and checking arms. Neville thus appears within the county command structure three years after his father’s death.4
His local influence also mattered in dealings over land. On 19 December 1606, Charles Howard, Earl of Nottingham, asked Neville to support a lease for his servant Turner of a farm in Wokingham. This was a lease in reversion, to take effect after the existing interest ended, and Lord Norreys had promised not to grant it without Neville’s agreement. Nottingham therefore asked him to write to Norreys approving the arrangement: securing a local tenancy could depend on Neville’s goodwill as well as the grantor’s.5
Parks, walks and deer
Forest office brought Neville into the management of land and deer around Windsor. A royal forest was a legal jurisdiction protecting the Crown’s deer and their habitat, not necessarily continuous woodland.6 A walk was a district assigned to a keeper; parks and smaller enclosed deer grounds could lie within it. A bailiwick was an officer’s jurisdiction. These divisions combined responsibilities for animals and land with questions of boundaries and rights. Norden’s survey later recorded disputes between neighbouring keepers who did not agree where their walks ended.7
Neville’s connection to Sunninghill Park is recorded from 1593. In early 1599, as he prepared to leave for France, Elizabeth instructed him to arrange restrictions on killing game and deer in Mote and Sunninghill Parks during his absence. An embassy abroad therefore required arrangements for the work he was leaving at home.8
The fullest picture comes from John Norden’s survey of 1607. It names Neville as keeper of Swinley Walk, describes Warfield Walk as reputedly his private property, and records his claim to hold Fines Bailiwick by inheritance. Fines extended northwards from Wokingham towards the Thames. Much of it was enclosed, and Neville had recently begun stocking it with red and fallow deer. These were different kinds of responsibility: the keepership of a walk, reputed private ownership, and a claim to an inherited forest office.7
In September 1607 his eldest son Henry received a grant in reversion of the keepership of Sunninghill and Mote Parks and the office of riding forester of Battles Walk: he was to succeed his father, not displace him. These offices were distinct from Fines and Swinley.9 A riding forester was traditionally a mounted officer with a wider area to oversee.6 A request from Robert Sackville, by then Lord Buckhurst, in August 1606 for a buck for Edward Fenner shows another side of the work: venison supplied as a favour.9
His father’s example
Neville’s father had dealt with a similar mixture of forest offences, local authority and personal obligations. On 13 April 1589 the elder Sir Henry reported to Sir William More that a masked gentleman and two companions had hunted a hind and calf at Finchampstead. The man refused to uncover his face. Keepers followed the party to an inn at Guildford; blood and hair supplied evidence, and constables became involved.10
An earlier letter from the Earl of Leicester to Neville’s father and More, dated 26 March 1574 but probably written in 1575, called for action against dishonest keepers and indictments at Quarter Sessions. It also concerned a man who wanted an appointment to a walk nearer his home. Forest administration involved supervising officers as well as pursuing those who took deer.11
Keepers also received customary fees and portions of the deer, including its shoulders, as William Harrison explains in his Description of England.12 These family records give practical substance to Neville’s forest titles. Chapter 25 returns to this setting in The Merry Wives of Windsor: the stolen deer, gifts of venison and the keeper’s customary share of a buck belong to the world of duties and privileges described here.
Delivering the cannon
Neville’s Sussex ordnance business continued after he inherited Billingbear. To recover the bonds securing his contract, he needed to account for the guns delivered. Reports from his agents followed deliveries, inspections and the money secured against them. The delivery papers do not identify the furnace that produced every consignment: managing a contract did not mean personally making every gun.13
Neville’s ordnance papers show the work required to turn cast guns into a completed delivery. In an August 1595 letter, Neville’s agent Abraham Jones reported that Sackville’s man, Thomas Balle, had inspected the pieces at Lewes. He refused two sakers, six falcons and two minions. Jones also reported that some rejected pieces were only slightly faulty at the mouth, but Balle would not take them. Acceptance depended on inspection, and rejected guns complicated the reckoning of what Neville had delivered.14
On 23 November 1595, Jones reported two batches of Neville’s pieces now shipped: approximately 28 tons 17 hundredweight, followed by a further 22 tons 19 hundredweight. He reported more than 37 tons remaining at Lewes and also listed 26 pieces, two on carts. It is unclear whether the 26 pieces were included in that weight or additional to it. He asked for Neville’s further instructions.14
A working copy to Robert Sackville, docketed 8 February 1596, shows how these reports supported a demand for the return of bonds. Neville set out three deliveries, including guns sent to Millhall and Lewes, giving a combined weight of 152 tons and three quarters of a hundredweight. By his reckoning, he had already supplied more than the 150 tons of the bargain. A further order for 22 tons 19 hundredweight and one quarter would bring the reckoning to 175 tons.15
The account was an argument about performance. Neville wanted the bonds back because he considered the required deliveries fulfilled. He referred Sackville to their agreement and their joint instructions to his cousin Edward Neville, Lord Abergavenny, who was to release the bonds in stages. The figures thus connect the physical movement of guns with the written securities behind the transaction. They record deliveries reported and instructions issued; they do not by themselves establish that every subsequent delivery occurred or that the bonds were returned.
A letter from Robert Sackville on 30 June 1597 brings price into this picture. Sending Neville the rent due at Midsummer, Sackville discussed an allowance for iron and insisted that even a purchase of a hundred tons brought him no price below £7 a ton. He offered an alternative arrangement involving sixty tons of good iron delivered at Lewes or Millhall. The letter also acknowledged Neville’s offer about Mayfield, which Sackville had passed to his lord for an answer.16 The proposed sixty-ton delivery was a negotiating option, not another completed shipment.
Leaving Mayfield
Neville disposed of his Mayfield interests in transactions dated 1597–98. Eva Margaretta Bell-Irving’s Mayfield: The Story of an Old Wealden Village (1903) quotes a 6 May 1598 conveyance of the manor and associated property to Thomas May for £6,387, with specified exceptions; a separate 1597 transaction concerned waste lands. The Sussex sale helped finance his purchase of lands formerly owned by Sir Henry Unton in Berkshire, the obligations he would describe to Cecil in May 1598 (Chapter 5). Berkshire became the centre of his landed responsibilities.17
Billingbear was the centre of a life divided among land, county government, forest management and the iron business. The French embassy would take Neville away from those responsibilities; his reluctance to leave them forms part of the next chapter.
Notes and sources
Andrew Thrush,“NEVILLE, Sir Henry I (1564–1615), of Billingbear”, The History of Parliament: The House of Commons 1604–1629, ed. Andrew Thrush and John P. Ferris (2010), family, constituency and office lists, and biography. Subsequent chapters give the particular records behind the offices, embassy and parliamentary career. For the Cornish family connection, see Thomas Finlayson Henderson, “Killigrew, Henry (d.1603),” Dictionary of National Biography, identifying Anne’s father as a son of John Killigrew of Arwenack, of an old Cornish family.↩︎
Andrew Thrush, ‘Neville, Sir Henry I (1564–1615)’, History of Parliament: The House of Commons 1604–1629 (2010), Offices Held. The biography lists keeper of the house at Windsor Castle 1593–?1601; Sunninghill Park 1593–1601 and by 1607 to death; Swinley Walk and Fines Bailiwick by 1607; Sonning by 1598–1601 and by 1603 to at least 1608; Newbury ?1593 to at least 1604. These are separate tenures, not a single uninterrupted office. Thrush lists the Berkshire deputy lieutenancy as 1596–at least 1608; that range does not resolve any interruption. For the 1596 commission, see the following note on the commission of 26 October 1596.↩︎
UK Parliament, “Local criminal justice”, on justices’ responsibility for local law and order, quarterly sessions, and their role as unpaid representatives of central government. The paragraph explains the institution; it does not assert Neville’s attendance at any particular session.↩︎
Mary Anne Everett Green, ed., Calendar of State Papers, Domestic Series, of the Reign of Elizabeth, 1595–1597 (London, 1869), commission of lieutenancy, 26 October 1596, pp.296–297, first page and continuation. The entry is marked “Docquet.” It authorizes the lieutenants to make the named men deputies; it is not a separate surviving instrument recording each appointment’s execution. The Oxfordshire deputy list follows and is kept distinct. For the duties of Tudor deputy lieutenants, see the Lord-Lieutenant of Devon, “Our History”, describing supervision of musters, gunpowder stores and weapons. These are institutional duties, not evidence of a particular inspection by Neville.↩︎
Charles Howard, Earl of Nottingham, to Henry Neville, Whitehall, 19 December 1606, Royal Berkshire Archives, D/EN/F6/1/11; catalogue of the correspondence bundle. The letter asks Neville to signify his approval to Lord Norreys, who had promised not to grant the reversion without Neville’s assent. The farm’s name is unclear. The letter does not establish Neville’s ownership of the farm or explain the legal basis of Norreys’s undertaking.↩︎
J. Charles Cox, The Royal Forests of England (London: Methuen, 1905), chapters I and III, on the legal meaning of forest and the mounted general or itinerant forester, public text. The explanation of a riding forester describes the office; it does not establish Neville’s personal patrol routine.↩︎
R. R. Tighe and J. E. Davis, Annals of Windsor, II (1858), pp. 28–30, printing and describing Norden’s 1607 survey. The account of Fines and its stocking is on p. 30. “Reputed” and the claim to inheritance follow the survey’s distinctions. The descriptions distinguish walks and enclosed parks, list their keepers, and report disputes over boundaries. This survey records conditions in 1607, not a complete list of Neville’s appointments at his inheritance in 1593.↩︎
For Sunninghill from 1593, see Thrush’s office list cited above. Mary Anne Everett Green, ed., Calendar of State Papers, Domestic Series, of the Reign of Elizabeth, 1598–1601 (1869), p. 157, “[Jan.]” 1599, abstract citing Warrant Book I, p. 36.↩︎
Green, ed., Calendar of State Papers, Domestic Series, of the Reign of James I, 1603–1610 (1857), p. 372, 29 September 1607, docquet, explicitly granting the offices to Henry Neville “in reversion after Sir Hen. Neville, his father”; Royal Berkshire Archives, D/EN/O12/42, August 1606, letter from Lord Buckhurst to Neville requesting a buck for Edward Fenner; the catalogue describes a request, not a record of delivery.↩︎
Surrey History Centre, Loseley manuscripts, LM/COR/3/446, 13 April 1589, Sir Henry Neville to Sir William More. The details follow the repository’s description of this damaged document.↩︎
Surrey History Centre, 6729/3/88, Leicester to Neville and More. The catalogue assigns 26 March 1575, explaining that the document bears 1574 and probably intends 1575.↩︎
William Harrison, “Of Parkes and Warrens,” Holinshed’s Chronicles (1587), I, p. 204; also Elizabethan England: From “A Description of England”, ed. Lothrop Withington, chapter XX, p. 207. Harrison lists money, skin, head, umbles, chine and shoulders among the keeper’s customary receipts.↩︎
Royal Berkshire Archives, D/EN/O/23/2–5, delivery correspondence and working account discussed below; parent catalogue. These are the papers on which the statement about identified furnaces rests. For later comparative context, Howard C. Tomlinson, “Wealden Gunfounding: An Analysis of Its Demise in the Eighteenth Century,” Economic History Review 29, no. 3 (1976), pp. 383–400, especially pp. 385, 390–395 and 398, JSTOR. This is chiefly a study of later seventeenth- and eighteenth-century production, including the Fuller works at Heathfield. It describes hollow casting, finishing and proof, skilled labour, subcontracting and transport; its later specifications, proof procedures, prices and failure rates cannot simply be assigned to Neville’s period. Hollow casting and boring a gun from a solid casting must also be distinguished.↩︎
Abraham Jones to Henry Neville, inspection report docketed 28 August 1595, Royal Berkshire Archives, D/EN/O/23/4; the rejected-gun passages are from this letter. Jones’s subsequent report of 23 November 1595, D/EN/O/23/2, distinguishes two shipments, approximately 28 tons 17 hundredweight and 22 tons 19 hundredweight, with stock remaining at Lewes; the figures do not necessarily describe separate stocks. The near-match between November’s 22 tons 19 hundredweight and the February account’s 22 tons 19 hundredweight 1 quarter does not establish that they are the same consignment. The parent catalogue describes correspondence concerning Neville’s sale and shipment of ordnance, 1593–1597. A separate account has not been securely connected with the November letter.↩︎
Working copy to Robert Sackville, docketed 8 February 1595 Old Style (1596 with the year beginning in January), Royal Berkshire Archives, D/EN/O/23/3; same parent catalogue. The opening deliveries are 44 tons 2 hundredweight 3 quarters, 28 tons 13 hundredweight, and 79 tons 5 hundredweight. At 20 hundredweight per ton and four quarters per hundredweight these total 152 tons 0 hundredweight 3 quarters; a further order for 22 tons 19 hundredweight 1 quarter was intended to bring the total to 175 tons. The sheet contains revisions and separate marginal drafts, so it should not be quoted as one clean sent letter. The final delivery location and the first bond-release threshold remain uncertain. No claim is made that all these guns came from a single furnace. For Edward’s relationship to Billingbear, W. A. J. Archbold, “Neville, Edward (d.1538),” Dictionary of National Biography, identifies Edward of Newton St Loe and Sir Henry of Billingbear as sons of the courtier, and the later Lord Abergavenny as the former’s son. He and the ambassador were therefore first cousins. His parliamentary summons followed in 1604; the account already calls him Lord Abergavenny.↩︎
Robert Sackville to Henry Neville, 30 June 1597, Royal Berkshire Archives, D/EN/O/23/5, same parent catalogue. The first allowance clause is difficult to read. The account does not establish a universal market price, completion of the alternative sixty-ton delivery, or acceptance of the Mayfield offer. My lord is retained without adding an independently unchecked identification.↩︎
Eva Margaretta Bell-Irving, Mayfield: The Story of an Old Wealden Village (London: William Clowes and Sons, 1903), pp. 159–160,public volume. The 1597 waste-land transaction and 1598 manor conveyance are distinct. Thrush gives 1597 and a total of nearly £8,800, but the two components in his note 28 sum to £7,787. The larger total remains unreconciled; the figure quoted here is Bell-Irving’s stated consideration for the particular 1598 conveyance, not an aggregate sale price. For the connection with the Unton purchase, Neville to Cecil, 6 May 1598, Hatfield House, Cecil Papers 60/114; HMC, Calendar of the Manuscripts of the Marquess of Salisbury, VIII (1899), p. 158; discussed in Chapter 5.↩︎
Author’s map. The historical associations are documented in Chapters 1–9. Base geography: Natural Earth (public domain); settlement locations: GeoNames (CC BY). Billingbear marks the former mansion site, approximately 51.445° N, 0.807° W, as recorded in the Wikimedia Commons geographical record for Billingbear House, rather than the modern hamlet’s centre. The enlarged river uses OS Open Rivers: contains Ordnance Survey data © Crown copyright and database right 2026, under the Open Government Licence. The present river is supplied for orientation; the map does not establish a sixteenth-century channel, ferry location, or forest boundary. Sunninghill is the settlement, not an exact reconstruction of the park.↩︎