The secretaryship: office and a political bargain
Neville’s campaign to become secretary of state was inseparable from his plan to repair relations between James and the Commons. After the failure of the Great Contract negotiations in 1610, the king needed money but distrusted Parliament. Neville believed that concessions to parliamentary grievances could restore confidence and secure a grant of taxation. Appointment as secretary would give him the authority to help carry that settlement through. His claim to office rested on diplomatic experience and, especially, the confidence of influential members of the Commons.1
The principal figures in the contest were these:
| Person or group | Role in the secretaryship contest |
|---|---|
| Sir Thomas Overbury | Adviser to Rochester and Neville’s intermediary in seeking access to the king. |
| Robert Carr, Viscount Rochester | James’s favourite: the court connection through whom Neville’s supporters worked. |
| Sir Thomas Lake | With Rochester, handled the secretary’s business while James left the office vacant; supported by the Howard interest. |
| Henry Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton | Neville’s friend and an active supporter of his appointment. |
| William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke | An ally in the campaign, also involved in advising Rochester after Overbury’s arrest. |
| The Howard interest | A competing court grouping favouring Lake. Northampton opposed Neville; Suffolk later sought his help for the Parliament of 1614. |
| Sir Ralph Winwood | Neville’s friend and prospective partner in office; ultimately appointed secretary in March 1614. |
The campaign was already under way before Robert Cecil, Earl of Salisbury, died on 24 May 1612. Neville’s route to the king ran through Sir Thomas Overbury, intimate adviser to James’s favourite, Robert Carr, Viscount Rochester. Southampton and Pembroke supported him; his friend Ralph Winwood, then ambassador in the Netherlands, became his prospective partner in the secretaryship. Yet the parliamentary connections that recommended Neville also counted against him. In June, Chamberlain reported James’s declaration that he would “not have a secretary imposed upon him by Parliament.”2 Neville was seeking admission with a group of allies, whose combined influence the king and rival courtiers had reason to fear.3
What Neville proposed
James nevertheless consulted Neville at Windsor in July 1612 and asked him to put his advice in writing. The resulting Advice Touching the Holding of a Parliament proposed a reconciliation: the king should redress grievances, fulfil earlier promises and stop public attacks on Parliament; the Commons would then have reason to respond generously to his financial needs. Neville offered his knowledge of members who had resisted the court, but his assurance was conditional. Without reciprocal acts of grace, “I dare promise nothing.” A separate Memorial collected grievances for consideration.4
His proposal allowed the Commons to choose its own representatives for direct discussion with James, without empowering them to bind the House.5 The political offer was substantial, but depended on James accepting changes in his dealings with Parliament as well as trusting Neville to mediate.
Reading Plutarch across languages
Plutarch’s Lives, in Thomas North’s English translation, supplied much of the narrative of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, Antony and Cleopatra and Coriolanus.6 Neville’s use of the same work therefore connects his reading with a major source of several Shakespeare plays. To explain the strength that visible trust between king and people could bring, he turned to Plutarch. In the Advice, he recalled how Antigonus received his son Demetrius while giving an audience to ambassadors.7
Demetrius had just returned from hunting. Still carrying his weapons, he greeted his father and sat beside him. Antigonus called the departing ambassadors back to make sure they reported the scene: a ruler who could sit comfortably beside his armed son was displaying the security of his power. Neville drew the moral:
[…] a great argument of his strength and a great assurance of his safety that his son and he lived in that confidence and concord. If this were true in that case between the father and the son, how much more is it verified between the Prince and the people?7
Neville makes Parliament the equivalent of the trusted son. The king’s strength would be demonstrated by admitting his people’s representatives, just as Antigonus demonstrated his security by admitting Demetrius with his weapons. Plutarch supplies an argument for repairing political trust.
Neville’s wording suggests that he drew on both North’s English and Amyot’s French Plutarch when writing his Advice. North had translated Amyot, but Neville’s retelling combines North’s English phrases with wording closer to the French:68
| North’s English | Amyot’s French | Neville’s Advice |
|---|---|---|
| “the agreement betwixt the father and the sonne together” | “la bonne concorde & confiance du pere au filz” | “in that confidence and concord” |
| “darts in his hand”; “sat down by him” | — | “darts in his hand”; “sat down by him” |
| “a great safety” | “grande asseurance” | “a great assurance of his safety” |
Neville’s “confidence and concord” corresponds to Amyot’s paired ideas in reverse order, where North has the single word “agreement.” His “great assurance of his safety” brings together wording corresponding to both translations. In the narrative itself he repeats North’s “darts in his hand” and “sat down by him.” His “arrayed in his hunting attire” also resembles Amyot’s “tout ainsi comme il estoit accoustré” (“just as he was dressed”), where North says “even as he came from hunting.” Taken together, these correspondences suggest that Neville had consulted both versions and brought his knowledge of them together in the Advice. His opening, “I remember a story,” is consistent with a recollection informed by both English and French reading.910
Neville brings his reading of ancient history into the business of government. The story from the Life of Demetrius becomes an argument for the reconciliation on which his parliamentary proposals depend.
Why the appointment failed
James repeatedly delayed a decision. By late September 1612 he declared that he needed no secretary, leaving Rochester and Sir Thomas Lake to conduct the business. Marriage negotiations offering a substantial foreign dowry also held out the prospect of money without a Parliament. Neville’s parliamentary usefulness therefore did not make him indispensable. Meanwhile, the alliance supporting him was unstable: Overbury’s quarrels alienated potential helpers, while the Howard interest favoured Lake.
Overbury’s imprisonment in April 1613 was a serious disruption, but did not end the campaign. Neville and Pembroke advised Rochester immediately after the arrest, and Southampton was still pressing Neville’s claims in August. The prison correspondence and the later scandal are discussed in Chapter 48; Appendix B examines the letter naming Neville Similis. Overbury died in September, depriving Neville of an important intermediary.11 In October Neville refused a lesser office that Rochester had bought from Lord Stanhope: after being so publicly considered for the secretaryship, he would not accept an inferior post purchased for him by another subject. The public meaning of the appointment mattered as well as the employment itself.12 Even an opponent, Northampton, reportedly described him as Southampton’s “dear Damon”—a hostile allusion to their close friendship.13
There was one final approach in February 1614. With another Parliament in prospect, the Earl of Suffolk sought Neville’s help and encouraged his expectation of the secretaryship. But James wanted Neville and his associates to prove their usefulness before receiving royal favour; Neville wanted appointment before Parliament met. Suffolk privately admitted that he was willing to deceive Neville to obtain his assistance. Neville withdrew from the contest, and Winwood was appointed on 29 March 1614.14
Neville thus failed to secure the combination of office and concessions on which his proposal depended. As Clayton Roberts and Owen Duncan emphasize, his proposed undertaking was never put into operation. The ensuing Parliament’s failure cannot be treated as the failure of a settlement he had been allowed to implement.
The Parliament of 1614
Again returned for Berkshire, Neville entered the new Parliament without the office he had sought, and with his earlier advice exposed to hostile interpretation. The word undertake had become dangerous. In his argument it expressed conditional confidence that members would respond to better treatment. In political rumour an undertaker was someone promising to deliver the Commons for the king in return for advancement. His hopes for the secretaryship made that charge plausible to opponents.15
When the paper was read on 14 May 1614, Neville acknowledged it and explained that James had summoned him to Windsor in July 1612 to ask his opinion. Chamberlain’s letter of 19 May reports that his account of the business, as intended for the good of realm and king, calmed the House and won him credit and commendation. That favourable report should stand beside Sir John Sammes’s objection that such advice should have originated in the House, and a draft Protestation to the king condemning “vain and idle” undertakers. Neville could win respect for his explanation while members rejected the presumption that a private man might manage their counsel.16
Dudley Digges spoke in Neville’s defence during the same debate. He defended the right to offer advice to the king for the country’s good, even without a royal summons:
a private man might go and move the King for the good of the country, uncalled17
Digges supported the argument with his father Thomas’s example: he had proposed projects to Elizabeth I without being summoned and had subsequently sat in Parliament without objection. Neville thus had a named defender in the Commons on the very point at issue—his right to approach the king with proposals for the public good.
The House nevertheless continued to draw on his experience. He received twenty-two committee appointments, including one on restrictions on the export of iron ordnance—a subject familiar to the former cannon manufacturer.18
James dissolved Parliament on 7 June 1614 without legislation or a grant of supply. Disputes over impositions—customs duties levied without parliamentary consent—had again defeated agreement between king and Commons.19 Neville’s hoped-for reconciliation remained unrealized.
Family, friends and scholarship
His children’s marriages were extending the household’s connections. Katherine married Sir Richard Brooke of Norton in 1608; that October Carleton planned a visit to Neville’s to greet the newly married couple.20 On 2 May 1609 the eldest son, Henry, married Elizabeth Smythe, daughter of Sir John Smythe of Westenhanger in Kent, with a marriage portion of £3,200.21
Carleton’s letters also catch the humour of Neville’s social life. Writing from Eton on 13 January 1609, he sent two epitaphs on the “poor young Pope”—apparently the impostor recently executed in Paris for claiming to be the Pope’s son—and asked Neville to show them to Sir Richard Brooke. They were, he wrote, “somewhat suitable to the entertainment of your yesterday’s melancholy dinner.” His closing wish gives “melancholy” an apparently ironic edge: “I know not how to wish you better than to wish you no worse all the year.” Satirical verse was passing between friends and into Neville’s family circle.22
A comic Latin poem, usually dated to September 1611, set a Sir Henry Neville among the company gathering at the Mitre, alongside John Donne, John Hoskyns, Christopher Brooke, Inigo Jones and Hugh Holland—the future First Folio poet. Zachary Lesser identifies him as Neville of Billingbear; Chapter 44 examines that identification and the alternative claim for his Abergavenny cousin. The occasion belongs to the intersection of literary fellowship and parliamentary society in which Neville moved. 23
The lawyer and MP James Whitelocke’s diary supplies a glimpse of that life. At Christmas 1613 Neville gave him a side of a doe. At Neville’s Westminster house Whitelocke renewed his acquaintance with Winwood, who had presented him for his law degree while Oxford’s proctor.24
Henry Savile, Neville’s former tutor, continued his collaborative scholarship in an eight-volume edition of the early Christian preacher John Chrysostom, published in 1610–13. It depended on librarians, manuscript seekers and collaborators across Europe. The edition reportedly cost £8,000 and was a commercial failure: publishing Chrysostom in Greek without a Latin translation left it at a disadvantage against rival editions. Shuger connects Chrysostom’s treatment of poverty and grain hoarding with King Lear and Coriolanus, and explicitly notices Savile’s work on both Tacitus and Chrysostom. See Chapter 34 (Coriolanus) and Chapter 30 (King Lear) for these comparisons.25
Investments and provision for the family
The prospect of buying Sonning revived in August 1613, though the Crown’s changing plans and Rochester’s own interest made the outcome uncertain.2627
The East India Company formally admitted Neville on 31 March 1614 as a “very worthy gentleman” who might “do many good offices for the good of the Company.” His timber business had already connected him with its ships; the entry now expressed a hope of useful service, without naming a particular task. In May the Company ordered half of his £800 joint-stock adventure transferred to Sir James Stonehouse.2829
Another investment lay closer to home. The New River enterprise would bring water from Chadwell and Amwell toward London. A receipt dated 26 November 1610 records Neville’s contribution, docketed £200, toward bringing the water to London. The receipt is treated here as documenting the £200 already acknowledged in an agreement with Hugh Myddelton in May 1612, for two of the thirty-six portions remaining after the Crown’s half-share. Two surviving receipts document a further £100. Neville acquired a stake in the works and their future income, with rights to accounts and obligations to meet further costs.303132
He expected that income to support his family. In July 1612 his instructions for settling his affairs included “my two parts in the new cut or river.” The benefit was “like to grow and increase much more in time than at the first.” If debts could be met by other means, he wanted the investment preserved; the eventual surplus would benefit his sons, with one-seventh reserved to Anne for life.33
A later settlement, made in April 1615, likewise treated the waterwork as a resource for children and creditors. Its income could help provide for his son Richard; if obligations could be met without selling the interest, it was to pass to the eldest son. Commercial ventures and landed inheritance formed parts of the same effort to provide for those Neville would leave behind.34
His last illness, will and death
On 9 February 1615, John Chamberlain wrote to Dudley Carleton that Neville had suffered a financial disappointment: a hoped-for suit concerning the spoiling of woods had been crushed. It was “but a bad medicine,” Chamberlain observed, for a man with:
three dangerous diseases upon him, that is the jaundice, the scorbut and a dropsy, which have brought him to a very weak case and will utterly overthrow him if he find not present remedy.35
Neville’s will, dated 30 April 1615, brings Anne and their eldest son together at the centre of the household’s succession. He directed that his goods, plate, cattle and household furnishings should be divided equally between them, subject to funeral expenses and particular legacies. His son Henry was to receive eight pieces of his best hangings; Anne was to keep her jewels, her coach and horses, and the linen furnishings she had caused to be made. She could remain at Billingbear for three months after his death, drawing on its provisions for herself and her family.
He also remembered his nephew Henry and niece Anne, the children of his brother Edward Neville, leaving each £50; the younger Anne was his wife’s goddaughter. He made provision for his granddaughters, household servants and the poor of neighbouring parishes, and requested a modest funeral and burial beside his parents at Waltham St Lawrence.
The will’s gifts of plate went to Lord Zouche, Robert Killigrew, William Borlase, Francis Moore (his lawyer and an estate trustee), Humphrey Newbury and Henry Savile, his former tutor and lifelong scholarly associate. Neville called Savile his “most special friend and cousin” and appointed him executor alongside Anne.36
The physician Théodore de Mayerne recorded Neville’s condition under the heading “Sir Henry Nevill. May 14. 1615” and Hydrops Pectoris—dropsy of the chest. His Latin account describes an earlier attack:
Seven months ago he was suddenly seized with a constriction of the heart and faintness, so that he was obliged to lean against a wall and support himself on nearby objects. He has been continually unwell since that time.
Mayerne also noted “continual difficulty in breathing and a dry cough.” His account ends with a brief report of improvement and relapse. After a single dose of pills Neville had felt so much better that “he said he was half cured.” The physician’s final words are:
After my remedies had been discontinued for a period of three weeks, he died.37
Neville died at Billingbear on 10 July 1615 and was buried the following day at Waltham St Lawrence.38
On 13 July, Chamberlain sent Carleton the news:
Sir Henry Neville died on Monday of the scorbut, a disease easy to be cured if it be espied and taken in time, otherwise it draws on a number of other diseases, and grows incurable.39
Robert Sidney, Neville’s companion on his continental travels more than thirty years earlier, wrote to his wife Barbara on 22 July:
That worthy gentleman Sir Henry Nevile died the last week and hath left a great debt behind him.40
The probate act of 24 July records that Anne and Savile had both renounced the executorship. Administration of Neville’s goods, rights and credits under the will was granted to his son Henry.41
Anne later married George Carleton, who had been vicar of Mayfield during the Nevilles’ residence there—the poet who had addressed Henry in 1603.42
Whitelocke’s remembrance
Whitelocke’s remembrance combines the history of their friendship with praise of Neville and bitter judgments on his enemies:
On Monday the tenth of July, 1615, at Billingbear in the county of Berks, departed out of this life sir Henry Nevill, my true and worthy friend. He was lineally descended from Edward lord Abergavenny, fourth son of Ralph Nevill first earl of Westmerland. He was a most faithful friend unto me, tam in adversis quam secundis, and I dealt as well with him, for at the time I was committed to the Fleet, he was hunted after by the earl of Northampton, as the author of the opposition against that irregular commission spoken of before in the declaration of that business; but, although he was an actor in it with far greater men, yet his good lordship could never find it out, notwithstanding he caused me to be kept close prisoner and examined by the lords of the council; the truth is, he durst not name him plainly, although he aimed at him, and I had reason enough to conceal him.
He was the most sufficient man for understanding of state business that was in this kingdom, and a very good scholar and a stout man, but was as ignobly and unworthily handled as ever gentleman was. Two of his enemies he saw die ignominiously before him. The treasurer Salisbury, that rotted above ground, and Northampton, that died of a gangrene in his thigh, a very rot, and left the world suspected of ill dealing toward the state. He was 52 years of age when he died.43
Notes and sources
Andrew Thrush, “Neville, Sir Henry I (1564–1615), of Billingbear”, in The History of Parliament: The House of Commons 1604–1629, ed. Andrew Thrush and John P. Ferris (2010), biography, discussion of the secretaryship campaign, 1611–14; Clayton Roberts and Owen Duncan, “The Parliamentary Undertaking of 1614,” English Historical Review 93 (1978), pp. 481–498, especially pp. 481–485, on the connection between advancement, concessions and parliamentary supply. A possible literary reflection of Neville’s parliamentary reputation occurs in The Parliament Fart: “Quoth Harry the hardie looke well to each clause / As well Englands liberties as lawes.” Alastair Bellany and Andrew McRae, eds., Early Stuart Libels (2005), C1ii, lines 53–54 and note 2, identify “Harry the hardie” as possibly Sir Henry Neville; the identification is tentative. “Hardie” means bold or daring, not red-haired.↩︎
John Chamberlain to Dudley Carleton, 17 June 1612, in Norman Egbert McClure, ed., The Letters of John Chamberlain, I (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1939), pp. 358–359. Spelling modernized. Edition.↩︎
Henry Neville to Ralph Winwood, Windsor, 6 September 1612, manuscript letter transcribed by John O’Donnell; printed in HMC, Report on the Manuscripts of the Duke of Buccleuch and Queensberry, Preserved at Montagu House, Whitehall, I (London, 1899), pp. 111–112, printed witness. For the court-access campaign, see Jackie Watson, Epistolary Courtiership and Dramatic Letters: Thomas Overbury and the Jacobean Playhouse (Edinburgh University Press, 2024), chapter 2, especially pp. 68–73, 85–86.↩︎
Neville, ‘An Advice Touching the Holding of a Parliament’, in Samuel Rawson Gardiner, History of England from the Accession of James I to the Disgrace of Chief-Justice Coke, II (London, 1863), Appendix V, pp. 389–394, from State Papers, July 1613, no. 44 (now catalogued as SP 14/74, f. 84). The conditional undertaking is on p. 391. The July 1613 archival placement is distinct from James’s July 1612 consultation; the narrative follows Thrush’s distinction between that meeting and the subsequent composition of the paper.↩︎
Plutarch, The Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romanes, translated by Thomas North, second edition (London, 1595), Demetrius, 941; Jacques Amyot, Les vies des hommes illustres, VI (1567), 3269–3270. The title-page wording is also recorded in the Folger catalogue. The table adds emphasis; North’s “safetie” is modernized to “safety.” For North’s role in the Roman plays, see Folgerpedia’s source list, entries for the three plays.↩︎
Henry Neville, “An Advice [by Sir Henry Neville] Touching the Holding of a Parliament,” in Samuel Rawson Gardiner, History of England from the Accession of James I. to the Disgrace of Chief-Justice Coke: 1603–1616, II (London: Hurst and Blackett, 1863), Appendix V, 389–394, especially 390. Neville’s retelling follows Gardiner’s printed passage, with emphasis added. Gardiner cites State Papers Domestic, lxxiv, no. 44: The National Archives, SP 14/74, ff. 84r–87v, manuscript facsimile. The manuscript confirms the key phrases compared here, including “confidence & concord” and “assurance of his safety.” The story is Plutarch, Demetrius 3; its political application is discussed above.↩︎
Thomas North, The Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romanes (London, 1595), 941; Jacques Amyot, Les vies des hommes illustres grecs et romains, VI (1567), 3269; Gardiner, II, 390. Long s is normalized; emphasis is added. The French gloss in the discussion is supplied here.↩︎
Amyot, Les vies, VI, p. 3269; North, Lives, p. 941; Gardiner, II, p. 390. Amyot has “il s’asseit aupres de luy” and “ayant encore en la main les iauelots”: sitting beside the father and holding the hunting weapons are present in the French too. The exact English overlaps therefore support the comparison without proving separate consultation of North. Neville omits the kiss found in both translations, adds the formal state of the audience, and specifies that the report is for the ambassadors’ masters, where North has them “carry home this report.”↩︎
Plutarch, Vitarum parallelarum tomus tertius (Stephanus, 1572), Demetrius 3, 1630–1631, Bavarian State Library facsimile; Plutarch, Parallela (Frankfurt: Sigismund Feyerabend, 1580), Demetrius, facsimile, leaf n539. The readings underlying the paraphrase are on the 1572 printed page, p. 1631, and the 1580 printed page, Archive leaf n539, in the Life of Demetrius. The Greek has two nouns, homonoia and pistis; the Latin has concordiam qualified by fidelem. These are alternative textual witnesses, not identified books used by Neville.↩︎
Henry Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton, to Ralph Winwood, 6 August 1613, in Edmund Sawyer, ed., Memorials of Affairs of State, III (London, 1725), p. 475, printed letter. Spelling and capitalization modernized. Southampton anticipates a settlement of Overbury’s case; his letter does not establish that the contemplated permission to travel was granted. For the arrest, Neville and Pembroke’s intervention, the prison letters and the death, see Watson, Epistolary Courtiership and Dramatic Letters, pp. 105–114, Letter 37, pp. 127–128, Letter 41, pp. 133–134 and n. 104, and Letters 79–80, pp. 170–172; for the murder trial, pp. 1–2. Book DOI.↩︎
Chamberlain to Carleton, 14 October 1613, McClure, Letters, I, p. 480. Chamberlain reports Rochester’s purchase from Lord Stanhope and Neville’s refusal; the passage is contemporary news, not an independent record of the transfer of the office. Spelling modernized. Thrush, “Neville,” n. 105, cautions that the particular office offered is uncertain; it is therefore not identified here as the treasurership of the chamber.↩︎
Neil Cuddy, “Anglo-Scottish Union and the Court of James I, 1603–1625,” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 39 (1989), pp. 107–124, at p. 117, describes Neville as Southampton’s “dear Damon.” The passage is visible on Cambridge University Library, MS Dd.3.63, f. 50v; the 1856 catalogue, I, pp. 156–157, item 24, dates the episode to November 1613 and records Southampton’s anger over the failure to make his Damon secretary. Neville is identified by context and Cuddy’s discussion, rather than named on this leaf. For the attribution to Northampton, John Casson, “The Earl of Southampton, Richard III, Shakespeare and Henry Neville,” p. 1 and n.2, reports Northampton’s November 1613 letter to Rochester and identifies Cambridge University Library, MS Dd.3.63, fol.50v, citing Brenda James and William D. Rubinstein, The Truth Will Out (2005), p. 246. Casson paper. For the friendship story, see Cicero, De officiis 3.45 (Phintias is the form of Pythias’s name used there). The phrase is a description of the pair, not established here as Southampton’s own form of address.↩︎
Thrush, “Neville”, biography and notes 96–109: the September 1612 decision to leave the office vacant, marriage finance, renewed prospects after Overbury’s arrest, and the February 1614 negotiations with Suffolk; Winwood’s appointment, 29 March 1614.↩︎
Roberts and Duncan, ‘Parliamentary Undertaking’, especially pp. 481–482, 490–496. For Duncan’s earlier treatment of the Advice and related proposals, see The Political Career of Sir Henry Neville: An Elizabethan Gentleman at the Court of James I (PhD diss., Ohio State University, 1974), pp. 234–242, public dissertation. Roberts and Duncan place delivery of the paper at the July 1612 consultation; Thrush, note 88, places its writing afterward. That difference does not affect Neville’s acknowledgment in 1614. They also differ over impositions: Thrush reports their omission as a weakness, while Roberts and Duncan discuss a compromise in the accompanying graces (pp. 486–487, 495–496). The Advice and the separate Memorial must be distinguished when comparing these accounts.↩︎
Chamberlain to Carleton, 19 May 1614, McClure, Letters, I, letter 202, pp. 530–532, edition, especially p. 531. Roberts and Duncan, p. 497, misdate this report 19 April; McClure’s heading gives 19 May. For Sammes and the Commons’ objection, see Thrush, biography and notes 112–114. Maija Jansson, ed., Proceedings in Parliament 1614 (House of Commons) (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1988), pp. 239 n. 23, 247 and 479, identifies the Protestation as a draft and records the House rising without resolving the question. The text alone does not establish adoption or delivery. Debate; draft.↩︎
Maija Jansson, ed., Proceedings in Parliament 1614 (House of Commons), Memoirs of the American Philosophical Society 172 (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1988), p. 246, debate of 14 May 1614. The printed page records Sir Dudley Digges’s speech immediately after Mr Hoskins’s defence of the king’s use of his subjects’ counsel and before Sir Robert Mansell’s proposal to clear Neville of being an undertaker. Digges cites his father’s unsolicited proposals to Elizabeth I as a precedent. The quotation follows the printed parliamentary report; “uncalled” means without being summoned.↩︎
Thrush, Neville biography, the 1614 session and note 114; the iron-ordnance appointment is dated 16 May.↩︎
James Whitelocke, Liber Famelicus, ed. John Bruce (Camden Society, 1858), p. 41, dates the dissolution to Tuesday, 7 June 1614. Shepard Ashman Morgan, The History of Parliamentary Taxation in England (1911), pp. 251–252, text, on the failure to grant supply or pass legislation; Andrew Thrush, “1614: The Beginning of the Crisis of Parliaments”, History of Parliament, 7 May 2014, on the dispute over impositions.↩︎
Dudley Carleton to John Chamberlain, Eton, 26 October 1608, TNA SP 14/37, f. 72; CSPD 1603–1610, p. 464. Carleton names Sir Richard Brooke and Neville’s daughter. For Katherine and the marriage arrangements, Royal Berkshire Archives, D/EN/F6/3, the 1608 Brooke correspondence; George Ormerod, The History of the County Palatine and City of Chester, I (1819), pp. 500–501, Brooke of Norton pedigree.↩︎
Thrush, “Neville, Sir Henry III”, Family and Education and n. 3, gives the date, parentage and £3,200 portion. Carleton’s letter to Chamberlain of 27 February 1609, TNA SP 14/43, f. 122, reports the concluded match without naming the bride; CSPD 1603–1610, p. 493.↩︎
Dudley Carleton to Henry Neville, Eton, 13 January 1608/9, Royal Berkshire Archives, D/EN/F6/1/15, correspondence catalogue. Quoted from the manuscript, spelling modernized. Chamberlain’s letters of 16 and 23 December 1608, McClure, Letters of John Chamberlain, I, letters 106–107, identify the Paris imposture and circulating epigrams. The epitaphs enclosed with Carleton’s letter have not been recovered; the letter does not identify a play or theatrical performance. The ironic tone is a reading of the letter, not an additional documented event.↩︎
Zachary Lesser, “Mixed Government and Mixed Marriage in A King and No King: Sir Henry Neville Reads Beaumont and Fletcher,” ELH 69.4 (2002), pp. 947–77, at p. 972 n. 13, article. Tom Cain, “Donne and the Prince d’Amour,” John Donne Journal 14 (1995), pp. 83–111, n. 37, article text. Cain distinguishes the two Sir Henry Nevilles, notes the Birling cousin’s contribution to Coryate and judges the Berkshire politician “marginally more likely.” Neither the surname pun nor the title “Sir” distinguishes them. For the manuscript and probable date, see The National Archives, SP 14/66, f. 2r–v, and Neuhauser, “Sirenaicks, Guilds and a New Coryate Manuscript,” pp. 34–35, DOI.↩︎
James Whitelocke, Liber Famelicus, ed. John Bruce (Camden Society, 1858), p. 32, Christmas 1613. Short extracts modernize spelling.↩︎
Jan Waszink, “Henry Savile’s Tacitus and the English Role on the Continent: Leicester, Hotman, Lipsius,” History of European Ideas 42.3 (2016), 303–319, at 306–307, on the Chrysostom edition and its European collaboration; Robert Proctor, Bibliographical Essays (London: Chiswick Press, 1905), 116, distinguishes the royal copy’s volume dates, 1610–12, from the ordinary issue with its engraved title dated 1613. Debora K. Shuger, “Subversive Fathers and Suffering Subjects: Shakespeare and Christianity,” in Religion, Literature, and Politics in Post-Reformation England, 1540–1688, ed. Donna B. Hamilton and Richard Strier (Cambridge University Press, 1996), pp. 46–69, chapter DOI, especially pp. 49–54 and 62–64. For the absence of a Latin translation and its commercial consequences, see Thomas Roebuck, “Politics, Patronage and Medieval Scholarship: Henry Savile’s Rerum Anglicarum scriptores post Bedam (1596) in Context,” Erudition and the Republic of Letters 6 (2021), pp. 61–115, accepted manuscript, p. 48, lines 971–976. Huron Library, “Savile’s Chrysostomi Opera Graece”, 7 April 2021, “Short Biography and Context” and n. 2, reports the £8,000 cost on a late seventeenth-century authority and continuing difficulty selling copies, and cites R. D. Goulding’s ODNB account for competition from editions with Latin translations. “Without a Latin translation” describes the Greek works, not the language of all the editorial apparatus.↩︎
Sir Henry Savile junior to Henry Neville, 24 August 1613, Royal Berkshire Archives, D/EN/F6/1, within the miscellaneous correspondence file. The proposed identification with Savile of Methley, the scholar’s nephew, remains contextual. The letter reports an opportunity and competing interests, not a completed sale.↩︎
Royal Berkshire Archives, D/EN/F44/1–4, Sir Henry Savile junior to Henry Neville, 26 August 1613, public catalogue. The surviving opening and final leaves are separated by a missing portion. The Sonning report is on the opening leaf; the date is on the final leaf. The difficult intervening purchase-multiple syntax is not used for a numerical calculation. The report shows an opportunity and a possible exclusion, not a completed purchase.↩︎
W. Noel Sainsbury, ed., Calendar of State Papers Colonial, East Indies, China and Japan, II (London, 1862), p. 288, no. 706, court minutes, 31 March 1614, March calendar. Quoted from the published calendar of the minutes. The entry does not specify Neville’s intended service.↩︎
Sainsbury, Calendar, II, p. 294, no. 723, court minutes, 19 May 1614, May calendar. The court orders the transfer; £400 is calculated from the printed £800 and half. This does not establish the date on which the original £800 was subscribed or paid.↩︎
Bernard Rudden, The New River: A Legal History (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985), Appendix E, pp. 274–278, especially pp. 274–275 and the concluding definition on p. 278. Published appendix. Rudden abbreviates the opening recitals; the original indenture’s present location remains untraced in this research. The payment predates sealing; 8 May is not its payment date.↩︎
Rudden, The New River, pp. 275–278, on further calls, annual accounts and the investor’s contractual protections.↩︎
Royal Berkshire Archives, D/EN/O24, receipts of 18 May 1612 and 2 December 1613, relating to the 8 May covenant. Archive catalogue. The catalogue describes correspondence and receipts concerning Neville’s New River shares, 1610–1614; the amounts and dates given here come from the receipts. A receipt dated 26 November 1610 names Neville and the route from Chadwell and Amwell to London; its reverse is docketed £200. It is treated here as evidence of the £200 already acknowledged in 1612, not as an additional payment. The surviving documents do not explicitly reconcile the two records.↩︎
Royal Berkshire Archives, D/EN/F6/1, instructions for conveyance of woods and payment of debts, endorsed July 1612, within the Neville correspondence and estate papers. Short extracts modernize spelling. The document contains numerous revisions; the concise account follows the legible New River clauses without supplying uncertain connecting words. The individual item suffix is omitted pending reconciliation with the numbering associated with the 1609 timber letter; the document is identified here by its contents and July 1612 endorsement.↩︎
Royal Berkshire Archives, D/EN/F6/1, abstract of Neville’s feoffment dated 30 April 1615, item recorded as /19, public parent catalogue. The abstract describes the interest as two thirty-fifths, whereas the 1612 deed specifies two thirty-sixths; the difference remains unresolved.↩︎
John Chamberlain to Dudley Carleton, 9 February 1614/15, in Norman Egbert McClure, ed., The Letters of John Chamberlain, I (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1939), p. 577. Date given as 1614 in the old-style year; 1615 here. Quotation modernizes spelling. Source.↩︎
The National Archives, PROB 11/126/63, registered will of Sir Henry Nevill of Billingbere, dated 30 April 1615, register f.26 and continuation: catalogue. The witnesses named in the registered copy are Henry Savile, Edward Neville (the testator’s brother), William Simonson and William Hammond. These are copied names, not autograph signatures. Robert Killigrew appears as a friend and legatee, not an executor. The dispositions concern household goods and obligations without individually identifying literary papers.↩︎
Théodore de Mayerne, Opera medica, ed. Joseph Browne (London, 1701), pp. 198–203: heading and symptoms, p. 198; conclusion, p. 203. Translations from the printed Latin. The first quotation translates “Ante septem Menses repentè Cordis compressione & Animi deliquio correptus, ita ut parieti incumbere & Vicinis adminiculis inniti coactus fuerit. Ab eo tempore malè semper habuit.” The respiratory phrase is “Perpetua spirandi difficultas & Tussis sicca”; the improvement is “ut se dimidia ex parte diceret curatum”; the conclusion is “post intermissa trium septimanarum spatio mea Remedia mortuus est.” These are Mayerne’s observations and account of treatment, without imposing a modern diagnosis or establishing that discontinuing treatment caused the death. The original casebook has not been collated. Source.↩︎
Andrew Thrush, “Neville, Sir Henry I (1564–1615), of Billingbear”, in The History of Parliament: The House of Commons 1604–1629, ed. Andrew Thrush and John P. Ferris (2010), conclusion of the biography; Whitelocke, Liber Famelicus, pp. 46–47, for the death at Billingbear on 10 July.↩︎
John Chamberlain to Dudley Carleton, 13 July 1615, The National Archives, SP 14/81, Gale document MC4323683456, marginal note on the second body image (catalogued at f.18; the body image bears 19); McClure, Letters, I, pp. 607–608. Quotation follows the manuscript, with spelling modernized. “Scorbut” is Chamberlain’s term for scurvy; his statement about curability is reported as his contemporary opinion. The remainder of the note, concerning the son’s forest offices, is discussed in Chapter 49. Source.↩︎
Robert Sidney to Barbara Gamage Sidney, London, 22 July 1615, Letter 252 in Margaret P. Hannay, Noel J. Kinnamon and Michael G. Brennan, eds., Domestic Politics and Family Absence: The Correspondence (1588–1621) of Robert Sidney, First Earl of Leicester, and Barbara Gamage Sidney, Countess of Leicester (Ashgate, 2005). The edition identifies the manuscript as C81/259 and gives the cross-reference DD 5:303. Quotation follows the printed letter. Source.↩︎
The National Archives, PROB 11/126/63, registered will, f.26 and continuation, probate act of 24 July 1615. The act records Anne’s and Savile’s express renunciation and the commission to Henry Neville, the deceased’s son. It gives no reason for their renunciation.↩︎
Chamberlain to Carleton, 30 October 1619, McClure, Letters of John Chamberlain, II, pp. 268–270, reports the intended marriage. Thomas Vicars’s dedication to Lady Anne Nevill, “wife to the Right Reverend Father in God, George, Lord Bishop of Chichester,” in Bartholomäus Keckermann, A Manuduction to Theology (1622), sig. A2r, establishes the marriage by that publication; these witnesses do not supply the ceremony date.↩︎
James Whitelocke, Liber Famelicus, ed. John Bruce, Camden Society 70 (London, 1858), pp. 46–47, complete obituary of Neville; spelling modernized, wording and paragraph division retained. The Latin phrase means “in adversity as in prosperity.” Whitelocke’s age of fifty-two is preserved as his statement; it agrees with the approximate 1563 birth discussed in Chapter 1 rather than proving birth in the baptismal year 1564. His “fourth son” differs from the DNB’s description of Edward Neville as the sixth and youngest son of Ralph Neville by Joan Beaufort. These are source differences, not silent corrections to the quotation.↩︎