Henry Neville died in 1615.1 His widow, Anne Killigrew, married George Carleton, Bishop of Chichester, at St Faith’s, Shellingford, on 2 November 1619. Carleton had addressed his Heroici characteres to Neville in 1603.2
Carleton’s daughter, also named Anne, married Thomas Vicars, a clergyman and author of a Latin rhetoric textbook. Neville’s widow was therefore the stepmother of Vicars’s wife. In 1622 Vicars named “The Lady Anne Nevill” among the patrons of his translation of Keckermann’s A Manuduction to Theology, identifying her as the wife of the Bishop of Chichester.32
Six years later, Vicars praised Shakespeare in a distinctive way. The third edition of his textbook, Manuductio ad artem rhetoricam (1628), repeats Charles Butler’s list of English poets: Chaucer, Spenser, Drayton and Wither. Vicars then adds:
Istis annumerandos censeo, celebrem illum poetam qui a quassatione & hasta nomen habet, Ioan. Davisium, & cognominem meum, poetam pium & doctum Ioan. Vicarsium.
(To these I think we should add that famous poet whose name comes from shaking and a spear, John Davies, and my namesake, the devout and learned poet John Vicars.)4
Vicars names Davies and John Vicars directly, but leaves readers to recognize Shakespeare through the Latin pun. Shakespeare is also the only one of Vicars’s three additions singled out as “famous.” Fred Schurink brought the passage to scholarly attention in 2006, showing that it was added after the textbook’s 1624 edition.5
Vicars also brought Carleton’s Astrologomania to print through the Jaggard press in 1624—the subject of the next chapter.3
Notes and sources
Henry Neville, registered will and probate act, 24 July 1615, The National Archives, PROB 11/126/63. The register names Anne and Savile as executors; the act records their renunciation and administration to the son. Quotations modernize spelling. The original-will bundle cited for further collation is TNA PROB 10/323; the registered copy remains a separate witness.↩︎
Berkshire Family History Society, Berkshire Marriages Index, Findmypast record GBPRS/M/251333809/1, records “George Chichester” and “Anne Nevill,” married by banns at St Faith, Shellingford, on 2 November 1619; its note locates the entry at the top of page 5. “Chichester” appears to represent Carleton’s episcopal title. The identification accords with Chamberlain’s report three days earlier that the bishop was to marry Neville’s widow: Calendar of State Papers, Domestic, James I, 1619–1623, p. 88. The index transcription has been checked; the original register has not. Anthony Wood, Athenae Oxonienses, I, p. 627, episcopal notice, dates Carleton’s transfer to Chichester to September 1619; the Clergy of the Church of England Database also records his confirmation at Chichester in 1619. George Carleton, Heroici characteres. Ad illustrissimum equitem Henricum Nevillum (Oxford: Joseph Barnes, 1603), title and opening poem, sigs. A2r–A3r. Bartholomäus Keckermann, A Manuduction to Theology, translated by Thomas Vicars (1622), sig. A2r, printed dedication. Its other patrons are Anne Fetiplace and Mabel Blenerhasset. Spelling in the quoted dedication is modernized.↩︎
J. H. Cooper, “The Vicars and Parish of Cuckfield in the Seventeenth Century,” Sussex Archaeological Collections 45 (1902), p. 17, transcribing the Guy Carleton monument, which calls Vicars’s wife Anne the daughter of Bishop Carleton. For Neville’s widow as dedicatee, see the 1622 dedication cited above. Anne Carleton and Anne Killigrew Neville Carleton are distinct women. Cooper also describes Vicars’s publication of Carleton’s Astrologomania (1624), p. 17.↩︎
Thomas Vicars, Manuductio ad artem rhetoricam, third edition (London, 1628), p. 70, facsimile. Latin checked against the printed page; long s, u/v and accents normalized. English translation supplied here. The figure is a detail of the page, not an image of Schurink’s article.↩︎
Fred Schurink, “An Unnoticed Early Reference to Shakespeare”, Notes and Queries 53.1 (March 2006), 72–75. Schurink identifies the addition in 1628, discusses the name-pun and possible reception contexts, and distinguishes John Davies of Hereford from Sir John Davies. Dana F. Sutton, ed., The Philological Museum, introduction, Latin text, and translation, supplies the surrounding discussion, pp. 70–72, and credits Schurink’s discovery. The textbook first appeared in 1621. Schurink identifies Davies as probably John Davies of Hereford. He discusses both the First Folio and the narrative poems as possible contexts for Shakespeare’s fame; the passage itself names no work.↩︎