Billingbear

Topic: Billingbear

1. Verified Sourced Facts

• The local wiki page states:

“In 1598, courtier and diplomat Sir Henry Neville acquired Shellingford Manor from trustees of the late Sir Henry Unton”

• The same page states:

“Sir Henry Neville died in possession of the manor in 1615”

• The same page states:

“His heir was "his son Sir Henry Neville of Billingbear in Waltham"”

• The same page states:

“In 1620, this heir sold the estate to John Packer of Westminster, who had previously served as secretary to the senior Neville during his ambassadorship in France”

• The same page states that the Billingbear page links to:

“Billingbear Oak Walk Poem”

• British History Online's VCH entry for Shellingford independently verifies the Shellingford sequence summarized by the wiki: Neville purchased Shellingford in 1598 from trustees of Sir Henry Unton, died seised of the manor in 1615, and his son Sir Henry Neville of Billingbear in Waltham sold the estate in 1620 to John Packer of Westminster.

• The same VCH entry states that John Parkhurst, later master of Balliol, was chaplain to Sir Henry Neville when Neville was ambassador at Paris and was presented by Neville to the rectory of Shellingford in 1602.

• Royal Berkshire History gives a public local-history control for Billingbear Park: it says King Edward VI granted Billingbear to the elder Sir Henry Neville in 1549, that he took possession in 1567, and that he built the red-brick Tudor mansion.
• The same page also links to:

“Auction records of Billingbear property”

• The same page also links to:

“Billingbear enclosure documentation”

• The local library-discovery note states that the researcher:

“viewed the complete 44-page catalog at the Berkshire Record Office in August 2019”

• The same note states that the catalog documents books:

“from Billingbear in Shakespeare authorship research”

• The local project now has a working Markdown transcription of the Billingbear Book List keyed to converted PNG images. This gives a direct local witness path for book-list claims:
• transcription: Billingbear_Book_List_Transcription.md
• image folder: Billingbear_Book_List_PNG
• The working transcription includes the catalog title page at IMG_8158.png and many individual page entries. Direct PNG inspection confirms that the catalog date should be treated as 1780; any 1750 reading in the working transcription should be treated as a transcription/OCR issue.
• Direct PNG inspection by Codex on 2026-04-21 confirms that IMG_8158.png visibly supports the 1780 catalog date. The high-importance source-book entries on IMG_8160.png, IMG_8163.png, IMG_8164.png, IMG_8173.png, IMG_8177.png, IMG_8181.png, and IMG_8184.png have also been spot-checked against the page images in substance.
• The Audley End note states:

“Henry Neville's father constructed the house in 1593, and Henry inhabited it until his 1615 death.”

• The same note states:

“Many Billingbear books, including this ancient Roman text, were relocated to Audley End during the early 19th century.”

• Dunstan Roberts writes:

“It seems likely that the two books came to Audley End via a connection between two families, the Hobys and the Nevilles.”

• Roberts identifies those books as Hoby-owned copies of Renaldini's Innamoramento di Ruggeretto and Boccaccio's Il Decamerone.
• Roberts identifies that Neville as:

“Sir Henry Neville (c.1520-93)”

• The same article states:

“Neville had been granted various lands in Berkshire in 1551, including the manor of Billingbear”

• It also states:

“The Nevilles, meanwhile, kept Billingbear as their main country seat until Richard Aldworth Neville (1750-1825) inherited Audley End in 1797.”

• Roberts states that the 1780 Billingbear catalogue records both Hoby books, the October 1834 Audley End catalogue records the Boccaccio but not the Renaldini, and the 1877 Audley End catalogue records both.

2. Ken Feinstein Twitter and Blog Information

• No Ken Feinstein Twitter/blog material is isolated in this packet at present.

3. Quoted Source Text

Billingbear wiki page

• “In 1598, courtier and diplomat Sir Henry Neville acquired Shellingford Manor from trustees of the late Sir Henry Unton”
• “Sir Henry Neville died in possession of the manor in 1615”
• “His heir was "his son Sir Henry Neville of Billingbear in Waltham"”
• “In 1620, this heir sold the estate to John Packer of Westminster, who had previously served as secretary to the senior Neville during his ambassadorship in France”
• “John Parkhurst ... was chaplain to the lord of the manor, Sir Henry Neville, when ambassador at Paris, and was presented by him to the rectory of Shellingford in 1602.”
• “Billingbear Oak Walk Poem”
• “Auction records of Billingbear property”
• “Billingbear enclosure documentation”

Library-discovery note

• “viewed the complete 44-page catalog at the Berkshire Record Office in August 2019”
• “from Billingbear in Shakespeare authorship research”

Working Billingbear transcription

• “Catalogue of the Books in the Library at Billingbear”
• IMG_8158.png: catalog date visible as 1780.
• IMG_8160.png: “Rerum Anglicarum Scriptores _____ Lond. 1596”
• IMG_8164.png: “Edit. Princ. Dionysius Halicarnasseus (Graecè) ... Lutet. R. Steph ... 1546”
• IMG_8163.png: “Saxonis Grammatici Danica ... Historia ... 1576.”
• IMG_8173.png: “Hecatommithi, overo Cento Novelle di M. Giovanbattista Giraldi Cinthio ... Ven. 1580”
• IMG_8177.png: “Il Decameron di Boccaccio di Rolli ... Salviati 1527.”
• IMG_8181.png: “Il Decamerone di M. Giovan Boccaccio ... Ven. app. Vinc. Valg. 1555.”
• IMG_8184.png: “Ragioni di adoprar sicuramente l'Arme ... di Giacomo di Grassi ... Ven. 1570.”
• IMG_8184.png: “Il Pastor Fido del Guarini ... Ven. 1602”
• IMG_8184.png: “Il Principe di Nicolo Machiavelli ... Firen. 1551.”
• IMG_8184.png: “Historia della Guerra fra Turchi et Persiani di Gio. Tomaso Minadoi da Rovigo ... Ven. 1594.”

Audley End note

• “Henry Neville's father constructed the house in 1593, and Henry inhabited it until his 1615 death.”
• “Many Billingbear books, including this ancient Roman text, were relocated to Audley End during the early 19th century.”

Roberts

• “It seems likely that the two books came to Audley End via a connection between two families, the Hobys and the Nevilles.”
• “Giovanni Boccaccio’s Il Decamerone (Venice: Vincenzo Valgrisi, 1555)”
• “Sir Henry Neville (c.1520-93)”
• “Neville had been granted various lands in Berkshire in 1551, including the manor of Billingbear”
• “The Nevilles, meanwhile, kept Billingbear as their main country seat until Richard Aldworth Neville (1750-1825) inherited Audley End in 1797.”

4. Citations

• “Billingbear.” Henry Neville Research Wiki, http://nevilleresearch.com/index.php?title=Billingbear.
• Page, William, and P. H. Ditchfield, eds. “Parishes: Shellingford.” A History of the County of Berkshire, vol. 4. London, 1924, pp. 475-478. British History Online, https://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/berks/vol4/pp475-478.
• Ford, David Nash. “Billingbear Park, Waltham St. Lawrence, Berkshire.” Royal Berkshire History, https://www.berkshirehistory.com/castles/billingbear_park.html.
• Feinstein, Ken. “My Discovery of Neville's Library and Shakespeare Research.” kenfeinstein.blogspot.com, 9 Sept. 2019, https://kenfeinstein.blogspot.com/2019/09/my-discovery-of-nevilles-library-and.html.
• Billingbear Book List Transcription. Working local transcription keyed to PNG image filenames. Billingbear_Book_List_Transcription.md. Converted image folder: Billingbear_Book_List_PNG.
• Feinstein, Ken. “Henry Neville's Library of Shakespeare Sources.” kenfeinstein.blogspot.com, 31 Aug. 2019, https://kenfeinstein.blogspot.com/2019/08/henry-nevilles-library-of-shakespeare.html.
• Feinstein, Ken. “Part 1: Henry Neville and Henry Savile's Annotations in Dionysius of Halicarnassus.” kenfeinstein.blogspot.com, 22 Oct. 2019, https://kenfeinstein.blogspot.com/2019/10/part-1-henry-neville-and-henry-saviles.html.
• Roberts, Dunstan. “Books Owned by Sir Thomas Hoby (1530-1566).” Transactions of the Cambridge Bibliographical Society, vol. 17, no. 1, 2020, pp. 53-66. JSTOR, https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2307/27099594. Local PDF: Roberts-BOOKSOWNEDSIR-2020.pdf.
• sir_thomas_hoby_audley_end_and_the_nevilles.md, direct packet for the Audley End/Hoby/Neville transmission line.

5. Notes on Access

• The Shellingford / Packer facts currently come from the local preservation of the Neville wiki page rather than a directly extracted estate or conveyance record.
• The Shellingford / Packer facts are now independently controlled by British History Online's VCH Shellingford entry, though the underlying footnoted conveyance records have not yet been extracted.
• The strongest direct local witness presently connected to Billingbear is the surviving 1780 library catalog and the Audley End provenance trail.
• The working transcription now provides a direct local text layer for the Billingbear catalog. The most important source-book entries have been spot-checked directly against the PNG images, but the whole catalog should still be cited as a working transcription until every page is checked line by line.
• Roberts strengthens the Audley End / Billingbear transmission line, but the Neville he identifies in the sixteenth-century Hoby connection is the elder Sir Henry Neville (c.1520-93), not Henry Neville (c.1563-1615).
• Source-hardening result, 2026-04-27: Roberts should be cited for the transmission path of specific Hoby-owned books through Billingbear/Audley End; it should not be used alone as proof that the younger Henry Neville read or owned those books personally.
• The wiki page links the following public resources:
• Billingbear Oak Walk Poem
• Sale of Billingbear at auction
• The history of Windsor, and its neighbourhood
• Early history of Billingbear
• The Windsor guide
• Byways in Berkshire and the Cotswolds
• Billingbear enclosure
• British History Online entry