The Biographical Mirrour 1795, Henry VIII, and Sir Edward Nevill

Topic: The Biographical Mirrour 1795, Henry VIII, and Sir Edward Nevill

1. Overview

This packet isolates the 1795 source that Ken Feinstein identified on Twitter as the earliest located printed source connecting Henry Neville with a Shakespeare Henry VIII scene. The source is not The Mirrour of Maiestie (1618). It is F. G. Waldron's The Biographical Mirrour, a portrait-biography collection published by S. and E. Harding.

The importance of the source is specific: the Henry Neville entry includes a portrait of Sir Henry Neville and a biographical page that discusses Sir Edward Nevill, Holinshed's account of Wolsey's banquet, and Shakespeare's omission of the Nevill-specific masquerade incident from Henry VIII.

2. Verified Sourced Facts

• HathiTrust identifies the work as F. G. Waldron's The Biographical Mirrour, comprising a series of ancient and modern English portraits, of eminent and distinguished persons, from original pictures and drawings, published in London by S. and E. Harding, 1795-[1802].

• The HathiTrust record lists three volumes and notes that volumes 2-3 have a title variant adding with some account of their lives and works.

• Ken Feinstein's 2 June 2019 tweet links the source to HathiTrust record 001964490 and includes three image witnesses: the title page, the portrait plate, and the Henry Neville biography page.

• The title-page image reads The Biographical Mirrour and gives the publisher as S. and E. Harding, Pall Mall, 1795.

• The portrait plate identifies the sitter as Sr. Henry Neville, Ambassador to France, 1599, and says it derives from an original picture in the collection of Richard Aldworth Neville.

• The biography page begins with Sir Henry Neville's descent from Sir Edward Nevill, then describes Sir Edward as conspicuous in the reign of Henry VIII, active in tournaments, and a valiant commander.

• The same page says Holinshed records Sir Edward Nevill as one of the masquers with the king at Cardinal Wolsey's banquet, where Wolsey mistook him for the king because of his resemblance to Henry VIII.

• The same page explicitly comments on Shakespeare's handling of the scene: Shakespeare is said either to have overlooked the incident or to have judged it unnecessary to the play.

• The same page says the incident could have made the scene's pleasantry sharper.

• The page then gives a short biography of Sir Henry Neville of Billingbear: born 1563, married Anne Killigrew, sent as ambassador to France in 1599, implicated in Essex's treason in 1600, and committed to the Tower.

• The direct Holinshed witness for the masquerade incident has now been located in the 1587 Chronicles, volume 3, TCP A68202. It occurs in the Henry VIII material around Cardinal Wolsey's banquet.

• In Holinshed, the Lord Chamberlain tells Wolsey that one of the masked company is a noble personage who will disclose himself if Wolsey can identify him. Wolsey chooses the gentleman with the black beard and offers him his chair.

• Holinshed then identifies the chosen masker as Sir Edward Neuill / Nevill, saying he resembled the king's person in that mask more than any other.

3. Ken Feinstein Twitter and Blog Information

• Ken's tweet says this is the first source he could find linking the Shakespeare Henry VIII scene with Henry Neville.

• Ken's tweet also notes that the source quotes Othello's Reputation! O, I have lost... passage, which may matter for the broader reputation/disgrace cluster but is separate from the Henry VIII masque-scene issue.

• Ken's interpretation is that the 1795 portrait-book entry preserves a family-memory or antiquarian link between Neville biography, Sir Edward Nevill, and Shakespeare's treatment of Henry VIII.

4. Quoted Source Text

Short phrases only, pending a full checked transcription:

• Title: The Biographical Mirrour.

• Portrait plate: Sr. Henry Neville.

• Portrait role label: Ambassador to France, 1599.

• Shakespeare comparison: Shakespeare either overlook'd.

• Scene-value claim: heighten'd the pleasantry.

Holinshed 1587, volume 3, TCP A68202

me séemeth the gentleman with the blacke beard, should be euen be

The person to whom he offered the chaire was sir Edward Neuill

much more resembled the kings person in that maske than anie other

Working excerpt from the local TCP extraction:

With that the cardinall taking good aduisement among them, at the last (quoth he) me séemeth the gentleman with the blacke beard, should be euen be: and with that he arose out of his chaire, and offered the same to the gentleman in the blacke beard with his cap in his hand. [...] The person to whom he offered the chaire was sir Edward Neuill, a comelie knight, that much more resembled the kings person in that maske than anie other.

5. Citations

• Waldron, F. G. The Biographical Mirrour, comprising a series of ancient and modern English portraits, of eminent and distinguished persons, from original pictures and drawings. London: S. and E. Harding, 1795-[1802]. HathiTrust record: https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/001964490.

• Ken Feinstein. Tweet, 2 June 2019: https://x.com/FeinsteinKen/status/1135285906120646656.

• Local Twitter image witnesses:
• title page
• portrait plate
• biography page

• Lord Braybrooke. "Queen Elizabeth and Sir Henry Nevill." Notes and Queries, No. 50, 12 Oct. 1850, p. 307. Project Gutenberg preservation: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/13551/13551-h/13551-h.htm. Local HTML: notes_and_queries_issue_50_1850.html.

• Holinshed, Raphael. The first and second volumes of Chronicles. [vol. 3]. London, 1587. EEBO-TCP A68202. Local extraction:
• A68202_Holinshed_1587_vol3.xml
• A68202_Holinshed_1587_Wolsey_masque_Sir_Edward_Neuill_excerpt.txt

• Shakespeare, William. Henry VIII. Folger Shakespeare Library text witness:
• front_matter.txt
• act-01_scene-01.txt
• act-01_scene-02.txt
• act-01_scene-04.txt

6. Notes on Access

• This packet currently relies on HathiTrust catalog metadata plus Ken Feinstein's preserved Twitter image witnesses for the actual Henry Neville entry. The next upgrade should be a direct download or page-image capture from HathiTrust / Google Books.

• The source is valuable because it makes a direct Shakespeare comparison inside a Henry Neville portrait-biography entry. It does not by itself prove authorship; it proves that an antiquarian source before the modern authorship controversy saw the Sir Edward Nevill / Wolsey masque anecdote as relevant to Shakespeare's Henry VIII.

• Keep three related items distinct: Sir Edward Nevill in Holinshed's Wolsey masque anecdote; Lord Abergavenny's appearances in Henry VIII; and Henry Neville of Billingbear's later biography and portrait.

• The direct Holinshed extraction currently uses the 1587 volume 3 witness (A68202). A quick local search of the 1577 TCP witness (A03448) did not surface the same blacke beard / sir Edward Neuill wording, so the 1587 witness should be the cited source until a page-image comparison is completed.