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Charles Howard, Earl of Nottingham, Turner, Norreys, and Neville's Wokingham Lease Authority, 1606

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Topic: Charles Howard, Earl of Nottingham, Turner, Norreys, and Neville's Wokingham Lease Authority, 1606

Central Finding

Royal Berkshire Archives D/EN/F6/1/11, dated at Whitehall on 19 December 1606, is a letter from Charles Howard, Earl of Nottingham, formerly Lord Howard of Effingham, to Sir Henry Neville of Billingbear. The large title-signature is Nottingham; the contemporary verso docket reads my L: of Effinghams / letter to mee.

Nottingham asks Neville to approve a reversionary lease in Wokingham granted by Lord Norreys to Nottingham's servant Turner. The letter is direct evidence that a Norreys property grant could require Neville's knowledge and assent. It does not say that Neville owned the farm.

Image-Controlled Text

The operative passage reads:

S^r the Bearer hereof my Servant Turner, hath given

him by my Lord Norreis, a Lease in Reversion of [Cott…?]

ffarme in Wokingham, but hee tells mee, hee must first have

y^r favor therein: because his Lordshipp, hath made yow a

promis, not to graunte a reversion thereof, without youre

assentinge privitie.

Nottingham asks Neville:

to directe y^r

letters, to my Lord Norreis, signifyinge y^r allowance of his

honorable disposition to my man.

He then makes the reciprocal patronage structure explicit:

For this my self shalbee

beholdinge, besides the poore mans acknowledgement, to have

receaved halfe this bountie from you.

The closing and signature read:

From the Courte at Whitehall.

this 19^th of December 1606

Your assured loving

frend to comand

Nottingham

Neville as a Property Gatekeeper

The sequence is unusually precise. Norreys had already agreed to give Turner a lease in reversion, but Turner believed he first needed Neville's favour because Norreys had promised not to grant the reversion without Neville's assentinge privitie. Nottingham did not ask Neville to convey his own property. He asked Neville to write to Norreys and signify approval. The phrase halfe this bountie treats Neville's assent as half the effective patronage behind the grant.

This is stronger than a generic indication of local influence. It shows Neville occupying a documentary gatekeeping position in a Wokingham property transaction: Norreys's undertaking to Neville constrained the grant, Neville's letter could release that constraint, and Nottingham expected an answer. The surviving letter does not identify the legal source of that power, so it should not be converted into a specific office title without the underlying lease, court record, or agreement.

Wokingham, Sonning, and the Norreys Context

The VCH account of Wokingham supplies the institutional geography. Wokingham was treated as a parcel of the royal manor of Sonning, and its courts were held before Sonning's steward. The same account distinguishes a separate Norreys Manor in Wokingham held by the Norreys family in the sixteenth century: “Parishes: Wokingham,” VCH Berkshire, vol. 3, pp. 225-236.

Neville's independently documented Sonning stewardship therefore gives a credible institutional setting for Norreys's promise to seek Neville's assent. The letter itself, however, does not name the stewardship or identify which Wokingham manorial jurisdiction contained the farm. The contextual inference must remain separate from the directly stated promise.

A Repeated Howard–Neville Relationship

This letter belongs to a broader Howard–Neville documentary lane, while each item still requires its own image audit:

The value of the 1606 item is not that it proves one continuous formal office. It shows that Howard expected Neville to be able to act in a local property matter and framed that action as reciprocal service between friends.

Sender Identification

Four controls converge:

  1. The visible recto title-signature is Nottingham.
  2. The contemporary docket identifies the writer by his former title,

    3. Effingham.

  3. The date, 1606, is ten years after Charles Howard was created Earl of

    4. Nottingham.

  4. Folger V.b.385 catalogues an autograph Charles Howard letter and describes

    5. its signature as Nottingham, while identifying him as Earl of Nottingham and Lord Howard of Effingham: Folger catalogue record.

The Folger record is an independent human-catalogued control for Howard's title and signature practice, not a transcription of the Berkshire letter.

Unresolved Farm Name

The word before ffarme in Wokingham appears to begin Cott…, but the remaining letters are not securely legible. The transcription therefore prints [Cott…?]. The unresolved form should be used as a search lead in manorial, lease, and place-name records, not silently expanded.

Archival Placement

The modern pencil reference on the verso is D/EN/F6/1/11. The live Royal Berkshire Archives parent record describes D/EN/F6/1 as nineteen documents of miscellaneous correspondence of Sir Henry Neville, 1592-1615, including letters from Lord Howard: RBA parent record.

The constructed direct /11 URL reports that the item does not exist as a separately exposed database record. The online catalogue therefore controls the parent bundle; the physical pencil reference controls the item number.

What Is Established

What Remains Unresolved

Sources

Manuscript Verification Audit