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Elder Sir Henry Neville to Richard Stafforton: The Two-Bucks Letter of 4 September 1578

Catalogue Crosswalk Ready source identification packet

Elder Sir Henry Neville to Richard Stafforton: The Two-Bucks Letter

Central finding

A letter offered by Myers & Co. in 1917 as an autograph of the later ambassador is almost certainly the document now held by Royal Berkshire Archives as D/EZ138/1. The dealer assigned the wrong Henry Neville.

The letter belongs to Sir Henry Neville of Billingbear, who died in 1593, the father of the future ambassador. It adds a direct father-generation document to the Windsor Forest and Warfield network.

The identification rests on two independent public catalogue descriptions:

Neither catalogue supplies a modern full transcription or a present manuscript image. Exact manuscript wording therefore remains unresolved.

What Myers offered in 1917

Myers item 139 describes a one-page folio autograph letter:

The catalogue says that the associated Earl of Sussex letter supplied the missing final digit of the date. Myers item 159, later in the same catalogue, describes that related letter as sent from court on 20 July 1578 by Thomas Radcliffe, third Earl of Sussex, to Sir Henry Neville. Sussex asks Neville to let William Bocher and William Mallorie, merchants of London, kill two bucks in Windsor Forest and to arrange good sport for their company. Myers item 159, printed p. 35 / Archive leaf n74.

The sequence is coherent: Sussex writes to Sir Henry on 20 July; Sir Henry's order to Stafforton follows on 4 September. Myers's two catalogue entries therefore preserve both the incoming request and Neville's later local implementation of it.

Myers nevertheless headed item 139 as the autograph of the courtier and ambassador who died in 1615. That attribution is chronologically impossible: the future ambassador was about fourteen in 1578 and was not knighted until 9 April 1599.

The present Royal Berkshire Archives record

Royal Berkshire Archives catalogues D/EZ138/1 as a letter from Sir Henry Neville of Billingbear to his very Frind Richard Staverton, whose surname is spelled Stafforton in the document. The sender signs Henri Nevell.

The archive description records:

The parent collection, `D/EZ138`, *Miscellaneous Berkshire documents*, was purchased by Royal Berkshire Archives in November 2001 as accession 6890.

Why the two catalogue records describe the same letter

The correspondence is not based merely on a shared name. The two descriptions agree in a compound of highly distinctive details:

FeatureMyers item 139RBA D/EZ138/1
SenderSir Henry NevilleSir Henry Neville of Billingbear, signing Henri Nevell
RecipientRichard Stafforton at WarfieldRichard Staverton, spelled Stafforton, of Warfield
Date4 September; torn year reconstructed as 15784 September; year missing where torn; probably 1570s
Principal authorityEarl of SussexEarl of Sussex
Subjecttwo friends and two buckstwo gentlemen and two bucks
SettingWindsor ForestWindsor Great Park and forest administration

The torn date in the same position is especially important. Together these features make separate, coincidentally similar letters extremely unlikely. The responsible formulation is therefore:

Myers item 139 and Royal Berkshire Archives D/EZ138/1 are almost certainly

the same physical letter.

The ownership chain is not yet complete. Myers offered the letter in 1917; Royal Berkshire Archives purchased it as part of a three-document group in 2001. No checked record currently identifies the intervening owner or proves continuous custody.

Why the author is Neville's father

The letter's attribution is controlled by chronology, title, locality, office, and comparison documents.

  1. The date is 1578 in the Myers reconstruction and broadly c.1570s in the

    2. archive catalogue.

  2. The sender is already Sir Henry Neville.
  3. The work concerns deer allocation and Windsor Forest authority.
  4. The recipient is Richard Stafforton/Staverton of Warfield, who appears in

    5. other father-generation Windsor Forest records.

  5. The later ambassador was a minor and an esquire in 1578. His knighthood

    6. belonged to the preparations for his French embassy in April 1599.

Royal Berkshire Archives also preserves two notices dated 16 April 1582 from Sir Henry Neville to Richard Stafferton as `D/EN/O12/9-10`. They concern a warrant for oak timber for Windsor Castle and identify Stafferton as a woodward. The related file `D/EN/O30` is catalogued as an order to Stafferton for felling oaks in Bray Woods for Windsor Castle works.

These records establish a continuing administrative relationship between the elder Sir Henry Neville and Richard Stafferton. Deer, timber, woodwards, Warfield, Bray Woods, Windsor Castle, and Windsor Great Park belong to the same documented forest-office environment.

Research significance

The elder Neville as an operating forest official

The letter is more specific than a general statement that Neville held a forest office. It shows him receiving and transmitting a great officer's request, assigning the practical provision of deer through a Warfield woodward, and comparing Sussex's request with Leicester's practice in Windsor Great Park.

A multigenerational Neville-Staverton relationship

Richard Stafferton appears in the elder Neville's records in the late 1570s and in the 1582 timber notices. A later Richard or continuing Staverton family relationship is central to the ambassador's 1609 Warfield free-chase letter. The names should not be merged automatically, but the records justify a dedicated Staverton-family and office genealogy.

Windsor context

The two-bucks letter belongs to a dense documented local system:

This is valuable historical context for research into Windsor's administrative and hunting culture. It does not by itself establish a source for a play or an authorship conclusion.

Manuscript and source-control status

Public sources