Encomium of Richard III / “Hen. W.” / Henry Neville

Topic: Encomium of Richard III, “Hen. W.,” and Henry Neville

1. Verified Sourced Facts

• W. Gordon Zeeveld states:

“It appeared in print for the first time in 1616 and again in the next year as one of William Cornwallis's Essayes of certaine paradoxes”

• Zeeveld states:

“Only one of the manuscript drafts, however, shows any connection with Cornwallis.”

• Zeeveld states:

“The Devonshire manuscript is dedicated by him to John Donne.”

• Zeeveld states:

“On the other hand, the British Museum copy is dedicated to Sir Henry Neville by ‘Hen. W,’ and neither the Huntington nor the Folger copy bears any indication of authorship.”

• Zeeveld also states of the Devonshire manuscript:

“The Devonshire manuscript, entitled The Encomium of Richard ye third”

• Zeeveld states:

“the possibility that the phrase was added by Cornwallis must be kept in mind.”

• Michelle O’Callaghan states:

“The encomium of Richard III, originally written by Sir William Cornwallis the younger, was reworked in the late 1590s or early 1600 by members of Essex's circle as part of propaganda which preceded the Essex rebellion.”

• O’Callaghan states:

“This version is dedicated to Sir Henry Neville by a ‘Hen. W.’”

• O’Callaghan cites:

“The encomium of Richard III by William Cornwallis the younger, ed. A. N. Kincaid (London, 1977), pp. v-viii, 18-19.”

• Source-control check of the local O'Callaghan/Brooke PDF confirms that she connects this Neville-dedicated Encomium witness to the same Tacitean/Richard III political culture that informs Brooke's Ghost of Richard III. This strengthens the packet as a network/context witness, but it still does not identify Hen. W..
• The local 1616 print witness is:

“Essayes of certaine paradoxes”

• The local 1616 print witness also reads:

“At London, Printed for Th. Thorpe. 1616.”

• The local 1617 print witness is:

“The second Impression, inlarged.”

2. Ken Feinstein Twitter and Blog Information

• Ken Feinstein's Twitter layer identifies this as important because a manuscript version of the Encomium of Richard III is dedicated to Henry Neville and signed Hen. W., while the text was printed by Thomas Thorpe in 1616 shortly after Neville's death.
• Ken has suggested Henry Wotton as a possible Hen. W. candidate while noting that some others suggest Henry Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton. This packet does not treat either identification as verified.
• Ken also links the packet to Christopher Brooke's Ghost of Richard III and the broader Richard III / Essex-circle / Donne network.

3. Sourced Witness Structure

4. Quoted Source Text

Zeeveld

• “It appeared in print for the first time in 1616 and again in the next year as one of William Cornwallis's Essayes of certaine paradoxes”
• “Only one of the manuscript drafts, however, shows any connection with Cornwallis.”
• “The Devonshire manuscript is dedicated by him to John Donne.”
• “On the other hand, the British Museum copy is dedicated to Sir Henry Neville by ‘Hen. W,’ and neither the Huntington nor the Folger copy bears any indication of authorship.”
• “The Devonshire manuscript, entitled The Encomium of Richard ye third”

O’Callaghan

• “The encomium of Richard III, originally written by Sir William Cornwallis the younger, was reworked in the late 1590s or early 1600 by members of Essex's circle as part of propaganda which preceded the Essex rebellion.”
• “This version is dedicated to Sir Henry Neville by a ‘Hen. W.’”
• “Tacitus”

1616 / 1617 print witnesses

• “Essayes of certaine paradoxes”
• “At London, Printed for Th. Thorpe. 1616.”
• “The second Impression, inlarged.”

5. Citations

• Cornwallis, William. Essayes of Certaine Paradoxes. London, printed for Th. Thorpe, 1616.
• Cornwallis, William. Essayes of Certaine Paradoxes. 2nd ed., London, 1617.
• O’Callaghan, Michelle. “Politics, Patronage and Poetry in the 1590s: The Ghost of Richard the Third and the Essex Circle.” The Yearbook of English Studies, vol. 31, 2001, pp. 31-49.
• Zeeveld, W. Gordon. “A Tudor Defense of Richard III.” PMLA, vol. 55, no. 4, 1940, pp. 946-957.
• Zeeveld, W. Gordon. “A Tudor Defense of Richard III.” PMLA, vol. 55, no. 4, 1940, pp. 946-957. Cambridge Core, https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/pmla/article/tudor-defense-of-richard-iii/5780FC08B49E921FEEE42D76B2A64CE1.

6. Notes on Access

• The packet’s firmest source-level fact is the British Museum manuscript description quoted by Zeeveld: Sir Henry Neville is named there as dedicatee, and the signature form is Hen. W..
• This packet does not identify Hen. W. as Southampton or Wotton. Later scholarly suggestions about that identification are not treated as facts here.
• Two local root-level PDFs have now been added that contain British Library manuscript images of the Encomium witness:
• encomium_smaller.pdf
• encomium_smaller (1.pdf>)
• These two files are byte-for-byte duplicates of the same PDF witness:
• SHA-1: 40d1ba83cc2d19dfd6fef6177abf2374c1e17673
• pages: 29
• producer: iOS Version 12.4.1 (Build 16G102) Quartz PDFContext
• These manuscript-image PDFs are important local access witnesses for the British Library copy and should be preserved even though this packet does not yet transcribe them directly.
• The document witnesses used for this packet are:
• Zeeveld_Tudor_Defense_Richard_III_1940.pdf
• OCallaghan_Ghost_Richard_III_Brooke_1614.pdf
• Cornwallis_Essayes_Paradoxes_Thorpe_1616.pdf
• Cornwallis_Essayes_Paradoxes_2nd_ed_1617.pdf
• O’Callaghan cites the modern edition:
• Kincaid, A. N., editor. The Encomium of Richard III by William Cornwallis the Younger. London, 1977.
• Source-control position: O'Callaghan should be used for contextual placement in Essex/Richard III/Tacitean political culture. Zeeveld remains the clearer source for the witness map and dedication facts, and direct manuscript-image transcription remains the next source-control step.
• The 1616 print witness preserves a separate bibliographic fact worth keeping:
• “At London, Printed for Th. Thorpe. 1616.”

This identifies Thomas Thorpe as the publisher of the 1616 print appearance, but the packet does not infer more from that fact.

• The next upgrade for this packet would be to obtain the Kincaid edition or direct manuscript-images/transcription so the dedication itself can be quoted rather than described through later scholarship.
• Local Twitter files with this lead include twitter Richard III, twitter Parliament and Politics, and twitter John Donne.

Additional Fact-Source Notes

• The source hierarchy is unchanged but clearer: Zeeveld controls witness map/dedication facts, O'Callaghan controls Essex/Richard III/Tacitean-political context, and the 1616 Thorpe print controls a later bibliographic appearance.
• No new source in this pass replaces the need for Kincaid or direct manuscript image/transcription work.
• Book use: cite the Thorpe 1616 print fact only as a publication witness; do not infer a Thorpe/Neville route without a separate document.

2026-07-10 EEBO print-witness correction

• The 1616 print witness has now been controlled directly against the EEBO-derived page images and EarlyPrint metadata.
• Bibliographic identity: Sir William Cornwallis, Essayes of certaine paradoxes (London: printed by George Purslowe for Thomas Thorpe, 1616), TCP A19354, ESTC S105004.
• The visually checked title page reads ESSAYES of Certaine PARADOXES and At London, Printed for Th. Thorp. 1616.
• EarlyPrint's source description identifies the first item as The prayse of King Richard the Third.
• Critical witness distinction: the 1616 printed title page does not name Henry Neville and the printed volume must not be described as a book dedicated to him. The dedication to Sir Henry Neville signed Hen. W. belongs to a separate manuscript recension.
• Website use: the exact 1616 title page is appropriate for a claim about Thorpe's publication of Cornwallis's collection; the manuscript dedication page is the required image for any claim specifically about Neville as dedicatee.
• Focused source ledger: ENCOMIUM THORPE PRINT WITNESS PASS 2026 07 10.

2026-07-14 Deep Research: the paradox answers “witty Play-makers”

The local 1616 text (TCP A19354) and the directly inspected page image supply a more direct Shakespeare-relevant question than the unresolved identity of Hen. W.. Cornwallis's printed defense explicitly attacks the authority of dramatic history:

malicious credulitie rather embraceth the partiall writings of indiscreet Chroniclers, and witty Play-makers, then his lawes, and actions, the most innocent, and impartiall witnesses.

Direct page-image control: encomium-09.jpg, right-hand page.

That sentence defines the paradox's polemical opponent: not merely Tudor chroniclers, but the theatrical Richard III already established in public memory. The essay reverses the play's opening logic point by point.

The Folger Richard introduces bodily deformity as motive:

I, that am rudely stamped and want love's majesty

To strut before a wanton ambling nymph;

I, that am curtailed of this fair proportion,

Cheated of feature by dissembling nature,

Deformed, unfinished, sent before my time

Into this breathing world scarce half made up,

And that so lamely and unfashionable

That dogs bark at me as I halt by them--

and concludes:

I am determined to prove a villain

And hate the idle pleasures of these days.

Folger local chunk, Richard III 1.1, lines 26-33 and 40-41.

Cornwallis instead argues that Nature, “wholly intentiue to his minde, neglected his forme,” placing “a straight minde in a crooked bodie”; lameness becomes evidence of valor because Richard performed “actions most perfectly valiant” with imperfect limbs. Where the play makes deformity part of Richard's self-authored villainy, the paradox makes hostile interpretation of deformity the first exhibit in a case against historical credulity.

The reversal continues through political ethics. The essay defends rapid execution, royal necessity, and even the princes' deaths as possible acts of public preservation; it repeatedly opposes event-based reputation to policy and law. Its most provocative formulation—new necessities, require new remedies—is directly visible in the encomium-11.jpg, left-hand page. This is not the same Richard as the play's charismatic plotter. It is a counter-history built to teach readers how easily narrative converts state action into tyranny.

The secure Neville fact remains limited but important: one manuscript recension was described by Zeeveld and O'Callaghan as dedicated to Sir Henry Neville by Hen. W.. The manuscript wording and signer identity remain unresolved. Yet the printed text now shows what intellectual object that dedication attached to: an argument about chronicler bias, theatrical historical memory, necessity, counsel, law, and the reputational construction of a king.

The next productive comparison is recension-level. Kincaid or direct images should determine whether the Neville-dedicated version already contains the witty Play-makers sentence and the same defenses of deformity, necessity, and public law. Until then, those printed passages must not be projected backward into that manuscript.