Exchequer Special Commissions and Depositions (E 178, E 134) for Sonning and Windsor Forest

Topic: Exchequer Special Commissions and Depositions (E 178, E 134) for Sonning and Windsor Forest

Source-Control Position

This packet opens an archival class that the AI Topics corpus has not previously used. A survey of series cited across all 419 packets shows heavy reliance on SP (State Papers), PROB (wills), C 142 (inquisitions post mortem), C 3 / C 33 (Chancery), and C 66 (patent rolls). Two Exchequer series that speak directly to the Neville estates return no citations anywhere in the corpus:

• E 178 — King's Remembrancer, Special Commissions of Inquiry
• E 134 — King's Remembrancer, Depositions taken by Commission

Everything stated below is drawn from TNA Discovery catalogue descriptions read directly on 2026-07-24 through the Discovery JSON API. No document image and no manuscript has been consulted. The catalogue description is a modern archival abstract, in most cases derived from the older printed Exchequer depositions calendars; it is a reliable witness to what the record is and a weak witness to what the record says. Every claim below is therefore catalogue-level, and is marked as such.

1. Verified Sourced Facts

• TNA Discovery returns 49 records in E 178 and E 134, dated between 1560

and 1620, whose catalogue descriptions name Sonning, Windsor, Windsor Forest, Bray, Winkfield, Hurst, Wargrave, Warfield, or Wokingham.

• E 134 is a deposition series: each file records interrogatories and sworn

answers, and the Discovery descriptions routinely list the deponents by name, the date of commission, and the place where testimony was taken.

• E 178 is a commission-and-return series: surveys, valuations, inquisitions

as to concealed lands, and presentments of spoil.

2. Why this class of record matters here

The existing Neville estate packets rest largely on instruments — leases, bonds, mortgages, warrants, surveys — which record what parties agreed. E 134 records something different in kind: sworn testimony by named local people, under interrogatory, about what was actually done on the ground.

Three properties make the series unusually useful for this project.

1. It names ordinary witnesses. The Discovery abstracts list deponents.

These are the tenants, keepers, woodwards, and yeomen of the manors and walks the corpus already documents, and they can be matched against Billingbear estate papers and parish records.

2. It is retrospective. Deponents were asked about custom "time out of

mind." A deposition of 1611 or 1618 routinely reports practice of forty or sixty years earlier. Later files are therefore usable witnesses to Neville-era custom, provided the retrospection is stated rather than hidden.

3. It records disputes, not settlements. Waste, spoil, encroachment, and

contested fees surface here and nowhere else. The existing Windsor Forest packets describe offices; E 134 shows those offices being fought over.

3. Quoted Source Passages

E 178/396 — Crown survey of Sonning lands, 28 Eliz I

• Source: TNA Discovery record C5141592, series E 178, reference

E 178/396, covering dates 1585-1586. Context: "Exchequer: King's Remembrancer: Special Commissions of Inquiry."

• Quotation:

"BERKSHIRE: Sonning. Survey of lands called the Baron,' Sonning Mead,' Hokedmore,' Weare Plot,' South Garden' and North Garden alias Court Orchard. ' 28 Eliz I."

• What it proves: A Crown survey of named Sonning closes existed in 1585–86,

more than a decade before the earliest Sonning transaction currently documented in the corpus.

• Limits: The catalogue names the closes surveyed. It does not say who held

them, and it does not mention Neville. The survey's relevance is that it is the baseline against which later Sonning copyhold and timber disputes must be read; that relevance is an inference from date and place, not a stated fact.

E 134/33Eliz/Hil3 — Windsor Forest custom and the woodward's fees, 1591

• Source: TNA Discovery record C3701601, reference E 134/33Eliz/Hil3,

covering dates 1591 Jan 23-1591 Feb 12.

• Quotation:

"Short title: Mownte v Woodward. Plaintiff(s): Richard Mownte, woodward of the Surrey part of Windsor ForeSt. Defendant(s): George Woodward, clerk of Her Majesty's honor and castle of Windsor. Subject of depositions: Custom of the forest of Windsor (particularly that part lying in Surrey). The woodward's fees. Repairs of the houses of Oking and Byfleet, in the forest \"Lopping and topping.\" Alleged waste and spoil."

• What it proves: Windsor Forest office, fees, and the customary right of

"lopping and topping" were litigated by sworn deposition in 1591, and the bailiwick structure was recorded well enough to be examined in court.

• Limits: This case concerns the Surrey bailiwick, not Neville's walks. It is

context for how forest office worked, not evidence about Neville.

E 134/20and21Eliz/Mich2 — Bray, the forest boundary, and Maidenhead Bridge, 1578

• Source: TNA Discovery record C3700607, reference E 134/20and21Eliz/Mich2,

covering dates 1578 Oct 9-1578 Nov 28; depositions taken 3 October 1578 at Maidenhead.

• Quotation:

"River Thames from Maidenhead Bridge to a place called Ryddles Pool, parcel of the manor of Braye, Berkshire, boundary of the forest of Windsor and the parish of Braye, and maintenance of the bridge of Maidenhead. Right of fishing in the Thames."

• What it proves: The boundary between Windsor Forest and the parish of Bray,

and liability for bridge maintenance, were established by sworn local testimony in 1578, with seventeen named deponents.

• Limits: Predates Neville's tenure. Its value is that it fixes the boundary and

bridge-liability questions that reappear in the 1608 Bray surveys and the 1610 Wokingham and Sonning bridges charge.

4. Register of in-period records

Catalogue-level only. Dates as given by Discovery. Not yet ordered or read.

5. Connections to existing packets

• E 178/379 (Englefield forfeiture) bears on

Henry Neville, Popham, and the Englefield-Burdet Sonning copyhold dispute.

• E 178/402 records an agreement between the Queen's farmer and the Sonning

freeholders and tenants — the kind of instrument the 1598 copyhold dispute presupposes but does not produce.

• E 178/5002 (Sonning timber, incl. timber marked for the navy, 6 Jas I) sits

in the same years as William Portington and the New Lodge timber and Mathew Crypps's Sonning timber warrants.

• E 178/6059 continues the bridge-liability question in

the 1610 Bromley/Wokingham/Sonning bridges charge down to 1659.

• E 134/20and21Eliz/Mich2 fixes the Bray/forest boundary underlying

the 1608 Sonning and Bray surveys.

• The forest-office cases bear on

Windsor Forest Office, Galis, and the Garter and Sir Michael Stanhope and the 1604 forest distraint.

6. Notes on Access

• Captured witnesses for the one record that names Neville are retained at

SOURCE NOTES — the verbatim Discovery API JSON and the browser-displayed record text, which agree word for word. No comparable capture has been made for the other records in the register above; they rest on the search-result descriptions quoted here.

• None of these records is digitised, so no manuscript image exists to capture.

Discovery's HTML pages also refuse headless rendering, so catalogue-page screenshots are not obtainable; the JSON API is the sanctioned machine route.

• Catalogue descriptions are Crown copyright under the Open Government Licence

v3.0.

• Route used: TNA Discovery JSON API,

https://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/API/search/records?sps.searchQuery=.... Discovery HTML pages block scripted requests; the JSON API does not.

• Each record above can be re-checked at

https://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/{id} using the Discovery IDs recorded in verification_sources.

• None of these records is digitised. Consultation requires either a visit to

Kew or a paid copying order. That is the gate on upgrading this packet from catalogue-level to document-level.

• The older printed calendars of Exchequer depositions (Lists and Indexes) are

the likely source of the Discovery abstracts and should be checked before ordering, since they sometimes carry fuller wording. Those calendars have not been consulted in this session and no claim here rests on them.

7. Citations

All references are to The National Archives, Kew, and were read as Discovery catalogue descriptions on 2026-07-24 via the Discovery JSON API.

• E 178 — Exchequer: King's Remembrancer: Special Commissions of Inquiry.
• E 134 — Exchequer: King's Remembrancer: Depositions taken by Commission.
• E 178/396, Sonning survey, 28 Eliz I. Discovery C5141592.

<https://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/C5141592>

• E 178/6059, Sonning and Wokingham bridges, 1659. Discovery C5147255.

<https://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/C5147255>

• E 134/43Eliz/East12, Taverner v Lovelace, 1601. Discovery C3702641.

<https://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/C3702641>

• E 134/33Eliz/Hil3, Mownte v Woodward, 1591. Discovery C3701601.

<https://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/C3701601>

• E 134/20and21Eliz/Mich2, Manfield v Norres, 1578. Discovery C3700607.

<https://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/C3700607>

• Remaining references in the register above are given by piece number and can

be resolved through Discovery search; their individual record IDs were not separately recorded in this pass.

8. Limits of this packet

• Nothing here has been read in the original. The packet is a finding aid, not

a source.

• The relevance of most listed records to Neville is inferred from place and

date. Only E 134/43Eliz/East12 names him, and that is treated separately.

• Catalogue place-names are not always reliable: several "Sonning" entries are

indexed under both Berkshire and Oxfordshire because the manor straddled the county boundary, and at least one hit indexed to "Sonning" belongs to an Oxfordshire commission of different subject matter.