Henry Neville Birthdate

Topic: Henry Neville Birthdate

1. Verified Sourced Facts

• Source-tier warning, 2026-04-28: this packet mixes parish-register/court-chronology evidence with blog interpretation and unresolved date conflicts. Any “same post states” material should be treated as a preserved research claim unless the bullet separately identifies the register, chronology, funeral certificate, university record, portrait, or other direct witness.

• A local image witness of the St. Anne, Blackfriars register page includes the line:

“1564. Henry Neville, son to Sir Henry Neville, knt. May 20.”

• Marion E. Colthorpe's Folger-hosted The Elizabethan Court Day by Day: 1564 gives a matching 20 May 1564 entry for the christening:

“Queen was godmother to ‘Sir Henry Neville’s child’.”

• The same Colthorpe entry identifies the parents as Sir Henry Neville of Berkshire and his first wife Elizabeth Gresham, and immediately adds the St Ann Blackfriars register extract:

“May 20: baptised: ‘Henry Neville, son to Sir Henry Neville’.”

• This pairing is the strongest currently located published evidence that Queen Elizabeth I was godmother to Henry Neville. It is stronger than a floating genealogical tradition because it synchronizes the royal-godmother note with the parish-register baptism on the same date.

• A 2026-04-28 web recheck of the official Folgerpedia project page confirms that Colthorpe's The Elizabethan Court Day by Day is a Folger-hosted scholarly chronology compiled from a broad primary-source base including unpublished diaries, letters, and royal-household account books. The same official page explicitly cautions that, because of the work's scale, it is not exhaustive and may contain errors. This supports using Colthorpe as a strong published-extract witness while still requiring manuscript verification for the godmother note.

• The Folger contents/survey PDF also shows that the project includes a Godchildren index under the Court section. This reinforces that royal godparentage is an intended data category in the Colthorpe project, but it does not by itself identify the manuscript source behind the Neville entry.

• The parish-register side has an independent access trail: FamilySearch catalog record 256057 identifies Parish registers for St. Ann Blackfriars Church, London, 1560-1849, describes the material as Microfilm of original at the Guildhall Library, and lists Baptisms, 1560-1812 as British Film 374416, DGS 8046653.

• The London Archives / AIM25 collection record for GB 0074 P69/ANN confirms that the St Ann Blackfriars parish archive survives, dates from 1560-1961, and includes registers of baptisms, marriages, banns, and burials. It also states that the records were deposited with Guildhall Library and that Guildhall Library Manuscripts merged with London Metropolitan Archives in 2009.

• A local image witness of a Foster entry includes the wording:

“Nevil, (Sir) Henry, of Berks, eq. fil. MERTON COLL., matric. entry under date 20 Dec., 1577, aged 15”

• A local image witness from James Whitelocke’s Liber Famelicus includes the wording:

“He was 52 years of age when he died.”

• A local image witness of Thomas Gresham’s inquisition post mortem includes the wording:

“The said Henry Nevell Junior was the nearest and next heir”

• The same image includes:

“of the age of 16 years 11 moneths and 10 days”

• The reference date of the Thomas Gresham Inquisition Post Mortem is March 21, 1580. Working back from the IPM age of “16 years 11 months and 10 days” from that date yields a birth date of approximately April 11, 1563, consistent with the blog’s conclusion of “approximately April 11, 1563 (Easter Sunday).”

• A local image witness of Elizabeth Neville’s funeral certificate includes the wording:

“Henry Nevell her son & heyre of the age of 10 years & halff”

• John Harley independently notes that the younger Sir Henry's birthdate is usually given as 1564?, but according to his mother's funeral certificate he was 10½ years old when she died on 7 Nov. 1573. This supports a birth in approximately 1563, and independently strengthens the local funeral-certificate line already preserved in this packet.

• Mark Greengrass's ODNB entry gives Neville's dates as 1561/2–1615, which conflicts with the project's current age-witness cluster. This should be treated as an external reference conflict rather than silently absorbed into the packet's conclusion.

• The same post states:

“A 1599 portrait by Marcus Gheeraerts the Younger ... states he was 36 years old.”

2. Ken Feinstein Twitter and Blog Information

• The 2020 blog post states:

“Henry Neville's birthdate can now be confidently established as approximately April 11, 1563 (Easter Sunday)”

3. Quoted Source Text

St. Anne, Blackfriars register image

• “1564. Henry Neville, son to Sir Henry Neville, knt. May 20.”

Colthorpe / Folger 1564 chronology

• “May 20: christening: Queen was godmother to ‘Sir Henry Neville’s child’.”
• “Parents: Sir Henry Neville, of Berkshire; 1st wife: Elizabeth (Gresham), daughter of Sir John Gresham.”
• “St Ann Blackfriars, London, register: May 20: baptised: ‘Henry Neville, son to Sir Henry Neville’.”
• Folger project page: the chronology uses “unpublished diaries, letters, and the account-books kept by senior officials of the Royal Household.”
• Folger project page: the work is “neither exhaustive nor without the potential for error.”

FamilySearch / archival access trail

• “Parish registers for St. Ann Blackfriars Church, London, 1560-1849”
• “Microfilm of original at the Guildhall Library.”
• “Baptisms, 1560-1812”
• “British Film 374416 8046653”
• “GB 0074 P69/ANN”
• “Records of the parish of Saint Ann, Blackfriars, City of London, including registers of baptisms, marriages, banns and burials”

Oxford entry image

• “Nevil, (Sir) Henry, of Berks, eq. fil. MERTON COLL., matric. entry under date 20 Dec., 1577, aged 15”

Whitelocke image

• “He was 52 years of age when he died.”

Thomas Gresham IPM image

• “The said Henry Nevell Junior was the nearest and next heir”
• “of the age of 16 years 11 moneths and 10 days”

Elizabeth Neville funeral certificate image

• “Henry Nevell her son & heyre of the age of 10 years & halff”
• “he was 10½ years old when she died on 7 Nov. 1573”

2020 birthdate post

• “Henry Neville's birthdate can now be confidently established as approximately April 11, 1563 (Easter Sunday)”
• “A 1599 portrait by Marcus Gheeraerts the Younger ... states he was 36 years old.”

4. Citations

• Chester, Joseph Lemuel, editor. The Marriage, Baptismal, and Burial Registers of the Collegiate Church or Abbey of St. Peter, Westminster; the Parish Church or Abbey of St. Margaret, Westminster; and the Church of St. Martin in the Fields, Middlesex; including also the Parish Register of St. Anne, Soho, Westminster; the Registers of the Savoy Chapel, and of St. Anne, Blackfriars, London. London, Harleian Society, 1876.
• Colthorpe, Marion E. The Elizabethan Court Day by Day: 1564. Folger Shakespeare Library / Folgerpedia, PDF, https://folgerpedia.folger.edu/mediawiki/media/images_pedia_folgerpedia_mw/2/2e/ECDbD_1564.pdf.
• Colthorpe, Marion E. The Elizabethan Court Day by Day. Folgerpedia project page and author's introduction, https://folgerpedia.folger.edu/The_Elizabethan_Court_Day_by_Day.
• Colthorpe, Marion E. The Elizabethan Court Day by Day: Contents Summary and Survey of the Reign. Folger Shakespeare Library / Folgerpedia, PDF, https://folgerpedia.folger.edu/mediawiki/media/images_pedia_folgerpedia_mw/1/19/ECDbD_1._Contents_Survey_of_Reign_1.pdf.
• Church of England. St. Ann Blackfriars Church (London). Parish registers for St. Ann Blackfriars Church, London, 1560-1849. FamilySearch Catalog 256057, https://www.familysearch.org/en/search/catalog/256057.
• "SAINT ANN, BLACKFRIARS: CITY OF LONDON." AIM25 / The London Archives, collection GB 0074 P69/ANN, https://atom.aim25.com/index.php/saint-ann-blackfriars-city-of-london.
• Foster, Joseph. Alumni Oxonienses: The Members of the University of Oxford, 1500-1714. Oxford, Parker and Co., 1891-92.
• Harley, John. “‘My Ladye Nevell’ Revealed.” Music & Letters, vol. 86, no. 1, 2005, pp. 1-15. Staged PDF: Harley-MyLadyeNevellRevealed-2005.pdf.
• Greengrass, Mark. “Neville, Sir Henry (1561/2–1615).” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Staged PDF: Greengrass-HenryNeville-ODNB-2014.pdf.
• “Henry Neville’s Birthdate Settled?” kenfeinstein.blogspot.com, 14 Dec. 2020, https://kenfeinstein.blogspot.com/2020/12/henry-nevilles-birthdate-settled.html.
• Whitelocke, James. Liber Famelicus. Camden Society, 1858.

5. Notes on Access

• The blog post is presently the assembled source note for this topic within the project: blog_birthdate_settled_2020-12-14.md.
• The packet preserves an unresolved tension among the current witnesses:
• the St. Anne, Blackfriars image reads 1564 ... May 20
• the Oxford age, Whitelocke age-at-death, Thomas Gresham IPM age, Elizabeth Neville funeral certificate age, and the portrait-age claim in the blog post all point instead toward 1563
• The Queen Elizabeth godmother claim is now upgraded from blog-level hypothesis to a strong published-extract claim through Colthorpe/Folger. It should still be stated cautiously: Colthorpe explicitly pairs the godmother note with the St Ann Blackfriars baptism entry, but the original manuscript behind the godmother note has not yet been inspected in this packet.
• The St Ann Blackfriars baptism itself is stronger than the godmother claim because it is supported by the register extract and by a clear archival route to the original baptism register: The London Archives collection GB 0074 P69/ANN and FamilySearch film 374416 / DGS 8046653.
• The current best formulation is: Henry Neville was baptized at St Ann Blackfriars on 20 May 1564; Colthorpe's Folger-hosted court chronology records that Queen Elizabeth I was godmother to Sir Henry Neville's child on that same date, apparently the same event; the godmother claim is probable but not yet manuscript-verified.
• Colthorpe's project introduction states that the chronology uses unpublished diaries, letters, and royal-household account books, but also cautions that a work of this scale may contain errors. A 2026-04-28 Folgerpedia recheck confirmed this wording on the official project page. That makes Colthorpe a strong guide, not a substitute for checking the underlying manuscript citation.
• The absence, so far, of a matching royal-gift entry for Neville's child should be treated as a limitation, not as disproof. Colthorpe records royal gifts for some other godchildren in 1564, including Dr Master's child and Sir William Cecil's daughter, but the inspected May 20 Neville entry does not include a gift.
• Harley's article is now the best independent secondary support for the funeral-certificate line. It does not solve the St. Anne register conflict, but it strengthens the reason not to default to 1564.
• Greengrass's ODNB date 1561/2–1615 adds another external conflict and should be cited as a conflict, not as a replacement for the packet's age-witness analysis.
• For that reason, this packet does not treat the register year 1564 as harmonized with the other evidence; it preserves the conflicting witness wording and the blog’s c. 11 April 1563 conclusion separately.
• Local image witnesses used in this packet:
• St. Anne, Blackfriars register image
• Oxford entry image
• Whitelocke image
• Thomas Gresham IPM image
• Elizabeth Neville funeral certificate image
• The local portrait image is present at image_05_43058d545a.jpg, but the age inscription is not transcribed here from the image itself.
• The local godchildren image is present at image_02_8bee5af4d6.jpg. The Colthorpe/Folger PDF now supplies the direct Henry Neville wording that this packet previously lacked.
• The earlier blog hypothesis that Neville may have been baptized late because he was a godchild of Elizabeth I is now better grounded but still not fully resolved. The godmother claim no longer rests only on the blog, but the explanation for the apparent gap between the c. April 1563 age-witness cluster and the 20 May 1564 baptism remains interpretive.