Henry Neville Birthdate

Topic: Henry Neville Birthdate

Source-Fact Audit — 7 August 2026 (Round 2)

The secure parish fact is baptism, not birth: the St Ann Blackfriars image reads Henry Nevell sonne to Sr Henry Nevell knight. xx Maye under 1564, agreeing with Malcolm's printed extract. The received image's exact frame, folio, and platform provenance remain to be recovered, and the neighboring entries are needed to explain its non-chronological page order.

The date about 11 April 1563 is a calculation from the Gresham IPM age, not a recorded birthday. The funeral certificate, Whitelocke, and the portrait age broadly support circa 1563; Oxford and modern biographies point elsewhere. None explains the gap to the 20 May 1564 baptism. The packet should therefore state the baptism exactly and the birth as unresolved, probably circa 1563 on the present age-witness cluster. Delayed baptism and imprecise ages are possibilities, not facts. The Blackfriars lease establishes household context, not a birthplace.

Primary Register Image Update, 20 July 2026

A manuscript image of the St Ann baptismal register has now been obtained and inspected directly at its native resolution. The third visible entry beneath the heading Anno 1564. Baptized reads:

Henry Nevell sonne to Sr Henry Nevell knight. xx Maye.

The exact image reading is controlled independently by James Peller Malcolm's 1803 printed extract:

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

The manuscript and Malcolm agree on the year, the child's and father's identities, the father's knighthood, and the date. Malcolm normalizes Nevell to Neville, xx to 20, and Maye to May, and abbreviates knight as knt.. These are editorial differences, not conflicts.

The image was supplied by Bruce Leyland as an email attachment on 20 July 2026. The screenshot displays 3 of 140, but the email does not identify the image platform, archive shelfmark, or folio. The public archive route remains The London Archives GB 0074 P69/ANN; FamilySearch catalogue 256057 lists baptisms 1560-1812 on film 374416, DGS 8046653. Until the frame URL or archive metadata is recovered, the reading is image-controlled but its exact frame/folio provenance should remain explicitly open.

One further physical feature deserves notice. The visible sequence is not in straightforward calendar order: November and December entries precede the May, June, and July entries under the displayed 1564 heading. The screenshot does not show why. It may reflect copying, retrospective compilation, or another ordering practice, and should be studied with the neighboring frames rather than explained from this crop alone.

This new primary image eliminates an error in Malcolm's transcription as the current explanation for the date conflict. It does not make 20 May 1564 a birth date. The cluster of age statements still points toward an earlier birth, probably around 1563, so delayed baptism or imprecision in one or more age witnesses remains the central unresolved problem.

Source Correction and Blackfriars Household Context, 19 July 2026

The clipped entry long treated in this packet as an image of the St Ann register is actually a printed page. It has now been identified in James Peller Malcolm, Londinium Redivivum, vol. 2 (1803), p. 366:

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

Joseph Lemuel Chester's 1876 Westminster-register volume is not the source of this entry and has been removed as its citation. Malcolm says that the St Ann incumbent allowed him use of the registers. The newly received manuscript image now directly controls Malcolm's reading, although its exact archive frame and folio metadata still need to be recovered.

The baptism now has a detailed property context independent of the unresolved birth-year problem. Sir Henry Neville the elder leased a large former Cheke/Revels-office household complex in Blackfriars in June 1560. Edited Loseley records call it Sir Henry Neville's house, record Neville's garden key and water fitting, and mention his new stairs between 1560 and April 1562; his rent continued until Lady Day 1568. His son was baptized in St Ann parish in May 1564. The property later entered the history of Richard Farrant's first Blackfriars playhouse. Wallace prints the elder Neville's recommendation from pyllyngber on 27 August 1576 for yor hows wc I had of yow; More later said Farrant removed Neville's partitions to make the house fit for plays. The exact auditorium footprint remains reconstructive and adds nothing to the unresolved birth-address question.

This makes the Blackfriars house a possible birthplace or early-childhood residence. It does not prove the child was born there: no located record supplies a birth address, and the current direct household evidence has a gap between April 1562 and the May 1564 baptism. Full source map: st ann blackfriars neville household farrant first playhouse.

Source-Control Summary

• Baptism anchor: Henry Neville, son to Sir Henry Neville, knt. May 20 controls the St Ann Blackfriars witness.
• Godparent-account anchor: Rye's transcription of a Treasurer of the Chamber enrolment lists Sir Henry Nevell's child under the account period 29 September 1564–29 September 1565. It does not name Henry or date the christening.
• Colthorpe anchor: the Folger-hosted chronology combines the godparent-account item with Malcolm's 20 May parish entry. That is a plausible editorial identification, not an independent same-day record.
• Age-witness anchor: the Gresham IPM gives 16 years 11 moneths and 10 days; Whitelocke gives 52 years of age when he died.
• Guardrail: baptism on 20 May 1564 is not the same as birth date; ODNB/secondary birth dates should be treated as conflicting external references until age witnesses are reconciled.

Research Verdict and Evidence Hierarchy

The exact birth date is not settled. The safest current conclusion is that Henry Neville was baptized at St Ann Blackfriars on 20 May 1564, while a cluster of age statements points instead to a birth in approximately 1563. The frequently repeated 11 April 1563 is the literal result of counting backward from the Thomas Gresham IPM age; it is not a date written in a birth or baptism record.

The primary image now agrees with Malcolm on both 1564 and xx Maye, so a Malcolm transcription error is no longer a persuasive explanation for the conflict. Neville may have been baptized substantially after birth, or one or more age witnesses may be imprecise. Neither explanation should be stated as fact. The royal-account entry does not solve the conflict because its dates are an accounting span and its child is unnamed.

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 manuscript image of the original-register page has now been inspected directly.

It includes the line:

“Henry Nevell sonne to Sr Henry Nevell knight. xx Maye.”

• Malcolm's printed St Ann extract independently renders the same entry:

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

• Constance E. B. Rye's 1885 transcription from the enrolled Treasurer of the

Chamber accounts lists:

“Sir Henry Nevell's child”

• Rye places it under the account period 29 September 1564–29 September 1565,

Box F no. 1, membrane 67. She expressly warns that the dates in her table are account periods and that the precise date of many christenings is not given.

• Marion E. Colthorpe's Folger-hosted The Elizabethan Court Day by Day: 1564

places the royal-godparent item and Malcolm's St Ann extract together on 20 May 1564. It identifies the parents and repeats:

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

• The pairing makes Henry the proposed identification of the unnamed account child;

it does not establish that the Treasurer account itself gives the same day. Elizabeth Neville's 1573 funeral certificate lists the younger surviving children at ages placing them after the 1564–65 account period, which supports Henry as the natural identification. Delayed accounting or a child who died young remain possible.

• 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. The newly located Rye source now reveals exactly where Colthorpe has performed an editorial synchronization.

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

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

• A image witnesses 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 literally from the IPM age of “16 years 11 months and 10 days” yields approximately 11 April 1563. That is a calculated date, not a directly recorded birth date; the additional claim that it was Easter Sunday should not carry evidentiary weight here.

• A image witnesses 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.

• Woolfson's web-indexed biographical-register entry for Neville gives the dates 1562-1615. Like Greengrass's 1561/2-1615, this is an external reference conflict and should not override the packet's age-witness cluster without direct explanation.

• 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)”

Source-control correction: the word confidently is stronger than the surviving evidence permits. Book prose should say that the IPM calculation points to about 11 April 1563 and that several other age witnesses broadly support c.1563, while the secure baptism is dated 20 May 1564 and other references point to 1561-62.

Quoted Source Passages

Follow SOURCE QUOTATION STANDARD. This packet is a good example of why exact quotation matters: the baptism record, godmother chronology, age witnesses, and ODNB date are not the same kind of evidence.

St Ann Blackfriars baptism

• Source: manuscript image of the St Ann Blackfriars register, received 20 July

2026 and directly inspected; independently controlled by James Peller Malcolm, Londinium Redivivum, vol. 2 (1803), p. 366; archival route through The London Archives / GB 0074 P69/ANN.

• Quotation:

"Henry Nevell sonne to Sr Henry Nevell knight. xx Maye."

"1564. Henry Neville, son to Sir Henry Neville, knt. May 20."

• What it proves: the manuscript register directly records Henry Nevell, son of

Sir Henry Nevell, knight, under the 1564 baptism heading on 20 May; Malcolm's early printed extract independently agrees.

• Limits: the received screenshot does not expose an archive shelfmark, folio, or

durable frame URL. Baptism date is not automatically birth date and conflicts with age-witness clusters suggesting an earlier birth year.

Treasurer of the Chamber godparent entry

• Source: Constance E. B. Rye, “Queen Elizabeth's Godchildren,” transcribing the

enrolled Treasurer of the Chamber accounts, Box F no. 1, membrane 67.

• Quotation:

"Sir Henry Nevell's child"

• What it proves: royal-godparent expenses were enrolled for a child of Sir Henry

Neville in the account covering 29 September 1564–29 September 1565.

• Limits: the account table does not name Henry or date the christening. Rye says

her dates are account periods and that precise christening dates are often absent. Colthorpe's placement beside Malcolm's 20 May baptism is an editorial identification that remains to be tested against the original membrane.

Oxford age witness

• Source: Oxford matriculation entry image preserved in the local birthdate packet.
• Quotation:

"MERTON COLL., matric. entry under date 20 Dec., 1577, aged 15"

• What it proves: A later educational record gives Neville's age as 15 in December 1577.
• Limits: Age-at-matriculation entries can be approximate; this witness points toward c.1562 but does not settle the exact birth date alone.

Whitelocke age witness

• Source: Whitelocke image preserved in the local birthdate packet.
• Quotation:

"He was 52 years of age when he died."

• What it proves: A death-age witness places Neville at age 52 in 1615, pointing toward c.1563.
• Limits: This conflicts with a literal 1564 birth inference from baptism; final prose should preserve the tension rather than silently normalizing.

Thomas Gresham IPM Age Witness

• Source: Thomas Gresham inquisition post mortem image preserved in the local birthdate packet.
• Quotation:

"The said Henry Nevell Junior was the nearest and next heir"

"of the age of 16 years 11 moneths and 10 days"

• What it proves: The IPM age witness, calculated from the 21 March 1580 reference date, points toward a birth around April 1563.
• Limits: The calculation depends on the reference date and on taking the stated age literally; it should be weighed with the baptism and other age witnesses, not used alone.

Elizabeth Neville Funeral Certificate Age Witness

• Source: Elizabeth Neville funeral certificate image preserved in the local birthdate packet; secondary support through John Harley, "`My Ladye Nevell' Revealed."
• Quotation:

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

• What it proves: A family death-context witness points to Henry being about ten and a half when his mother died on 7 November 1573, again supporting c.1563.
• Limits: The original certificate still needs a direct archival or printed-edition citation beyond the preserved image/blog route.

ODNB Conflict

• Source: Mark Greengrass, ODNB entry for Sir Henry Neville; document witnesses odnb 9780198614128 e 19940.
• Quotation:

"1561/2-1615"

• What it proves: ODNB gives a materially different birth-date range from the packet's baptism and age-witness cluster.
• Limits: ODNB is useful bibliography and overview, but its date should not override the direct age witnesses without explanation.

3. Source Text Index

Malcolm's St Ann Blackfriars register extract

• Manuscript: “Henry Nevell sonne to Sr Henry Nevell knight. xx Maye.”
• “1564. Henry Neville, son to Sir Henry Neville, knt. May 20.”

Rye account transcription and Colthorpe chronology

• Rye: “Sir Henry Nevell's child.”
• Rye: account period 29 Sept. 1564–29 Sept. 1565, Box F no. 1, membrane 67.
• Rye: “These dates represent the period over which the account extends; the

precise date of many of the christenings is not given in the record.”

• “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

• Malcolm, James Peller. *Londinium Redivivum; or, an Ancient History and Modern

Description of London*. Vol. 2. London: J. Nichols and Son, 1803, p. 366. Internet Archive page.

• Rye, Constance E. B. “Queen Elizabeth's Godchildren.” The Genealogist, new

series 2 (1885): 292–96, especially p. 294. Internet Archive page.

• 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.
• Greengrass, Mark. “Neville, Sir Henry (1561/2–1615).” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Local ODNB folder copy: odnb 9780198614128 e 19940. Earlier staged PDF: Greengrass HenryNeville ODNB 2014.
• henry neville 1578 travel licence and woolfson register leads, for Woolfson's 1562-1615 register-date conflict and the separate travel-licence lead.
• “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.
• The packet preserves an unresolved tension among the current witnesses:
• Malcolm's St Ann Blackfriars extract 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 tradition now has an identified printed route to an

official account: Rye transcribes Sir Henry Nevell's child from Box F no. 1, membrane 67. The account child is unnamed and its table date is the span 29 September 1564–29 September 1565, not 20 May.

• Colthorpe explicitly pairs the royal-account item with Malcolm's St Ann baptism,

but this should be described as an editorial identification. It is not two independent sources recording the same date.

• The current best formulation is: Malcolm's printed St Ann register extract records Henry Neville's baptism on 20 May 1564. A Treasurer of the Chamber account transcribed by Rye records Queen Elizabeth's sponsorship expenses for an unnamed child of Sir Henry Neville in the following accounting year. Henry is the natural identification among the surviving children, but the account does not name him or date his christening.
• Colthorpe's project introduction states that the chronology uses unpublished

diaries, letters, and royal-household account books and cautions that a work of this scale may contain errors. The newly located Rye transcription shows the underlying account route and where Colthorpe has supplied a date and identity by combination with Malcolm.

• 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 and Woolfson's register date 1562-1615 add external conflicts and should be cited as conflicts, not as replacements for the packet's age-witness analysis.
• ODNB source-control position: the local ODNB PDF in [local source path removed] is useful for bibliography and overview, but its 1561/2 date is not controlling against the age-witness cluster preserved here.
• 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.
• image witnesses witnesses used in this packet:
• image 01 a392e02486
• image 03 672a90c5d7
• image 04 98bd9f57df
• image 06 39aba52593
• image 07 b0fd72712b
• The local portrait image is present at image 05 43058d545a, but the age inscription is not transcribed here from the image itself.
• The local godchildren image is present at image 02 8bee5af4d6. Rye's 1885 article now supplies the identified official-account route, while also showing that the account itself leaves the child and precise date unstated.
• The earlier blog hypothesis that Neville may have been baptized late because he

was a godchild of Elizabeth I remains unresolved. The account does not explain the apparent gap between the c. April 1563 age-witness cluster and the 20 May 1564 baptism.

Additional Fact-Source Notes

• AIM25 verifies the archive route for St Ann Blackfriars: the parish records include registers of baptisms, marriages, banns, and burials, and the Guildhall Library material was merged into LMA custody in 2009.
• That archive-route control does not solve the date tension. The 20 May 1564 baptism remains in tension with the age-witness cluster pointing to c.1563.
• Rye's godchild-account extract is now the controlling printed source for the

royal sponsorship claim. Final resolution requires manuscript-level verification of both the St Ann register and Treasurer of the Chamber membrane.

Direct Portrait-Age Control, 13 July 2026

The age notation on the 1599 portrait has now been read directly from the full-resolution image rather than repeated from the blog. The local object control is Henry Neville 1599 commons, 6933 × 9172 pixels. At upper right it visibly reads:

A° 1599

Æ 36

At left, the same image identifies the sitter as:

Sr Henry Neville

Ambassador to France

Anno 1599

This is now a direct visual age witness. It places Neville’s birth approximately in 1562/63, depending on the portrait’s exact date and whether the stated age is current or completed years. It does not by itself establish 11 April 1563, because the portrait provides neither a month/day of painting nor an exact birthday.

The revised comparison is:

The portrait therefore strengthens the cluster centered on 1562/63 but leaves the baptism problem intact. A baptism in May 1564 need not equal a birth in May 1564, yet a delay of roughly a year would be unusual enough that it should be demonstrated rather than assumed. The decisive next work remains direct manuscript control of the parish register, the godmother source behind Colthorpe, the Gresham IPM wording, and the funeral certificate. The portrait can now be cited confidently for “age 36 in 1599,” while the exact birth day remains unresolved.