Home / Topics / Henry Neville's Bonds Due: Creditors, Interest Pattern, Newbery, Garrard, and the 1599 Portrait

Henry Neville's Bonds Due: Creditors, Interest Pattern, Newbery, Garrard, and the 1599 Portrait

Mixed Ready evidence packet

Henry Neville's Bonds Due, 1598-1599

Central finding

Royal Berkshire Archives D/EN/F6/1/5 is an unsigned private schedule headed:

A note of my bonds when they grow due

It lists nine maturities payable to eight creditors or creditor descriptions. The amounts total £1,709. More revealingly, they form a systematic numerical pattern: each is a round multiple of £100 plus an addition between 2.5 and 10 per cent. The nine apparent bases total £1,600 and the additions total £109.

This is the earliest surviving compact map presently known in the RBA material of Neville's private-credit network. The names potentially connect his finance to Berkshire government, the London book trade, his Gresham-Garrard affinity, and—much more tentatively—the painter of his 1599 portrait.

The leaf does not say that the listed debtor is Neville. It speaks in the first person and survives in the RBA file of Sir Henry Neville's correspondence and memoranda, so Neville is the probable owner of the bonds. It is unsigned, and the hand has not been independently authenticated.

Controlled transcription

The complete image-controlled text is:

To S^r John Spencer — 215^li — 12 febru: 1598

To d^o Sp: — 210^li — 12 Novemb: 1598

To M^r [Parrie?] — 215^li — 12 februari: 1598

To M^rs [Parrie?] — 215^li — 6 februarie 1598

To richard waynwright — 107^li 10^s — 6 febr: 1598

To M^r rafe newbery — 102^li 10^s — Augusti 1598

To my cosen garret — 220^li — 29 Martij 1599

To W^m More — 109^li — Maij 1599

To M^r Wood — 315^li — 15 Novemb [17 febr: 1598 crossed out]

The inherited text has been materially corrected. The heading says when they grow due, not upon this yeare due; the third sum is £215, not £218; the visible surname forms are waynwright and newbery, not waynman and nowbery. The repeated husband-and-wife surname remains bracketed. Fresh collation of the separate physical /3 obligation also removes the former comparison name: that document names Richard Washington of Windsor, not Richard Waynman. It is therefore wholly distinct from this schedule's Richard Waynwright.

Date sequence

The February dates use Old Style year numbering and correspond to February 1599 in modern reckoning. Written in chronological order, the secure sequence is:

Modernized placement	Creditor	Amount
August 1598, day absent	Rafe Newbery	£102 10s
12 November 1598	ditto Spencer	£210
6 February 1599	Mrs [Parrie?]	£215
6 February 1599	Richard Waynwright	£107 10s
12 February 1599	Sir John Spencer	£215
12 February 1599	Mr [Parrie?]	£215
29 March 1599	cousin Garret	£220
May 1599, day absent	William More	£109
15 November, year absent	Mr Wood	£315

Mr Wood's maturity was altered from 17 febr: 1598 to 15 Novemb. Because the new date omits a year, it should not silently be expanded to November 1599, even though that is a plausible rescheduling.

The £1,600 + £109 pattern

Written amount	Natural round base	Addition	Percentage
£215	£200	£15	7.5%
£210	£200	£10	5%
£215	£200	£15	7.5%
£215	£200	£15	7.5%
£107 10s	£100	£7 10s	7.5%
£102 10s	£100	£2 10s	2.5%
£220	£200	£20	10%
£109	£100	£9	9%
£315	£300	£15	5%

The pattern offers a research method. Search each creditor for a round £100, £200, or £300 principal and the exact maturity date, not only for the full amount written on the schedule. The differing additions could reflect different loan durations: for example, 2.5% for a quarter-year, 5% for a half-year, and 10% for a full year at a ten-per-cent annual rate. Yet the actual execution dates are absent, so that duration model cannot presently be tested.

Thomas Wilson's Discourse upon Usury (1572) defines usury around an overplus or excess above principal allowed for lending and forbearance. Elizabeth's 1571 statute permitted a maximum of ten in the hundred. William West's Symboleography (1598) prints contemporary conditions for bonds payable at stated days and places. Together these sources make interest-bearing conditioned payments a historically coherent explanation. They do not prove it for this schedule, which never labels principal, interest, or penal sums.

Rafe Newbery: a possible direct book-trade creditor

The most striking readable name is:

To M^r rafe newbery

Ralph or Rafe Newbery was one of the important London publishers of the period. The DNB records him as master of the Stationers' Company in 1598, exactly the year of the maturity schedule. The title page of Henry Savile's Rerum Anglicarum scriptores (1596) reads:

LONDINI, Excudebant G. BISHOP, R. NVBERIE, & R. BARKER Typographi Regij

Deputati.

Newbery was also involved in the 1587 Holinshed and had Waltham St Lawrence connections. If the creditor is this publisher, the leaf would be direct financial evidence joining Neville to a printer of both a central Shakespeare source chronicle and Savile's major historical edition. That is an important possibility, but identity is not yet demonstrated. A Newbery account, bond, or receipt with £100/£102 10s and an August 1598 maturity is the required test.

Mr and Mrs [Parrie?]: a paired Berkshire obligation

Two separate £215 obligations mature six days apart to a man and a woman with the same uncertain surname. Direct inspection favors [Parrie?] over the inherited Daine. Thomas Parry and Dorothy Brooke deserve targeted research: Thomas was part of Berkshire county government, was considered for the French embassy in 1598, later succeeded Neville in that embassy, and was knighted in 1601. Thus Mr Parry is chronologically appropriate. The pair of entries may represent two separate principals within a married household, a settlement, or coordinated lending. None of that identifies them without the instruments.

`my cosen garret`: family finance and an artist-name coincidence

The kinship language is unusually personal:

To my cosen garret

The 1568 Visitation of London maps a real Garrard-Gresham affinity. Sir Thomas Rowe married Mary, daughter of Sir John Gresham; their daughter Elizabeth Rowe married Sir William Garrard of Dorney. Neville's maternal Gresham descent makes this family a plausible field in which to seek the person he called cousin. The term need not mean a modern first cousin and could include affinity by marriage.

There is also a genuinely surprising alternative lead. The painter now called Marcus Gheeraerts the Younger appeared in English records as Marks Garratt, Marcus Garrard, and Marcus Garret. The GrECI catalogue dates Neville's Audley End portrait to 1599 and attributes it to Marcus Geeraerts with a question mark. The Garret obligation matured on 29 March 1599.

This coincidence should be investigated, not converted into a claim. The portrait itself says only 1599; it does not supply a March or 1 April date. Commons's specific 1 April 1599 metadata is not an inscription on the object and has not been institutionally controlled. No portrait account has been found, £220 would require contextual comparison with portrait prices, and my cosen needs explanation if it names the painter. The family-Garrard and artist-Garret paths must remain separate until one produces transaction evidence.

Sir John Spencer and metropolitan credit

The schedule owes two sums totaling £425 to Sir John Spencer or to Spencer and a second abbreviated Sp: creditor. The former lord mayor of London known for his enormous merchant fortune is an obvious financial candidate. Sir John Spencer of Althorp is another contemporary candidate. The first entry spells the title and surname but gives no residence or office, so neither identification is secure. The possibility of a City-credit cluster becomes more interesting when read beside Newbery and Garret/Garrard, but it remains a search design, not a prosopographical conclusion.

Estate-acquisition context

The schedule belongs to the same archive file and year as the Wadley memorandum D/EN/F6/1/4, which proposes a £9,800 purchase of the Unton leasehold complex in five instalments. VCH separately records Neville's 1598 purchase of Shellingford from Unton's trustees. The £1,709 scheduled maturities equal about 17.44% of the proposed Wadley price. That comparison shows scale, not purpose. No bond on this leaf names Wadley, Unton, Knightley, Wentworth, or Shellingford.

The productive next step is to search the Unton, Parry, Spencer, Garrard, Newbery, More, and Wood papers for the exact round bases and maturity dates, then determine whether any consideration was estate purchase money.

Research program

Search RBA D/EN/F6, the Unton papers, and Chancery recognizances for each

exact maturity date and both the written amount and its round base.

Search Stationers' Company and Newbery probate/business records for a

£100/£102 10s Neville obligation due in August 1598.

Compare the uncertain [Parrie?] letterforms with securely named Parry

documents in the same archive, then seek two £200/£215 instruments.

Build the Garrard-Gresham affinity from visitations, wills, and marriage

settlements and identify adult Garrards in Neville's circle in 1598-99.

Search Audley End, Braybrooke, Gheeraerts, and conservation/provenance files

for a portrait commission, payment, or debt dated 1598-99.

Research customary portrait prices before judging whether £200 principal or

£220 repayment is plausible for the painted object or a broader account.

Distinguish the two Sir John Spencers through their bond, scrivener, estate,

and account papers.

Search for the revised Mr Wood instrument, first under 17 February 1599 and

then under 15 November without assuming the year.

Verified sourced facts

The leaf is RBA D/EN/F6/1/5; the direct image is IMG_8328.jpeg at

3024 x 4032 pixels.

Its controlled heading is A note of my bonds when they grow due and its

nine written amounts total £1,709.

The visible forms waynwright and newbery are secure; the repeated

[Parrie?] surname is not.

Savile's 1596 imprint names R. NVBERIE, but the schedule itself does not

identify its Rafe Newbery as the publisher.

The portrait catalogue dates Neville's portrait to 1599; the painted object

supplies no controlled 29 March or 1 April date.

Quoted source passages

The manuscript's controlled title and three research-bearing lines are:

A note of my bonds when they grow due

To M^r rafe newbery — 102^li 10^s — Augusti 1598

To my cosen garret — 220^li — 29 Martij 1599

To M^r Wood — 315^li — 15 Novemb [17 febr: 1598 crossed out]

Savile's 1596 title-page imprint supplies the separate printed control: