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Henry Neville's 1601 Estate Statement: Fine, Family Settlement, and the Yorkshire Tithes

Verified Ready evidence packet

Why This Document Matters

Royal Berkshire Archives D/EN/F6/1/6, dated 20 July 1601, is the most compact first-person statement yet identified of Neville's landed position at the beginning of his long Tower confinement. It is more than a rent roll. In two pages Neville:

The complete packet is now controlled from IMG_8319-8321, each inspected at its original 3024 × 4032 resolution. The public archive places the item within RBA `D/EN/F6/1`, “Miscellaneous correspondence, of Sir Henry Neville”. The item number /6 is physically written on the reverse; it is not exposed as a separate online catalogue record.

Quoted Source Passages and the Estate Account

The first page's valuation is internally exact. Earlier transcription errors began with Lawrence Waltham, whose leased demesnes are valued at £6 13s. 4d., not £13 13s. 4d.. Once that line is corrected, the manuscript total and net figure both reconcile:

PropertyAnnual value
Shelingford copyhold lives£16
Shelingford demesnes£44
Billingbear and Waltham park£80
Lawrence Waltham rents of assize£25
Lawrence Waltham demesnes£6 13s. 4d.
remaining Woolfines lease£12
Wargrave rectory£80
South Cave rectory£30
half of Otley rectory£39
half of Sandall rectory£52
Total in possession£384 13s. 4d.
brother Edward's annuity−£80
“So remaineth to me de claro”£304 13s. 4d.

The Wargrave and Warfield lands expected after Lady Peryam's death add a future £86 yearly—£74 in freehold and copyhold rents plus £12 from the demesnes—but Neville correctly places them under reversion rather than current income.

The corresponding manuscript lines are:

Sum^a of all in possession, p^r Ann^u — ccclxxxiiij^li xiij^s iiij^d

and, after the £80 charge:

So remaineth to me de claro — ccciiij^li xiij^s iiij^d

The phrase de claro means the clear remainder after the stated charge; it is not a second gross valuation.

Lady Peryam Was Neville's Stepmother

Neville says the Wargrave and Warfield reversion would fall in after the death of:

my mother in law the Lady Peryam

This is Elizabeth Bacon, the third wife and widow of Neville's father, who then married Chief Baron Sir William Peryam. She was Neville's stepmother. In early modern usage, “mother-in-law” could mean stepmother. The passage must not be attached to Anne Killigrew Neville's mother, Katherine Cooke Killigrew.

This identification also gives the estate statement a musical-household connection of genuine relevance: Elizabeth Bacon was the Lady Nevell of My Ladye Nevells Booke and the Lady Peryam to whom Thomas Morley dedicated his 1595 canzonets. The connection belongs to the family and reversion history; the estate statement itself says nothing about music.

£4,030 Sold Around the French Embassy

Neville's sale account is arithmetically as exact as the rent account:

Fraunce as yielded me 2400^li. And since my coming out of Fraunce I haue bene

forced to make sale of the rest for 1000^li to helpe freindes of mine w^ch

were engaged suerties for my debts.

He then adds a Wargrave parcel sold “in Anno 38” for £330 and other parcels, marginally associated with Woolfines and located partly in Waltham, for £300:

So that the land w^ch I haue sold since my first employment into Fraunce

amounteth to 4030^li.

The four components—£2,400, £1,000, £330, and £300—sum to £4,030. “Anno 38” is Elizabeth I's thirty-eighth regnal year, 1595-96, but the sale deed has not yet been found.

The £4,030 schedule gives precision to Neville's August 1601 appeal to Robert Cecil. The human-edited Hatfield calendar says that his French service “forced [him] to sell land to the value of 4,000l.” The calendar's rounded £4,000 and the schedule's itemized £4,030 describe the same asserted burden. See *Calendar of the Manuscripts of the Marquess of Salisbury*, vol. 11, p. 371.

The later Woolfines paragraph creates a useful unresolved accounting problem. Neville says that after his return he sold additional Woolfines property “as came to 630^li.” That exactly matches £330 plus £300 above, but the earlier syntax distributes those sums across Wargrave, Woolfines, and Waltham. The figures reconcile while the property allocation remains compressed.

The Berkshire Settlement

The second page says that Shelingford was initially purchased to Neville, Anne, and the heirs of his body begotten on her. Neville then says that he alone levied a fine covering that manor and all his other Berkshire lands in possession and reversion:

to M^r Secretarie and other of my wifes kindred

The declared uses were:

  1. Neville for life, without impeachment of waste;
  2. friends in trust for a term to raise portions for his daughters;
  3. son Henry and the male heirs of his body;
  4. son William and the male heirs of his body;
  5. the other male heirs of Neville's body;
  6. the heirs of Neville's body;
  7. brother Edward and the heirs of Edward's body; and
  8. Neville's own right heirs.

This is unusually revealing evidence of the estate structure already in place before the fine was settled. The August appeal says that “the substance of his land was so conveyed to his son” that Neville could neither forfeit it beyond his life interest nor sell enough to raise a large sum. The July settlement statement explains the legal architecture behind that claim.

“Mr Secretary” is most naturally Robert Cecil in July 1601, and Cecil was the recipient of the August appeal. But the Berkshire document supplies no forename. The underlying fine and indenture must be found before the trustee list can be completed or the Cecil identification promoted from contextual identification to named-document fact.

Sandall Was Available; South Cave and Otley Were Restricted

Neville distinguishes three Yorkshire interests. Sandall had come into his hands at Michaelmas 1599 and had been improved to slightly above £50 yearly. He offered to sell it or deliver it directly to Elizabeth for part of the fine.

South Cave and Otley were legally different:

The rectorie of Southcaue of the rent of xxx^li & the moitie of the rectorie

of Otley of the rent of xxxix^li were given to my father & the heires males of

his bodie by K. Ed: 6. So as I can not alien them without it please her Ma^tie

to graunt me the reversion w^ch is in her.

The place is Otley, and the independent title records repeatedly call it Oteley or Otely.

In August, Neville's Cecil appeal “asks leave to sell 2 tithes in Yorkshire.” Because the 20 July schedule has just isolated South Cave and Otley as the two Yorkshire rectory interests blocked by the Crown reversion, they are the most probable two tithes meant in the appeal. That identification is a documentary inference; the calendar itself does not name them.

The Hull Title Chain Supplies the Later Answer

Hull History Centre's public catalogue of the Barnard papers preserves the next stages. The complete public `U DDBA` catalogue PDF records:

The 11 February 1605 reversion patent directly resolves the legal disability Neville described on 20 July 1601. It does not show that Elizabeth granted his 1601 request: the surviving grant came from James I more than three years later. The sequence is nonetheless unusually coherent:

DateDocumentary stage
9 Jan. 1553Edward VI grants the properties to Neville's father in tail male; Crown retains reversion
20 Jul. 1601Neville says he cannot alienate South Cave and Otley without the Queen's reversion
Aug. 1601Neville asks Cecil for leave to sell two Yorkshire tithes toward the fine
11 Feb. 1605James I grants Neville the reversion
4–16 Jun. 1605covenant and final concord restructure the property
8 May 1609witnessed deed settles Otley on Edward and South Cave on Robert after Neville's life

This chain also explains why the 1601 estate statement belongs simultaneously to the Tower/fine topic, the Yorkshire-property topic, the Savile and Backhouse network, and the genealogy of Neville's sons.

Waddisworth: A Newly Exposed Absence

The 1553 grant includes the rectory and advowson of Waddisworth, while the 1601 schedule lists only South Cave and Otley from that grant. This may mean that Waddisworth produced no income for Neville, had already been alienated or leased away on different terms, or was represented under another name. No current source resolves the omission. The Waddisworth title and later descent should now be searched separately rather than silently folding it into South Cave.

The £700 Problem

The August calendar says Neville's land in possession was “not above £700” a year and that the Crown could not clear above £500 after maintenance. The 20 July itemized schedule gives only £384 13s. 4d. gross, £304 13s. 4d. after Edward's annuity, and £86 prospectively after Lady Peryam's death.

The two figures cannot be treated as identical. The £700 may be a ceiling rather than an account, may include interests not entered in the schedule, or may use a different valuation basis. The discrepancy is now a research question. It is also a warning against replacing Neville's itemized account with the better-known rounded figure from a printed calendar.

New Research Programme

  1. Search Common Pleas feet of fines, Berkshire deeds, Cecil papers, and

    2. Killigrew settlements for the fine and indenture naming “Mr Secretary” and the other relatives of Anne.

  2. Retrieve images or full copies of U DDBA/4/88-92 and /4/139; the

    3. catalogue establishes identity and scope but not every operative clause.

  3. Search patent rolls and docquets for the 11 February 1605 reversion grant,

    4. then compare its petition/consideration language with Neville's 1601 fine appeal.

  4. Trace Waddisworth separately through Tudor patents, leases, and East Riding

    5. title records.

  5. Locate the Wargrave sale made in Elizabeth's thirty-eighth regnal year and

    6. test whether the £330 and £300 deeds explain the Woolfines £630 sentence.

  6. Reconstruct the brother Edward annuity from the elder Sir Henry's grant and

    7. Edward's marriage settlement.

  7. Compare the July 1601 settlement order with Neville's 1605, 1612, and 1615

    8. settlements to show which children, trustees, and remainders changed.

Sourced Facts and Claim Audit

Sources

Notes on Access

The RBA item-level identity is supplied by the physical /6 reference within the publicly catalogued D/EN/F6/1 parent bundle. The Hatfield calendar and Hull catalogue are openly accessible through the links below. The three RBA photographs are held locally and were inspected at their original dimensions; they are not substituted for the public catalogue controls.