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Henry Neville's £100 Bond to John, Lord Petre: Credit, Temple Church, Byrd, and Virginia, 1607

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Topic: Henry Neville's £100 Bond to John, Lord Petre, 1607

Central Finding

Royal Berkshire Archives D/EN/F6/1/9 is a sealed bond made by Sir Henry Neville of Billingbear to John Petre, first Baron Petre, on 24 February 1606/7. Neville bound himself in a penal sum of £160. The bond would become void if he paid Petre £100 on 20 June 1607 at the font-stone in the Temple Church near Fleet Street.

This is a direct addition to Neville's financial biography. It names a specific creditor, a principal sum, a penalty, a payment date, a London payment place, and two witnesses. It also places Neville in a documented private-credit relationship with the Essex nobleman who was William Byrd's major patron and, in the same year, the dedicatee of Byrd's second book of Gradualia.

The bond does not disclose the transaction that produced the £100 obligation. No connection between Neville's money and Byrd's publication should be asserted without a Petre account, receipt, or companion agreement.

Image-Controlled Text

The Latin obligation identifies the parties and penal sum:

Noverint universi per presentes me Henricu[m] Nevill de Billingbeare in

Comitatu Bark[shire] militem teneri et firmiter obligari Johanni Domino

Petre de Ingatestone in Com[itatu] Essex in Centum et sexaginta libris

That is: Henry Neville of Billingbear, Berkshire, knight, acknowledges that he is firmly bound to John, Lord Petre of Ingatestone, Essex, in £160.

The English condition states the actual performance required:

the Summe of One hundred poundes of lawfull English monny uppon

the Twentith Day of June next ensueinge the Date of this present

Obligacõn at the ffontstone in the Temple Churche neere ffletestreete

London, or the place where the said ffontstone there nowe standeth

If Neville paid as required, the larger obligation would be cancelled:

That then this present obligacõn to be voide

& of none effect, or els to stand, remaine, and be in full force & strength.

Neville signs Henry Nevill. The execution clause names two witnesses:

Sealed & delivered accordingly

in the presence of us

Tho: Weare

William Killingworth /

The reverse docket gives the operative sum and controls the modern year:

S^r Henry Nevill bond

for 100^li 20 June

1607

£160 and £100 Are Different Parts of the Same Instrument

The £160 named in the Latin is the penal obligation. The £100 named in the English condition is the sum whose timely payment cancels that obligation. The reverse docket describes the document by the £100 performance sum rather than the penalty.

This distinction matters because a summary that calls the document a “£160 loan” would misstate its legal structure. The surviving paper proves that Neville promised £100 under a £160 penalty. It does not say whether the £100 was a cash loan, purchase money, a settlement balance, reimbursement, or another kind of debt.

A Second Large Bond Ten Days Earlier

The Petre obligation now has a close documentary companion. On 14 February 1606/7, ten days before this bond, Neville executed D/EN/F6/1/13 to Sir William Pole of Shute. That bond carried a £300 penalty subject to payment of £150 on 14 May 1607 at Pole's London dwelling house in St Michael Bassishaw.

Together the two papers required £250 in conditioned payments, backed by £460 in penal sums, and staggered the due dates across May and June. This is direct evidence of concentrated private-credit documentation in Neville's affairs in February 1607. It is not proof that he borrowed £250 in cash: neither bond states its consideration.

The comparison also identifies different documentary personnel. Thomas Weare and William Killingworth witnessed the Petre bond. The Pole bond was witnessed by fra Greeneway and Will: Staverton; Staverton later recurs on Neville's New River share and payment instruments. The new dedicated comparison is Henry Neville, Sir William Pole, and William Staverton: A Credit and Transaction Network, 1607-1613.

Why the Date Is 1606/7

The face writes the year as 1606 and dates the instrument to James I's fourth regnal year in England and fortieth in Scotland. Under the legal calendar then in use, the year changed on 25 March. The date is therefore 24 February 1606 Old Style and 24 February 1607 in modern year numbering.

The contemporary docket removes any ambiguity about the next payment date. Its 20 June / 1607 is the same “Twentith Day of June next ensueinge” specified in the condition.

The Temple Church Font-Stone as a Payment Place

Neville was not told merely to pay somewhere in London. The bond selected a specific fixed object: the ffontstone in the Temple Churche neere ffletestreete. That language belongs to a wider legal practice.

John Amphlett's calendar of the Kyre Park charters records a 1590 deed securing £500, payable in 1592:

“on the fontstone of the church called Temple Church in Flete street,

London”

The next entry records £300 payable:

“on the font stone of the Temple Church in Fleet Street”

These passages are visible on printed p. 123 / Archive leaf n176 and printed p. 124 / Archive leaf n177. The comparison shows that the Temple Church font-stone functioned as a recognized public payment point in formal securities. It should not be read as evidence that Neville or Petre belonged to the Inner or Middle Temple without a separate membership record.

John Petre Identified

The bond's Johanni Domino Petre de Ingatestone is John Petre (1549-1613), not his son William. The History of Parliament biography identifies Sir John Petre as of Ingatestone, Essex, and records that James I created him Baron Petre in 1603. The bond's date and title therefore match the first baron.

History of Parliament also records Petre's substantial estates and his creation as Baron Petre. The bond demonstrates that Neville's credit network reached beyond Berkshire into this Essex household.

The Byrd Connection in the Same Year

John Petre was not simply an Essex landowner. He was William Byrd's patron. Byrd's second book of Gradualia was printed in London by Thomas East in 1607 and dedicated to Lord Petre. David Mateer's study, “William Byrd, John Petre and Oxford, Bodleian MS Mus. Sch. E. 423,” dates Byrd's dedicatory epistle to 3 April 1607 and discusses lending from Petre to Byrd in the household accounts. The public bibliographic control is JSTOR stable 25099452; the 1607 edition is catalogued as STC 4244.5 by Heidelberg University Library.

The JSTOR record and bibliographic controls were reachable in this research pass, but the complete article was not. Consequently, no exact Petre-account line from Mateer is quoted here. That account entry remains a source-retrieval target rather than a substitute for the directly inspected Neville bond.

The chronology is tight:

DateDocumented event
24 February 1606/7Neville seals the £100 obligation to Petre.
3 April 1607Byrd dates the dedicatory epistle to Petre in Gradualia II.
20 June 1607Neville's £100 payment falls due at the Temple Church font-stone.

The responsible conclusion is precise: Neville had a personal financial relationship with Byrd's patron during the months in which Petre received the dedication of one of Byrd's major publications. The cause and use of Neville's £100 remain undocumented.

This connection belongs beside the separate Billingbear musical lane: My Ladye Nevells Booke was completed in 1591 for Elizabeth Bacon Neville, Henry Neville's stepmother, and contains Byrd's pavan and galliard for William Petre. The 1607 bond supplies a direct Neville-to-Petre financial document; it does not turn these separate musical records into a single commission.

A Later Virginia Company Overlap

The relationship also has a later institutional echo. The 1620 printed Virginia Company adventurer accounting list records:

Sir Henry Neuill, of Barkshire 37. 10

and separately:

Iohn, Lord Petre 95.

Those spellings follow the TCP text of the Virginia Company's *Declaration of the State of the Colonie and Affaires in Virginia*. The entries were also checked directly in Susan Myra Kingsbury's printed facsimile transcription: Sir Henry Neuill, of Barkshire and 37. 10 appear on vol. 3, printed p. 330, and John, Lord Petre with 95 appears on printed p. 331. Neville was dead by 1620, so his line is a posthumous company/accounting survival. The paired entries nevertheless show that the two men of the 1607 bond also belonged to the documented Virginia-adventurer world.

Research Paths Opened by the Bond

  1. Petre accounts, February-June 1607. Search Essex Record Office Petre

    2. household, cash, loan, and estate accounts for Nevill, Billingbear, £100, £160, 20 June, Thomas Weare, and William Killingworth.

  2. Receipts and cancelled securities. Search for a satisfaction, receipt,

    3. defeasance, or cancelled counterpart dated on or shortly after 20 June 1607.

  3. Witness identities. Establish whether Weare and Killingworth were Petre

    4. servants, Neville agents, Temple scriveners, or independent witnesses.

  4. Temple payment records. Determine whether scrivener, recognizance, or

    5. legal-office records preserve a companion instrument explaining the debt.

  5. Neville's financial chronology. Place the bond beside the 1601 land

    6. statement, post-Essex surety burdens, later estate instructions, and other dated obligations rather than treating Neville's finances as a single undifferentiated decline.

  6. Petre–Byrd accounts. Obtain and page-image-check the complete Mateer

    7. article and the underlying Essex account entry, then compare its date and ledger context with the Neville obligation without assuming the payments are connected.

Archival Placement

The physical reverse carries D/EN/F6/1/9. The live Royal Berkshire Archives parent record describes nineteen documents of Sir Henry Neville, 1592-1615, and expressly includes a “bond with Lord Petre, 1606.” The exact /9 URL is not separately exposed in CALMView, so the online catalogue controls the bundle and the pencil reference controls the item number.

What Is Established

What Remains Unresolved

Sources

Manuscript Verification Audit