Henry Neville, Sir William Pole, and William Staverton: A Credit and Transaction Network, 1607-1613

Verified Sourced Facts

• On 14 February 1606/7, Sir Henry Neville executed a bond to Sir William

Pole of Shute, Devon.

• The Latin obligation bound Neville in £300; the English condition made the

bond void if £150 was paid on 14 May 1607.

• Payment was to be made at Pole's current dwelling house in the London parish

of St Michael Bassishaw.

• Neville signed the bond. The witnesses signed fra Greeneway and `Will:

Staverton`.

• The reverse docket records 14 may 1607, the maturity date, not the February

execution date.

• William West's 1598 legal form book prints a closely matching model

condition for payment at a named day and place. This establishes that the surrounding formula is conventional while the parties, sums, date, place, and witnesses are transaction-specific.

• The same Will: Staverton name and a closely corresponding signature recur

on Henry Myddelton's 2 December 1613 £50 New River receipt to Neville.

• Rudden's printed 8 May 1612 New River share issue names Will: Staverton

among its witnesses.

• A 1917 Myers & Co. sale catalogue describes another Hugh Myddelton receipt,

dated 27 June 1612, for £50 from Neville toward the Chadwell and Amwell water project, witnessed by Will. Staverton and John Otwyn.

The Bond

Royal Berkshire Archives D/EN/F6/1/13 is one executed sheet, not a letter. The central clauses read:

Noverint universi per presentes me Henricum Nevill de Billingbeare in Com[itatu]

Berks militem teneri et firmiter obligari Will[el]mo Pole de Shute

in Com[itatu] Devon militi in Trescentis libris ...

The condition then defines the actual performance:

The Condicion of this obligacion is suche that if the abovebounden S^r Henry

Nevill knight ... doe well and truely paye ... unto the above-

named S^r William Pole knight ... the Some

of one hundred and fiftie poundes ...

or in the fowrteenth daye of Maye next ensuing ... at or in the

nowe dwellinge house of the saide S^r William Pole knight within the

parishe of S^t Michaell Bassishaw in the Citie of London ...

The signatures are:

Henry Nevill

fra Greeneway

Will: Staverton

All three available photographs were checked at original resolution. IMG_8308 is only a closer view of the witness block already present on IMG_8306; it is not an independent copy.

£300 Is the Penalty, £150 the Conditioned Payment

The bond should not be summarized as a £300 loan. Neville is formally bound in £300, but the obligation becomes void upon payment of £150. The double sum is the penal security for performance.

This distinction is independently controlled by William West's First Part of Symboleography (1598). In a model “condition to pay a summe of money at a certaine day,” West prints the same architecture: the bound party or his executors must pay a stated sum on a stated day at a stated place, after which the obligation is void; otherwise it remains in force. The complete public EEBO-TCP text is A14963.

West's precedent also shows why formulaic resemblance is not evidence of a special literary or personal habit. What matters biographically is the local content inserted into the form: Pole, Neville, £150, the two dates, Bassishaw, and the witnesses.

Two Large Bonds in Ten Days

The Pole bond is not an isolated survival. Ten days later, on 24 February 1606/7, Neville executed a second bond, this time to John, Lord Petre. In that instrument (D/EN/F6/1/9) he was bound in £160 subject to payment of £100 on 20 June 1607 at the Temple Church font-stone.

Thus Neville formalized obligations requiring £250 in conditioned payments, secured by £460 in penalties, within ten days. The papers do not state that he received £250 in new cash: either or both bonds could secure purchase money, settlement balances, reimbursement, or pre-existing debts. They do establish a concentrated use of private credit instruments in early 1607, with payments staggered into May and June at two London locations.

Sir William Pole of Shute

The manuscript identifies the obligee without ambiguity as William Pole of Shute in Devon, knight. This is Sir William Pole (1561-1635), the antiquary, landowner, former Devon sheriff, Inner Temple man, and later Virginia Company investor. The public-domain DNB biography) records his knighthood on 15 February 1606.

The bond adds a precise London fact not usually foregrounded in Pole's biography: in early 1607 his “nowe dwellinge house” was in St Michael Bassishaw. This was not merely a notional City payment point such as a church porch. The document calls it Pole's dwelling house.

Pole's family connections make the relationship worth investigating further. His mother Katherine Popham was a sister of Chief Justice Sir John Popham. His first wife Mary Peryam was a daughter and co-heiress of Chief Baron Sir William Peryam and had died in May 1606, nine months before the bond. These facts place the transaction near legal, Exchequer, and West Country networks that also intersect Neville's affairs. They do not yet establish the reason for the £150 debt. A Peryam inheritance settlement is a possible search direction, not a present conclusion.

William Staverton Across Four Transactions

The most productive new finding is the recurrence of William Staverton. His name is not confined to Warfield litigation or family genealogy. It appears in executed Neville transactions over at least six years:

The 1607 and 1613 manuscript signatures share the written form Will: Staverton, a long underline, and a terminal flourish. The name, repeated role, and signature correspondence make the same signer a strong identification. The two 1612 printed witnesses supply independent non-AI controls.

This pattern materially changes Staverton's place in the Neville dossier. William was repeatedly present when Neville formalized a debt and an investment, including instruments involving London payment and the Myddeltons. He can be described securely as a recurrent transaction witness. He may have acted as a household clerk, estate officer, financial agent, or trusted associate, but the title of his office has not yet been found. Nor is he yet securely placed within the many sons and descendants in the Warfield Staverton pedigree.

A person-specific consolidation now appears in William Staverton: Recurrent Witness to Neville Transactions, 1607-1613. That packet checks the later Warfield visitation, probate index, and Edward Staverton monument. Those records establish the later Neville-Staverton marriage bridge but do not yet place the 1607-13 witness in that pedigree.

A Lost-or-Dispersed New River Receipt

Myers & Co.'s An Illustrated Catalogue of Rare Books (1917), item 129, describes a document then on the market:

DOCUMENT SIGNED, 1 p. folio, dated 27 June, 1612, in which Hugh Myddelton ...

acknowledges the receipt of £50 from Sir Henry Nevill of Billingbeare,

Berks ... Witnessed by Will. Staverton and John Otwyn.

The catalogue further quotes the purpose as bringing a river or water stream from Chadwell and Amwell toward London. The scan is publicly available through Internet Archive.

This is not one of the two locally photographed New River receipts: those are dated 18 May 1612 and 2 December 1613. The 27 June document is therefore a third receipt, or at minimum a separately dated witness that must be located. It may explain why a later dissertation counted payments beyond the two local £50 receipts. Its post-1917 provenance is now a concrete research problem.

fra Greeneway

The first witness signs fra Greeneway. Direct inspection of both the full sheet and close detail supports that reading. The abbreviation naturally suggests Francis, but the manuscript does not spell the forename out.

A Francis Greeneway of St Sepulchre, London, merchant tailor, appears in a human-transcribed 9 December 1612 marriage allegation as the householder with whom Magdalen Alsop lived. This confirms a contemporary London person of the right name form, but it does not prove he witnessed Neville's bond. Merchant Tailors' Company, parish, probate, and scrivener records should be searched before the witness receives a full biographical identification.

A person-specific identity dossier now adds two later London leads without merging them: TNA E 115/164/87 records a Francis Greenway tax-resident in London in 1641, and the 1642 parliamentary declaration in TCP A82636 lists “Francis Greeneway for Basinghall Ward.” The exact public EarlyPrint query for Francis Greeneway returns that one printed hit. Company, parish, probate, or signature evidence is still required to connect the 1607, 1612, 1641, and 1642 appearances.

Research Program

1. Follow the money. Search Pole, Peryam, Popham, Chancery, and Inner Temple

papers for the consideration behind £150 and a cancellation or receipt after 14 May 1607.

2. Map Pole's London house. Use St Michael Bassishaw rate, subsidy, parish,

and property records to identify the dwelling and neighboring households.

3. Locate the 27 June 1612 receipt. Trace Myers & Co. stock number 129

through auction catalogues, dealer archives, RBA accessions, and New River Company collections.

4. Identify William Staverton. Compare signatures and search Neville

household accounts, New River papers, RBA D/EN/F5, and Warfield wills for an office title and genealogy.

5. Identify Greeneway. Search Merchant Taylors' Company freedom,

apprenticeship, livery, and court records, plus St Sepulchre and PCC probate material.

6. Reconstruct the February 1607 credit cluster. Search Neville's accounts

and the Pole and Petre archives together for transactions executed between 14 and 24 February, rather than treating the two bonds as unrelated curiosities.

Structured Quoted Source Passages

D/EN/F6/1/13, conditioned payment

the Some

of one hundred and fiftie poundes of good and lawfull English monye ...

nowe dwellinge house of the saide S^r William Pole knight within the

parishe of S^t Michaell Bassishaw in the Citie of London

D/EN/F6/1/13, witnesses

Sealed and delivered in the presence

of these whose names are underwritten /

fra Greeneway

Will: Staverton

William West, model condition, 1598

the condition of this obligation is such that if the within bounden ... do

well truely pay or cause to be paid ... vppon the first day of october next

ensuing the date hereof at or in the south porch of the parish church ...

The West quotation is limited to the relevant formula. The full CC0 TCP text is available from the University of Michigan link below.

Citations

• Royal Berkshire Archives, `D/EN/F6/1` parent catalogue.
• William West, *The First Part of Symboleography* (`1598`), EEBO-TCP A14963.
• DNB, “Pole, William (1561-1635)”).
• Myers & Co., *An Illustrated Catalogue of Rare Books* (`1917`), item 129.
• Bernard Rudden, The New River: A Legal History, appendix E, the `8 May

1612` share issue, reproduced and discussed in the New River AI Topic.

Notes on Access

RBA's public catalogue describes D/EN/F6/1 at parent-file level. The /13 item number is visible on the manuscript reverse. The three project photographs are not three separate documents: IMG_8308 is a detail view. The Myers catalogue is public, but it describes rather than reproduces the 27 June 1612 receipt; the original's current location remains unknown.

Source and Claim Audit

• Images checked: IMG_8306.jpeg, IMG_8307.jpeg, IMG_8308.jpeg, and

comparison image IMG_8424.jpeg, all directly at original resolution on 15 July 2026.

• Independent non-AI controls: RBA parent catalogue; William West's printed

legal precedent; DNB Pole biography; Rudden's printed New River deed; Myers & Co.'s 1917 catalogue.

• Promoted claims: parties, sums, execution and maturity dates, Bassishaw

payment house, witness readings, and William Staverton's repeated role as a transaction witness.

• Unresolved: the £150 consideration and discharge; fra expansion and

personal identity; William Staverton's office and genealogy; current location of the 27 June 1612 receipt.