Home / Topics / Henry Savile to Richard Beaumont: Neville, Country Air, and the Bottomless Pond (8 October 1606)

Henry Savile to Richard Beaumont: Neville, Country Air, and the Bottomless Pond (8 October 1606)

Verified Ready evidence packet

Henry Savile to Richard Beaumont: Neville, Country Air, and the Bottomless Pond

Book integration — 1 September 2026

Chapter 5 now uses this letter after the 1601–02 crisis documents. Its function is relational: the political records show Savile advocating and negotiating for Neville; the 1606 letter shows the same relationship in ordinary country life. The chapter quotes the invitation to come and live with Sir H. Nevill and mee in the countree and the promise that wee wilbe merry in the countree. Savile's Eton dateline matters because Eton was near Neville's Billingbear estate. The geography reinforces the plain grammar: Neville is the country companion whom Savile places beside himself in the invitation. The chapter therefore presents an active country friendship and broadens the documented relationship from education, scholarship, property, and political intervention to health, hospitality, recreation, and shared friendship.

The later fishing clause remains grammatically separate: Mr. Carlton and I directly joins Savile and Carlton in missing Beaumont for the fishing exploit. The best present identification is probably Dudley Carleton, who had direct correspondence with both Savile and Neville and is independently placed at Eton during Christmas 1606 while courting Savile's stepdaughter. The identification remains probabilistic because the letter gives no forename and no independent source yet places Dudley at Eton on the exact day, 8 October. Those unresolved details do not weaken the letter's direct identification of Neville as Savile's country companion.

1. Verified Sourced Facts

W. D. Macray prints this letter in Beaumont Papers. Letters Relating to the Family of Beaumont, of Whitley, Yorkshire, from the Fifteenth to the Seventeenth Centuries (London: Nichols and Sons for the Roxburghe Club, 1884), pp. 14-15. Macray's marginal note gives 1606 and manuscript fol. 11. The letter itself is dated at Eaton on 8 Octob. 1606, signed Hen. Savile, and addressed to Sir Richard Beaumont at the Woll-stable in Westminster.

The volume's preface states that Macray edited the letters from originals in the Bodleian Library. The collection is now Bodleian MS. Add. C. 259. The manuscript has not been inspected for this update, so the transcription below controls Macray's printed edition, not the seventeenth-century document.

Public page-image witnesses:

3. Quoted Source Text

Complete page-image-checked transcription of Macray's printed text

The transcription preserves Macray's words, spelling, capitalization, and punctuation while suppressing printed line and page breaks. It is not a diplomatic transcription of the manuscript.

Sir Henry Savile to Sir Richard Beaumont.

1606. fol. 11.

Sir,

I have receyved the money from your man. I wrote to you once this weeke, and now agayn doe renew my request, that you would bee pleased to leave London for a while and come and live with Sir H. Nevill and mee in the countree. Truely you will spoile your selfe there both for lacke of fresh ayer and with too much phisicke, beside that the choice of your phisitian is not, as I heare, the best. But pray you come, and leave physicke and citty, and wee wilbe merry in the countree, where at this present Mr. Carlton and I have a great misse of you for a present exploit of fishing a bottomlesse pond. And therefore I pray you make hast and come hither. In the meane, wishing you health and your heartes desire, I commit you to God. Eaton, this 8 Octob. 1606.

Your assured loving cosen,

Hen. Savile.

Addressed,—To the right worshipfull his very loving cosen Sir Richard Beaumont, knight, at the Woll-stable in Westminster.

What the letter establishes

The sentence about Neville is direct and unusually personal. Savile proposes that Beaumont leave London and come and live with Sir H. Nevill and mee in the countree. Savile wrote from Eton, near Neville's Billingbear estate, so the geography reinforces the syntax: Neville is the country companion explicitly placed beside Savile. The medical frame is equally clear: London lacks fresh air, Beaumont is taking too much physic, and Savile doubts his choice of physician.

The next sentence must be parsed more carefully than earlier topic summaries did. Savile says that Mr. Carlton and I have a great misse of you for fishing the pond. Grammatically, that clause directly groups Savile and Carlton as the people then missing Beaumont. It does not explicitly say that Neville was present with them at that moment. The letter therefore establishes an overlapping social circuit:

It is a Neville-Savile-Beaumont-Carlton country-sociability witness. The distinction between the two clauses matters only for the separate fishing detail; it does not qualify Neville's stated role in the country invitation.

Identification of “Mr. Carlton”: probably Dudley Carleton

The balance of evidence now favors Dudley Carleton, later Viscount Dorchester, rather than George Carleton, later bishop of Llandaff and Chichester.

Evidence favoring Dudley

  1. Savile already corresponded directly with Dudley. A surviving letter of 17 October 1603 is addressed To my very loving friend Mr Dudley Carleton at Court (SP 14/4 f.43). This establishes the precise personal form Mr Dudley Carleton within Savile's correspondence three years before the fishing letter.
  2. Neville also corresponded directly with Dudley in 1606. Henry Neville's letter of 8 April 1606 thanks Dudley for good offices and asks him for information. The current canonical Neville Letters Corpus v23 identifies Dudley as the recipient; the public printed-calendar witness is CSPD, 1603–1610, p. 310.
  3. Dudley is independently placed at Eton in the same season. The History of Parliament biography says that he spent Christmas at Eton courting the stepdaughter of Sir Henry Savile. Savile's Beaumont letter was written from Eton on 8 October 1606, only a little over two months earlier. Dudley married Anne Garrard, Savile's stepdaughter, in November 1607. History of Parliament: Dudley Carleton; Westminster Abbey biography.
  4. The title fits the chronology. Dudley was not knighted until September 1610, so Mr. Carlton is an appropriate form for him in October 1606.
  5. The later record confirms a sustained Eton/Savile relationship. In December 1608 Dudley wrote from Eton that he had been working with his father Savile among the latter's Greek letters. Here father is household language for his stepfather-in-law after Dudley's marriage to Anne Garrard, not a statement that Anne was Savile's biological daughter.
  6. A surviving Dudley-to-Neville letter makes the correspondence reciprocal. On 13 January 1608/9 Dudley wrote directly to Neville from Eton about Parliament's printed prorogation, Neville's continued goode housekeeping, and a pair of topical epitaphs to be shown to Sir Richard Brooke. Royal Berkshire Archives D/EN/F6/1/15 therefore places Dudley, Eton, Neville, and Brooke in one signed manuscript witness. It is later corroboration of the relationship and setting, not proof that Dudley was at Eton on 8 October 1606. RBA parent catalogue; January 1609 CSPD context.

Why the future bishop is less likely

George Carleton's relationship with Henry Neville was substantial: Neville was recorded as patron at George's Mayfield institution in 1589, George addressed Heroici characteres to Neville in 1603, and John Chamber's 1604 will connected George with an Eton fellow and a proposed anti-astrology publication. Those facts make George a possible member of the wider circle, but they do not place him at Eton in October 1606.

George left Mayfield in 1605 for the third portion of the rectory of Waddesdon, which his modern parliamentary biography lists as his principal residence from 1605 to 1609. No checked appointment, college record, or letter presently makes him an Eton fellow, officer, resident, or visitor in October 1606. His clearest personal Eton-family detail is later: his son Dudley was an Eton scholar by 1615. History of Parliament: George Carleton; *Alumni Oxonienses*, p. 238_volume_1.djvu/285).

Evidentiary verdict

Use the identification in book prose as:

Mr. Carlton—probably Dudley Carleton, then closely associated with Savile and independently documented at Eton later in the same season.

Do not print simply Dudley Carleton without probably, likely, or an equivalent qualification until an exact-date witness is found. The alternatives have not been eliminated absolutely: the printed letter supplies only the surname and title, and both George Carleton the bishop and Dudley's elder brother George Carleton were living.

5. Notes on Access and Interpretation

Relationship to Neville's venison letter

Macray prints this Savile letter immediately after Neville's undated [1606?] letter from Billingbear to Beaumont concerning a buck, a stag side, venison pasty, heat, a cook and keeper, Beaumont's health, and South Cave. The two letters together document a warm Beaumont connection with both Neville and Savile, but they must remain separate records:

Savile's exact date does not date Neville's venison letter merely because Macray placed them together.

4. Citations

W. D. Macray, ed., Beaumont Papers. Letters Relating to the Family of Beaumont, of Whitley, Yorkshire, from the Fifteenth to the Seventeenth Centuries (London: Nichols and Sons for the Roxburghe Club, 1884), pp. 14-15, Sir Henry Savile to Sir Richard Beaumont, Eton, 8 October 1606; Internet Archive scan. Printed from Bodleian MS. Add. C. 259, fol. 11, according to Macray's marginal locator.