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Henry Savile's Rerum Anglicarum Scriptores (1596)

Mixed Ready evidence packet

Topic: Henry Savile's Rerum Anglicarum Scriptores (1596)

Source-Control Summary

Overview

Savile’s Rerum Anglicarum scriptores post Bedam should be treated as a substantial historical-scholarship packet in its own right, not merely as a footnote to Jonson’s later library. The strongest current evidence shows that the book was an important editorial milestone, that it circulated among contemporaries in the 1590s, and that modern scholarship places it at the center of politics, patronage, and medieval historical scholarship in late Elizabethan England.

Direct 1596 Printed Witnesses

Google Books / Bavarian State Library full scan

Google Books volume QUlhAAAAcAAJ is a full-view, downloadable, public-domain scan of the 1596 Barker edition. Google identifies the original as the Bavarian State Library copy, digitized on 11 March 2015, and describes the volume as 1,040 pages; the downloaded PDF contains 1,113 access pages including covers and blanks.

The title page reads:

RERVM ANGLICARVM SCRIPTORES POST BEDAM PRAECIPVI, EX VETVSTISSIMIS CODICIBVS MANVSCRIPTIS NVNC PRIMVM IN LVCEM EDITI.

It lists the contents directly:

WILLIELMI Monachi Malmesburiensis de gestis regum Anglorum lib. V.

Eiusdem Historiæ Nouellæ lib. II.

Eiusdem de gestis Pontificum Angl. lib. IIII.

HENRICI Archidiaconi Huntindoniensis Historiarum lib. VIII.

ROGERI HOVEDENI Annalium pars prior & posterior.

Chronicorum ETHELWERDI lib. IIII.

INGVLPHI Abbatis Croylandensis historiarum lib. I.

The imprint is:

LONDINI, Excudebant G. BISHOP, R. NVBERIE, & R. BARKER Typographi Regij Deputati. Anno ab incarnatione, 1596.

The dedication begins SERENISSIMAE POTENTISSIMAEQVE Principi ELIZABETHE, Angliæ, Franciæ, & Hiberniæ Reginæ and ends with Savile's printed signature:

Serenissimae Ma. tuae deuotissimus

HENRICVS SAVILE.

Checked local witnesses:

CRRS copy with a Sidney ownership inscription

The Centre for Renaissance and Reformation Studies catalogues its copy as DA170 .R47 1596, STC 21783, folio, [2], 520, [30] leaves. Its title page bears the ownership inscription Sydney 1597. CRRS attributes the copy to Sir Robert Sidney. Separately, CRRS cites Rowland Whyte's November 1596 household account:

for Mr Saviles storie of England for your Lordship

The account records a payment of 13s 6d. It is an external household record, not a purchase note written in or bound with the CRRS volume. CRRS uses the title-page inscription, this separate account, and the book's appearance in the Sidney family library catalogue of about 1665 when reconstructing the copy's provenance. This copy therefore joins the Billingbear, Audley End, and Jonson copy lanes with a fourth contemporary ownership history.

CRRS also notes that the printed Chronicle of Æthelweard became the only surviving text after the manuscript witness was destroyed in the 1731 Cotton Library fire. That fact helps explain why Savile's volume is both a late Elizabethan political-book-history object and a surviving textual witness of lasting medieval-historical importance.

CRRS copy title page bearing the Sydney 1597 inscription
CRRS copy title page bearing the Sydney 1597 inscription

The CRRS image and the BSB scan display the same title-page setting while preserving different copy histories: the CRRS page bears the Sydney 1597 inscription; the BSB page bears a later Augsburg institutional stamp. They should not be treated as the same physical book.

Quoted Source Passages

1. Publication and Sidney-Circle Circulation

"five medieval historians"

"Mr Saviles storie of England"

2. Billingbear Book-List Control

"Rerum Anglicarum Scriptores _____ Lond. 1596"

3. Audley End Copy-Search Lead

"ID Number: 88072699"

"Title: Rerum Anglicarum Sciptores"

"FR/19 Library, Case S, Shelf 10"

4. Jonson Afterlife Control

"SAVILE, Sir Henry. Rerum Anglicarum Scriptores"

"Jonson's copy: Two copies"

1. Verified Sourced Facts

A. Publication and circulation

“In 1596, Henry Savile (1549-1622) published an edition of five medieval historians, mainly writers of the twelfth century, under the title Rerum Anglicarum scriptores post Bedam”

“in November 1596, Rowland Whyte bought a copy of ‘Mr Saviles storie of England’”

“in 1601 Marnius and Aubri brought out Savile’s Scriptores in a new edition under their Pegasus”

B. Billingbear and Audley End copy evidence

“Rerum Anglicarum Scriptores _____ Lond. 1596”

C. Editorial significance

“Savile’s volume was, however, a decisive turning point in this long tradition.”

“Savile’s is therefore the first substantially complete edition of William’s histories in print.”

“Savile’s edition is its only surviving witness.”

D. Political and patronage setting

“needs to be situated at the centre of Elizabethan politics and patronage in the 1590s.”

“the nexus of politics and patronage from which the book emerged.”

E. Later afterlife in Jonson’s library

“Rerum Anglicarum Scriptores, ed. Sir Henry Savile (No. 161)”

This is a later afterlife point, but it should remain secondary to the book’s original 1596 significance.

2. Ken Feinstein Twitter and Blog Information

3. Quoted Source Text

Roebuck / Accepted Manuscript

Billingbear Book List

Audley End pre-1616 books list

Direct PNG inspection

Roebuck

McPherson

Direct 1596 title and dedication

4. Citations

5. Notes on Access

Additional Fact-Source Notes

2026-07-15 Newbery creditor lead

RBA D/EN/F6/1/5 now supplies a possible direct financial connection between Neville and one of this book's publishers. The image-controlled line reads:

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

The full schedule is unsigned; first-person wording and custody in Neville's file make him the probable debtor, but the hand is not authenticated. The title page of Rerum Anglicarum independently names R. NVBERIE beside George Bishop and Robert Barker. Ralph Newbery was master of the Stationers' Company in 1598 and also had Berkshire connections. Exact name, date, book-trade prominence, and locality make him a serious candidate for the creditor.

The identification remains unproved. The schedule does not call Newbery a printer, and no £100 principal, £102 10s repayment, August 1598 bond, receipt, or account has yet been found. The numerical form suggests a £100 base plus £2 10s, potentially 2.5%, but the leaf never labels principal or interest.

If an underlying instrument confirms the publisher, the result would matter beyond generic acquaintance. It would establish a personal credit transaction between Neville and a publisher of Savile's major 1596 historical edition and the 1587 Holinshed. Until then, the correct formulation is publisher candidate, not Neville's printer-creditor. The complete analysis is in henry neville bonds due creditor schedule 1598 1599.

2026-07-14 Dedication Deep Dive: A Deliberate Historical Source Reservoir

The opening dedication does more than praise Elizabeth. Savile explains what kind of book he believed he was making. After criticizing Polydore Vergil and popular chroniclers, he says that he could not himself construct a complete history from its foundations, but did what he could:

feci tamen, quod potui, non inuitus, vt ex situ, & squalore, pulueréque eruerem, & in lucem primus emitterem vetustissimos rerum nostrarum authores ... eo consilio, vt alij, qui & otio abundarent & ingenio, hos quasi ad manum haberent rerum nostrarum commentarios, unde sumerent, quae ad tanti operis exaedificationem pertinerent.

A close working translation is:

Yet I did what I could, willingly: I drew the most ancient authors of our affairs out of neglect, squalor, and dust, and first sent them into the light ... with this purpose, that others who possessed leisure and ability might have, as it were ready to hand, these records of our affairs, from which they could take what belonged to the construction of so great a work.

The direct scan places this passage on PDF access page 8, in the dedication to Elizabeth. Its wording makes the collection explicitly instrumental: Savile is publishing ancient historians so later writers can have historical materials ready to hand and build a larger work from them.

That editorial purpose materially sharpens the Billingbear topic. A catalogue entry for Rerum Anglicarum is not just evidence of a learned Latin history volume. It points to a deliberately assembled quarry of medieval English narratives—William of Malmesbury, Henry of Huntingdon, Roger of Hoveden, Æthelweard, Ingulph, and others—published for reuse by readers with the leisure and ability to construct historical works.

No direct Shakespeare source claim follows from this statement. The new finding establishes Savile's own declared use-case for the volume and gives future play-source work a precise question: which historical episodes in the Folger histories can be traced to texts or readings distinctive to Savile's 1596 editorial collection?

Direct witness

Next research program

  1. Create an episode index for John, Henry III, Edward I, and the fifteenth-century material represented in the volume.
  2. Compare Savile's Latin readings with Holinshed and the Folger history plays, recording cases where Savile supplies facts absent from the English chronicle.
  3. Keep the Billingbear, Audley End, Sidney, and Jonson copies separate until object-level provenance joins them.