John Yonge's Hermits Field Bargain with Henry Neville: Acreage, Defeasance, Leaseback, and Warfield, 1595-1598

John Yonge's Hermits Field Bargain with Henry Neville, 1595-1598

Why This Memorandum Matters

Royal Berkshire Archives D/EN/F6/1/7 is a working memorandum of a land bargain between John Yonge, husbandman “of the poole” in Warfield, and Henry Neville of Billingbear. It is unusually informative because it records not merely a sale but the practical machinery around it: statutory acreage, a price per acre, a prior defeasance, staged payment, continued occupation at a peppercorn rent, reserved woods and timber rights, and a prohibition on ploughing.

The reverse identifies the object and date:

A note of the bargaine

w^th John Yonge 3

Decemb: 1598

That description is exact. The recto is heavily revised, lacks signatures and seals, and should be described as a draft memorandum rather than an executed agreement. All five photographs have now been checked at original resolution. IMG_8322 is the complete recto; IMG_8323-8325 are overlapping detail views, not duplicates; and IMG_8326 is the reverse.

The archive places the item within RBA `D/EN/F6/1`, “Miscellaneous correspondence, of Sir Henry Neville”. The public catalogue does not expose an item-level /7 description.

The Parties and the Four Closes

The memorandum begins:

Memorandum John Yonge of the poole in the parishe of

Warfelde in the Countie of Berks husbandman of

thone partie and Henry Nevell of Billingbere

in the said Countie Esquier of thother partie

Poole is a local address or holding within Warfield, but it has not yet been located on a contemporary map. The man's surname is consistently Yonge, not an expansion inferred from a catalogue. Neville is styled esquire, and the memorandum does not call him Sir Henry.

The land description supplies a compact topographical dossier:

all his freehold parcells of lande & pasture in

Warfelde aforesaid in the said countie nowe devided into fower

closes and called or knowen by the name of Hermits fylde

The four closes together were estimated at twelve acres, less a small already agreed exception. The draft says Yonge reported that the land had formerly borne another name, but that name is not securely legible and is therefore not printed here. Modern names such as Hermitage are only search leads and cannot identify the closes without a deed, survey, or estate map.

£12 Per Statutory Acre

The operative price clause is direct:

twelve poundes of

lawfull mony of England to be paied for every acre thereof

according to the measure according to the statute De terris

mensurandis

At the stated estimate of twelve acres, the provisional arithmetic is £144. But this was not a fixed £144 bargain: the wording prices “every acre” according to a specified measure, while the land itself is only “by estimacion twelve acres be it more or lesse.” A completed survey could therefore raise or lower the total.

The measure was not an obscure scholarly flourish. William Bedwell's 1636 English enlargement of Ramus prints the rule attributed to De terris mensurandis: three barley grains make an inch; twelve inches a foot; three feet a yard; five and a half yards a perch; and forty perches in length by four in breadth an acre. See *The Way to Geometry* and the Folger catalogue record for STC 15251. The reference in Neville's memorandum makes the legal measuring standard part of the purchase-price formula.

The 1595 Defeasance Behind the 1598 Sale

The payment section does not describe a simple cash completion. It directs Neville first to pay or discharge sums due to Yonge under:

one Indenture of defeasance

bearing date the xxvij^th day of Aprill in the xxxvij^th

yeare of the reigne of o^r Sovereign Lady Elizabeth

Elizabeth's thirty-seventh regnal year ran across 1594-95, so the date is 27 April 1595. The bargain of December 1598 was therefore reorganizing or clearing an obligation already at least three and a half years old. The balance was to be paid before the next Shrovetide.

This is a new research route. The missing 1595 defeasance may explain why the purchase money was divided, what security Yonge had given, whether another party had advanced money, and why the memorandum's margin refers to both John Yonge and “my lord.” It should be searched as a separate document rather than treated as a routine recital.

The £57 10s Margin and the Unnamed Lord

The left margin contains lvij^li x^s—£57 10s—and compressed wording that mentions payment to John Yonge and my lord. The complete syntax remains too uncertain to allocate the £57 10s conclusively or to say whether it was a payment already made, a sum payable by the lord, or a component of the money Neville had to discharge.

The photographs do not supply a personal name for the lord. The public reading therefore preserves my lord without expanding it.

There is nevertheless a strong historical reason to investigate the Norreys connection. The VCH history of Warfield says that Newenham or Warfield was held of the Bishop of Winchester by fealty and suit at Wargrave, that John Norreys held it before 1451, and that a 1542 settlement carried it to Henry Norreys, afterwards first Lord Norreys of Rycote. Its descent then disappears from the account until the early seventeenth century. This makes Norreys a focused archival hypothesis for “my lord,” not a reading present on the manuscript. The 1595 defeasance is the best route to resolving the identity.

Sale Followed by a Two-Year Leaseback

The most revealing feature is continued possession after assurance. The draft provides that Neville was:

to lett to the said Yonge the husbandman the said

land … for two yeares from

midsomer next to come under the yerely rent of

one pepper corne … but Yonge is not to plow

the said ground or any part thereof

The term is two years from Midsummer. One peppercorn is a nominal annual acknowledgement. John Norden's 1607 Surveyor's Dialogue, a book written for people dealing with manorial revenue and land occupation, groups “a rose, a pepper corne, a ielsoflower or some such trifle” as a “small acknowledgement.” See EEBO-TCP A08310.

The arrangement therefore separated ownership from short-term use. Yonge could remain as husbandman for two years without paying a commercial rent, while Neville obtained the title and reserved valuable incidents. The no-ploughing clause protected the land's existing pastoral condition. The draft also excepted the woods and reserved to Neville a liberty to fell trees.

What the Bargain Adds to the Warfield Sequence

The document moves Neville's directly documented Warfield administration back to 1598 and supplies a different category of evidence from the later dispute papers:

The sequence shows Neville acting not only as the inheritor of a manor complex but as a purchaser negotiating measurement, finance, occupation, timber, and husbandry in a named Warfield holding.

New Research Programme

1. Search the RBA D/EN estate series for the 27 April 1595 defeasance and any

engrossed conveyance following the 3 December 1598 memorandum.

2. Search Berkshire feet of fines, Common Pleas, Chancery, and manorial records

for John Yonge/Young, Poole/Pool, Hermits Field, and four closes in Warfield.

3. Compare the 1814 Warfield enclosure map and earlier estate surveys with the

four-close description; record modern Hermitage names only as leads until a historical label or boundary chain connects them.

4. Identify “my lord” through the 1595 defeasance, Norreys estate papers,

Warfield/Newenham title deeds, and payment bonds rather than by expanding the manuscript silently.

5. Locate a survey or completion account showing the final acreage, the total

purchase price, and the treatment of the excepted small parcel.

6. Search subsequent Neville timber and Warfield papers for Yonge's two-year

occupation, the reserved woods, felling, or enforcement of the no-ploughing covenant.

Sourced Facts and Claim Audit

• Images checked: IMG_8322-8326, all at original 3024 × 4032

resolution on 15 July 2026.

• Local transcription checked: the inherited Doc_22g text was compared

line by line; its unsupported readings are documented privately in the canonical record and excluded from this public topic.

• Non-AI archive control: RBA's live D/EN/F6/1 hierarchy.
• Non-AI printed controls: VCH/BHO Warfield; Ramus/Bedwell, *The Way to

Geometry (1636), STC 15251; Norden, The Surveyor's Dialogue* (1607), EEBO-TCP A08310.

• Unresolved: the older field-name; location of Poole and Hermits Field;

exact excepted parcel; revised portions of the payment clause; allocation of £57 10s; identity of “my lord”; the missing 1595 defeasance; the exact final £3 phrase; hand; survey; completion deed; and final price.

The complete controlled transcription and correction history are preserved in the project's canonical record for Royal Berkshire Archives D/EN/F6/1/7.

Quoted Source Passages

The manuscript quotations above are controlled directly from the five Royal Berkshire Archives photographs. The printed statutory-measure and peppercorn context is quoted only in short form from identified public editions.

Citations

• Royal Berkshire Archives, D/EN/F6/1/7, within [the D/EN/F6/1 parent

record](https://ww2.berkshirenclosure.org.uk/calmview/Record.aspx?src=CalmView.Catalog&id=DEN%2fF%2f6%2f1).

• [“Parishes: Warfield,” Victoria County History of Berkshire, volume

3](https://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/berks/vol3/pp184-191).

• Petrus Ramus, translated and enlarged by William Bedwell, [*The Way to

Geometry* (London, 1636)](https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/26752/pg26752-images.html), Folger catalogue record, STC 15251.

• John Norden, [The Surveyor's Dialogue (1607), EEBO-TCP

A08310](https://texts.earlyprint.org/works/A08310).

Notes on Access

RBA's public catalogue exposes the nineteen-document parent file but not a separate /7 page. The manuscript reading therefore depends on the project's five archive photographs, all inspected at full resolution. The BHO, Folger, Project Gutenberg, and EarlyPrint controls are public. The missing 1595 defeasance, final survey, and engrossed conveyance have not yet been located.