Neville to Richard Beaumont (1606?)

Topic: Neville to Richard Beaumont (1606?)

1. Verified Sourced Facts

• Manuscript-location update, 2026-07-12: the Bodleian catalogue identifies the collection printed by Macray as MS. Add. C. 259, Summary Catalogue vol. V, no. 28798, “Letters and papers relating to the Beaumont family, of Whitley in Yorkshire.” It contains 160 leaves and is held at the Weston Library.

• The Bodleian catalogue records four letters from Sir Henry Savile at fols. 8, 9, 11, and 16. Macray's printed margin explicitly assigns Neville's letter to manuscript fol. 120; the earlier inference that it might lie around fols. 9v-11r was wrong and is superseded.

• The catalogue says the papers were injured by damp and neglect and in parts mutilated. It also records that Macray rediscovered them in 1881 rolled in a dirty parcel in a small box or drawer, after which they were repaired and bound. Manuscript inspection may therefore reveal damage, lost docketing, or binding-order issues relevant to the uncertain date.

• The controlling public witness located in this pass is the Roxburghe Club volume Beaumont Papers. Letters Relating to the Family of Beaumont, of Whitley, Yorkshire, from the Fifteenth to the Seventeenth Centuries, edited by Rev. W. D. Macray and printed by Nichols and Sons in 1884.
• The printed title page says the letters were edited "from the originals in the Bodleian Library"; the collection is Bodleian MS. Add. C. 259, and Macray assigns this letter to fol. 120.
• The printed letter is headed:

"Sir Henry Neville to the same."

"Noble Sir, [1606?]"

• The printed text occupies printed pp. 13-14 of the Beaumont volume. Archive.org's OCR text was checked directly on 2026-05-29.
• The letter is addressed to Sir Richard Beaumont at London and signed:

"Your faithfull frend, kinsman and servant"

"Hen: Neville."

"Billingbeare, Wensday night."

• The letter is not securely dated to 1606-01-01; that value in the local letter-image packet is a corpus placeholder for an uncertain 1606? printed date.
• The letter gives direct Neville-side venison, keeper, walk, and household-conveyance evidence:

"half a buck"

"none in my walk"

"a pasty of venison"

"the side of a stag"

"my cooke and keeper"

"the coole conveyance"

• The same letter turns from venison to estate/legal agency over the deed of S[outh] Cave, asking Beaumont to sell the property outright if he can meet with a suitable price or purchaser.
• The local letter-image packet preserves two Archive.org page images for the printed witness: page-image leaf n52 for printed p. 13 and leaf n53 for printed p. 14.
• The direct play packet for Merry Wives of Windsor independently verifies the Folger text lines in 1.1 around venison and a hot venison pasty. The Beaumont letter is therefore useful as parallel Neville household material, not as proof of borrowing or authorship.

2. Ken Feinstein Twitter and Blog Information

• The preserved Ken Feinstein blog post of 22 Jan. 2019 pairs the venison passage in this letter with Merry Wives of Windsor 1.1.
• That comparison remains an interpretive layer. This packet now separates the direct Beaumont printed witness from the blog argument.

3. Quoted Source Text

Beaumont Papers printed witness

• "Noble Sir, [1606?]"
• "half a buck"
• "none in my walk"
• "a pasty of venison"
• "the side of a stag"
• "my cooke and keeper"
• "the coole conveyance"
• "the deede of S[outh] Cave"
• "Your faithfull frend, kinsman and servant"
• "Billingbeare, Wensday night."
• "Sir Richard Beaumont, knight, at London."

Merry Wives comparison layer

• Merry Wives 1.1: "I thank you for my venison"
• Merry Wives 1.1: "we have a hot venison pasty to dinner."

4. Citations

• Bodleian Libraries, “Letters and papers relating to the Beaumont family, of Whitley in Yorkshire”, MS. Add. C. 259, Summary Catalogue no. 28798.

• Macray, W. D., ed. Beaumont Papers. Letters Relating to the Family of Beaumont, of Whitley, Yorkshire, from the Fifteenth to the Seventeenth Centuries. London: Nichols and Sons, 1884, printed pp. 13-14. Archive.org witness: https://archive.org/details/beaumontpapersle00roxb/page/12.
• Archive.org OCR text checked directly from beaumontpapersle00roxb djvu on 2026-05-29; extracted passage begins "Sir Henry Neville to the same" and continues across printed pp. 13-14.
• letter beaumont 1606, local letter-image packet with Archive.org page-image leaves n52 and n53.
• Local Archive.org page image for printed p. 13: beaumontpapersle00roxb_page_13_leaf_n52.jpg.
• Local Archive.org page image for printed p. 14: beaumontpapersle00roxb_page_14_leaf_n53.jpg.
• "Neville to Richard Beaumont 1606." Henry Neville Research Wiki, http://nevilleresearch.com/index.php?title=Neville_to_Richard_Beaumont_1606. Local preservation: wiki beaumont letter 1606.
• Feinstein, Ken. "Henry Neville, Shakespeare, and Merry Wives of Windsor." kenfeinstein.blogspot.com, 22 Jan. 2019, https://kenfeinstein.blogspot.com/2019/01/reason-1-henry-neville-lived-most-of.html. Local preservation: blog henry neville shakespeare merry wives 2019 01 22.
• Shakespeare, William. The Merry Wives of Windsor, 1.1, Folger Shakespeare Library local text: act 01 scene 01.
• play merry wives of windsor, related play packet.
• hunting hawking parliamentary evidence and canon vocabulary, related hunting vocabulary and evidence packet.

5. Notes on Access

• This packet is no longer dependent on the wiki page for the core letter text; the printed Beaumont Papers witness has been checked directly.
• The printed witness is strong enough for household-hunting, venison, keeper, and South Cave agency context, but it remains a printed edition rather than the manuscript itself.
• Do not cite the local 1606-01-01 corpus date as an exact date. Use 1606? unless a manuscript or calendar source supplies a firmer date.
• The Merry Wives comparison should be phrased as a local-material parallel: Neville's household letter shows the same social world of venison gifts and venison pasty, while the play text must remain its own direct witness.

• The exact manuscript shelfmark and editor-supplied folio are no longer open: request Bodleian MS. Add. C. 259, fol. 120. Macray's editorial placement beside a Savile letter does not establish physical adjacency in the manuscript.

2026-07-13 Deep Research Update: Folio, Full Letter, and the South Cave Sequence

The printed folio locator resolves the retrieval problem

Fresh inspection of Macray's page images shows the marginal locator [1606?] fol. 120 beside the heading “Sir Henry Neville to the same.” The correct manuscript-image request is therefore MS. Add. C. 259, fol. 120, not the previously inferred fols. 9v-11r. Macray prints the next Sir Henry Savile letter as fol. 11, showing that his book is chronologically or thematically arranged rather than a transcript of manuscript binding order.

Full printed text, checked on pp. 13-14

Noble Sir, [1606?]

I am very sorry that it lies not in my power to send you half a buck; my keepers tell me that there is none in my walk; sure I am that I have not seene a pasty of venison of this yeere. I did adventure to send you the side of a stag which I thought might serve your turne as well if it came sweet to you, which the heate of the weather made me fearfull of. But my cooke and keeper were confident, and I caused them to take the best order for the coole conveyance of it. My lawyer failed in the instructions I gave him about the deede of S[outh] Cave. My purpose was to give you power to sell it outright, which I intreat you still to doe if you can meet with any price or purchaser that you shall think fit; I will avow any act herein done by you. Thus, with many excuses for my boldness in thus farre troubling you and many thanks for your care of it, I end, assuring you that none living doth more earnestly desire the recovery and continuance of your health then

Your faithfull frend, kinsman and servant,

Hen: Neville.

Billingbeare, Wensday night.

This is a transcription of Macray's printed edition, not of the manuscript. The original remains uninspected.

The adjacent Savile letter documents a shared country household circle

Macray's next item is Sir Henry Savile to Beaumont, 8 October 1606, manuscript fol. 11. Savile asks Beaumont to:

“leave London for a while and come and live with Sir H. Nevill and mee in the countree.”

He adds:

“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.”

This directly places Neville, Savile, and a Mr. Carlton together in a country recreation and convalescence setting. The edition alone does not identify the house or prove that Carlton is Dudley Carleton, so both questions remain open.

Fol. 122 creates a new dating and estate-history lead

Two manuscript folios after Neville's letter, Macray prints a [1606?] letter from William Neville to Beaumont (fol. 122). It reports that “the mannour of Southcaue” was so entailed that the daughters were excluded, that Beaumont's trust was extinguished, and that the rent passed to the Lord Steward or his assigns under a royal wardship. The letter asks Beaumont to continue managing South Cave and says this would show affection “to your dead frende.” This is not proof of the precise date or of William Neville's identity, but it supplies a tightly bounded research path: identify the deceased friend and wardship, then date Henry Neville's attempted sale before that legal change.

Folger-controlled play comparison

The material parallel should remain precisely stated. In Folger The Merry Wives of Windsor 1.1, Page says:

PAGE I am glad to see your Worships well. I thank you

for my venison, Master Shallow.

Later he invites the company:

PAGE Wife, bid these gentlemen welcome.--Come, we

have a hot venison pasty to dinner. Come, gentlemen,

I hope we shall drink down all unkindness.

Neville's letter documents an actual venison gift, a pasty, gamekeepers, a cook, heat, and conveyance in his household world. It does not establish that the letter was a source for the play.

Page images inspected in this pass: beaumont_neville_letter-073.png, beaumont_neville_letter-074.png, beaumont_adjacent-075.png, and beaumont_adjacent-076.png.