Robert Sidney, Henry Neville, and Henry Savile

Topic: Robert Sidney, Henry Neville, and Henry Savile

Overview

This packet is now the shared travel-and-companionship packet for Robert Sidney, Henry Neville, and Henry Savile. Its job is narrower than robert_sidney.md: it preserves the direct continental company evidence, the tutor-companion framing around Savile, and the importance of Robert Sidney as the figure through whom the Neville/Savile continental witness cluster is most clearly documented.

1. Verified Sourced Facts

A. Continental travel and companionship

• Robert Shephard and Noel J. Kinnamon write of Robert Sidney’s continental tour that Sir Henry Sidney was glad Robert had:

“fallen into consort and fellowship with Sir Harry Neville’s son and heir, and one Master Savile”

• The same article identifies Master Savile as:

“Henry—later Sir Henry Savile”

• The same article states that in his 28 October 1580 letter Sir Henry Sidney:

“strongly implied that Robert and Henry Neville the younger had met each other”

• The same article quotes Sir Henry Sidney as writing:

“There can be no greater love than of long time hath been, and yet is, between Sir Harry Neville and me, and so will continue till our lives end.”

• The same article states that Philip Sidney sent greetings to:

“Master Neville, Master Savile, and honest Harry Whyte”

• Jan Waszink independently reconstructs Savile’s continental tour and states:

“His travel companions included Robert Sidney (Philip’s brother), the astronomer George Carew and one of his own pupils, the future obnoxious diplomat Henry Neville.”

Taken together with the Sidney-family letters, this gives strong support not just for companionship but for the older description of Savile as Neville’s tutor on the continent.

• Mark Greengrass's ODNB entry for Henry Neville separately states that Henry Savile was Neville's tutor and that Neville and Savile went on a continental tour in 1578, spending at least part of the journey with Philip Sidney and visiting Padua, Venice, and Prague.
• Source-hardening caution: Shephard and Kinnamon explicitly note that the ODNB article on Henry Neville "erroneously states that he traveled with Philip rather than Robert Sidney." The packet should therefore treat Greengrass as useful for the Savile-as-tutor claim and itinerary summary, but should prefer the Sidney correspondence article for identifying the Sidney companion as Robert Sidney.

• Robert B. Todd places Henry Savile in September 1580 at Nuremberg in company with George Carew, Henry Neville, and Robert Sidney. This gives the shared travel packet a second direct continental setting beyond the more general Waszink reconstruction.

• Waszink further places that company on the continent in:
• Paris
• Altdorf
• Breslau
• Prague
• Vienna
• Padua
• Venice
• Rome

B. Why Robert Sidney matters inside this shared packet

• Robert Sidney is the named figure through whom the Neville/Savile companionship evidence is preserved. The packet therefore keeps its center on him as the documentary anchor of the continental-travel cluster.

• Robert Sidney's separate literary and Tacitean importance is now tracked in robert_sidney.md, so this shared packet no longer has to double as the main Robert Sidney packet.

2. Ken Feinstein Twitter and Blog Information

• The key Feinstein use of this cluster is still as a bridge into the wider Sidney/Herbert/Neville network.

• The stronger Robert Sidney tweet-layer items that go beyond travel itself, including the 1615 death-letter image witness, are now preserved centrally in robert_sidney.md rather than duplicated in full here.

3. Quoted Source Text

Shephard and Kinnamon

• “fallen into consort and fellowship with Sir Harry Neville’s son and heir, and one Master Savile”
• “Henry—later Sir Henry Savile”
• “strongly implied that Robert and Henry Neville the younger had met each other”
• “There can be no greater love than of long time hath been, and yet is, between Sir Harry Neville and me”
• “Master Neville, Master Savile, and honest Harry Whyte”

Waszink

• “His travel companions included ... Henry Neville.”
• “His tutor was Henry Saville”
• “They both went on a continental tour in 1578”

4. Citations

• Shephard, Robert, and Noel J. Kinnamon. “The Sidney Family Correspondence during Robert Sidney’s Continental Tour, 1579-1581.” Local PDF: sidney_family_correspondence.pdf.
• Sidney_Family_Correspondence_Continental_Tour_1579.pdf, canonical local copy of the same article.
• Waszink, Jan. “Henry Savile’s Tacitus and the English role on the Continent: Leicester, Hotman, Lipsius.” Local PDF: Waszink_Savile_Tacitus_Continental_2016.pdf.
• Greengrass, Mark. “Neville, Sir Henry (1561/2–1615).” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Staged PDF: Greengrass-HenryNeville-ODNB-2014.pdf.
• Todd, Robert B. “Henry and Thomas Savile in Italy.” Bibliothèque d'Humanisme et Renaissance, vol. 58, no. 2, 1996, pp. 439-444. Staged PDF: Todd-HenryAndThomasSavileInItaly-1996.pdf.
• robert_sidney.md, the dedicated Robert Sidney packet for poetry, Tacitus, and the 1615 death-letter witness.
• henry_savile.md

5. Notes on Access

• The strongest result remains simple and valuable: Savile and Neville appear together in direct Sidney-family travel evidence, and Waszink’s reconstruction independently supports that broader continental setting.
• The Waszink and Greengrass wording matters because it makes the tutor relation explicit where the Sidney letters mainly make the companionship relation explicit.
• The Sidney correspondence PDF is the cleaner witness for the Robert Sidney point. Greengrass is a strong ODNB source, but its "Philip Sidney" wording should be cited only with the Shephard/Kinnamon correction attached.
• Todd is especially useful because it gives a concrete 1580 Nuremberg setting for Savile, Neville, Robert Sidney, and George Carew.
• This packet is intentionally narrower now. Robert Sidney’s poetry, Tacitus annotations, and post-1615 death-letter witness are all kept in robert_sidney.md so the shared packet can stay focused on the travel-and-company evidence.
• The earlier four-generation downstream summary was too broad for the core evidence here and remains out of the main packet body.