Home / Topics / Sir Henry Savile junior and the blocked sale of Sonning, December 1608

Sir Henry Savile junior and the blocked sale of Sonning, December 1608

Primary Source With Public Controls Active deep research topic

The new identification

The letter of 24 December 1608 about the manor of Sonning is by Sir Henry Savile of Methley, conventionally called Sir Henry Savile junior, not by the celebrated scholar who was Warden of Merton and Provost of Eton. The manuscript signs only H: Savile, and its docket says from S^r H: Savile, so the distinction cannot be recovered from the signature alone. The exact Royal Berkshire Archives item record supplies it: “Letter to Sir Henry Neville from Sir Henry Savile, junior.” The hand and subscription also agree with the younger Savile's controlled letters of August 1613.

This matters because the two knighted Henry Saviles belonged to the same Neville network but performed different roles. The elder scholar was Neville's former travelling companion and a named executor of his will. The younger Savile was a kinsman and political intelligence correspondent who repeatedly helped Neville with Sonning and Crown-land business.

Complete image-controlled text

Savile writes:

S^r. I thanke you for y^r kyndnes in sendinge to see me, w^ch

I shalbe willinge to requyte w^th the rest of y^r favoures

when I may be soe happie to have the offer of any good

occasion. In the meane tyme for the mannor of Sonning

I have spoke w^th M^r Chancelo^r who hath perused his bookes

and assures me y^t there ys noe intention to make sale

of y^t mann^r, for y^t y^t ys parte of the late morgaged

lands, all w^ch are newly put into the entayle as the

kinges best lands, & other lands taken out y^t may be

more convenyently departed w^th for his Ma:^ties profit.

Thus have I thought fitt to satisfie you for

this busynes, desyringe my service may be recommended

to my Lady Nevill, as y^t shalbe ever commaunded by

y^r selfe, by whom I rest ever to be disposed.

It is signed and dated:

Strand this 24^th

of Decemb^r 1608.

H: Savile

The address reads:

To my Honorable

Cosen S^r Henry

Nevill K^t at his

house at Billingbeare

The transcription corrects two inherited details: the manuscript has I have spoke, not I have spoken, and his Ma:ties profit is directly visible rather than editorially supplied.

A four-document Sonning sequence

The letter becomes much more important when placed in its exact archival sequence. Four adjacent catalogue items reconstruct the changing Sonning policy from July to December 1608.

DateRBA itemEvent
29 July 1608D/EN/O12/46Sir Julius Caesar sends Neville the surveys of Sonning and Bray and asks him to obtain tenant offers.
24 September 1608D/EN/O12/47Neville returns the surveys, reports defects in the Sonning valuation, promises to increase the King's profit, and asks that his agent negotiate for a Sonning lease.
8 December 1608D/EN/O12/48Robert Wright warns that Sonning is “wholly, instantly intended to be sold,” thinks Neville may obtain “the refusall,” and orders him to “take no notice of ought from me.” Neville's endorsed draft calls him the King's steward of Sonning and offers service in the transaction.
24 December 1608D/EN/O12/49Savile reports that the Chancellor has checked his books and that Sonning will not be sold because the mortgaged lands have been put into the royal entail.

The public controls are:

This chronology shows that Neville was simultaneously the Crown's local steward, an evaluator expected to improve royal revenue, and a prospective beneficiary of a small lease or larger disposal. The roles could coexist, but they must remain analytically separate. The archive records Neville promising to maximize the King's return even while asking for preference on terms as favorable as another bidder would offer.

The July and September letters can now be placed against the Exchequer's printed May 1608 Directions for Commissioners, with the Steward of each Mannour. Resolved by Salisbury, Julius Caesar, Laurence Tanfield, and the Exchequer barons, it orders commissioners and manor stewards to investigate copyholds' quantitie, qualitie, and true yeerely value, assess fines, advance the King's profit, and certify proceedings to the Lord Treasurer after every court. This explains why Caesar sent Neville the surveys, required tenant offers and prior reporting, and why Neville answered in terms of copyhold valuation, a faulty survey, a better royal value, and a trust reposed in him.

“Mr Chancellor”: Julius Caesar, not the Lord Chancellor

The RBA title for the December letter expands M^r Chancelo^r as the Lord Chancellor. The surrounding items make Sir Julius Caesar, Chancellor of the Exchequer, the better identification.

Caesar is the named official who sent Neville the same two surveys in July and received them back in September. Savile's report that the Chancellor had “perused his bookes” concerns precisely the Crown-land records managed through that office. The official historical list dates Caesar's chancellorship of the Exchequer to 1606–14, and the British Library describes his Jacobean papers as substantially concerned with Crown lands.

The identification is therefore a documented inference from office, subject, and the exact archive sequence. The manuscript itself gives only Mr Chancellor, so the inference should remain explicit rather than being disguised as expanded text.

What “the kinges best lands” means here

Savile explains the negative decision through asset classification. Sonning was not rejected as unprofitable. It was unavailable because it belonged to the late mortgaged lands, those lands had been put into an entail, and they were treated as the King's best lands. Other property was being removed from the protected block because it could be more convenyently departed with for royal profit.

The letter therefore supplies a compact hierarchy:

  1. mortgaged Crown lands;
  2. the protected royal entail containing the best lands;
  3. other lands selected for alienation;
  4. royal profit as the governing purpose of the sale programme.

This also explains the apparent reversal within December. Robert Wright heard that the manor might be sold. Neville immediately offered his steward's knowledge and service. Savile then checked the responsible official's books and returned the answer that the asset was outside the saleable pool.

The newly controlled Wright packet makes that reversal more precise. Wright did not simply report a public rumour. He expected that Neville might obtain the prior refusal before returning and explicitly told him to conceal Wright as the source: take no notice of ought from me. Wright was also more than a local vicar. His 1596 Oxford Funebria for Sir Henry Unton says that he had followed the ambassador across the seas to the French camps, had placed himself under Unton's patronage, and had organized the Oxford contributors' writings for the press. The December sequence therefore joins a confidential informant with prior ambassadorial-entourage experience to Savile's records-based inquiry and Neville's Crown stewardship.

An editorial note in the nineteenth-century edition of Bacon's works identifies Sir Julius Caesar as Mr Chancellor in a related Crown-land context and describes contractors for property “not comprised in his Majesty's entail.” That is not a transcript of the Sonning letter, but it independently confirms the administrative vocabulary and Caesar's role in the same period.

1608 and 1613: a persistent acquisition effort

The younger Savile returned to Sonning in August 1613. By then he believed that a changed programme of Crown-land sales might create opportunitie for Sonninge, provided that the manor did not lie too near Windsor. The two letters reveal a five-year effort shaped by changing exclusions:

Savile's function also becomes clearer across the pair. He was not merely passing gossip. In 1608 he obtained a records-based decision from Caesar. In 1613 he reported the Chancellor's movements, contractor allocations, parcel sales, purchase multiples, and comparable transactions. Neville's access to Crown-land policy depended in part on this younger kinsman's fast administrative intelligence.

Later history and research routes

The later ownership sequence must be stated in stages. The Victoria County History says that Sonning remained in the Crown until James I granted it to Prince Henry in 1610; after Henry's death it was granted to Prince Charles in 1616; and Charles I privately granted it to Laurence Halstead and Abraham Chamberlain in 1628, reserving East Park and Holme Park. It is therefore correct to say that Crown tenure ended in 1610 and that private alienation did not occur until 1628. The eventual history confirms that Neville's contemplated 1608 purchase did not proceed, but it does not prove that the legal entail remained unchanged for twenty years.

The most valuable next retrieval is the legal and accounting dossier behind Savile's compressed phrase. Caesar's surviving papers should be searched for the Sonning and Bray surveys, mortgage schedule, entail, lists of lands removed for sale, and the December decision. The British Library's catalogue points especially to Caesar's Crown-land papers; the RBA sequence supplies the names, dates, and phrases needed to search them.

Sources