Thomas Smythe, Henry Neville, and One Hundred Loads of East India Company Ship Timber, 1609
Thomas Smythe and the East India Company timber letter, 1609
Central finding
On 10 August 1609 Thomas Smythe wrote to Sir Henry Neville at Billingbear about a completed East India Company timber transaction. The Company could not find the writing in which Neville had covenanted to deliver one hundred loads, but asked Smythe to acknowledge that the timber had been delivered “to their very good likinge.” It also wanted as much timber again, if Neville could spare it, for finishing its ships.
This is direct supply evidence. It establishes successful performance of an earlier covenant, satisfaction with the timber, a proposed repeat order, and Smythe's role as intermediary. It does not name a ship, wood, transport route, unit price, or source estate, and it does not prove that Neville was already a formal Company member in 1609.
Physical and archival control
The letter and its address leaf form the D/EN/F6/1/16 item within Royal Berkshire Archives' file of miscellaneous Sir Henry Neville correspondence. The public parent catalogue explicitly includes letters from Sir Thomas Smith concerning the sale of timber to the East India Company.
Both faces were freshly inspected at original resolution. The recto ends London this 10 of August 1609 and is signed Tho: Smythe; the contemporary docket independently repeats Smith, 10 August 1609, and one hundred loads of timber. The address directs the letter to Sir Henry Neville at Billingbear. The year is therefore written twice and is not an inferred date.
Controlled transcription
The East india Company cannot as yet finde
the wrighting wherein you Covenanted
to deliver them 100 loode of Timber
but desyred me to acknolege in their
behalfe that the same is performed
to their very good likinge
Smythe then gives the new request:
They do also desyre you to let them
have as muche more timber towardes
the finishinge of their shipes, if
you canne spare the same, for w^ch
they will pay as they did for the
former
The lost wrighting and the promised return of Neville's note indicate that the deal had generated a documentary instrument beyond this surviving letter. The language of covenant, acknowledgement, prior payment terms, and a request for an answer by the bearer shows a transaction moving from completed first performance to proposed renewal.
Household and relationship language
Smythe thanks Neville and my Lady for his kind entertainment, remembers his love to them both, and addresses Neville as his honourable friend and cousin. Those formulas place the commercial request inside a relationship that was also social and familial in idiom. They do not, by themselves, identify the precise genealogical degree of cousinship.
A newly inspected State Papers letter adds a separate social relationship before the August timber business. On 26 May 1609 Dudley Carleton asked Sir Thomas Smythe to join Sir Henry Neville as godfather to Carleton's newborn child, saying that Neville had long since bespake himself: SP 14/45 f.114, Gale `MC4323587527`, CSPD p. 515. This places Smythe and Neville together in anticipated baptismal sponsorship within Carleton's household. It does not prove that the ceremony occurred as planned. Because Henry Neville III had been knighted shortly before the letter, the elder ambassador is the leading contextual identification rather than an unqualified certainty until the full manuscript is diplomatically collated.
The later Company chronology
The 1609 timber letter must be kept distinct from Neville's later formal Company record. The East India Company calendar for 31 March 1614 records his admission as a worthy gentleman who might perform useful offices for the Company. The calendar for 19 May 1614 records half of his £800 joint-stock adventure being transferred to Sir James Stonehouse.
Together, the records show two different stages: a practical supplier relationship in 1609, followed by documented admission and investment in 1614. The later minutes cannot be backdated to make the 1609 letter a membership record; conversely, the 1609 letter shows that Neville's Company relationship did not begin with the surviving admission minute.
What the letter contributes
- It gives a precise, independently repeated date for a Neville–Company timber
- It documents one hundred loads already delivered and accepted.
- It records a request for up to the same quantity again for ship finishing.
- It preserves the contractual vocabulary of covenant, note, performance,
- It links Billingbear's timber economy to maritime construction without naming
transaction.
acknowledgement, payment, and reply by bearer.
the woods, yard, carrier, price, or vessels.
Research programme
- Search the East India Company court books and accounts around August 1609
- Test Company shipbuilding records for a two-hundred-load procurement and
- Search Neville estate accounts for felling, cartage, river carriage,
- Compare the timber's unit and price language with contemporary Company
for Smythe, Neville, timber, ship finishing, and a missing covenant or note.
identify candidate vessels without assuming that every ship then fitting out used Neville's timber.
measurement, and payment.
contracts before converting loode into a modern volume.
Sources
- Royal Berkshire Archives, `D/EN/F6/1`, miscellaneous correspondence of Sir Henry Neville, including Sir Thomas Smith on East India Company timber.
- East India Company court minutes, 31 March 1614, calendaring Neville's admission.
- East India Company court minutes, 19 May 1614, calendaring Neville's £800 adventure and transfer.