Wargrave Inhabitants, Robert Blythman, and Neville's Ecclesiastical Patronage

Topic: Wargrave Inhabitants, Robert Blythman, and Neville's Ecclesiastical Patronage

Source-Control Summary and Sourced Facts

Royal Berkshire Archives D/EN/F6/2/6 is a collective petition from nine inhabitants of Wargrave to Sir Henry Neville at Billingbear. It reports that their vicar, Robert Blythman, used sermons on two successive Sundays first to call his parishioners knaues and then to denounce a newly married woman as a bastardbearer common whore, and a strumpett. The petitioners say Blythman's public attack followed the woman's refusal of an unspecified vnlawfull action to which he had importuned her and her disclosure of what had happened.

The document is important because it records local people invoking Neville's ecclesiastical patronage in a concrete conflict. British History Online confirms that the advowson of Wargrave passed to the Neville family in 1564 and that Sir Henry Neville died seised of it in 1615. Herbert Reid's page-image-checked history of the Wargrave register identifies Blythman as vicar from 1576/7 until his burial on 26 August 1614, under the patronage of Sir Henry Neville. The petition therefore belongs to the practical history of Neville's local authority, not merely to the abstract history of his landed estate.

The advowson conferred the right to present a clerk when the living was vacant. It did not by itself give Neville a power to remove an instituted incumbent summarily. The petitioners consequently ask him to express his dislike of Blythman's conduct and to press for some satisfaction, rather than asking him to pronounce a formal ecclesiastical sentence.

Quoted Source Passages and Documentary Analysis

The petition begins with two successive sermons:

“The last saboath sauing one M^r Blithman in his sermon in expresse

termes called his parissioners knaues”

On the following Sunday, Blythman allegedly singled out a woman and said publicly that she was:

“a bastardbearer common whore, and a strumpett”

and:

“that shee had a bastard before shee was marryed”

The petitioners distinguish their own grievance from hers—for our selues, wee will answere as occasion shall serue—and then defend her standing in the parish. She was the daughter of an honest poore man one Siluer; she had behaved honestly, supported her aged parents by her own labour, and was newly married to a young man called Barnebe a carpenter:

“not onely in releeuing her aged parents by her labours, but in all her

other conuersation and carriage”

This is unusually specific evidence about a poor woman's economic and familial contribution. Her reputation is defended through work, care of elderly parents, conduct observed by neighbours, and marriage—not by elite status or wealth.

Refusal, Disclosure, and Retaliation

The decisive passage explains why the petitioners believed Blythman attacked her:

“this woman beeing one of them whoe haue bene importuned by M^r Blithman

to some vnlawfull action: vppon her denyall and making of it knowne”

The next actions are given in sequence. Blythman first sent for her husband and told him she had borne a bastard; he then preached the accusation publicly. The sequence supports a reading of retaliation following refusal and disclosure. An improper or sexual advance is the strongest contextual inference, but the document does not name the proposed act. The source should therefore continue to be quoted as some vnlawfull action, with the inference explained separately.

The statement that she was one of them whom Blythman had importuned may imply that the petitioners believed more than one person had experienced such conduct. That grammatical implication is worth investigating, but it does not identify any other woman or define what Blythman sought.

Damage to the Marriage

The petitioners describe the accusation as an intervention inside a recent marriage. Blythman first told the husband privately and then used the pulpit to give the charge public authority. They say the result was:

“a great discomfortt and discontentment and almost desperacion betweene

the woman and her husband”

This is more than a generalized claim of reputational injury. The petition depicts sexual slander as threatening the couple's domestic relationship almost to desperation. It also explains why the pulpit mattered: the charge was not merely village gossip but an accusation delivered by the parish's long-serving minister within a sermon.

Why the Petitioners Turned to Neville

The closing request is exact and restrained:

“lett M^r Blithman know Your dislike of such courses and to wish him to

make some satisfaction to the persons greeued”

They add that this is:

“all the course the poore people are able to take”

Early modern sexual defamation could be pursued in ecclesiastical courts, but the petitioners' wording emphasizes practical inability to take another course. It does not prove that no legal remedy existed. It shows that these parishioners regarded an appeal to Neville, the local magnate and patron of the living, as their available route to correction and satisfaction.

The requested remedy is also revealing. They do not demand money, deprivation, or criminal punishment. They ask Neville to disapprove of the conduct and persuade Blythman to repair the wrong. The document thus preserves patronage operating as informal mediation alongside, rather than identically with, formal ecclesiastical jurisdiction.

Robert Blythman

Herbert J. Reid's History of Wargrave prints evidence from the parish register that ties the petition's M^r Blithman to one identifiable incumbent:

• Robert Blitheman appears as vicar of Wargrave from 1576/7 to 1614, with Sir

Henry Neville named as patron.

• The register marks his first entry into the vicarage in 1577.
• His burial entry, 26 August 1614, says he had lived there as vicar for

thirty-seven years and six months.

• Reid reports that the same hand maintained the register from 1538 to 1614,

treating the earlier entries as a retrospective copy made under Blythman.

Joseph Foster's Alumni Oxonienses adds an institutional career. Robert Blythman took the Oxford B.A. on 5 March 1573/4, became vicar of Wargrave in 1576, rector of Harpsden in 1585, and a canon of Lichfield in 1597. The petition therefore concerns a long-established and multiply beneficed clergyman. That imbalance of office and standing helps explain why nine parishioners collectively appealed to the patron rather than leaving the newly married woman to answer the sermon alone.

Date and Archival Placement

The petition is undated. Its address to S^r Henry Neuill Knight places it after Neville's knighthood in 1597. Blythman's burial fixes the outer limit before 26 August 1614. The Royal Berkshire Archives catalogue dates the parent bundle D/EN/F6/2 approximately c.1600; that remains the best approximate date unless the marriage or another local record narrows it.

CALMView places the document under:

D/EN Neville and Aldworth family and estate papers → D/EN/F family papers → D/EN/F6 correspondence and memoranda of Sir Henry Neville, 1592–1615 → D/EN/F6/2, nine miscellaneous undated documents, c.1600 → physical item /6.

The public catalogue exposes the nine-document parent bundle rather than a separate item page. The manuscript's own modern shelfmark supplies /6. Its correct setting is therefore Neville's personal correspondence and memoranda, even though its subject is Wargrave parish government.

The Nine Petitioners

The subscriptions, including marks where used, are:

The presence of nine subscribers matters. This was not presented as an anonymous rumour or a private quarrel between Blythman and the woman. Named inhabitants put their own standing behind an account of her conduct and the sequence of retaliation. At least two probable probate matches are described as yeomen, suggesting that the petition may have recruited locally established householders to speak for poorer neighbours. That social reconstruction remains provisional until the wills and parish register are compared directly.

Research Programme

1. Search the Wargrave St Mary marriage register, RBA D/P145, between Neville's

1597 knighthood and Blythman's August 1614 death for a bride whose father was Silver and a groom recorded as Barnaby, carpenter. The RBA guide confirms that marriages survive from 1539 and that a transcript and index cover this period.

2. Search Berkshire archdeaconry and diocesan cause papers for defamation or

clerical discipline involving Blythman. Search terms must include Blithman, Blythman, Blitheman, Wargrave, Silver, Barnaby, and the nine subscribers.

3. Obtain the probate originals associated with Robert Allen senior (1615) and

Francis Wright (1625) and compare signatures. Their wills may also reconstruct occupation, kinship, neighbours, and links among the petitioners.

4. Search presentation and institution records for Blythman's appointment and any

later visitation presentments. His simultaneous Wargrave, Harpsden, and Lichfield positions deserve a separate chronology.

5. Search the remaining Neville memoranda for a response, apology, settlement, or

reference to satisfaction at Wargrave.

Citations

• Royal Berkshire Archives, D/EN/F6/2/6, Wargrave inhabitants to Sir Henry

Neville, undated, c.1600. The two primary images were inspected at original resolution and the body, subscriptions, address, and early docket were line-controlled on 14 July 2026. CALMView parent-bundle record.

• Herbert J. Reid, The History of Wargrave, Berks (1885), especially pp. 96 and

113–16. Google Books scan.

• Joseph Foster, Alumni Oxonienses, 1500–1714, vol. 1, p. 160.

Public page image and transcription_volume_1.djvu/184).

• P. H. Ditchfield and William Page, eds., “Parishes: Wargrave,” *Victoria

County History of Berkshire*, vol. 3 (1923), pp. 191–97. British History Online.

• Royal Berkshire Archives, Wargrave St Mary parish-register guide, D/P145.

Register coverage.

• Royal Berkshire Archives wills index: Robert Allen senior, Wargrave, yeoman,

1615, D/A1/36/040 and D/A1/15/512 (index page); Francis Wright, Wargrave, yeoman, 1625, D/A1/135/036 (index page).

Notes on Access

The Royal Berkshire Archives public catalogue exposes the parent D/EN/F6/2 bundle, not a separate /6 item page. The child number is controlled by the physical shelfmark in the photographed document. Both manuscript photographs were opened at original resolution for this pass. Reid's Wargrave evidence was checked against the Google Books page images rather than relying on search snippets or uncorrected OCR. Foster, BHO/VCH, and the RBA register and probate indexes are publicly accessible through the links in the citations above. The parish-register entries and probate originals needed to identify the couple and subscribers have not yet been obtained and should not be treated as searched or negative evidence.