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Xerax Unfvsrsity Microfilms 300 North Zeeb Road Ann Arbor, Michigan 48106 74-24,317 DUNCAN, Owen Lowe, J r., 1940- THE POLITICAL CAREER OF SIR HENRY NEVILLE: AN ELIZABETHAN GENTLEMAN AT THE COURT OF JAMES I. The Ohio State University, Ph.D., 1974 History, modern Xerox University Microfilms, Ann Arbor, Michigan 48106 © Copyright by Owen Lowe Duncan, Jr. 1974 THIS DISSERTATION HAS BEEN MICROFILMED EXACTLY AS RECEIVED. THE POLITICAL CAREER OF SIR HENRY NEVILLE: AN ELIZABETHAN GENTLEMAN AT THE COURT OF JAMES I DISSERTATION Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of the Ohio State U n iversity By Owen Lowe Duncan, J r ., B.A., A.M, The Ohio State University 1974 Reading Committee: Approved By R, Clayton Roberts John C. Rule Paul R. Bowers f Adviser epartment of Hi story PREFACE In July of 1612 Sir Henry Neville, a Berkshire gentleman, rode out to Windsor Forest to join King James I on the hunt. Neville loved to hunt, and was in addition Keeper of the Forest, but he pursued the King neither for pleasure nor for mundane duty. He sought instead to become a maker of royal policy. There in the forest, Neville proposed to James that he had sufficient understanding of parliamentary matters and sufficient support among the parliamentary opposition to gain passage of the King's le g is la tio n and funding of his government from the House of Commons. For Neville to accomplish this, he required of James a few reforms in government policy, and his own appointment to the office of First Secretary vacated in May by the deeth of Robert Cecil, Earl of Salisbury. In this audacious proposal Neville suggested that James give up the King's traditional power to appoint men to office out of personal affection, and that instead he should accept men who could provide him parliamentary majorities. Neville sought to repudiate the means to power through royal favor used in the previous century by ministers from Wolsey to Burleigh, and in so doing he became the firs t man to anticipate the system of cabinet responsibility to the people through Parliament used in England today. James rejected Neville's proposals for a variety of reasons, and in 1614 Neville's enemies, led by the Earl of Northampton, distorted his program into a plot to manage Parliament in the King's behalf. i i 111 Thus, his plan became the basis for the furor over the infamous "undertaking" incident which did much to cause the early dissolution of the Addled Parliament. Neville died shortly thereafter, on the 10th of July, I6l5j s till much respected by his contemporaries, but gener­ ally unnoticed or misunderstood by historians. In this dissertation, I shall seek to explain in the life and career o f S ir Henry N eville those factors that led him to Windsor Forest in I6l2, and that provided him the ingenuity and the audacity to put forth his plan. In addition, I shall seek to correct certain misunderstandings o f N e v ille 's in ten tions caused by h is to ria n s who have dealt with Neville as a sidelight to the development of other s to rie s . It is, of course, impossible to acknowledge everyone who has contributed to the completion of this dissertation. In general, I wish to thank the staffs of the libraries of the British Museum, the Public Record O ffic e , the Berkshire Record O ffic e , the Ohio State U n iv e rs ity , and Simpson College for their assistance. But there are a few individuals without whose support this work lite rally could not have been done. The firs t of these is my friend and colleague at Simpson College, Dr. Bruce Haddox, who s a c rific e d many evenings eliminating wasted words and misdirected ideas from the text, and who provided assurance that the project could and should be done during the last long and trying months. In addition, I wish to thank especially my adviser. Dr. Clayton Roberts, who introduced me to Sir Henry Neville, and who exemplifies for IV ine the best of the liberal arts tradition as a scholar, as a concerned individual, and as a personal friend. My special thanks to my wife Karen, who typed the manuscripts, for her patience, love, and understanding, and to my daughters Amy and Lora for making it all worthwhile. Finally, I wish to dedicate this dissertation to my father, who died on the 19th of August, 1973, and for whom it was always intended. VITA A p ril 24, 1940 . Born - Huntington, West V irg in ia 1962 ............................... B.A., Marshall University Huntington, West Virginia 196 3 ............................... M.A., The Ohio State University Columbus, Ohio 1963-1966 .................. Teacher, Logan Elm High School Circleville, Ohio 1966-1969.... .................. Teaching Associate, Department of History The Ohio State U n iv e rs ity , Columbus, Ohio 1969-1974 .................. Assistant Professor of History Simpson College, Indianola, Iowa FIELDS OF STUDY Major Field: English History Studies in Tudor-Stuart England, Professor Clayton Roberts Studies in Nineteenth Century England. Professor Philip Poirier Studies in Early Modern Europe. Professor John C. Rule V TABLE OF CONTENTS Page PREFACE................................................ i i VITA ............................................................................................ V Chapter I. THE NEVILLE LEGACY................................... 1 I I. EDUCATION AND APPRENTICESHIP....................... 39 I I I . AMBASSADOR TO FRANCE: YOUTHFUL HOPES . 86 IV. AMBASSADOR TO FRANCE: DISILLUSIONMENT . I l l V. A VICTIM OF VAULTING AMBITION ...... 151 VI. THE COURTIER IN OPPOSITION........ 182 V II. THE ABORTIVE UNDERTAKING............ 226 CONCLUSION................................................................................ 271 BIBLIOGRAPHY ....................................................................... 2?6 VI Chapter One THE NEVILLE LEGACY To be born a Neville in Tudor England was an invitation to great­ ness and to tragedy. This was true in the sixteenth century as it had been for five hundred years before. The firs t Neville, Gilbert, had come to England in 1066, an admiral in the service of William the Conqueror. Gilbert proved prolific, as did his progeny, and the later middle ages provide one instance after another of the influence of the family of Neville. They served as advisers to English kings. They be­ came great nobles of the realm and chief prelates in the church. Sir Henry's ancestor Ralph, sixth Baron N e ville o f Raby, fo r example, earned the title of Earl of Westmorland by helping Richard I I avenge him self on the fam ily of Gloucester. But w ith in two years he had turned against Richard and become one of the firs t English lords to jo in Henry, Earl o f Derby, in h is successful campaign to gain the throne as Henry IV. He then helped that king put down the rebellion of Hotspur and the Percies and thus became the most powerful figure in the north of England.’ Twice m arried, the f i r s t Earl of Westmorland produced twenty-three children, nine by his firs t wife and fourteen by his seconds His second marriage, to Joan Beaufort, daughter o f John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, brought royal blood into the family. Much of his patrimony was diverted to this younger line, from whence the Nevilles of Billingbear sprang. The youngest of all his children. ^Dictionary of National Biography, XIV, 277. Cicely, married Richard Plantagenet, Duke of York, and became mother to two English kings (not to mention a king o f Bohemia); Edward iV 2 and Richard III. The sixth and youngest son of this second marriage, Edward, has generally been lost to the historian amidst the squabbling of this numerous brood in the fifteenth century, yet he became the firs t Lord Abergavenny and established a pedigree unparalleled among 3 the English nobility.