Sir Henry Neville (1564 – 10 July 1615)[1] was an English courtier, politician and diplomat. In 2005, he was put forward as a candidate for the authorship of Shakespeare's works.
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Neville was the first born child of Sir Henry Neville Senior (d. 1593) and his wife, Elizabeth, daughter of John Gresham of Fulham in Middlesex.[1] His father was the great-great-grandson of Ralph Neville, 1st Earl of Westmorland and Joan Beaufort, Countess of Westmoreland. Joan was daughter of John of Gaunt, 1st Duke of Lancaster and Katherine Swynford. John of Gaunt was in turn a son of Edward III of England and Philippa of Hainault.
Henry grew up at Billingbear House at Waltham St Lawrence in Berkshire, was educated at Merton College, Oxford and sat in Parliament as the member for New Windsor (1584, 1586 and 1593), Sussex (1589), Liskeard (1597) and Berkshire (1604, 1614).[1] He served as High Sheriff of Berkshire in 1595.[1] Before his father's death, he lived at the old Archbishop's Palace at Mayfield in Sussex where he ran a highly successful cannon manufactury.[1] He was apppointed Deputy Lieutenant of Berkshire in 1596 and moved to Billingbear the next year.[1] He was knighted in 1597.
In 1599, Neville was appointed Ambassador to France and attended the Court of Henri IV.[1] Although knighted for his services in France, he was unhappy with the way he was treated by the French and in 1600, complaining of deafness, he asked to be recalled to the Kingdom of England.[1]
After his return he became involved with the plot of Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex and imprisoned in the Tower of London.[1] He was stripped of his position and fined £5,000, which he agreed to pay in annual instalments of £1,000.[1] After the death of Elizabeth I of England and the accession of James I a Royal Warrant was issued for his release.[1]
After his release, he played a greater role in the political life of Great Britain and earned the antagonism of King James by advocating the King surrender to the demands of the House of Commons.[1] It was this action that, on the death of Robert Cecil, 1st Earl of Salisbury, lost him the possibility of becoming the Secretary of State.[1] Although offered the position of Treasurer of the Chamber he turned it down.[1]
Neville died in 1615 and was buried at the church of St Lawrence in Waltham St Lawrence.[1]
Neville (nicknamed Falstaff)[2] is a candidate for being the true writer of Shakespeare's works. Mainstream Shakespearean scholarship does not accept that anyone but William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon was the author; however, there exist a number of theories that the works were penned by someone else.
In The Truth Will Out, published in 2005, authors Brenda James, a part-time lecturer at the University of Portsmouth, and Professor William Rubinstein, professor of history at Aberystwyth University, propose that Henry Neville, a contemporary Elizabethan English politician who was a distant relative by marriage of Shakespeare's mother,[3][4] is the true author. According to James and Rubinstein, Neville's career placed him in the locations of many of the plays about the time they were written, and his life contains parallels with the events in the plays.[5]
The book outlines the case for Neville as the true author, proposing that otherwise inexplicable features of Shakespeare's works thus make sense. For example, many of Shakespeare's plays are histories that revolve around the Plantagenets — the long-ago-defeated enemies of the (then) current (Tudor) regime in England. According to James, the choice of subject makes little sense with Shakespeare the author, but perfect sense if the author was Sir Henry Neville, a descendant of John of Gaunt and member of the Plantagenet family. Also, Neville had access to private documents that he is said to have used in his works and he has the most reasons to have written the plays and sonnets.
The book contends that, in many respects, Neville is a match for authorship. He had traveled extensively to places described in the plays, in particular Italy; was fluent in Italian, French, Latin, and most other current European languages; had a detailed knowledge of both court protocol and law; and in many other respects matches the educational knowledge and societal norms exhibited by the author of the plays.[6]
The Truth Will Out cites circumstantial documentary evidence that Neville was the author, notably the "Tower Notebook", a collection of writings by a prisoner in the Tower of London, presumably Neville.[7] The notebook contains writings similar to the stage directions for the coronation of Anne Boleyn in the play King Henry VIII. Sources taking a contrary position may be found here [1].
Neville married Anne Killigrew (daughter of Sir Henry Killigrew and Catherine Cooke) and they had five sons and six daughters:[1]
| Political offices | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by Sir Edward Norreys |
Custos Rotulorum of Berkshire bef. 1605–1615 |
Succeeded by Sir Francis Moore |