Part 4: The Discovery of Henry Savile's handwriting at Audley End

Greek scholar, mathematician, and astronomer Henry Savile was Henry Neville's tutor and best friend. They traveled together in Europe from 1579-1582 and they remained close for Neville's whole life. Savile was one of the executors of Neville's will when he died in 1615.

At Audley End, the 1551 edition of Appian of Alexandria's Roman History is bound together with the 1548 edition of Dionysius of Halicarnassus' Roman Antiquities. We looked at Henry Neville's annotations in this copy of Roman Antiquities in Part 2. The Appian section of this book also some annotations. Some are likely by Henry Neville, but some also appear to be by Henry Savile.

Unfortunately, I have not examined these books myself, I am doing my best to reconstruct the facts via photographs.

Here is the Billingbear Book List entry for the book, I have underlined it in red:

Here is the USTC entry for the book and you can see a title page of that edition here, and read the whole book on Google Books:

The first annotation is from Dionysius. Here is the full page:

 Here is the annotation:

Savile had extremely distinctive and difficult to read handwriting. Here is an example of his handwriting:

Savile made a very distinctive "g". Compare to the annotation:

Compare the capital "P":

Compare the lower case "d":

The lower case "p" is also a match:

Compare the "l":

This is important because it establishes the provenance of these books and links them directly to Henry Neville. But of course, these books were at Henry Neville's family home of Billingbear. So we should expect them to have been his.

Annotations in Appian

This annotation on page 255 is also likely Savile's handwriting:

John Casson identifies several other annotations in the Appian history. Some are Henry Neville and some are Savile. These appear to be in Henry Savile's handwriting:

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