Part 6: Henry Savile and Henry Neville's Annotations of Tacitus

Note: This is just the beginning of the exploration of this issue, but I wanted to get the news out quickly to everyone.

There is a copy of Tacitus at Audley End with the annotations of two people. The handwriting of those annotations are unmistakably that of Henry Savile and Henry Neville. This is a very important discovery because it may relate both to Savile's 1591 translation of the Histories of Tacitus as well as the 1598 translation of the Annals by "Grenewey" (read about the mystery of Grenewey's identity).

This is Part 6 of a series of posts about the annotations at Audley End. You can see them all here.

The 1574 Edition of Tacitus

The edition of Tacitus at Audley End is the 1574 one by Justus Lipsius. Here is the title page of this edition which includes both the Histories and the Annals:

Here is the USTC entry and the entire book is available on Google Books.

Establishing the Provenance

Even though this book is at Audley End, it does not appear to be listed on the Billingbear Book List. However, as I will show below, the handwriting annotations match precisely books at Audley End which were on the Billingbear Book list. In addition, Henry Savile had extremely distinctive handwriting, and some of the annotations are unmistakably by him. So it seems likely this book was at Billingbear, even though it was not on the list. There is a 1599 edition on the list, however:

Henry Savile's Annotations

Most of the annotations in the book appear to be by Henry Neville, and we will look at them next. But first I would like to establish Henry Savile's handwriting. That will firmly establish the provenance of the book. As we have shown in Part 4 and Part 5, there are at least two books at Audley End, originally from Billingbear, with Henry Savile's handwriting in them.

Here is a letter Henry Savile wrote in 1600 to Henry Neville. As you can see, he has extremely distinctive handwriting:

Here is the general context of the first annotation:

It is on Page 149, you can see the whole thing on Google Books:

Here is the detail of the handwriting:

As we showed previously, Savile has a very distinctive "g" which is a match for this annotation. I have marked this Tacitus annotation in blue, the annotation from Dionysius' Roman Antiquities in red, and Savile's letter in green. This is unmistakably the same handwriting:

Here are more comparisons. Note how the "a" is formed with the gap at the top and the shape of the "n":

Here is the second annotation, from page 161:

Note above the page and line number references. These appear to be to this book. The first reference, 159.28, over "castra" is to page 159, line 28, which also references "castra"; please refer to Google Books:

 Page 159, line 28:

Here is a close-up of the annotation:

Here are some handwriting comparisons from his letters. Savile had a very strong tendency to abbreviate "on" with an abbreviation mark:

I discovered this example of his handwriting at the Berkshire Record Office:

As you can see, the capital "R" is an extremely good match for the annotation; the two examples of "B" are reasonably good matches; I have underlined the letters from the annotation in blue:

I think we can say with an extremely high degree of confidence that Henry Savile made those two annotations. This helps establishes the provenance of the book. Likely it was at Billingbear with the other books on the Billingbear Book List. 

Henry Neville's Annotations

There are many other annotations in the book that appear to be in Henry Neville's handwriting. I would like to just examine a few of them here. This is from Page 147, you can see it on Google Books:

Here are some handwriting comparison:

I will provide more comparisons later, but it is obviously Henry Neville's handwriting and obviously the same as the other books we have examined. It is all extremely consistent.

Here Page 150 annotated, you can see it on Google Books:

What's most interesting is this annotation mark:

Exactly the same mark we saw in Part 3 in  Francesco Guicciardini's History of Italy:

So, I think we have likely established an annotation mark used by Henry Neville. 

Conclusion

This deserves a great deal of scholarly attention. It's really an extraordinary discovery.