[Teller’s Bills, 1568-1634 (bulk 1568 and 1634)] Collection of 10 Ms. Documents (1568-1634), paper, Teller’s Bills from the Receipt of the Exchequer. Some by Richard Stonley. Six dated 1568, one dated 1615, and three dated 1634.
Ten strips of paper with secretary hand text written in black ink by at least three hands. Numbered in pencil, likely by a later hand. Mounted and framed. Holes indicate that they were previously bound together with wire. Signatures good on nine, including six signed by Richard Stonley and four by Edward Carne. One is signed by Richard Carxler/Carxten (illegible) the deputy to William Patten. Writing clear in most places, little fading.
A set of documents rich in underexplored history from the Elizabethan, Jacobean, and Carolinian periods, linked to multiple figures of literary and historical importance.
Items 1-5 were written and signed by Richard Stonley (1521-1600), one of four Tellers of the Receipt of the Exchequer, in 1568. As a Teller, a position he held 1554-1597, Stonley was responsible for accepting and tallying money being paid to the Exchequer, dispersing money from the Exchequer, and recording those transactions. Many receipts represent money owed by the Crown to a person, often for goods or services, or reflect money paid to the Crown, such as taxes, fines, or fees.
In his own time, Stonley achieved some notoriety for being caught embezzling from the Exchequer; in more recent years, he has become famous, thanks to his surviving diaries, as the first known purchaser of Shakespeare’s first printed work, Venus and Adonis (1593). Stonley amassed a remarkable library, which was sold, along with the other contents of his house, to defray his debts to the Crown. The inventory of that sale reveals that he owned over four hundred books.
Item 6, signed by Richard Carxler(?) the deputy of William Patten (c. 1510-after 1598), pertains to First Fruits and Tenths, a tax on clergy taking up positions. The clergyman owed the Crown a portion of his first year’s income, then a tenth of his yearly revenue thereafter. The insolvent Stonley should have taken a warning from the case of his coworker William Patten. In 1567/68, the Auditor of the Exchequer of Receipts discovered almost £8000 was missing from Patten’s accounts. Patten, who had served as a teller since 1562, was suspended in January 1568, explaining why the deputy’s signature dominates this receipt, which is dated 20 June 1568; Patten was officially replaced three weeks later. Patten devoted the rest of his life to scholarship and literary pursuits and may have been the author of the 1580 Langham Letter, which described the entertainments staged by Robert Dudley at Kenilworth Castle for Queen Elizabeth in 1575; Patten certainly contributed some Latin verses to the occasion.
Item 7, signed by Edward Carne, regards a debt owed to Cornelio Deerecop(?).
Items 8-10, signed by Edward Carne, record fines issued in July 1634 to people who had built at least one house in London without a license. Each are ordered to pay a fine and the cost of the licenses to prevent the houses from being torn down. From 1608, unlicensed building was prohibited in London, part of a longstanding attempt to control London’s inevitable urban sprawl.[1]
Edward Carne came from a large and distinguished Welsh family, and the family’s repeated use of the same names (Edward, Richard, Thomas, William, and John) makes it difficult to determine to determine which Edward Carne signed these receipts.[2] The Edward Carne who served as Teller seems to have been one of the Carnes of Nash Manor, born in 1577. In addition to Teller, he was the Receiver-General for South Wales. His exact tenure as Teller is not entirely clear—although one bill here is dated 1615, the possibility exists that two Edward Carnes served as Tellers in succession.[3] More research is required to parse these details.
Dr. Molly G. Yarn
Document Details
1. 1 June 1568. Richard Gray. £3 15s. Signed by Richard Stonley.
2. 1 June 1568. Richard Gray. £30. Signed by Richard Stonley.
3. 1 June 1568. Richard Gray. £4 21d. Signed by Richard Stonley.
4. 21 May 1568. John Lyon. £96 11s. Signed by Richard Stonley.
5. 9 July 1568. John and Barbara Doddington. ___ Signed by Richard Stonley.
6. 20 June 1568. Christopher Bernard. ___ Signed by R. Carxler(?) and his deputy William Patten.
7. _ November 1615. Cornelio Deerecop. ___ Signed by Edward Carne.
8. 4 July 1634. Richard Ellis. ___ Signed by Edward Carne.
9. 5 July 1634. Susanna King. ___ Signed by Edward Carne.
10. 4 July 1634. Thomas Goddard. ___ Signed by Edward Carne.
_____________________
Aylmer, Gerald, ‘The Officers of the Exchequer, 1625-42’, in Essays in the Economic and Social History
of Tudor and Stuart England, ed. by F. J. Fisher (Cambridge University Press, 2006)
Hudson, Zoë Ellen Pearce, ‘Locations, Networks and Cycles: Studying the Everyday Life of Richard
Stonley (1520-1600)’ (unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Kent, 2017)
Hunt, L. E., ‘Carne, Sir Edward (c. 1496–1561), Diplomat’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008) <https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/4712>
Roberts, Stephen K., ‘Carne, Edward (1623/4–1650), Rebel Leader’, Oxford Dictionary of National
Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014)
<https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/66573>
Scott-Warren, Jason, Shakespeare’s First Reader: The Paper Trails of Richard Stonley (Philadelphia, PA:
University of Pennsylvania Press, 2019)
Sherlock, Peter, ‘Patten, William (d. in or after 1598), Author’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004) <https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/21573>
‘The Long History of British Land Use Regulation’, Create Streets, 2019
<https://www.createstreets.com/the-long-history-of-british-land-use-regulation/>
[accessed 17 February 2021]
[1] Many thanks to Andrew Zurcher and Jason Scott-Warren for their help deciphering these documents.
[2] An earlier Sir Edward Carne (1495-1561) served as an ambassador to Rome both for Henry VIII, during his attempts to divorce Katharine of Aragon, and for Elizabeth I. He was also involved in the Dissolution of the Monasteries and purchased Ewenny Priory in Glamorgan himself during that process. Yet another Edward Carne inherited the Priory in 1643, at which point he became the High Sheriff of the region—a tricky position given the escalating civil war. Carne remained loyal to the king, but was captured, jailed, and fined £1000 after a battle at Cardiff in 1646/47. He was released but died several years later. His daughter Blanche inherited the Priory.
[3] See Gerald Aylmer.