GREVILLE, Fulke (1554-1628). Courtier, poet and author.
Document Signed, 1 page small folio (with integral second leaf bearing endorsements, two large brown stains), 17 February 1619/20. Bound in half-leather, gilt. An order to [Robert] Pye (ca 1585-1662, exchequer official) to make four specified payments to named individuals, also signed by Lionel Cranfield (1575-1645, merchant and financier).
The payments, of sums between £9 2s 6d and £15, are to various functionaries, Francis Tunsted, and Arra Smyth (i.e. according the endorsement 'Richard Arrowsmith), 'keeper of Bearewood Walk', John Boltby, and to two knights of Windsor 'Thomson & Gibbes'. The endorsement on the second leaf is headed 'Lordes Assignacon'.
 For Pye's position at this time, and his involvement with Cranfield see G.E. Aylmer in Oxford DNB:
At some date between 1615 and 1618, together with his eldest brother Walter Pye, Robert joined the service of George Villiers (later first duke of Buckingham). In March 1617 he was granted the profit on the extra import duty levied on the goods of foreign merchants entering the country (a kind of revenue farm), in place of Sir Lionel Cranfield, who was moving on to higher things. Their paths were to cross and recross in the years ahead. In April 1618 Pye became co-grantee of a minor but potentially profitable office in chancery-presumably granted by the lord chancellor, Sir Francis Bacon (later Viscount St Albans) to gratify Buckingham. But the decisive advance in Pye's prospects came with the disgrace and dismissal in 1619 of the lord treasurer, Thomas Howard, first earl of Suffolk, and his henchman Sir John Bingley. He succeeded the latter as auditor of the exchequer of receipt and writer of tallies. Successive holders of this post and of the clerkship of the pells, which had overlapping duties, had been at odds during the previous reign. Their relative importance was partly a matter of administrative procedures, but perhaps even more of the personality and political connections of their respective holders. In any case the auditorship was a lucrative office.
[No: 24195]