Elizabeth Evenden has claimed that ‘an account of rents’ paid to Sir William Cecil names the printer John Day ‘as his tenant on his land in Barholm, [Lincolnshire,] prior to mid-1556’. She guesses that he must have arrived there ‘very early in Mary's reign’ and deduces that he stayed ‘nearly three years, until the summer of 1556’. But there are reasons for doubting both her dating and her identification of John Day of Barholm as the printer.

The document is one of a group of related rental accounts from Cecil's lands and properties including (but not limited to) those in and around Stamford. Scattered somewhat haphazardly through the ninth volume of Marian State Papers (PRO, SP 11/9), most of those with extant or legible dates are from Michaelmas 1556 or the year following. It is the second of the following three.

1. SP 11/9, no. 70 (fols. 139–40))

2. A list in Cecil's hand of the rents paid by the tenants of lands and houses in Barholm, Stowe, and ‘Deping Market in Milnewong’ (Market Deeping) that Cecil had probably held for some time. The first named tenant is David Cecil, evidently a kinsman. Damage to the edges has removed some details, but the heading ‘Rentall renewed’ was followed by a date in the third and fourth years of Philip and Mary that was almost certainly Michaelmas 1556. The significance of ‘renewed’ (‘reuewed’ is possible but unlikely) appears to be that Cecil had decided to update his estate records, perhaps mainly to make sure they properly incorporated all his more recent purchases in the area.

3. (SP 11/9, no. 71 (fols. 141–2))

4. Mostly in a different hand, this apparently lists properties Cecil purchased in or after 1552 from the son of a ‘master Browne’. It includes details not usually found in a routine rental, in particular the names of former tenants of some properties, and Cecil has not only revised and augmented some entries but also inserted a list of sixteen Deeping properties in a gap left by whoever first wrote the list. There is no date, but this evidently belongs with A. Not only is each damaged in precisely the same way at the edge, but they have a common relationship to C.