active 1672-1710 Henry Neville Payne

Henry Nevil Payne was active in the late 17th and early 18th centuries as both a writer and a political operative. Older reference works describe him as a dramatist connected with the Duke's Theatre and credit him with plays including The Fatal Jealousie, Morning Rambles, and The Siege of Constantinople. He was also linked with political pamphlets from the reign of James II.

After the Glorious Revolution of 1688, Payne became known less for drama than for intrigue. Contemporary and near-contemporary accounts portray him as a committed agent for the Jacobite cause, and he was widely associated with the Montgomery Plot of 1690, an attempt to restore support for the exiled James II. His reputation in these accounts is mixed at best: energetic, persuasive, and deeply entangled in the unstable politics of the time.

He spent many years imprisoned in Scotland, where he remained a notable Jacobite figure before his death in 1709. Reliable modern portraits are not easy to confirm, so no verified image is included here.