The House Neville

A history of the Neville Dynasty

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Odo of Rennes, Count of Penthièvre

The ancient House of de Nevilles descended from Odo, Count of Penthièvre in Normandy and his son Ribald.

In 1069, William the Conqueror had granted the Lordship of Middleham to his Breton cousin Alan Rufus, son of Odo, who built a wooden motte-and-bailey castle above the town. By the time of the Domesday Book, Alan had passed the castle to his brother Ribald.

Geoffrey de Neville (d1193)

The Norman Middleham Castle eventually passed to Ribald's descendant, Geoffrey de Neville, Second Baron of Ashby in Lincolnshire.

By 1176 Geoffrey married Emma de Bulmer (d 1208), who brought to her husband several estates, including Brancepeth Castle in County Durham and Sheriff Hutton Castle near Bulmer, Raskelf and Sutton-in-the-Forest, all in Yorkshire.

Henry de Neville (d1230)

Geoffrey and Emma’s son was Henry de Nevill who gave his consent to Emma, his mother's grant of a pension of 20 marks to the abbot from Sheriff Hutton Church in about 1209.

Henry died without issue in 1229 or 1230.

Isabel de Neville (d 1248 or 1254)

Geoffrey’s second child, and heiress to the Neville lands after her brother Henry, was Isabel.

Isabel married Robert FitzMaldred, Lord of Raby (c1170 to c1242 or 1248).

The ancient paternal ancestors of the Nevilles were thus the Fitzmaldreds, who were traditionally descended from an unknown Uhtred, who in turn was descended from Crinan of Dunkeld, ancestor of the Scottish House of Dunkeld. There were also claims to descent from the Bamburgh dynasty of Earls of Northumbria. The reality is in some doubt, and the claimed lineage might have had more to do with later Neville claims to an ancient descent from the rulers of the northern lands.

Dolfin, who was sometimes referred to as son of Uhtred, presumably reflecting the claimed descent, appeared in the records in 1129, holding Staindrop, also referred to as Stainthorp, in County Durham, which shared a church estate of 14,000 acres. The chief residence of these lands became Raby where a castle was built in the fourteenth century. These lands would become the original seat of the Nevilles.

This was a major landholding family, In the extent of their landed possessions this family, holding on obdurately to native names for a full hundred years after 1066, was pre-eminent among the lay proprietors within the bishopric of Durham during the twelfth century.

Dolfin was succeeded by his son Meldred. He in turn was succeeded by his son Robert FitzMeldred.

Geoffrey de Neville (c1170 to c1242)

Geoffrey was the son of Robert FitzMaldred and Isabel de Neville. Geoffrey adopted the family name of his mother, but retained the arms of the FitzMaldreds. He inherited the Neville lands and the FitzMaldred lands. He therefore held the Durham lands centred on Raby, and the Neville lands which included Sheriff Hutton.

The family's wealth and power grew steadily over the following centuries. Their regional power benefited from regular appointment to such royal offices as sheriff, castellan, justice of the forest, and justice of the peace in various parts of northern England.

Robert de Neville, 2nd Baron Neville of Raby (c 1223 to 1282)

Geoffrey de Neville's eldest son and heir was Robert de Neville, Sheriff of Yorkshire and Sheriff of Northumberland.

Robert supported Henry III against the barons under Simon de Montfort.

Robert de Neville married twice. His first marriage was to Isabel de Byron. Their first son Robert, married Mary Fitzrandolph.

In 1190, a new Middleham Castle had been built by Robert Fitzrandolph near to the site of the old Norman castle. Mary therefore brought the new castle back into the Neville family.

With the addition of Middleham Castle in Wensleydale and large estates in Cumberland, the Nevilles came to rival the Percy family as the leading family in northern England.

Robert the Younger and Mary had a son Ranulph. Robert himself died before his father in 1271, so it was Ranulph who inherited the Neville landholdings and titles.

Ranulph de Neville, First Baron Neville (18 October 1262 to 18 April 1331)

Robert the Younger’s son Ranulph married Euphemia de Clavering, and they had fourteen children. Their eldest son, Robert Neville (c1297 to 1319), the Peacock of the North, died before Ranulph, so his second son Ralph Neville, succeeded to the inheritance.

Ranulph later married Margery de Thwenge, daughter of John de Thwenge and Joan de Mauley.

The tomb of Sir Edmund Thweng, who died at the Stirling in the Anglo-Scottish Wars in 1344, lies in Sheriff Hutton’s Parish Church. He was born in about 1280 in Cornborough, near Sheriff Hutton, and was Margery’s brother. He married Isabel Constable and they had a son, Marmeduke de Thweng. Sir Edmund de Thwenge of Cornburgh died on 15 October 1344 and was buried at Sheriff Hutton, where his effigy in mail armour still lies in the North Chapel.

Ralph Neville, 2nd Baron Neville (c 1291 to 5 August 1367)

Ralph Neville married Alice de Audley (d 1358), the widow of Ralph de Greystoke, 1st Baron Greystoke (who died in 1323), on 14 Jan 1326 and they had thirteen children.

Ralph was steward of the king's household. The fifth Peter de Mauley, overlord of the Sheriff Hutton lands, released to Sir Ralph de Nevill all his right to his service for those lands so that the Nevilles held Sheriff Hutton directly from the Crown.

Ralph led the English forces to victory against King David II of Scotland at the Battle of Neville's Cross on 17 October 1346. In 1348 Ralph de Nevill, for his laudable bearing in the battle by Durham against David Brus, obtained licence to alienate considerable property to two chaplains who were to celebrate daily at the altar of St. Mary and St. Peter in the parish church of Sheriff Hutton for the souls of himself and his kindred.

Alice Neville had the Neville Chancery Chapel built in the parish Church at Sheriff Hutton to say mass for deceased members of her family.

John Neville, 3rd Baron Neville de Raby (1322 or 1328 to 17 October 1388)

John married Maud Percy and later Elizabeth Latimer.

He was a captain under his father at the Battle of Neville’s Cross. He also served in the wars in France. He was made a Knight of the Garter by Edward III and became Admiral of the North.

In 1382 John Neville was granted a licence to crenellate, which allowed him to chose a different site for a new larger castle at Sheriff Hutton, similar in design to Bolton Castle, with tall corner towers four or five storeys high and domestic buildings which were almost as tall arranged around a courtyard. He started to build a second castle on a new site in the village, the castle whose ruins remain today. The new castle was built to the west of the earlier Norman castle. The new castle became the heade and capitall residence of his heirs.

Ralph Neville, First Earl of Westmoreland (1346 to 1425)

Ralph Neville married Margaret Stafford and later Joan Beaufort, the daughter of the Lancastrian John of Gaunt, royal granddaughter of Edward III.

Neville's first military service was in Brittany under King Richard II's uncle, Thomas of Woodstock, who knighted him at Saint-Omer in July 1380. On inheriting the Neville lands in 1388, he was appointed, with others, to survey the fortifications on the Scottish border.

The Neville lands were primarily in County Durham and Yorkshire, and both King Richard II and King Henry IV found the family useful to counterbalance the strength of the Percys on the Scottish Borders. In 1397 Ralph Neville supported Richard II's proceedings against Thomas of Woodstock and the Lords Appellant, and by way of reward was created Earl of Westmorland on 29 September 1397. He was appointed as Warden of the West March in 1403.

Neville Lancastrian support

Ralph’s loyalty to the King was tested shortly afterwards. His first wife, Margaret Stafford, had died on 9 June 1396, and Neville's second marriage to Joan Beaufort before 29 November 1396 made him the son-in-law of Richard II 's uncle, John of Gaunt, 1st Duke of Lancaster.

He therefore supported Henry IV’s assumption of the Crown from Richard II and was rewarded with a lifetime appointment as Earl Marshal on 30 September 1399, a lifetime grant of the honour of Richmond, and several wardships.

Ralph’s youngest daughter by his marriage to Joan Beaufort, Cecily Neville (1415 to 1495), married Richard, Duke of York.

There are two podcasts about Cecily Neville in the Gone Medieval series, one which deals with her early life and a second with her later life.

At this stage the Yorkists supported the Lancastrian assumption of the Crown from the unpopular Plantagenet Richard II.

In 1404 Ralph settled the castle and manor of Sheriff Hutton on his second wife Joan Beaufort, daughter of the Lancastrian John of Gaunt, and their male heirs, and they were held by her as his widow from 1425 when Ralph died.

Five Powerful Mums

When Joan, the Fair Maid of Kent, heiress of the Stuteville lands, lost her Black Prince in 1376, and her father in law Edward III the following year, her nine year old son, Richard II relied on her Mum to steer him through the Coronation and beyond. She used all her guile to protect her somewhat hopeless son until she too died in 1385.

The Mumless Richard II was left with only scheming advisers, including the wily Lancastrian John of Gaunt, who nevertheless remained loyal to the Crown until he died on 3 February 1399. But left to fend for himself, Richard II finally lost his throne to John of Gaunt’s son Henry Bolingbroke on 30 September 1399. So started the dynasty of the House of Lancaster.

Ralph Neville had married Joan Beaufort, the daughter of the Lancastrian John of Gaunt by Gaunt’s third marriage to Katherine Swynford. Joan’s brother was John Beaufort, the first Earl of Somerset, great grandfather of Lady Margaret Beaufort, Countess of Richmond and Derby who married Edmund Tudor, with whom they had Henry Tudor, the future Henry VII.

Ralph Neville and Joan Beaufort’s youngest daughter was Cecily Neville. Cecily married the Yorkist Richard Plantagenet, 3^rd Duke of York. Their sons were Edward VI, George Plantagenet, Duke of Clarence and Richard of Gloucester, the future Richard III. When the Yorkists took the throne from the Lancastrians in 1461, Cecily, rather as Joan of Kent had done, was the Queen mother who guided her son through the early challenges of monarchy.

The nemesis of Edward IV and his mother Cecily Neville, was Margaret of Anjou, the wife of the ousted Lancastrian King Henry VI, who had been the real power behind the Lancastrian cause in previous challenges with the House of York, and during the period of the Yorkist Edward IV’s first reign. Margaret of Anjou was portrayed by the Wars of the Roses spinmaster, Cecily Neville’s nephew, Richard Neville the Younger, Earl of Warwick, known as the Kingmaker, as an apocalyptic woman at the head of a Viking like army, who threatened the folk of southern England. He promoted a probably unfair legend of Margaret of Anjou as evil. Cecily Neville’s Edward of York was a powerful, charismatic individual, easily contrasted to Margaret’s Henry VI and the Kingmaker promoted the Yorkist claim to the throne.

Edward IV secretly married Elizabeth Woodville in 1464, in much the same way as Joan of Kent had secretly married Thomas Holland and later the Black Prince, upsetting the plans of their mentors. Elizabeth Woodville was ambitious but in the early years Cecily Neville seems to have retained some influence over her monarch son. However when Edward IV died in 1483, trusting the protection of his son Edward V to his brother Richard III, the young prince Edward was with the Woodville family, and the Woodvilles made their move to control the minority rule of Edward V. Edward V and his young brother soon disappeared, the princes in the tower, and Elizabeth Woodville’s marriage to Edward IV was declared invalid. You can read the historical facts as might take your fancy, to decide whether Richard III was the evil king made out by Shakespeare or not. Cecily Neville continued to be on good terms with Richard’s new wife Lady Anne Neville, her own kin through her brother and nephew the Kingmaker.

Then from stage right came the return of another threat, the Beauforts, descendants of the Lancastrian John of Gaunt, who had married into the Tudors. Lady Margaret Beaufort supported her son,. Henry Tudor, to seize the throne from Richard III who he defeated at the Battle of Bosworth in 1485 to become the first Tudor King Henry VII. In the following year, 1486, Henry VII would secure his legacy by marrying Elizabeth of York, the daughter of Edward IV and Elizabeth Woodville, the granddaughter of Richard of York and Cecily Neville.

Joan the Fair Maid of Kent was the power behind the reign of the hopeless Plantagenet Richard II, at least until she died in 1385.

Margaret of Anjou was the power behind the reign of the equally hopeless Lancastrian Henry VI, until outmanoeuvred by the Yorkist power grab in 1461, though with a short counter offensive in 1470

Cecily Neville was the mother and mentor of the Yorkist Kings Edward IV and Richard III.

Elizabeth Woodville was the wife of Edward IV, who attempted an unsuccessful power grab to protect her son Edward V against the designs of Richard III, but whose daughter, Elizabeth of York married the Tudor King Henry VII.

Lady Margaret Beaufort was the mother of the Tudor King Henry VII, who she helped to steer to his monarchy.

The blood of Lady Margaret Beaufort, Elizabeth Woodville and Cecily Neville was passed through Henry VII to all the English and British monarchs who followed.

If you would like to really understand the politics behind the Wars of the Roses, don’t be tempted to become too focused on the battles fought between the menfolk, but take note of the powerful women who called the shots.

Richard Neville, 5^th Earl of Salisbury (1400 to 1460)

Richard Neville came into possession of far greater estates than, as a younger son under the primogeniture rules, he might reasonably have expected. His eldest half-brother John Neville seems to have agreed to many of the rights to the Neville inheritance being transferred to his step-mother, the Lancastrian Joan Beaufort, so that it was her son Richard who inherited these on her death in 1440.

He also gained possession of the lands and grants which had been made jointly to Ralph and Joan.

Yet Ralph's feudal heir was his grandson Ralph Neville, 2nd Earl of Westmorland who was the son of John Neville (1397 to 1420) who had predeceased Ralph. John had marred Elizabeth Holland, daughter of Thomas Holland, the Second Earl of Kent. It was therefore Ralph Neville, Earl of Westmoreland, who represented the senior line of the Nevilles.

Ralph of Westmoreland later disputed the loss of his inheritance to Richard Neville, and although he agreed to a settlement in 1443, it was something of a fudge.

Richard of Salisbury retained the great Neville possessions of Middleham and Sheriff Hutton, as well as a more recent grant of Penrith.

However by the settlement Raby Castle, the family's most ancient possession, returned to the senior branch.

Here lay the germs of a Neville–Neville feud, which was later to become absorbed into a destructive Percy-Neville feud.

Richard Neville married Alice Montagu, 5^th Countess of Salisbury. This gave him his wife's quarter share of the Holland inheritance, although his Salisbury title came with comparatively little in terms of wealth, though he did gain a more southerly residence at Bisham Manor in Berkshire.

Any growing tension between the Houses York and Lancaster was put on hold during the reign of Henry V, the heroic soldier king, victor of the Battle of Agincourt. His success in France was popular.

Henry V died in 1422 and left a nine month old baby son, Henry VI. The inter noble rivalry would soon pick up again.

By the 1430s, Henry VI had started to exercise personal rule, and began to promote the fortunes of his closest relatives. The Nevilles risked losing their influence. The local rivalry between the Nevilles and the Percys in the north of England started to become a major force in Yorkshire politics.

On 24 August 1453, Thomas Percy, Lord Egremont, assembled a force of men-at-arms and archers perhaps as large as 1,000 strong, intending to intercept Salisbury and his family at Heworth Moor, outside York, as he made for Sheriff Hutton. Salisbury arrived unscathed at Sheriff Hutton, but this marked the beginning of what was virtually a private war between the Houses Percy and Neville.

Neville Yorkist support

Richard of Salisbury changed his allegiance to Richard, Duke of York, who made him Lord Chancellor in 1455. This enabled Salisbury to advance the interests of his retainers against the Percys.

King Henry VI tried to assert his independence and dismiss York as Protector. Richard Neville joined Richard of York in fighting at the First Battle of St Albans, claiming that he was acting in self-defence.

In 1458 he participated in The Love Day, an attempt at reconciliation held in London. A solemn procession on 24 March 1458 marked the culmination of Henry VI’s personal attempt to prevent civil war following the outbreak of the Wars of the Roses in 1455. The public display of unity instigated by a peace-loving ‘simple-minded’ monarch was ineffective. The rivalries within the nobility ran deep. Within a few months petty violence had broken out, and within the year Yorkists and Lancastrians faced each other at the Battle of Blore Heath.

Richard Neville was notably successful in the Battle of Blore Heath, but after the Yorkist army collapsed in the Rout of Ludford Bridge, he was forced to escape to Calais, having been specifically excluded from a royal pardon.

He returned to England with York in 1460, and was killed on 30–31 December 1460, the night after the Battle of Wakefield.

Richard Neville, 16^th Earl of Warwick, 6th Earl of Salisbury, KG, the Kingmaker (22 November 1428 to 14 April 1471)

Richard Neville was the wealthiest and most powerful English peer of his age, with political connections that went beyond the country's borders. One of the leaders in the Wars of the Roses, originally on the Yorkist side but later switching to the Lancastrian side, he was instrumental in the deposition of two kings, which led to his epithet of Kingmaker.

Richard Neville married Anne Beauchamp, 16^th Countess of Warwick and became Earl of Warwick.

Their daughter Isabell married George, Duke of Clarence.

Through fortunes of marriage and inheritance, Warwick emerged in the 1450s at the centre of English politics.

Originally, with his father, he was a supporter of King Henry VI. However, a territorial dispute with Edmund Beaufort, Duke of Somerset, led the Nevilles to collaborate with Richard, Duke of York, in opposing the king. From this conflict, Richard gained the strategically valuable post of Captain of Calais, a position that benefited him greatly in the years to come.

The political conflict had turned into full-scale rebellion. Richard of York was slain in battle, as was Richard Neville of Warwick's father Richard Neville of Salisbury.

Richard of York's son, however, later triumphed with Warwick's assistance, and was crowned King Edward IV.

Neville Lancastrian support

Ther Yorkist Edward IV initially ruled with Warwick's support, but the two later fell out over foreign policy and the king's choice to marry Elizabeth Woodville.

After a failed plot to crown Edward's brother, George, Duke of Clarence, Warwick instead restored Henry VI to the throne.

The Lancastrian restoration was short-lived. On 14 April 1471, Warwick was defeated by Edward at the Battle of Barnet, and killed.

Richard and Anne’s daughter Anne Neville (1456 to 1485) married Edward, Prince of Wales, the son of Henry VI and Margaret of Anjou. Later she married Richard, Duke of Gloucester when he became Richard III.

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