NEEL, Richard

Richard Neel was of undistinguished paternity. His probable father, Gervase, is named as a witness to various deeds dated at Shepshed in the second decade of the fifteenth century, but very little else is known of him.8 Quorndon Recs. Supp. ed. Farnham, 95. Our MP first appears in the records in February 1436 when he was one of those to whom a Leicester grocer granted his goods in trust. By this date he must already have been studying at Gray’s Inn. In June 1439 he witnessed a deed for a more senior member of the Inn, Walter Moyle*, and he gave his first reading probably as early as the autumn term of 1442.9 Wyggeston Hosp. Recs. ed. Thompson, 600; CCR, 1435-41, p. 277; Readings and Moots, i (Selden Soc. lxxi), p. xxxii. He is to be distinguished from his namesake of Harefield in Mdx., bailiff of Uxbridge and attestor of elections in that county in the 1440s. No doubt he owed his success largely to his own abilities and endeavour, but he was perhaps also helped by a close kinship with John Neel, master of the hospital of St. Thomas of Acre from 1420.10 Their precise kinship is unknown, but their later association suggests it was close and it may be that the master was our MP’s uncle: A.F. Sutton, ‘Hosp. of St. Thomas of Acre’, in The Late Med. English Coll. ed. Burgess and Heale, 201. His reading aside, the most important event in his early life was his election to Parliament for his native county on 21 Dec. 1441. Very soon after the close of this Parliament he was appointed to the quorum of the Leicestershire bench and to his first commission of gaol delivery. It is striking that these acknowledgments of local status, particularly election to Parliament, should have come so early in his career, and this implies he had a powerful local patron. In September 1443, styled as ‘of Shepshed’, he acted in a conveyance for William, Lord Ferrers of Groby, one of the leading Leicestershire magnates; but he was on closer terms with a more important man, John, Lord, and from 1440, Viscount, Beaumont. Beaumont was a substantial landholder in the neighbourhood of Shepshed, and it is significant that his intimate, John Truthall*, was named alongside our MP among the trustees of the Leicester grocer in 1436. By the mid 1440s the young Neel was firmly established in his service. In July 1444 he attested the important charter by which an estate in remainder in the manor of Barrow-upon-Soar was settled on Beaumont, who had purchased it from Sir Thomas Erdington*. Later, on 8 July 1447 he delivered into Chancery the Leicestershire inquisition taken on the death of Joan Bardolf, mother of Beaumont’s first wife to whom Beaumont’s son, William, was heir. He went on to act with a small group of the viscount’s intimates as a feoffee in the family estates.11 Quorndon Recs. Supp. 25; Wyggeston Hosp. Recs. 265; CIPM, xxvi. 555; CIMisc. viii. 273, 275-6, 315, 405.

Neel’s marriage to an heiress in Beaumont’s wardship is a further indication of their close connexion. At some date not long after June 1444, when he was still described as ‘of Shepshed’, the young lawyer took as his bride Isabel Ryddynges. With her sister, Elizabeth, she had inherited from her father the manor of Prestwold not far from Shepshed and other lands with a total annual value of about £20 p.a., the sum at which their father had been assessed in the subsidy returns of 1436.12 E179/192/59. He was alive in April 1438, but seems to have died soon after. His memorial in the church of Prestwold is now lost: Trans. Leics. Arch. Soc. xvii. 42, 44. His daughters may also have had a claim to the manor of Bailrigg (in Scotforth), Lancs. In 1467 our MP and his wife were the deforciants to a common recovery sued by John Gardiner for the manor, although there is no evidence that they ever held it: PL15/31, rot. 26. On the childless death in about 1460 of her sister, the wife of Richard, son of John Wastnes*, the inheritance came to her in its entirety.13 E179/192/59; Nichols, iii (1), 360; Trans. Leics. Arch. Soc. xvii. 42-44. For Isabel as Beaumont’s ward: CP40/716, rot. 186d; E13/141, rot. 34.

Neel’s second reading, probably in the Lent term of 1449, confirmed his promotion to the senior ranks of his profession. Throughout the late 1440s and 1450s he was an active member of the Leicestershire bench, and as one of the leading lawyers in the East Midlands he extended his connexions.14 Readings and Moots, i, p. xxxii. For sessions of the peace he is known to have attended: E101/590/34; KB27/744, rex rot. 6; 769, rex rot. 7d; 785, rex rot. 5d. In the early 1450s he was one of several Leicestershire gentry, including the Household servant, Thomas Everingham*, who acted for another royal retainer, Henry Filongley*, in the acquisition of the manor of Barkby near Leicester. Further evidence of his association with Everingham, with whom he shared a common connexion with Beaumont, is provided by a conveyance of 1448 when they acted together as feoffees for the prominent Leicester townsman Thomas Charity*, and by his attestation of the Leicestershire parliamentary election of 1 Mar. 1453, when Everingham was returned.15 Leics. Village Notes ed. Farnham, ii. 121-2; CP25(1)/126/76/72, 75; 77/82; Wyggeston Hosp. Recs. 614; C219/16/2. Further afield, and more mysteriously, he was linked with yet another Household man: in March 1449 the King’s esquire, Nicholas St. Loe, was given licence to grant him and others a Dorset park.16 CPR, 1446-52, p. 242. Curiously, in the church of Newton St. Loe, Som., is an undated brass to Elizabeth Neel of Keythorpe and Prestwold. It is tempting to identify her as a daughter of our MP, although Keythorpe did not come into the fam. until the late 1470s, when it was part of the inheritance of our MP’s daughter-in-law: J. Collinson, Hist. Som. iii. 344. A more important association came to him through Master Neel, whose hospital had a long and close association with the great Hiberno-Norman family of Butler. In the late 1440s both Neels incurred debts on behalf of James Butler, earl of Ormond (d.1452), and our MP acted, both at that date and later, as a feoffee for the earl’s son, Sir James Butler, who was promoted to the earldom of Wiltshire in July 1449.17 Sutton, 201-5; CAD, vi. C6544; HMC Hastings, i. 2; CCR, 1454-61, p. 213; CPR, 1461-7, pp. 549-50.

From these militantly Lancastrian connexions – Beaumont, Butler and Everingham all died in that cause – it might be supposed that Neel shared their political sympathies. But this was not the case. Far more important, at least as far as his future career was concerned, was his connexion with William Hastings, a prominent servant of Richard, duke of York. On 12 May 1460 Hastings granted all his extensive estates to just three feoffees, one of whom was our MP, in a conveyance that was clearly designed to protect his lands from forfeiture in the event of a Yorkist defeat.18 HMC Hastings, i. 295-6. This association helps to explain why Neel’s career was forwarded rather than diminished by Edward IV’s accession. He soon became one of Hastings’s principal legal servants, and, by the mid 1460s, he was acting as his steward in Leicestershire estates forfeited by his old masters, Viscount Beaumont and the earl of Wiltshire, and granted to the new Lord Hastings by Edward IV.19 Baker, ii. 1147-8; CPR, 1461-7, pp. 103-4, 354.

Not surprisingly this close connexion with one of the new King’s intimates brought Neel a worthwhile reward. On 26 July 1461 the new King, ‘of his mere motion and particular knowledge’, granted him ‘for good and acceptable service’ a large life annuity of £40 charged on the fee farm of Derby.20 CPR, 1461-7, p. 96; CCR, 1461-8, p. 20; E159/238, brevia Mich. rot. 8d. Less welcome may have been the professional promotion which soon followed. On 23 May 1463 he was one of those ordered to take the degree of serjeant-at-law, and at a meeting of the royal council held at Stamford on 12 Aug. 1464 he was appointed and sworn as one of the King’s serjeants. As such he was summoned to attend the peers in the Parliament of 1467.21 CPR, 1461-7, pp. 387, 532; CCR, 1461-8, pp. 172-3; Reps. Lords’ Cttees. iv. 967. Neel’s high standing in the profession made his services attractive to others than Hastings. By 1467 he was acting as steward of Burbage near Hinckley in south-west Leicestershire for Edmund Grey, the recently-promoted earl of Kent.22 Grey of Ruthin Valor, 64. Still closer was his association with the corporation of Nottingham, for during the financial year Michaelmas 1463-4 the chamberlains of the town made several payments for consultations with him. This entailed keeping up with his extensive itinerary: men rode to consult him at Leicester, Morley in Derbyshire, Doncaster in Yorkshire and Wistow, a manor of Lord Hastings in south Leicestershire. Later, in July 1467, he was the most senior of four lawyers who returned an award in the dispute between the townsmen and their neighbour, Henry Pierrepont. Hastings’s role as a mediator between the disputing parties provides an additional reason why Neel had been chosen to act. On 31 July, a little over three weeks after the award was returned, the disputants took an oath to maintain it before our MP in the local church of St. Mary.23 Nottingham Recs. ed. Stevenson, 375, 380-3, 415. It is worth noting that by 1455 Bartholomew Neel, who may have been our MP’s brother, was rector of Wistow church, the advowson of which belonged to the Hastings fam.: Leics. Village Notes, iii. 68. Neel again acted as an arbiter in the following year: on 18 Sept. 1468, in company with Robert Staunton*, another Leicestershire lawyer associated with Hastings, he returned an award in a dispute involving the Cistercian abbey of Garendon, near Shepshed.24 Nichols, iii (2), 823.

In April 1469 Neel was promoted to the judiciary, taking his place in the court of King’s bench with the customary fee of 110 marks p.a., and the following February he was one of a high-ranking group of feoffees to whom Hastings granted his extensive estates. He was not compromised by his Yorkist affiliations on the restoration of Henry VI in October 1470, but, in the following June, Edward IV’s reordering of the judicial bench resulted in his transfer to the inferior court of common pleas.25 Quorndon Recs. Supp. 29-30; E.W. Ives, Common Lawyers: Thomas Kebell, 233. Little of interest is known of the later years of his career. After the death of his first wife in May 1476, he supplemented his wealth by marriage to the widow of Sir William Feldyng, who had fallen on the Lancastrian side at the battle of Tewkesbury five years before. This brought him her life interest in her paternal manor of Martinsthorpe in Rutland with whatever portion of the Feldyng lands that had come to her.26 CP40/876, rot. 48. This augmentation of his landholdings was probably a factor in his knighthood. He was knighted in 1478, probably among those so honoured on 18 Jan. in celebration of the marriage of the King’s son, Richard, duke of York, to Anne Mowbray.27 His name does not appear in the list of those knighted given in a contemporary ms: W. Black, Illustrations of Ancient State and Chivalry, 31-32. Yet he was certainly a knight by 24 May 1478, and the wedding is the most likely occasion for his promotion.

As a judge, Neel received seven yards of scarlet cloth for his livery at the coronation of Richard III on 6 July 1483. It does not appear that his longstanding connexion with the lately-executed Hastings made him an object of suspicion of the new King. Not only did he continue to sit as a justice of the common pleas but he was appointed to several important commissions of oyer and terminer during the troubled reign and acted as a trier of petitions in its only Parliament. His patent as a judge was renewed by Henry VII on 13 Oct. 1485. Hastings’s execution did not end his service to the family. In Easter 1486 he was involved with (Sir) Thomas Fitzwilliam II* (for whom he had earlier acted as a feoffee) and two other prominent lawyers in providing his widow and son with sure title to property in Leicestershire and elsewhere.28 Coronation of Ric. III ed. Sutton and Hammond, 165; PROME, xv. 9; CCR, 1485-1500, no. 63; CIPM Hen. VII, ii. 2. Soon afterwards he was dead: a Year Book entry dates his death to 15 June 1486.29 Year Bk. Trin. 1 Hen. VII (Reports del Cases en Ley, 1679), f. 25, pl. 1. On contemporary evidence, 15 July 1486 has been suggested as a possible alternative for his death: Order of Serjts. at Law (Selden Soc. supp. ser. v), 528. But his omission from the Leics. commission of the peace issued on 23 June suggests the Yr. Bk. is correct. He was buried with his first wife in the chancel of Prestwold church, where his splendid effigy portrays him in judicial robes with the words, ‘Moder of mercy help us in this case’ written over his head.30 F.A. Greenhill, Incised Slabs of Leics. and Rutland, 140-1, pls. XIV and XV.

Although a judge, Neel was far less active in the land market than many other justices and serjeants-at-law. Early in his career he purchased from Robert Neville the other manor in Prestwold, and in 1467 he made a small addition to his property at Shepshed, but this marked the limit of his documented acquisitions.31 Trans. Leics. Arch. Soc. xvii. 42-43; J. Biancalana, Fee Tail and Common Recovery, 377. His inquisition post mortem does not survive, but that of his son and heir, Christopher, taken in 1526, gives a clear picture of the extent of the Neel estates at the end of our MP’s life. Christopher died seised, in his own right, of two manors in Prestwold with further property in their near vicinity, namely the advowson of the church of Cotes and about 120 acres of farmland there, and some 400 acres in the vills of Hoton, Burton on the Wolds and Wymeswold. This compact estate was supplemented by another 110 acres at Saxelbye, eight miles to the east of Prestwold. These lands, the bulk of which our MP acquired by marriage to the Ryddynges heiress, were valued at less than £20 p.a., and, although other evidence demonstrates that the judge held lands worth at least 40 marks p.a., it is likely that the inquisition is at fault as to the value assigned to the property rather than to its extent.

This is not to say that the judge was a man of modest means – in addition to the considerable judicial stipend and other fees he long enjoyed, his income was supplemented in his last years by the inheritance and dower of his second wife – only that he did not expend this wealth in the purchase of land. Nevertheless, although not an active purchaser, he did significantly improve the prospects of the family by contracting his heir in marriage to a coheiress-apparent. At his death Christopher held in right of his wife the extensive manor of Keythorpe in south Leicestershire valued at as much as £42 p.a., together with other property worth a further £16 p.a.32 E150/1131/7; C142/45/36; Trans. Leics. Arch. Soc. xvii. 48-49. A Chancery suit of 1488 gives some indication of the terms under which this marriage was contracted. Christopher’s stepmother, Agnes Seyton, sued Bartholomew Kendale of Shepshed, Richard Reynold, William Ferrour and Thomas Scott, feoffees for the performance of our MP’s last will, for their failure to convey to her a messuage and croft in Prestwold. The feoffees defended themselves on the basis of a settlement our MP had made on Christopher’s marriage to Margery, daughter of Thomas Rokes† of Fawley in Buckinghamshire, at a date before September 1475. Within three months of the deaths of Thomas Palmer* and Elizabeth, the bride’s grandparents to whom she was one of the coheirs-apparent, Neel was to make estate of lands worth 40 marks p.a. (which probably represented his entire landed estate) to himself and his then wife Isabel for their lives with remainder to the couple and their issue. The feoffees claimed that, after the deaths of the Palmers (in other words, after January 1481) Neel enfeoffed them for the performance of this agreement. It is easy to see why his widow should have set about undermining this settlement for it reduced her dower entitlement to almost nothing, but it is not known whether she succeeded in securing the property she claimed. She was not the only one to make a claim in Chancery against the feoffees. At about the same time the beneficiaries of the marriage settlement, her stepson and his bride, sued Scott for his refusal to convey the Neel lands to them.33 C1/81/58-62; 151/2.

Christopher Neel, as a result of the property he held in right of his wife, had begun to take a part in local affairs even before his father’s death. Educated at Thavies Inn and then at his father’s inn, he was twice appointed to Leicestershire commissions of array in 1484. Nevertheless, although his marriage gave him a landed income far greater than that enjoyed by his father, he was a less substantial figure. The family failed in the male line on the death his great-grandson in 1576.34 Baker, ii. 1147; Trans. Leics. Arch. Soc. xvii. 7.