NEVILLE, Sir Alexander

The Nevilles of Thornton Bridge (in Brafferton) were a cadet branch of the great Neville family, being descended from Ralph Neville (d. bef. 1369), a younger son of Ralph, Lord Neville of Raby (d.1367) .4 CP, ix. 499-501. Although the inq. post mortem of the younger Ralph was not taken until 1380, he predeceased his wife, who died before 10 Sept. 1369: DURH3/2, f. 102; CP40/404, rot. 136. In 1354 Lord Neville granted Ralph the reversion of the County Durham manors of Ulnaby, Carlbury and Ingleton, and Ralph supplemented these lands by marriage to Elizabeth (d.c.1369), daughter and heiress of Alexander de Ledes. Through her he acquired the North Riding manors of Thornton Bridge, Milby and Cundall, as well as lands in Leeds and Gipton in the West Riding.5 VCH Yorks (N. Riding), ii. 98-103; CAD, ii. B3606; Feudal Aids, vi. 299, 602; Leics. RO, Peake mss, DE220/51, 61. The Durham manors reverted back to the earls of Westmorland on the extinction of the male line in 1522: DURH3/174, m. 1. Ralph’s son and our MP’s father, also named Alexander, had an obscure career, but he did secure a prestigious marriage for his son and heir, to Katherine, daughter of his North Riding neighbour, Sir Ralph Euer, and sister of Sir William Euer*. According to the marriage agreement, drawn up on 9 Jan. 1401, the marriage was to take place on the following 18 Apr. at Witton-le-Wear, the Euers’ family home in County Durham, and by the terms of the agreement Sir Ralph was to pay the groom’s father £200, while the latter was to enfeoff the new couple jointly with his family manors of Thornton Bridge and Milby near Boroughbridge. Whether the marriage itself took place on the agreed date is unknown, but the grant of the property was made a week later, on 25 Apr. 1401.6 Yorks. Deeds, i. 213-14.

The dates of Alexander’s birth and of his father’s death are both uncertain. He was evidently old enough to marry in 1401, while his father was certainly alive in September 1406, when he supposedly acted as godfather to a child born at the same time as Thomas, later Lord Roos, and was apparently still alive in June 1409, when he was named as a tenant of George Darell.7 CIPM, xxiii. 139; CCR, 1405-9, pp. 439-40; 1409-13, pp. 24-25. However, he probably died before April 1421, when it would appear that it was his son who was commissioned with others to raise a loan from the inhabitants of the North Riding towards Henry V’s latest voyage to Normandy, and by 1422 the younger Alexander was conducting property transactions in Cundall in his own right.8 CPR, 1416-22, pp. 384-5; E. Riding of Yorks. Archs., Chichester-Constable mss, DDCC/130/13.

Alexander’s administrative career was to prove relatively modest for a man of his pedigree, and it was not until March 1430 that he was called upon again to act as a commissioner, in this case as one of array. Appointment to further commissions of array and to arrest a renegade monk of Whitby followed in the mid 1430s.9 CPR, 1429-36, pp. 360, 521, 607. In 1436 he was taxed on an annual landed income of £100 in Yorkshire and the city of York, and the fact that he was taxed in the city rather than in the county (being comfortably the largest individual taxpayer on the assessment) suggests that he may have spent much of his time at his urban property there. This property, held by the family since at least 1404, was situated in the Skeldergate area of York, and Alexander was evidently a regular parishioner in the local church of St. Mary Bishophill Senior.10 E179/217/42, m. 2; Yorks. Deeds, i. 217; York Bridgemasters’ Accts. ed. Stell (York Arch. Trust, 2003), 167, 173, 307, 312, 414, 422, 442. Still an esquire at the time of the 1436 assessment, he had been knighted by 23 May 1438, when he was appointed to a general commission of oyer and terminer in Yorkshire, under the leadership of his kinsman, Richard Neville, earl of Salisbury.11 CPR, 1436-41, p. 201.

Despite only occasional administrative appointments, Neville was nevertheless an active member of the local gentry community, appearing in a variety of property and family transactions, as well as defending his own interests. The background to his involvement in the major dispute between Walter Tailboys* and Sir John Keighley over the manor of Theddlethorpe in Lincolnshire is obscure, but in February 1427 together with Sir Thomas Cumberworth* and others he entered into a recognizance for 1,000 marks to guarantee that Tailboys would abide by an arbitration award. In the previous summer he had brought an assize of novel disseisin over property in Leckby, a hamlet in the parish of Cundall, and later that year he had witnessed a grant by one of the defendants, Richard Fairfax of Walton, to Henry Percy, earl of Northumberland, of property in Acaster Malbis and Thorp Arch.12 CCR, 1422-9, p. 329; JUST4/8/3, m. 44; Yorks. Deeds, x (Yorks. Arch. Soc. Rec. Ser. cxx), 6. His links with the earl and his family were evidently very close. In March 1430 he was associated with the earl and the under treasurer William Darell* in a grant at the Exchequer of wardship of the lands once of Thomas Duffield to hold during a minority, and he acted as feoffee of widespread estates on behalf of the earl’s first cousin Sir Henry Percy of Atholl.13 CFR, xv. 322-3; CIPM, xxv. 304; CP25(1)/292/67/129. Yet Sir Alexander always maintained his links with his Neville relatives. For instance, in June 1439 he witnessed a grant by Robert Neville, the new bishop of Durham.14 CCR, 1435-41, p. 452.

Given his relatively meagre administrative experience, Neville perhaps seems an unlikely choice to be elected as shire knight for Yorkshire in the Parliament of 1439. However, circumstances in both Yorkshire and on the national stage suggest that his election may have been the result of pressure exerted by the Percy family. Petitions were presented to this Parliament by the Commons concerning the rights of the heirs of three of the men involved in the rebellion of 1403, Henry Percy (‘Hotspur’), Thomas Percy, earl of Worcester, and Thomas, Lord Bardolf, and Percy interests would clearly have been served by the return of their supporters to this assembly. Furthermore, this Parliament also saw the heightening of attacks by Humphrey, duke of Gloucester, on two members of the ruling elite, Cardinal Beaufort and John Kemp, archbishop of York.15 PROME, xi. 236-46. Yorkshire at this time was beset by a simmering dispute between Kemp and the Percy family, a dispute stemming ostensibly from exemptions claimed by the tenants of Knaresborough from tolls levied at the archbishop’s fairs at Otley and Ripon, and the Percys would doubtless have been only too keen for their supporters to back any actions against their rival.

This quarrel degenerated into overt violence in July 1440, after the close of the Parliament, when, according to Kemp, around 700 men from Knaresborough, under the leadership of the Percy retainer Sir William Plumpton*, disturbed the fair at Otley. Another incident followed on 5 May 1441, when an armed band led by Plumpton attacked the archbishop’s men at Thornton Bridge and neighbouring Helperby, leaving two men dead. Kemp’s relations with the wider Neville family were generally cordial, but the location alone suggests that Sir Alexander was involved in this latter attack. At a meeting of the Council on 10 May 1443 Kemp complained about these assaults, and on the following day a group of men were ordered under pain of £1,000 to ‘leave all else and ceasing every excuse’ and appear in person before the King on 31 May to answer ‘causes’ brought against them on behalf of the King and archbishop. Most of these men were well-known Percy followers, including Plumpton and Sir William Normanville*, but Sir Alexander and his son and heir, William, were also summoned. The next day, 12 May, the sheriffs of York and the keepers of the peace in Yorkshire were ordered to make proclamations against those seeking to cause harm to the archbishop, stating that ‘children of iniquity’ had attacked the archbishop’s properties in Ripon and Bishopthorpe.16 CCR, 1441-7, pp. 98-99, 143-4; Foedera ed. Rymer (orig. edn.), xi. 27-28.

These violent incidents do not seem to have unduly affected Sir Alexander’s relations with the wider Neville family. In the early 1440s he acted in the conveyances designed to divide the Neville lands between Ralph, earl of Westmorland, and Westmorland’s half-brother, Richard, earl of Salisbury, to the disadvantage of the former.17 CIPM, xxv. 519; CCR, 1441-7, pp. 150-1, 198. On 1 Oct. 1443 he witnessed another grant by Bishop Neville of Durham, alongside the earls of Westmorland and Salisbury and his brother-in-law, Sir William Euer.18 CCR, 1441-7, pp. 150-1, 198-9. However, his relatively brief and limited political and administrative career was apparently over. He had been appointed to the peace commission for the North Riding in April 1440, but was dropped from the bench in July 1443, following his summons before the Council. The general pardon he received on 1 June 1446 marks the end of this passage of his career.19 C67/39, m. 45.

In the remaining 11 years of his life Sir Alexander is not known to have been involved in any of the escalating feuds between the Nevilles and the Percys. He seems rather to have maintained connexions with both. In about 1454 he drew closer to the Percys when his daughter, Katherine, widow of William (d.1453) , son of the Richard Fairfax mentioned above, married one of the earl of Northumberland’s younger sons, Sir Richard.20 Reg. Guild Corpus Christi, York, 29n.; Test. Ebor. ii (Surtees Soc. xxx), 207n. Yet, in March 1456, he conveyed a few acres he had purchased in Cundall to the earl of Salisbury and other Nevilles.21 Chichester-Constable mss, DDCC/130/15-16. In any event, death spared him from committing to one family or the other in the great crisis of 1459-61 for he died on 15 June 1457. His inquisition post mortem for County Durham, held on 23 Mar. 1458, simply stated that he held no lands there, presumably because they were in the hands of feoffees, and no inquisition, if any were taken, survives for Yorkshire.22 Peake mss, DE220/89; DKR, xliv. 476.

Neville left an intriguing will, drawn up on 29 Sept. 1453, which made no mention whatsoever of his family, being concerned principally with the details of his funeral.23 Test. Ebor. ii. 207-9. He asked to be buried in his local parish church, St. Mary Bishophill Senior in the city of York, ‘att Saynt Nicholas auter before the stall quer I sitt at mese’ and left various bequests to the church for his funeral service. However, his funerary wishes went far beyond the walls of St. Mary’s, with bequests for masses at various local monastic houses, including St. Mary’s abbey and the priories of Holy Trinity, St. Andrew and St. Clement in York, the abbeys of Byland and Fountains, Newburgh priory, and the friaries in York, Richmond, Hartlepool and Northallerton, as well as all of the other 52 parish churches in the city of York. He also left instructions for generous donations to the poor on the day of his funeral, and for feasts to be held by the York guilds of St. Mary and St. Christopher, as well as for works at various churches. Probate was granted on 25 June 1457 to his executors, Richard Hamerton, rector of St. Mary Bishophill Senior, and a York lawyer, John Dawtry, both of whom were evidently on very close terms with him.24 In 1458 Dawtry bequeathed his son a mazer given to him by Sir Alexander, and in 1465 Hamerton left a mazer to his god-daughter Joan, Sir Alexander’s gd.-da.: Test. Ebor. ii. 232, 268-9. Yet despite these close connexions, the executors were clearly alarmed at the state of Neville’s affairs, and refused to accept their task, citing complications caused by other grants made by him during his lifetime. Their reluctance was probably justified. As early as 1431, Neville had seemingly granted much of his property to feoffees, in turn being appointed as receiver in what were his own lands, and in 1440 the York draper, William Girlington*, was pursuing him for debts of over £150.25 Lancs. RO, Hornby Catholic Mission mss, RHCY 3/6/11, 12; CP40/718, rots. 169, 170d. As a result of this refusal, administration of Sir Alexander’s goods was granted to his son and heir, William (d.1469), and two of his widow’s relatives, the brothers Master William, rector of Brompton (near Scarborough), and Henry Euer*, on 24 Sept. 1457. The widow did not outlive her husband long, as administration of her effects was granted to her son-in-law, Sir Richard Percy, on 31 Aug. 1459, less than two years before Percy’s own death on the battlefield at Towton.26 Test. Ebor. ii. 207.

Very soon after Sir Alexander’s death his son William strengthened the family’s ties with the Nevilles by marriage. On 13 Oct. 1457 he entered into a contract for the marriage of his son and heir, another William, to Joan, daughter of the Neville servant, Christopher Boynton. It is a measure of the family’s wealth that he was able to secure a portion of as much as 400 marks, offering in return a substantial jointure in land with an annual value of 40 marks The family had an undistinguished later history until its failure in the male line in 1523. 27 Yorks Deeds, i. 218; VCH Yorks. (N.Riding), i. 101; Genealogist, n.s. xxxiii. 14.