NEVILLE, Henry (1619-94), of Heathley Hall, Warfield and Billingbear, Berks., and Silver Street, Mdx.

Early career

The Nevilles of Billingbear, a cadet branch of the Barons of Bergavenny, were first represented in Parliament by Henry Neville’s great-grandfather Sir Henry†, who sat for the county in five Parliaments from 1553. The grandfather, also Sir Henry†, spent two years imprisoned in the Tower, suspected of a part in the 2nd earl of Essex’s rebellion and, as MP for Berkshire in the Addled Parliament of 1614, was arrested as one of the ‘undertakers’ accused of holding secret negotiations with James I on reforming the government. The father, yet another Sir Henry†, sat in Parliament in 1614 and 1621 as a client of the 3rd earl of Pembroke.23HP Commons 1558-1603; HP Commons 1604-1629. Despite coming from a long line of parliamentarians, it was probably Henry Neville’s mother’s family that most influenced his political ideas. Through his uncle, 1st Viscount Stangford, Neville was second cousin to Algernon Sydney*; and on his mother’s second marriage to Sir John Thorowgood† of Clerkenwell, Middlesex, he came into contact with radicals such as Josias Berners*, Thomas Chaloner* and James Harrington, all later named with Neville as executors to Thorowgood’s will.24J. Scott, Algernon Sidney and the English Republic (Cambridge, 1988), 63; Aylmer, State’s Servants, 415; PROB11/265/718. In October 1639 Neville married Elizabeth Staverton, a Berkshire heiress whose father had died three months before.25Berks. RO, Waltham St Lawrence par. regs; Mahlberg, Neville, 33, 36. As she was still a minor, Elizabeth had become a royal ward, and Neville, faced with losing control of his wife’s property, became involved in a scheme to conceal some of the lands, in collusion with other members of the family. This led to an investigation for fraud over the next few years that may have influenced Neville in his later views on the overweening powers of the crown.26Mahlberg, Neville, 36-7. Later allegations of ‘his barbarous usage of the woman that brought him the estate’ cannot be substantiated, but the marriage would remain childless, and disputes over the inheritance within the family continued for the next two decades, until Elizabeth’s death in 1664.27Mahlberg, Neville, 33, 38; Berks. RO, D/EN/F8/1/6. In the midst of the initial row over the wardship, in January 1641, Neville took his wife from Billingbear ‘to school’ in Oxford, and she may have remained as a resident there after May 1641, when Neville set off for a grand tour of Europe.28Berks. RO, D/EN/F8/1/1; CSP Dom. 1640-1, p. 574. He spent the next few years in France and especially Italy, where he lived in Rome and Florence, and took a great interest in the workings of the Venetian republic. On his travels he made friends with the Florentine lawyer, Ferrante Capponi, and Bernardo Guasconi.29Oxford DNB; Berks. RO, D/EN/F8/2/1-2. Neville seems to have shared an interest in Mediterranean literature and culture with other members of his family, especially Sir John Thorowgood, who left his library of Italian and French books to Neville in his will.30PROB11/265/718.

Neville’s movements after his return to England, probably around 1645, are unclear, although his brother Richard fought on the royalist side and compounded for his delinquency under the Oxford Articles. A series of pamphlets featuring the lascivious activities of a fictitious ‘Parliament of Ladies’, produced around 1647-8, has generally been attributed to Neville.31Oxford DNB; Mahlberg, Henry Neville, 89, 96-105. The first of these, published in May 1647, and purporting to be the official report of proceedings of ‘the rattle-headed ladies assembled at Kate’s in the Covent Garden’, made satirical jibes against prominent parliamentarians. Thus ‘Lady Stapilton’ and ‘Lady Norton’ (the wives of Sir Philip Stapilton* and Sir Gregory Norton* respectively) were chosen doorkeepers of the ‘House’, while the countess of Salisbury (wife of the 2nd earl, William Cecil*) was elected their ‘Speaker’. Religious zealots were an easy target. The assembly investigated Sir Robert Harley* for ‘attempting to deface’ the heavily made-up Lady Norton, ‘the said lady being a zealous Independent and so one of the saints, and Sir Robert having found out that she was likewise painted, he pretended that she came within his ordinance of idolatry, saints, crosses etc’. The Presbyterian divine, Obadiah Sedgwick, notorious for his incontinence, was said to have advised the ladies on their conjugal rights, and after his report ‘it was declared by them that all and every man coupled in the bond of matrimony and wedlock, he is engaged to content his mate and fellow-feeler as often as the strength of his body will permit’. The proceedings ended in similar vein, with the forced entry to the House of the hermaphroditic ‘Madam Swive-all-she-met Hungerford’ (presumably the wife of Sir Edward Hungerford*): ‘the very sight of this madam with a dildo, together with the noise of her name, put the House into a great silence’.32Neville, The Parliament of Ladies (1647), 3, 5, 11-14 (E.388.4). The timing of this pamphlet might suggest a political motive, but Neville’s crude sexual jests and attacks on the godly were even-handed, and the result is a satire on Parliament as an institution.

Commonwealth, 1649-53

Neville’s election for Abingdon in Berkshire in April 1649 was challenged in the Commons before he could take his seat. On 11 October Sir Henry Vane II read a letter criticising the return, and it was voted to appoint a committee to investigate further, despite the opposition of Neville’s cousin, Algernon Sydney. The committee of elections found in Neville’s favour, however, and he was admitted to the House on the same day.33CJ vi. 305b-306a. In the House, Neville soon became a member of the republican group which included Thomas Chaloner and Henry Marten* as well as Sydney, and was associated with Edmund Ludlowe*, Lord Grey of Groby (Thomas Grey*) and others.34Worden, Rump Parliament, 218-9. Neville’s early attachment to the commonwealth was apparent from his first appointment, on 12 October, to the committee to ensure all MPs took the Engagement before they were admitted to the House, and on 9 November he was named to a committee concerning measures to ensure the Engagement was taken throughout the country.35CJ vi. 307b, 321b. Over the winter Neville was brought into important administrative committees. He was added to the Committee for Compounding on 2 November and to the Army Committee on 4 February 1650.36CCC, 161; CJ vi. 318a, 357b. On 7 February he was appointed to the committee on a bill to remove obstructions in the sale of crown lands, on 12 February he was named to a committee considering the election of four new members to the council of state, and on 18 February he was appointed to a committee to consider assessment legislation.37CJ vi. 358b, 363b, 368a.

Despite his apparent support for the regime in the Commons, Neville courted controversy by publishing, in January 1650, another satirical pamphlet, Newes from the New Exchange.38[Neville], Newes from the New Exchange (1650, E.590.10). Although in some ways a sequel to The Parliament of Ladies, the new account of the doings of ‘the commonwealth of ladies’ who had ‘voted themselves the supreme authority both at home and abroad and settled themselves in the posture of a free state’, was a catalogue of sexual slurs against prominent Members of the Rump, perhaps designed to link personal greed with sexual excess.39Newes from the New Exchange, title page, p. 2; Mahlberg, Neville, 106-7. As before, this was a scatter gun attack, with no obvious party political bias. As well as a number of ladies of rank – the countesses of Kent, Exeter, Carlisle, Peterborough and Salisbury – there were allegations about Rumpers such as John Bradshawe, Thomas Scot I and even his own friend, Henry Marten, as well as innuendo about important preachers including Hugh Peter and Peter Sterry. Those around Oliver Cromwell* were given short shrift

Oh, let us not now forget Mistress Duns [i.e. Dunch]… she hath paid tribute to all the deputies of Ireland, and will not now forbear her Cousin Cromwell. She keeps night intelligence with his wife, and she with Hugh Peter, and Peter with Mistress Ireton, she with Bradshaw, he with Madam Castlehaven, as Cromwell with Mrs Lambert.40Newes from the New Exchange, 2-5, 8-10.

Despite this outrageous publication, Neville’s involvement in the sober business of financial affairs – and especially the raising of money through the sale of confiscated estates - continued throughout 1650 and 1651. He was included in the committees on the sale of the late king’s goods in March 1650 and January, April and May 1651; and to other committees concerning the sale of the royal estates in April 1650.41CJ vi. 382a, 398b, 519b, 556a, 563b, 576b. On 18 October 1650 he was appointed to the committee on a bill to remove obstructions from the sale of dean and chapter lands; in January and September 1651 he was included in a committee to receive claims against the bill for the sale of delinquents’ estates; and on 3 December 1651 he was named to the committee on an additional bill for the sale of forfeited estates.42CJ vi. 485a, 528a; vii. 21a, 46b. He was also involved in investigating charges of fraud against the former chairman of the Committee for Compounding, Lord Howard of Escrick (Edward Howard*). On 30 July 1650 Neville was named to a committee to consider information against Escrick, and reported its findings to the Commons on 18 September.43CJ vi. 448b, 469a

Neville’s linguistic abilities and European experiences gradually drew him into matters of foreign policy during 1650-1. On 25 April 1650 he was named to the committee to prevent the export of bullion, and on 14 June he was appointed to a small committee to draft an answer to the commissioners from the states of Holland and West Friesland.44CJ vi. 403b, 424a. On 27 December Neville advised the Commons on the correct way to receive the Portuguese ambassador and other agents, and a few days later he was named to a committee to draw up answers to the Spanish ambassador.45CJ vi. 516b, 517a. On 10 April he was named to another committee concerning Portugal, this time to consider what demands were to be placed before the ambassador.46CJ vi. 560a.

Despite his earlier jests at their expense, there was little in Neville’s parliamentary activity to suggest any tension with Cromwell and his army colleagues by the end of 1650. Indeed, his committee appointments suggest that at this stage relations were fairly amicable. In December 1650 Neville was named to committees on legislation to naturalise Major General Philip Skippon’s* wife and to settle lands on him.47CJ vi. 515b, 516b. In April 1651 he was also named to a committee to consider the claims of Henry Lord Herbert of Ragland, concerning the lands of the earl of Worcester which had been granted to Oliver Cromwell.48CJ vi. 565b. On 13 February 1651 Neville was added to a committee to review the powers of the admiralty and navy ‘for the good of the commonwealth’.49CJ vi. 534a. As the threat of invasion by the Scots increased in the spring and summer, Neville was named to committees on a bill for the pressing of soldiers (17 April), and for the relief of soldiers’ widows (2 May).50CJ vi. 563a, 569b. In the aftermath of the decisive defeat of the Scots at Worcester on 3 September, Neville was appointed to committees on bills to establish English dominion over occupied Scottish land (9 Sept.), to examine the sufferings of the ‘well-affected’ caught up in the Worcester campaign (10 Sept.), and to pass a bill appointing a day of thanksgiving (19 Sept.).51CJ vii. 14a, 15a, 20a. On 25 September Neville was one of those MPs appointed to draft a bill to meet one of the army’s key demands: the setting of a time limit on the sitting of the Long Parliament and providing for new elections.52CJ vii. 20b. At this stage Neville may have seen the army as the best chance to reform the Rump, which he later derided as ‘an oligarchy, detested by all men that love a commonwealth’.53Burton’s Diary iii. 134.

There were limits to this cooperation with the military, however. Neville was elected to the new, reactionary, council of state in November 1651, and was soon appointed to its committees for examinations and obstructions to the mint (2 Dec.) and the admiralty (4 Dec.).54CSP Dom. 1651-2, pp. 43, 46; Worden, Rump Parliament, 281. Also in December, he was appointed to the committee to consider giving audiences to diplomatic representatives, and over the following year most of his energies were devoted to matters of foreign policy, which he connected both with republican ideals and national prestige.55CSP Dom. 1651-2, p. 43; Worden, Rump Parliament, 174. In December he was ordered to consider complaints from the minister of the duke of Tuscany, to receive the ambassador of the duke of Oldenburg, and to report to the Commons concerning the Swedish representatives.56CSP Dom. 1651-2, pp. 54, 85, 71. On 2 January 1652 he was added to the council committee for foreign affairs, and from then on he joined Marten, Chaloner and Harbert Morley* as the main managers of foreign policy.57CSP Dom. 1651-2, p. 89; Worden, Rump Parliament, 301. Later in the same month, Neville and Marten were ordered to draw up an answer to the Spanish ambassador’s information on the murder of Anthony Ascham, and Neville was a member of the committee that received the ambassador thereafter.58CSP Dom. 1651-2, pp. 95, 96, 122. In March he attended the agents from the Hanseatic League, and in April he was added to the committee for French affairs.59CSP Dom. 1651-2, pp. 172, 205. In May he was one of the councillors detailed to hear French trade proposals, to draft a letter recalling the representative in Turkey, and to advise on the safety of the Dutch ambassadors who had travelled to London to negotiate peace.60CSP Dom. 1651-2, pp. 233, 242, 251. He was instructed to dine with the Dutch ambassadors on 11 June, and later in the same month was involved in further discussions with them.61CSP Dom. 1651-2, pp. 287, 293, 295. In July he was added to the committee to treat with the Danes, who were allied to the Dutch; in August he and Chaloner were appointed to a committee to speak with all foreign representatives; and in September Neville, Chaloner and Marten were ordered to meet the Italian secretary.62CSP Dom. 1651-2, pp. 348, 365, 406. In October and early November, Neville met the agent from Venice, twice attended the Portuguese ambassador, and reported the bill opening trade relations with France.63CSP Dom. 1651-2, pp. 428, 436, 441, 454, 489.

Despite his Herculean labours, Neville was not reappointed to the council of state in November 1652, and this perhaps reflects the tensions between the republicans and the army that had been growing throughout the year.64Woolrych, Commonwealth to Protectorate, 45. Neville’s involvement in this factionalism was neither constant nor consistent, and on certain issues he sided with the Cromwellians. For example, when it came to pardoning royalists, Neville, like Marten, sided with Cromwell against Sir Arthur Hesilrige* and others who called for harsher measures against them.65Worden, Rump Parliament, 268-9. On 20 January 1652 Neville and Marten were tellers in favour of voting on an amendment to the oblivion bill which would replace November 1640 with January 1648 as the cut-off date.66CJ vii. 75a. On 27 January Neville and Marten again acted as teller against a further amendment to the same bill.67CJ vii. 78a. Likewise, for much of the spring of 1652 Neville continued to be involved in financial measures that would benefit the army: he was named to committees to reduce into one the committees on the sale of forfeited estates (30 Mar.), to consider a petition by the contractors for the sale of bishops’ lands (6 Apr.), and to proposed ways to supplement the income from the assessment (28 Apr.).68CJ vii. 112a, 115a, 128a. But in the same period Neville became involved in matters of great sensitivity to the army, and its sense of honour. He was named to the committee on the bill transferring the powers of indemnity to commissioners on 27 April.69CJ vii. 127a. On 5 May he was teller with Denis Bond against an amendment appointing Colonel Thomas Pride* as a commissioner in the revived bill for relief on articles, with Philip Skippon and Grey of Groby telling in favour.70CJ vii. 130a; Worden, Rump Parliament, 284. This was a symbolic defeat for the army, as Skippon and Groby had been key players in Pride’s purge of the Commons in December 1648.71Worden, Rump Parliament, 284.

Neville continued to be involved in financial affairs during the summer and autumn of 1652. He was named to a further committee on improving the revenue on 2 June, and to a committee to ensure the swift collection of revenue from the sale of delinquents’ estates on 15 July.72CJ vii. 138b, 154b. He was also named to the committee on the bill for the settlement of Irish land between the Adventurers, the army and the Irish Protestants on 6 August, and joined Sydney as teller in favour of including the former royalist Henry, Viscount Moore of Drogheda [I], in the bill on 11 August.73CJ vii. 162a. With Irish land in short supply, leniency towards such individuals was not welcomed by the army. Neville’s concern for foreign affairs and commerce, so obvious from his committee appointments in the council of state, also features in his parliamentary activities in the second half of 1652. On 24 August he reported from the council on proposals concerning trade with France.74CJ vii. 169a. On 7 September he told against amending a bill to execute an earlier House of Lords’ judgement between George Fowke and the East India Company – a controversial measure that had the support of Cromwell and Thomas Harrison I*.75CJ vii. 175a; Worden, Rump Parliament, 311-2. Neville was also chosen to accompany the Portuguese ambassador on his visit to Parliament on 29 September, and named to a committee to peruse a letter from the duke of Vendome on 26 October.76CJ vii. 187a, 195a. Earlier in October, Neville was named to the committee considering the declaration on the union with Scotland.77CJ vii. 189a. He was ordered to count the votes in the election of the admiralty judges on 26 November and was added to the navy committee on 28 December.78CJ vii. 221b, 236b. During the early months of 1653, Neville’s career appears to have been equally uncontroversial. He was named to committees for the sale of forest lands (8 Jan.), to receive ambassadors from Hamburg and Sweden (28 Jan., 24 Feb.), and to consider various private petitions (27 Jan., 14 and 19 Apr.).79CJ vii. 245a, 251a, 252a, 262a, 278a, 280a. Cromwell’s dissolution of the Rump brought Neville’s parliamentary career to a sudden halt on 20 April. In an unpublished manuscript, written shortly afterwards and addressed personally to Oliver Cromwell, Neville denounced the commonwealth ‘factions and parties’ who were prepared to see ‘themselves destroyed so that they might first see your ruin and the armies’ and warned against the ‘race of flatterers, who when they get access to you or meet with any of your friends and relatives cry up monarchy in your own person’.80Berks. RO, D/EN/F8/1/10. He was also critical of the current situation, in which ‘the rules and foundations of all government are broken and shaken’ and called on the general to seize the opportunity to undertake a complete overhaul of the system, by ‘modelling a perfect form of a commonwealth’ along classical republican lines.81B. Worden, ‘Harrington’s “Oceana”: origins and aftermath, 1651-1660’, in Republicanism, Liberty and Commercial Society 1649-1776 ed. D. Wootton (Stanford, 1994), 117-9; Mahlberg, Neville, 140-1. It was a forlorn hope.

Opponent of the protectorate, 1653-8

Neville took no part in the Nominated Assembly, and he was no friend of the protectorate, but claims that he ‘rendered himself so obnoxious to Cromwell as to be banished from London in 1654’ cannot be substantiated.82DNB; Oxford DNB. The Henry Neville granted licence to visit London for his private affairs in August 1655, notwithstanding the recent proclamation against royalists residing there, was almost certainly his namesake, Henry Neville of Cressing Temple in Essex and Holt in Leicestershire.83CSP Dom. 1655, pp. 232, 595; CCC 863-4, 1916, 3263. Our Henry Neville seems to have retired to his estates in this period, perhaps deigning to play a minor part in local affairs. Although he had been removed from the Berkshire bench by the autumn of 1653, he continued to receive appointments to the Oxford circuit oyer and terminer commission and to sewers commissions for the River Kennet. It was not long before Neville found ways of getting under the protector’s skin, however. It was said in March 1656 that Neville was ‘conceived to be a person of more bitterness towards his highness and the government than any of that party’.84HMC 5th Rep., 148. His subversive attitude can perhaps be seen in another pamphlet sometimes attributed to him, published in June: A Copy of a Letter from an Officer.85Oxford DNB; A Copy of a Letter ed. The Rota, Exeter, 1974, intro. This letter, supposedly from an officer in Ireland to Cromwell written two years before, urged the protector not to make himself king, and, using analogies with ancient Rome and modern Italy, praised a republic as ‘a nursery of virtue, valour and industry, where no court whispers, no pimping projecting, or such arts, can bring advantage to those who practise them’.86A Copy of a Letter from an Officer of the Army in Ireland (June 1656), 2-5, 21 (E.881.3). Neville’s classical republicanism was nurtured by his friend James Harrington, whose Commonwealth of Oceana, probably written during the commonwealth, was finally published in 1656.87Worden, Literature and Politics in Cromwellian England (Oxford, 2007), 105-6. It was said at the time that Neville had read and approved the book, and Thomas Hobbes even suspected that he had had a hand in writing it.88Aubrey, Brief Lives, 124-5; Worden, ‘Harrington’s “Oceana”’, 116.

Neville’s first public challenge to the protectorate, by standing for one of the Berkshire county seats in August 1656, ended in failure, as the pro-Cromwellian sheriff, William Strowde of Ruscombe, was determined that he should not get in. The full details were thereafter published in a pamphlet, which emphasised Neville’s ‘unblameable’ behaviour during the commonwealth and the ‘affections of his countrymen’ towards him during the election. It was said that his reluctance to stand had been overcome once he had discovered ‘in the people so unexpected a joy and alacrity and so unanimous an inclination towards him’ and this was contrasted with the machinations of the sheriff, ‘the soldiers, the corrupt and flattering ministers and other engaged persons’ who were allied him.89A True and Perfect Relation of the manner and proceeding held by the Sheriff of Berk: at Reading (1656), 2 (E.891.8). Neville was seen as ‘a witness in behalf of liberty and the old cause’, and his supporters were praised as those who upheld ‘a commonwealth and popular government’ against ‘the prime gentlemen and house-keepers in the shire, together with that of all the factious ministers and their blinded followers, as also of all the soldiers’.90True and Perfect Relation, 3, 10. Neville had lost the seat, but it was not the end of the matter.

In the immediate aftermath of the election debacle, Neville penned a satirical account of ‘The Royal Game at Picquet’, a manuscript copy of which came into the hands of the London bookseller, George Thomason, on 2 September 1656. In portraying the Cromwellian establishment gathered around the card table, Neville was able to put words into their mouths. Thus Cromwell admitted that he had lost his loyal friends since becoming protector: ‘I have thrown out all my best cards, and got none but wretched ones’ in return; while Lambert replied ‘Now you have a new pack, I am content to play, but you know every card in the old one, and could make your game as you listed’. Neville even included himself in the game, with the own ironic comment that: ‘I am so diseased with the spleen that I should think of something else while I was aplaying, and take in all the small cards, for I am all day dreaming of another game’.91‘The Royall Game at Picquet’ (1656, E.886.4). A printed version of the satire appeared in 1659.92Harl. Misc. iii. 314; Mahlberg, Neville, 51-3. Neville’s constant needling of the regime made him few friends at Whitehall, and suspicions of his loyalty were further increased by the interception of letters to him from the continent in August and October 1657.93TSP vi. 428, 562. Worse still, Neville refused to let the 1656 election controversy lie. In the Trinity term of 1658, Neville took Strowde to court over the proceedings, encouraged by a number of republicans and Rumpers, including Harrington, Hesilrige, Scot and Ludlowe, who attended the trial. According to Ludlowe, the lord chief justice, Oliver St John*, initially took Neville’s part, telling the jury ‘how heinous a crime it was for a sheriff, who being but a servant to the country, should presume to impose upon them such members as he pleased’, and Strowde was found guilty and ordered to pay £1,500 damages to Neville.94Ludlow, Mems. ii. 35-6. St John, ‘to gratify his master Cromwell’, then postponed the judgement until the next term, and the judges eventually decline to take the case further, as ‘it is a matter … that concerns the privileges of the Parliament, and wheresoever the privileges of Parliament are concerned, no other court can hold jurisdiction’.95Ludlow, Mems. ii. 36; Nevill v. Strood: the state of the case (1656). It was left to successive parliaments to decide Neville’s case.

Richard Cromwell’s Parliament, 1659

In the winter of 1658-9 Neville was said to be among the supporters of the old Rump, or commonwealthsmen, said to ‘stickle all they can to come into the House’.96TSP vii. 588. Neville’s candidature at Reading in December 1658 brought him into conflict with the Cromwellian, Bulstrode Whitelocke*, whose son William* was also a candidate. Even before the contest, it was clear to Whitelocke ‘that there was a great faction before for Mr Henry Neville, and little probability of bringing in Whitelocke’s son because of former engagements by the townspeople for Mr Neville and others’, and he was advised that success would be difficult ‘unless Mr Henry Neville could be taken off from standing for it’.97Whitelocke, Diary, 502-3. After a skirmish in the council chamber, the younger Whitelocke and William Thornhill* were elected with the support of the corporation, but Neville and Daniel Blagrave* having received over 1,000 votes in the town, the contest resulted in a double return.98HMC 11th Rep. pt. vi. 193; Berks. RO, R/AC1/1/9, ff. 1-2. At this point, Bulstrode Whitelocke withdrew his son’s nomination, ‘because there would be a question upon it by Mr Neville, who had the popular election, and Whitelocke’s son was chosen by the mayor and aldermen only’.99Whitelocke, Diary, 504. William Whitelocke opted to sit for his other seat, West Looe in Cornwall, and on 1 February the committee of privileges confirmed the election of Neville and Blagrave for Reading.100CJ vii. 596a; Burton’s Diary iii. 21; Whitelocke, Diary, 506.

On the same day that Neville’s election was confirmed, the Commons received a request from the court of common pleas to assist their deliberations in the case of Neville v Strowde, and there followed a lengthy debate about jurisdiction before the House agreed to treat it as a matter of privilege.101CJ vii. 596a; Burton’s Diary iii. 18-21. The controversy over the 1656 election would provide the ground bass for Neville’s activities during the 1659 Parliament. On 3 February the House received a transcript of the case, as heard by St John, and the decision by the common pleas to pass the matter back to Parliament, and ‘Mr Neville himself did move it, but modestly enough, and then withdrew’.102CJ vii. 598a-9b; Burton’s Diary iii. 51-5; CCSP iv. 144. The formal hearing of the case, originally set for 10 February, was twice delayed.103CJ vii. 601b, 604b. This allowed Neville’s enemies to organise. On 16 February the Presbyterian, John Bulkeley*, interrupted a debate on the treasury to bring an accusation against Neville on the grounds of blasphemy and atheism, alleging that he had stated that ‘nothing could be said for scriptures which could not be said for the Koran’.104TSP vii. 616; CCSP iv. 150, 152; Clarke Pprs. v. 279; Consultations of the Edinburgh Ministers ed. Stephen ii. 166. Supporters of Neville, including Hesilrige, Scot, Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper*, Matthew Alured*, John Lambert*, Thomas Kelsey* and Robert Bennett*, urged that specific charges be made in writing and that his accusers be named, but Bulkeley refused. This led to suspicions that the accusations had little basis in truth, and that the episode was a ploy to discredit Neville on the eve of his proposed hearing against Strowde. After five hours’ debate the matter was dropped and rescheduled for the following day, the case against Strowde once again postponed.105Burton’s Diary iii. 296-305. On 26 February the lawyers for both parties were called to the House and the date for the determination of the case was set for 4 March, although when nothing was done, 19 March was set as the new date.106CJ vii. 608a, 612b. On 1 April it was again ordered that the case was to be heard, this time on 9 April; on 6 April another order delayed it until 19 April; and on the latter case it was again postponed, this time until 23 April – which turned out to be the day after Parliament was dissolved.107CJ vii. 623a, 626b, 642b.

Soon after the election case was raised, Neville became a leading figure in the attack on the protectorate, in alliance with Hesilrige, Vane, Scot, Ashley Cooper and other commonwealthsmen.108Add. 22919, f. 78. On 2 February Neville welcomed the decision to debate the bill to recognise Richard Cromwell as lord protector, but pushed for a general discussion of the Humble Petition, pointing out that ‘the two great flaws in the government, one in sovereign power and another in the executive power, were the negative voice and the militia’. He argued that the protector’s right of veto needed to be curbed and the control of the armed forces ‘entrusted to safe hands’. Hesilrige seconded him, saying that both rights should belong to the Commons.109Burton’s Diary iii. 34. On 5 February, when the need for oaths was discussed, Neville again criticised the Humble Petition as an inadequate foundation: ‘you have been often told you sit here on the Petition and Advice. I hope you sit here by the people’s choice’; while the oath imposed on MPs had no force, for ‘it does not bind us not to alter the legislature. We are free to debate any part of it’.110Burton’s Diary iii. 72-3. Returning to the recognition bill on 7 February, Neville pressed for its commitment, to allow amendments limiting Richard’s power to be drawn up.111Burton’s Diary iii. 117. The following day Neville argued not just for limits but for the constitution itself to be revised, although, in an attempt to make his ideas more palatable, he stopped short of calling for Richard to be deposed

It has been said that the chief magistrate is king and that his office is hereditary. If nothing has been done to take away these powers then Charles Stuart has undoubted right. I am for a single person, a senate and a popular assembly but not in that juggling way. King, Lords and Commons I cannot like. This man is at least actually, if not legally, settled the chief magistrate.112Burton’s Diary iii. 132.

The government was far from settled, Neville continued, for ‘since dissolving the old government, we have had many alterations without success, which hath happened because every government hath had some flaw in it which hath not yet been seen’. He included in this the commonwealth, which he described as a mere ‘oligarchy’. The authority claimed for the protector was not matched by reality, and ‘the people of England will not suffer a negative voice to be in those who have not a natural power over them’; while the Humble Petition’s pretensions to give the protector ‘kingly authority over a people’ would not work either: ‘never think that settling such powers as are not consistent with a free people can do your business’. Again, Neville did not call for Richard to be removed. Instead he wanted Parliament ‘to declare the protector to be chief magistrate … as supreme as the nation will bear at this day’, but ‘under such rules and limitations as you shall agree upon’.113Burton’s Diary iii. 133-5; Schilling, ‘Gell Diary, 1659’, 39. Parliament, rather than a written constitution – or, even worse, the law courts – must control the executive, or the people’s liberties were at risk.

As the debate on the recognition bill continued, tempers began to fray. On 11 February the solicitor-general, William Ellys, complained that ‘those that are of opinion that all the power is in this House do not acknowledge the protector to be chief magistrate at all’. This was denied by Neville, who coolly referred Ellys to his earlier remarks, and warned that ‘if you give up the liberties of the people you lay the foundation for [civil war]’, and moved for a committee to be appointed to redraft the question.114Burton’s Diary iii. 229. When several MPs, including Hesilrige, became heated, Neville joined Adam Baynes in calling for an adjournment, ‘or hear one another with patience’.115Burton’s Diary iii. 231. Despite this irenic stance, Neville was happy to stir emotions later on the same day, when, in a debate on the legality of Edmund Jones* sitting in the House, he turned the question back to the validity of the Humble Petition, for ‘if we had not a better law than the Petition and Advice, we sat but by a piece of paper’.116Burton’s Diary iii. 236. The row over the recognition bill came to a head on 14 February. In the debate, which lasted six hours, it was said that ‘the negative was headed by Sir Arthur Hesilrige, Sir Henry Vane, Ludlow, Lambert, Scot, Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper, Neville and all that gang’.117Henry Cromwell Corresp., 455. Neville repeated some the points he had made earlier. ‘The word recognise’ he argued, ‘gives away the question – it betokens slavery’.118Burton’s Diary iii. 275. When the matter finally came to a vote, Neville and Hesilrige twice acted as tellers, first against including the word ‘recognise’, and then in favour of allowing further amendments, but on both occasions they were defeated by a substantial margin.119CJ vii. 603b. Neville, who had long pressed for amendments, could only comment

You are now where you were in the king’s time. He had a long hereditary right, which, without the sword, could not be obtained. Unless we speak now for the people, we must forever hold our peace.120Burton’s Diary iii. 285.

During this period, Neville was also involved in financial matters. On 3 February, after the House received a report from the treasury commissioners, he called for a committee to be appointed to consider the present extent of the armed forces and the cost of maintaining them.121Burton’s Diary iii. 62. When the state of the accounts was considered on 17 February, Neville moved that the war with Spain would be considered, as ‘there are many reports that the enemy would seek you in peace, if your sense were understood that you would admit it’. His primary concern was ‘a general decay of trade’ because of the war, and ‘no money has come for two or three years’ from the customs.122Burton’s Diary iii. 314. This view was not shared by all commentators. Unsurprisingly, the French ambassador dismissed Neville’s words, saying that he had ‘exaggerated the disadvantages of war [and] he assured the House that Spain would not fail to send propositions of accommodation as soon as she was aware of the feeling of England on the subject’.123Guizot, Richard Cromwell i. 308. On 21 February, during a debate on the war between Sweden and Denmark, Neville denied there was a religious element: ‘when a war is begun upon account that the Protestant religion is in persecution, as in France and Spain formerly, there is a great concernment, and it ought to move us before all things else. There is no such war now, as I take it’. In the current conflict in the Baltic, ‘I can see nothing of religion or Protestant religion’, but ‘England, indeed, cannot subsist without trade’, and trade must be the deciding factor. As a result, Neville questioned the wisdom of opposing Denmark when Swedish dominance in the region would be equally bad for English merchants.124Burton’s Diary iii. 387-8. ‘Besides all this’, he continued, ‘I apprehend it will be no easy matter to get monies to carry on this war’. The best approach would be to encourage the warring nations to make peace, ‘that by peace we may remain umpire, rather than engage upon such a hard service in a war’.125Burton’s Diary iii. 391-2. For pragmatic reasons, Neville was reluctant to link this question with the constitutional point that allowing Richard Cromwell to deploy the fleet would acknowledge his control over the ‘militia’ forces more generally. On 24 February he twice argued against mixing the two issues, as ‘I doubt the business of the Sound will hardly keep cold corked up till you have considered these things, and settled the debate concerning the militia’.126Burton’s Diary iii. 451, 461. When finally drawn into the debate, Neville supported Parliament’s right to decide military matters, and warning that ‘you give the power or peace and war by this vote, to his highness’.127Burton’s Diary iii. 476. In the subsequent division, Neville and Hesilrige were tellers against sending ships under Richard’s sole authority – a motion passed by 176 votes to 98.128CJ vii. 607b.

Initially, Neville was reluctant to leave the question of bounding the rights of the protector – and remoulding the constitution – in favour of a debate on the Other House, arguing on 17 February that ‘when the whole Petition and Advice comes in debate, another House perhaps my then be thought convenient, but it is not necessary you should take the old way into consideration … You are not going to build upon the old constitution’.129Burton’s Diary iii. 320-1. The next day he again urged the House not to look back to ‘what was done by John of Gaunt and those fellows’, but forward to a new form of government which better reflected the current situation

the Lords much outweighed before, and now the Commons and the people outweigh; and your king, not long since, before the Parliament, did oversway. So you build upon an ill foundation if you aim at the old way. You cannot build up that which God and nature have destroyed … You have laid a good foundation, a single person. It now concerns you to build upon that, and to bound him, that he may lay claim to no more power than you now give him.130Burton’s Diary iii. 330-1; Schilling, ‘Gell Diary, 1659’, 84, 88.

Once the debate on the Other House was underway, Neville sided with those who called for strict limits to its powers, although he remained doubtful that such measures would work, telling MPs on 19 February that ‘it is clear that the bounding of peers is like that which was said of the king: it is like hedging the cuckoo’.131Burton’s Diary iii. 368. He also voiced concerns on 28 February, saying that he would not give his vote unless the question was clear.132Burton’s Diary iii. 546. On 1 March Neville was again concerned that correct procedure had not been followed: ‘you are not now about transacting with the Other House, and therefore to move that we shall transact with them begs the question’. He also raised the wider point that the status of the Humble Petition might be confirmed through the back door: ‘I hear it not yet answered that the Petition and Advice being personally addressed to his late highness is personal, therefore the protector that now is, is not obliged, not indeed empowered to call another House; so that what by what is offered, you will swallow the Petition and Advice at once’.133Burton’s Diary iii. 564; Schilling, ‘Gell Diary, 1659’, 142. On the same day, Neville joined Hesilrige in telling for the minority against transacting business with the Other House as a House of Parliament before its form was agreed and its powers limited.134CJ vii. 609a.

On 4 March Neville showed his frustration at the continuing debate on the Other House, while more important business languished, and urged the Commons to adjourn, ‘else you will spoil the Committee of Trade, which is the great part of the settlement, and much expected’.135Burton’s Diary iv. 19 His advice was ignored, however, and debate on the Other House continued. On 5 March the question of readmitting the old peers – or at least not excluding their right to sit – was discussed. Neville took the matter back to first principles. The purpose of an upper chamber was to act as a ‘balance, and that is impossible now to be’, as the lords now lacked the landed power that had given them authority over the Commons in the past, and ‘this will not be endured by the people, to have a sort of privileged persons to obstruct the passing of their laws’. The current members of the Other House were straw men as they ‘depend upon the single person’. Indeed, ‘there is much more to be said for the old peerage being neuters. They have no dependency … Let us have them rather than the other, as much more fit and indifferent’.136Burton’s Diary iv. 23-5. This was no more than a rhetorical flourish, however. As Sir John Gell* recorded, Neville followed it with his real point: ‘Let the Other House be elected by the people’.137Schilling, ‘Gell Diary, 1659’, 166. On 7 March Neville again sought to concentrate MPs’ minds by boiling the case of the Other House down into a simple motion: ‘If you will have any addition, I desire that this may be it, which was debated two days: that you will transact etc. when you have bounded and approved them’.138Burton’s Diary iv. 76.

According to Jerome Sankey*, writing on 8 March, Neville was now working closely with ‘the commonwealth party … who have notably bestirred themselves against the Petition and Advice’.139Henry Cromwell Corresp., 472. Supporters of the protectorate, such as Whitelocke, had by this stage become exasperated with ‘Hesilrige and Henry Neville and their flock’ who they saw as ‘a great cause of disturbance in this Parliament’.140Whitelocke, Diary, 510. But Neville’s contributions to the debates of February and early March do not fit into the conventional factional categories. This ambivalence can also be seen in his attitude towards the Scottish MPs. When the matter was first raised, on 8 March, he opposed the withdrawal of the Scottish members during the debate, for ‘it is not fit to leave so many worthy members out that may help you in it’.141Burton’s Diary iv. 88. The next day he seems to have changed his position, saying that ‘if persons concerned may vote in their own cause, then it is as broad as long’, and reminding the House of the implications of allowing the Scots to sit: ‘for you are, for aught I know, going to give away the nation’.142Burton’s Diary iv. 105. He supported calls for the Scottish writs to be examined on 17 March, despite sarcastic suggestions from Presbyterians that this was a mere delaying tactic, to ‘draw out the debate’.143Burton’s Diary iv. 170. The next day he made a full-length speech on the issue, starting with the validity of the first tender of union, made by the commonwealth: ‘I conceive you are not bound by that union, and you, first, ought to consider what constitution you will be at’, while the Scots had been ‘reduced by arms to a commonwealth, not voluntarily’. He then addressed the question of writs: ‘if they had right, and if writs had not been sent, they might have demanded it at your doors. Yet, if Edinburgh had come and demanded that right, you would have not granted it’, as the protector had no authority to send out such writs: ‘it is dangerous … to endow the chief magistrate with such a power … when you know not how you will bound him and limit him’. Neville finished with an attempt to see things from the Scottish point of view: ‘It cannot be prejudicial to that nation not to send members. It is much charge to them. They have a law which cannot be applicable to our laws. They must not have Englishmen imposed upon them [as MPs] by letters to enslave them and us too … It is absolutely to enslave and reduce them to a province’.144Burton’s Diary iv. 188; Schilling, ‘Gell Diary, 1659’, 243. When the matter eventually came to a vote on 21 March, Neville joined Robert Reynolds as teller against the Scots continuing to sit at Westminster, but their side lost by a considerable margin.145CJ vii. 616b; Burton’s Diary iv. 219. Immediately afterwards, Neville and Hesilrige moved for the legality of the Irish MPs to be debated next, and he contributed to that debate on 22 March, urging members to ‘confine your debate to the legal, and go on to your point of prudence afterwards’, and ‘not hunt two or three hares at once’.146Burton’s Diary iv. 219, 225, 231. On 23 March, as MPs prepared for a division on the Irish MPs, Neville called for an adjournment, ‘because divers were to speak’, but his motion was ignored and the vote was passed.147Burton’s Diary iv. 243. Neville had some sympathy with the Scots, however. On 2 April, when it was moved that a forthcoming fast day should be imposed north of the border, against Presbyterian scruples about state interference, Neville argued that ‘I would not have the Church of Scotland imposed upon, and I desire the like favour for England’, attesting that some congregations ‘would be torn in pieces with wild horses rather than read this declaration’.148Burton’s Diary iv. 332. The role of the chief magistrate should be severely restricted in such case: ‘Some say the magistrate hath nothing to do with matters of religion … as for toleration, he is to put into execution laws for [i.e. to prevent] disturbance’.149Derbs. RO, D258/10/9/2, f. 15r-v. On 5 April he joined John Hobart as teller against.150CJ vii. 626a; Burton’s Diary iv. 347. The agent for the Resolutioner faction in the Kirk, James Sharp, was deeply suspicious of these new allies, whom he saw as ‘persons professedly disaffected to all church order’.151Consultations of the Edinburgh Ministers ed. Stephen ii. 166.

In the last week of March, with the votes to allow the Irish and Scots to sit, the commonwealthsmen were said to have been ‘silenced in the House’, and to ‘hang down their heads’.152Bodl. Clarendon 60, ff. 254, 256. Neville shared their despondency. He returned to the debate on the Other House – now concentrating on if and how the Commons would ‘transact’ with it – with a melancholy air. On 28 March he urged MPs not to accept the upper chamber without careful consideration: ‘If you have no right, you cannot make delegates to treat, how can you transact with those you know not?’153Derbs. RO, D258/10/9/2, f. 7. ‘If you do transact’, he added, ‘you can do nought. You are in a sea, and see no land … there is no treating with them now, but as a besieged town, that they may march away with all the honour that may be, upon honourable terms’.154Burton’s Diary iv. 278. As the mood of the House seemed to favour transacting, Neville moved for the wording of the motion to be altered to introduce a time limit, or ‘you will lose by it, for you bind yourselves up for this Parliament’. Although Neville remained opposed on legal grounds, he accepted that the vote would now pass: ‘This vote, when you pass it, will be the best title they have. They sit not by the Petition and Advice’.155Burton’s Diary iv. 291. Later the same day the vote to transact was passed by 198 to 125. On 29 March, Neville was reduced to advising MPs to consider how they might greet members of the Other House, ‘whether you will stand bare or not. It is likely that I shall not stand bare. This may beget differences among us’.156Burton’s Diary iv. 294. Thereafter, Neville fought a rearguard action, opposing the protector and the constitution whenever opportunity arose. On 1 April, during the debate on the excise bill, he attacked the generous provision made to the government under the Humble Petition, and advised MPs to ‘consider your own constitution before you settle your revenue… It may be, you will think fit to retrench the chief magistrate’s charge, that he may not go out with his chariots and horses, the powers of the heathen’. Parliament should guard their money-raising powers jealously, and ‘I would have no excise levied after this Parliament, unless confirmed by the Parliament’.157Burton’s Diary iv. 322; Derbs. RO, D258/10/9/2, f. 13. He was also quick to defend leading commonwealthsmen. When, on 5 April, Hesilrige accused the Speaker of having ‘been at court’ without permission of the House, he was attacked by various MPs, but defended by Neville, who ‘laboured to excuse Sir Arthur Hesilrige, and said it was anger’.158Burton’s Diary iv. 347. During the debate on the practicalities of transacting with the Other House, conducted over the next few days, Neville was deliberately unhelpful, suggesting that the upper chamber should be described only as ‘the persons sitting in the Other House’, and that further discussion should be referred to a grand committee, where interminable delay could be expected.159Burton’s Diary iv. 349, 351. On 6 April, Neville was given a week’s leave of absence, and he apparently played no further part in Parliament until 18 April.160Burton’s Diary iv. 359; CJ vii. 641b.

Whitelocke saw the chaos of the second half of April, as ‘the Parliament grew into heats’, as the work of ‘Hesilrige, Neville and their party, [who] laboured to overthrow the government … and pretended to have a free commonwealth’.161Whitelocke, Diary, 512. The surviving evidence bears this out. The crisis was precipitated by the increasing cooperation between the commonwealthsmen and their traditional enemies in the army interest. Neville’s own attitude towards the army seems to have softened from the middle of March. On 12 March he supported the payment of the soldiers as ‘the most necessary work in the world. The army are your children, and the people are your children. You ought to take care of them. If you please, order three months’ pay beforehand. It cannot be better employed’.162Burton’s Diary iv. 140. On 16 March he called for the release of Robert Overton, a senior officer imprisoned illegally by Oliver Cromwell.163Burton’s Diary iv. 152, 154, 159, 162. On 18 April Neville and Chaloner were tellers against a deliberately provocative motion to prevent general councils of the army meeting without the consent of Parliament.164CJ vii. 641b. On 21 April he pressed for the debate on control of the militia to be referred to a grand committee, reminding MPs that Oliver Cromwell had himself opposed the powers now claimed by his son: ‘The general that is dead stood up in that place and urged unanswerable reasons why the militia should not be in one single person. If this had been denied, we had not been here’. The only result of the present debate was ‘to make way for the Cavaliers’.165Burton’s Diary iv. 472.

The commonwealth restored, 1659-60

The army’s intervention to dissolve the Parliament on 22 April may have been anticipated by Neville. A mere ten days later he was among those who published a Harringtonian manifesto for widespread political and constitutional change, The Armies Dutie, ‘hoping that it may in some measure quicken up the Lord Fleetwood [Charles Fleetwood*] … to procure a settlement’. The pamphlet called on the army leadership not to rehabilitate Richard Cromwell – ‘he was a stranger to the people of God, unknown to the army’ – or to restore the Rump, which was seen as ‘a return back to that imperfect form of Parliament that’s now become unsuitable for us as a free people’. It advocated instead the creation of a new government, consisting of a popular assembly, a senate, and a ruling magistrate, which would provide ‘the benefit of the natural democracy, aristocracy and monarchy’ in a three-fold system ‘wherein the foundation of liberty to a people ought to be laid’.166The Armies Dutie (1659), 4, 23, 25-8 (E.980.12); Worden, ‘ Harrington’s “Oceana”’, 133; Mahlberg, Neville, 158-9. The army ignored the demands of Neville and his friends, however, and decided to restore the Long Parliament with its attendant council of state. Neville was elected to the new council of state on 14 May, with the appointment coming into force on the 19th, and he was granted official lodgings in Whitehall at the beginning of July.167CJ vii. 654a; Whitelocke, Mems. iv. 346; CSP Dom. 1658-9, p. 349; 1659-60, p. 11. From the summer onwards Neville was named to number of council committees, including those to confer with the Dutch ambassador, to consider Dunkirk, to attend the Portuguese and Danish ambassadors.168CSP Dom. 1659-60, pp. 173, 188, 208, 213. He also signed financial orders, mainly for the payment of the navy and the troops in Flanders.169Add. 4197, ff. 166, 196, 214, 223-4, 226-7. It seemed that, despite his earlier views, Neville had become reconciled to the restored commonwealth.

Neville was also active in the Commons in this period, being named to committees on prisoners of conscience (10 May), to preserve timber in the Forest of Dean (11 May), and on the latter day he also presented a petition on behalf of his Berkshire neighbour, Lord Craven.170CJ vii. 648a-b, 649b. Neville was appointed to committees on suitable accommodation for Parliament and the council of state (16 May), and on bills for the appointment of navy commissioners (18 May) and arrears of excise (25 May).171CJ vii. 656a, 656b, 665b. He reintroduced his case against Strowde on 4 June and a day was set to hear counsel after the question was passed with a 30 to 25 majority, with Robert Wallop and Sir John Trevor telling in favour.172CJ vii. 672a-b. During June, Neville was named to committees on the bill for the sale of forests (8 June), to receive the agent from Hamburg (14 June), and to confer with the council of state about raising money from the profits of the prerogative courts (22 June).173CJ vii. 676b, 685a, 691a. On 28 June he joined Sir Henry Mildmay as teller against Colonel Sadler being commissioned as colonel in Ireland.174CJ vii. 696a. In July he was named to committees to consider how to prevent disturbances during public worship (1 July), the money still owed for Oliver Cromwell’s funeral (4 July), and a bill concerning householders in London (9 July).175CJ vii. 700b, 704b, 710b. On 11 August, Neville presented a proviso in the bill for delinquents’ estates, to except the lands of Lord Craven, whose status was still disputed, and on the same day he was named to a committee to consider providing an allowance for Craven from the lands not yet sold.176CJ vii. 756a-b. On 12 August Neville was named to a committee on a bill for managing the militia of the Isle of Wight, and the next day he reported the suggested amendments.177CJ vii. 757b, 756a. On 25 August he was one of those appointed to draft a clause in the sequestrations bill, and reported back to the Commons later that day.178CJ vii. 768a, 768b.

Despite this flurry of activity, it soon became obvious that Neville was never a wholehearted supporter of the restored commonwealth. Contemporaries found him difficult to pin down. In early June it was said that he was one of the ‘perfect commonwealth’s men’ – a group that included Ludlowe and possibly Hesilrige, but definitely not Vane II.179Clarendon SP iii. 483-4; Mayers, 1659, 53. Later in the same month, Richard Lobb*, an ally of Colonel Robert Bennett, saw Neville as ‘my good friend’, alongside Ludlow and Scot.180FSL, X.d.483 (124). In June and July it was also said that Neville supported Leveller petitions for tithes to be paid into the exchequer, and that his continued opposition to the ‘oligarchy’ of the commonwealth had brought tensions with both Vane II and Hesilrige.181CCSP iv. 248-9, 257; Wariston Diary iii. 125. Neville’s carefully chiselled classical and foreign allusions also attracted adverse comment. In June one satirist likened the new government to ‘that of the Romans under Nero and Heliogabulus, when Henry Neville, sometime an eminent bardash in Italy, is now so great a favourite in the state’.182Clarke Pprs. v. 304. Nevertheless, Neville did not remain aloof from factional politics. He sided with Hesilrige, if not Vane II, on 6 June, in arguing that control of army commissions should be in the hands of the Speaker rather than the lieutenant-general, Charles Fleetwood.183Ludlow, Mems. ii. 89. A few days later he proposed that Fleetwood be made ranger of St James’s Park, in what was, according to Ludlowe, a conciliatory gesture ‘that no occasion of obliging the army might be omitted’.184Ludlow, Mems. ii. 98. Neville went on to support Ludlowe’s appointment as commander-in-chief in Ireland, despite opposition from Hesilrige and Reynolds, on 7 July.185CJ vii. 707a. In general, however, Neville sided with the commonwealthsmen against the army. On 11 July he joined Henry Marten as teller in favour of reading a proviso to the indemnity bill that would exclude those who held public office after April 1653 – a measure that was aimed at the officers who had served the protectorate.186CJ vii. 714a. Neville and Vane II were also capable of working together, acting as tellers in votes in favour of appointing the Quaker, George Bishop, as a militia commissioner for Bristol (14 July), and against a motion to return the former Cromwellian, Colonel Edward Whalley* to a military command (5 August).187CJ vii. 717b, 749b; Mayers, 1659, 54.

During September, as tensions between the army and the commonwealthsmen worsened, Neville continued to be reluctant to commit himself. On 3 September he was named to a committee to draft proposals for a new government settlement – a development not welcomed by the army.188CJ vii. 775b. Yet in the divisions over a new Engagement on 7 September, which led to ‘hot words’ between Vane II and Hesilrige, it was said that Neville supported neither, rather ‘jeering at their division. And taking advantage of it, and saying that honest men will come to their own when thieves reckon’.189Wariston Diary iii. 134-5. Neville’s favour towards Ashley Cooper is suggested by his choice as reporter from the council of state of its decision that there was no case against him (14 Sept.).190CJ vii. 778a. On 23 September Neville supported Hesilrige in demanding that no further army commissions be issued, but on the same day the two were telling on opposite sides on the question of whether the petition from John Lambert’s officers was unseasonable and dangerous.191Whitelocke, Mems. iv. 362; CJ vii. 785b. By the end of the month, Neville seems to have been working more reliably with the opponents of the army. On 29 September, Neville was named to a committee to draft an order for the payment of militia forces and he reported it in the House later in the day.192CJ vii. 786a, 789a. On 30 September Neville and Hesilrige were again cooperating, as tellers in favour of fining Sir Thomas Widdrington for his absence at the call of the House.193CJ vii. 790a. By early October, when Hesilrige and Vane again fell out publicly, it was said that Neville was firm ally of the former.194Mordaunt Letterbk., 48, 65; Mayers, 1659, 243.

After the army coup in October 1659, Neville was listed with Hesilrige among the eight councillors of state who had immediately refused to cooperate.195Clarke Pprs v. 318. On the establishment of the committee of safety, Neville’s was one of the names put forward by Ludlow as an overseer of elections for a new Parliament, although his nomination was rejected, and in November he was removed from the Westminster militia committee.196Ludlow, Mems. ii. 173; Clarke Pprs iv. 148. Neville was still in contact with his council of state colleagues, meeting regularly with them in November, and joining Hesilrige, Scot, Ashley Cooper and others in writing to George Monck* at the beginning of December, assuring the general of their support.197Whitelocke, Mems. iv. 376; Clarke Pprs v. 343-4. He also joined Scot in condemning Whitelocke and others who had sided with the military.198Whitelocke, Mems. iv. 384. On 29 December, Neville, Hesilrige and Wallop received the thanks of the newly restored Rump for their efforts on behalf of Parliament over the previous few months, and on 31 December Neville was voted on to the new council of state.199CJ vii. 799a, 800b; Whitelocke, Mems. iv. 385. Having joined Hesilrige as teller in favour of granting indemnity to Colonel Lambert (2 Jan.), and with Augustine Garland in favour of reading a bill for the oath to renounce Charles II (3 Jan.), Neville busied himself with reconstructing the government.200CJ vii. 802b, 803a. He was named to committees to draw up nominations for new commissioners of the great seal (9 Jan.), to draw up qualifications for voters and candidates in the new elections (11 Jan.), and to constitute a new Army Committee (13 Jan.).201CJ vii. 806a, 807a, 811a. Neville was also involved in the jockeying for position that marked the early weeks of 1660. He came to Ludlowe’s defence on 19 January, when an attempt was made to have him declared a traitor, and he pressed the House to allow Ludlowe to answer the charges against him.202Ludlow, Mems. iv. 210-12. On 21 January he was appointed to a committee to improve the management of offices, including the custos brevium, and later told in favour of Sir John Trevor’s appointment to that post.203CJ vii. 818a. Neville’s case against Strowde came before the House for the last time on 27 January, when it was referred to the judges and barons of the exchequer.204CJ vii. 823b; Whitelocke, Mems. iv. 391. The next day he reported from the council of state on the instructions to be issued to the Irish commissioners.205CJ vii. 826a. On 11 February Neville and Marten were tellers against Ashley Cooper’s nomination as an army commissioner.206CJ vii. 841a.

Neville was out of step with political developments by the beginning of February 1660. Although he had been named (16 Jan.) to a committee to draft a bill granting lands to George Monck, he did not court the general on his arrival in London.207CJ vii. 813a. Instead, he demanded the immediate dissolution of the Rump and the calling of a new Parliament.208Wariston Diary iii. 174. On 15 and 16 February he was involved in redrafting of a clause of the election bill, and these were his last recorded appearances in the House.209CJ vii. 843b, 845a. Neville’s opposition to the re-admittance of the secluded members was well known, and when a new council of state was elected at the end of the month, he was omitted from its membership.210Whitelocke, Mems. iv. 398; CCSP iv. 572. When new elections were held, he failed to secure a seat, despite reports that he and Hesilrige were to stand for Christchurch in Hampshire with the support of Wallop, and thereafter he seems to have retired from active political life altogether.211CCSP iv. 628, 656.

Later years

As a noted republican figure, Neville was treated with great suspicion by the Restoration regime. In the autumn of 1663 he was arrested with Colonels John Hutchinson* and Richard Salwey* and remained in the Tower until March 1664 when he requested permission to travel abroad.212CSP Dom. 1663-4, pp. 317-8, 325, 334, 352, 466. On his release, he returned to Italy, where he became a close friend of Cosimo, later grand duke of Tuscany.213Berks. RO, D/EN/F8/1/13; D/EN/F8/2, passim. Writing from Rome in 1666, Neville assured the 1st earl of Clarendon (Edward Hyde*) that he would not involve himself in plots against the new government in England, saying that he mostly kept company with Italians, who were more interested in women and money than politics.214CCSP v. 535. Neville had returned to England by 1669 when he received Cosimo at his brother’s residence at Billingbear and, remaining in England, produced a well-received translation of the works of Machiavelli, and in 1681, during the Exclusion Crisis, he published his most famous work, Plato Redivivus, which argued for constitutional limits to the monarchy rather than the exclusion of a single individual, as the antidote to both tyranny and popery.215Oxford DNB; Mahlberg, Neville, 165-7. When Neville drafted his will in 1691, he used the preamble to restate his long-held hostility to organised religion. Requesting a simple funeral, he asked that

it may be done without that unprofitable form of words which is commonly read over dead carcasses ... and which comes in the place of the papist’s office for the dead, as firmly believing that all Jewish and heathenish rites and ceremonies and the like are wholly taken away and abolished by the coming of Christ and that God will now be worshipped in spirit and truth.216PROB11/421/450.

Neville named his nephew Richard† as his heir and made provisions for his property to be sold and the proceeds to be divided among his beneficiaries. £3,000 was bequeathed to Richard Cox†, husband to Neville’s niece, in settlement of the marriage agreement. Neville died in 1694 at his lodgings in London, and was buried in the Staverton aisle in Warfield church.217PROB11/421/450.

Henry Neville’s political career was mercurial. Although he was prepared to serve the Rump before 1653 and the restored Rump in 1659-60 he did not approve of the commonwealth regime, and was not above poking fun at its leading supporters and their sacred cow, Parliament as an institution. During the third protectorate Parliament Neville allied with the ‘commonwealthsmen’ when it suited his purposes, but he was never part of that faction, and his relationship with both Hesilrige and Vane II was an ambivalent one throughout the later 1650s. This lack of firm political commitment was perhaps the result of his cosmopolitan and intellectual pretentions, which he expressed most clearly not in Parliament but in a series of published works. He certainly seems to have been more comfortable with James Harrington and his circle, who might spend ‘all day dreaming of another game’, than with the grubby realities of Westminster politics.