NEVILLE, Edward (c.1618-59), of Grove, Notts.

The Nevilles of Grove were descended from one of the companions of the Conqueror who was granted land in Lincolnshire.21W.O. Massingberd, ‘Lincs. Nevill families’, The Gen. n.s. xxvii. 1, 5-6; A.E. Nevile, ‘Ped. of Nevile of Thorney’, The Gen. n.s. xxvii. 232. They had settled in Nottinghamshire by the early thirteenth century and had acquired Grove (near East Retford) by marriage in the early Tudor period.22Vis. Notts. 64-6; Thoroton, Notts. iii. 263; C.R. Young, The Making of the Neville Fam. in England 1166-1400 (Woodbridge, 1996), 21. Neville enjoyed the patronage of the prominent Nottinghamshire lawyer (and future royalist) Gilbert Boune* and of the future parliamentarian Francis Mussenden*, who both acted as his manucaptors on his admission to Lincoln’s Inn in 1634.23L. Inn Lib. Admiss. Bk. 6, f. 85. But whereas his younger brother became a royalist major of horse during the civil war (and reportedly plundered the family residence at Grove in 1643), there is no evidence that Neville himself was active on either side.24The Kingdomes Weekly Intelligencer no. 16 (11-18 Apr. 1643), 126 (E.97.9); P.R. Newman, Royalist Officers (1981), 271; Wood, Notts. 165-6. Nevertheless, the fact that he was added to the Nottinghamshire bench in 1647, and to a number of local committees thereafter, indicates that he was regarded as well-affected to the parliamentarian cause.25C231/6, p. 81.

Neville was returned as a ‘recruiter’ for East Retford on 21 December 1648 in place of the recently deceased Colonel Francis Thornhagh.26Supra, ‘East Retford’. Neville almost certainly owed his election to the strength of his proprietorial interest in the borough – he owned much of the land to the east of the town – and perhaps also to his familiarity with the town’s steward, William Cartwright*. The two men had studied together at Lincoln’s Inn during the 1630s, and by 1656, Neville had mortgaged Grove to Cartwright for £3,000.27Notts. RO, PR/NW, will of Edward Neville, 1662. Any assessment of Neville’s career in the Rump is complicated by the election of Henry Neville in October 1649 and by the clerk of the Commons’ failure to distinguish between the two MPs, referring to both as ‘Mr Neville’. However, the fact that Edward Neville received not a single mention in the Journal between December 1648 and October 1649 and that the majority of committee appointments for ‘Mr Neville’ thereafter can be attributed to Henry suggests that the Member for East Retford – although active on the Nottinghamshire bench under the Rump – was an insignificant presence in the House itself.28Infra, ‘Henry Neville’; Notts. RO, C/QSM/1/12, p. 179 and passim. In fact, there is only one appointment in the Rump that can be assigned to Neville with any certainty and that was on 20 December 1650, when ‘Mr Neville’ was added to the ‘committee of obstructions’ as to the proceedings of the Nottinghamshire county committee concerning a local delinquent.29CJ vi. 512b. This appointment is certainly consistent with Neville’s involvement in punishing delinquents at local level and also with his inclusion on the commission for removing obstructions on the sale of forfeited estates, in July the following year.30CSP Dom. 1651, p. 299; A. and O.

In the elections to the first protectorate Parliament in the summer of 1654, Neville was returned in third place for one of Nottinghamshire’s four county seats.31Supra, ‘Nottinghamshire’. The basis of his evident popularity with the county’s voters is not clear. He received no committee appointments in this Parliament, and it is far from certain that he took his seat. Yet despite his inactivity at Westminster, at local level he was an enthusiastic supporter of the protectorate – particularly during the rule of the major-generals. In 1655 and 1656, he was a signatory to letters from the Nottinghamshire commissioners for securing the peace of the commonwealth, defending the decimation tax as a thing ‘absolutely necessary’ and praising Major-general Edward Whalley* for his ‘singular justice, ability and piety’.32TSP iv. 156, 468-9. As a magistrate, he was also involved in implementing Whalley’s programme against vagrancy and unlicensed alehouses.33Notts. RO, C/QSM/1/13, unfol.; P.R. Seddon, ‘Maj.-Gen. Edward Whalley and the government of Notts. 1655-6’, Trans. Thoroton Soc. ciii. 133. Given his support for the rule of the major-generals, it seems plausible to suppose that Neville was a man of godly sympathies.

In the elections to the second protectorate Parliament in the summer of 1656, Neville was re-elected for one of the four Nottinghamshire county seats – again, probably in third place.34Supra, ‘Nottinghamshire’. On this occasion, he was named to four committees, including that appointed on 22 December 1656 to consider a number of petitions relating to fen drainage and land enclosure disputes on the Hatfield Chase Level and the Isle of Axholme.35CJ vii. 450b, 457b, 472b, 545a. This committee had been established after Neville – who was an active member of the Hatfield Chase Level sewers commission – had presented a petition complaining of the tumultuous proceedings of the fenlanders and had been supported by Whalley, whose forces had been required to re-impose order in the Isle of Axholme.36The Case and Proceedings of at Least Sixty Gentlemen Participants and Purchasers (1656), 12-13; Burton’s Diary, i. 199-200. Five days later (27 Dec.), Whalley helped procure a Commons resolution granting Neville leave of absence.37Burton’s Diary, i. 264; CJ vii. 476b. In the summer of 1657, Neville was a teller on several divisions that suggest he had an interest in issues relating to taxation. On 12 June, he and the Northamptonshire MP Alexander Blake were tellers against giving leave to debate the assessment rates on Ireland. This vote had come after a debate provoked by Lord Deputy Charles Fleetwood’s* presentation to the House of a petition, signed by several Irish MPs, for abatement of the assessment. The precedent of Members petitioning the House when, as Whalley put it, ‘they have liberty here to speak for themselves’, was ‘disliked generally’, but Blake and Neville lost the division nonetheless.38CJ vii. 555b; Burton’s Diary, ii. 225-6. Maximising state revenues does not appear to have been Neville’s main priority, however, for on 22 June he was a teller in favour of reducing the excise on wine.39CJ vii. 568b.

Neville was re-elected for Nottinghamshire to Richard Cromwell’s* Parliament of 1659, but made no recorded impact upon the proceedings of the House. He was named to at least one committee in the restored Rump – on a petition from the mariners of Lower Deal, in Kent (28 May 1659).40CJ vii. 668a. As in the Rump, however, most of the references to ‘Mr Neville’ in the restored Rump can be attributed to Henry.

Neville died about August 1659.41C6/462/64. In his will, he asked to be buried in Grove, but the parish registers for this period have not survived. He charged his estate with raising portions of £2,000 for each of his two daughters, an annuity of £100 for his son during his minority, and the redemption of his mortgage on Grove.42Notts. RO, PR/NW. His only son, Edward Neville†, sat for East Retford as a court supporter in all three Exclusion Parliaments and in that of 1685.43HP Commons 1660-1690.