NEVILE, Francis (1591/2-1666), of Chevet, Royston, Yorks.

Nevile, as he proudly informed the heralds in 1665, was ‘lineally descended from the ancient earls of Westmorland’.35Coll. of Arms, Yorks., Dur., Northumb. Vis. Pprs. 1672. His great-great-grandfather had acquired Chevet, near Wakefield in the West Riding, by marriage in the early sixteenth century and had represented Yorkshire in the Parliament of 1529.36Coll. of Arms, Yorks., Dur., Northumb. Vis. Pprs. 1672; Dugdale’s Vis. Yorks. ii. 157; Foster, Yorks. Peds.; HP Commons, 1386-1421, ‘Sir Robert Neville’; HP Commons 1509-1558, ‘Sir John Neville II’. At the beginning of James’s reign, the Nevilles’ lands lay mainly in the south of the Riding, well away from Boroughbridge, and it was only by his marriage into two important families in the area that Nevile was able to secure an electoral foothold in the town.37Carroll, ‘Yorks.’, 249. His first marriage was to a daughter of Cecil Arthington – possibly a man of Catholic sympathies – who was the uncle of the future parliamentarian Henry Arthington* (whose wardship Nevile purchased in 1624 for £400).38WARD5/49; WARD9/207, f. 36; Misc. Recusant Recs. ed. C. Talbot (Cath. Rec. Soc. liii), 284. The Arthingtons had close ties to the Fairfaxes of Denton – who represented Boroughbridge in every Parliament between 1614 and the spring of 1640 – as did Nevile’s friend and neighbour Sir George Wentworth I*.39Supra, ‘Henry Arthington’; infra, ‘Sir George Wentworth I’; Hunter, S. Yorks. ii. 392-3. Nevile’s second marriage was to the daughter of Thomas Tanckred, a recusant and the dominant local figure in Boroughbridge, and it was on his in-laws’ interest that Nevile was returned for the borough in 1628.40Supra, ‘Henry Arthington’; HP Commons 1604-1629, ‘Francis Neville II’.

Nevile was party to numerous property transactions during the 1630s, one of which, in 1636, involved the future royalists Sir Thomas Danbie*, Sir Edward Osborne*, Sir John Ramsden* and Sir William Savile*.41WYAS (Wakefield), C1358/8-9. That same year, Nevile sold his manor of Thorpe Salvin to Danbie and Osborne for £6,200 (although it later emerged that the sale was void, the manor being entailed upon Nevile's eldest son).42C54/3265/37; WYAS (Wakefield), C1358/8-9. Nevile was on particularly close terms with Savile, who made Nevile, Ramsden and another Yorkshire royalist executors of his will in July 1642.43E134/14CHAS1/MICH47; Borthwick, Wills in the York Registry, Jan. 1644, Prerogative wills, will of Sir William Savile; WYAS (Wakefield), C1358/389; Notts. RO, DDSR 225/99; HMC 5th Rep. 28. At the same time, Nevile maintained his intimacy with the Fairfaxes, and on 14 September 1639 he was party to the marriage settlement between Henry Arthington and Mary, the daughter of Sir Ferdinando (later 2nd Baron) Fairfax*, the future parliamentarian general.44WYAS (Wakefield), C1358/81. An avid usurer, Nevile lent out sums totalling over £4,000 to several northern gentlemen before the war.45LC4/201, f. 252v; LC4/202, ff. 71, 106; SP23/107, pp. 838, 849; Sheffield City Archives, WWM/BR P182/1. His debtors included the royalists Brian Palmes* and Sir Edward Littleton*.46WYAS (Wakefield), C1358/15; SP23/107, pp. 865-71. It was probably to help cover these and other loans that Nevile borrowed £2,100 in May 1638 and a further £2,500 in October 1639.47LC4/201, ff. 26, 212, 269; LC4/202, ff. 76, 143; LC4/203, f. 122. Shortly before the election at Boroughbridge to the Short Parliament in the spring of 1640, Nevile leased a burgage tenement in the town from his brother-in-law, Thomas Tanckred, in an obvious attempt to render his candidacy more acceptable to the Boroughbridge voters.48WYAS (Wakefield), C1358/83. Tanckred headed the list of signatories on the indenture returning Sir Ferdinando Fairfax and Nevile for Boroughbridge on 24 March.49C219/42/2/92.

Nevile did not receive any committee appointments in the Short Parliament and made no recorded contribution to debate. In fact, the only evidence that he actually took his seat in the Commons is that on 8 May 1640, three days after the Short Parliament had been dissolved, he and Sir William Savile testified before the privy council concerning words spoken by Sir John Hotham and Henry Belasyse during a parliamentary debate on supply on 4 May.50CSP Dom. 1640, pp. 155, 156. Taking issue with Sir William Savile, who had complained about the burden of Ship Money, Hotham and Belasyse had argued that military charges represented a much greater grievance.51Aston’s Diary, 142-3. When questioned by the council, both men claimed to have forgotten what they had said. However, after Nevile had ‘repeated and averred to the board, the king being present, what they had spoken’, they were committed to the Fleet, where they remained for ten days.52Supra, ‘Henry Belasyse’; ‘Sir John Hotham’; CSP Dom. 1640, pp. 154-5. Yet a correspondent of Edward Viscount Conway, writing on 12 May, claimed that Nevile ‘did aver nothing against Mr. Belasyse nor the rest, although it were so reported, and Sir William Savile is much afflicted at their commitments’.53CSP Dom. 1640, p. 156.

Whatever their precise role in the council’s proceedings against Hotham and Belasyse, Nevile and Savile were widely believed to have acted in breach of parliamentary privilege, and it was partly for that reason, perhaps, that both men lost their seats in the elections to the Long Parliament that autumn. Nevile’s place at Boroughbridge was taken by Sir Philip Stapilton, who made a motion in the Commons on 29 January 1641 that Nevile be summoned to the House as a delinquent.54CJ ii. 75a; Procs. LP ii. 307. Nevile was brought to the bar of the House on 4 February and was told by the Speaker that he had committed ‘a great offence against the liberties and privileges of this House in that after the dissolution of the same [in May] he had at the council table accused or at least revealed what had been spoken by two Members of this House’. Nevile denied the charge, however, and after he had been taken from the House there was a long debate as to what punishment he should receive. Some Members wanted him sent to the Tower and fined, some released ‘upon his humble confession’ and others that he might be disabled from ever sitting in Parliament again. In the end, it was decided that he should be confined to the Tower at the House’s pleasure.55CJ ii. 78; Procs. LP ii. 360, 363-4, 367. Once in the Tower, Nevile’s defiance quickly crumbled, and on 9 February, Sir Neville Poole presented a petition from him in which he ‘acknowledged the justice of this House and craved pardon’.56Procs. LP ii. 397. The next day (10 Feb.), having accepted his ‘submission’, the House discharged him from prison.57CJ ii. 82a.

There is no evidence that Nevile attended the king at York during the spring or summer of 1642, although he would have been in sympathy with those gentlemen who did. Early in August, he joined Osborne and other Yorkshire royalists in a petition to Parliament, protesting at the proceedings of Sir John Hotham as parliamentary governor of Hull.58Northants. RO, FH133; LJ v. 273b-274a. On 26 September, he joined Savile and other prominent Yorkshire royalists in a letter to the commander of the king’s northern army, the earl of Newcastle, requesting military assistance against the Hothams’ ‘infesting the country’.59Newcastle Mems. ed. Firth, 189. Nevile’s alarm at the Hothams’ belligerency may help to explain his presence just three days later, on 29 September, among the signatories to the Yorkshire ‘treaty of pacification’ – an abortive attempt by the Fairfaxes and other West Riding gentry to keep the county neutral. The royalist signatories to this treaty also included Nevile’s friends Osborne, Ramsden and Savile.60A. Woolrych, ‘Yorkshire’s treaty of neutrality', HT vi. 696-704. The treaty was immediately condemned by Parliament, and on 8 October, Captain John Hotham secured a Commons vote that Nevile be summoned to the House as a delinquent.61CJ ii. 794a, 800a; Add. 18777, f. 24v.

By mid-October 1642, Nevile was accounted among the most bellicose of Yorkshire’s cavaliers.62The Declaration of Captain Hotham Sent to the Parliament (1642), 2 (E.121.32); Terrible Newes from York (1642), 3 (E.123.14). He played a leading role in the royalist committee set up late in 1642 to maintain Newcastle’s army, and in February 1643, he was party to the so-called Yorkshire engagement, by which the signatories pledged their estates as security on loans for the supply of the earl’s troops.63Add. 15858, f. 237; C33/208, f. 784v; SP23/2, pp. 55, 62; SP23/107, pp. 843, 859, 863; SP28/133, pt. 5, f. 12; Bodl. Tanner 62, ff. 655-6; Belvoir, QZ.23, ff. 13, 16; CCAM 908; Slingsby Diary ed. D. Parsons, 94; ‘Royalist clergy in Yorks. 1642-5’ ed. W. Brown, in Misc. 1 (Yorks. Arch. Soc. rec. ser. lxi), 156, 161, 164, 166. He himself lent £300 and signed bonds on the engagement for large sums of money.64SP23/107, p. 860; C33/208, f. 784v; Bodl. Tanner 62, ff. 655-6; Doncaster Archives, DD/CROM/11/6. During his composition proceedings in 1645, he would be charged with garrisoning Pontefract and Sandal Castle (which he owned) for the king, using great violence and oppression as a Yorkshire commissioner of array and as a member of the committee for supplying Newcastle’s army, and with taking up arms against Parliament in 1644. Moreover, when questioned before the Committee for Compounding about his conduct during the war, he had allegedly answered ‘very confidently and impudently that he had done all the mischief he could’.65SP23/107, pp. 859-60; CCC 842; Yorks. Royalist Composition Pprs. ed. Clay, 3. Inevitably, his own account of his civil-war activities was somewhat less damning. He insisted that he had never acted on the commission of array, that he had ‘obscured himself in Northumberland’ rather than raise or command troops for the king, and that he had abandoned the king’s party altogether late in 1643 and had submitted himself to Lord Fairfax shortly after the battle of Marston Moor in July 1644.66SP23/107, p. 863; CCC 842-3; Yorks. Royalist Composition Pprs. ed. Clay, 3-4. In March 1645, the committee fined him £2,000 in regard that he had been ‘very active for the lord of Newcastle’s army’ and was possessed of an estate worth ‘£1,408 per annum at the least, and well stocked’.67SP23/2, pp. 55, 62; SP23/107, p. 860; CCC 843. By Nevile’s own reckoning, however, his estate was now worth no more than £500 a year and his personal estate less than £600. He was also indebted, he claimed, to the tune of £1,650 and had been plundered of £1,720 in goods and livestock by Parliament’s soldiers.68SP23/107, pp. 857, 863; CCC 842. Perhaps anxious not to deter other royalists contemplating surrender, the Commons resolved on 22 March to fine him only £1,000, half of which he was allowed to detain until the resumption of peace in south Yorkshire.69CJ iv. 86b; SP23/2, p. 63. On 9 June, Parliament passed an ordinance discharging him from delinquency and removing the sequestration on his estate.70CJ iv. 169a; LJ vii. 421a. This relatively lenient treatment of a ‘grand delinquent’, as one London newsbook referred to him, may also have reflected his success in currying favour with some of Yorkshire’s most influential parliamentarians – notably, Henry Darley* and Francis Pierrepont*, who informed the Speaker that Nevile had ‘given us good assurance of his affection and done us some service’ and that he was willing to pay £20 a month towards the maintenance of the Northern Association army.71SP23/107, pp. 843, 853; Kingdomes Weekly Intelligencer no. 93 (25 Mar.-1 Apr. 1645), 750 (E.276.3). It is also worth noting that in May 1645, the parliamentarian grandee Philip Herbert*, 4th earl of Pembroke, appointed Nevile surveyor, steward and receiver for all the lands and ironworks which he and his sister-in-law, Lady Mary, countess dowager of Pembroke, held in Yorkshire, Derbyshire, Staffordshire and Nottinghamshire (the former occupant of this office had been Nevile’s deceased friend Sir William Savile).72Infra, ‘Sir William Savile’; Leeds Univ. Lib. MD335/3/12/2.

Nevile avoided involvement in the second civil war and made efforts to distance himself from the ‘desperadoes’ (as he termed them) who had seized Pontefract Castle for the king.73Add. 36996, f. 175. Anxious to ingratiate himself with the commonwealth authorities, Neville cooperated closely with the Committee for Advance of Money in its efforts during the early 1650s to collect the sums pledged by the Yorkshire engagers in 1643. In fact, Nevile appears to have been one of the committee’s principal agents in the business. He drew up interrogatories, informed against those who denied signing the engagement and helped to supervise the collection of the money.74SP19/119, ff. 13, 25, 26, 32, 38, 40; CCAM 898-902. Not surprisingly, this conduct earned him the resentment of some of his erstwhile friends, although (understandably) he preferred ‘not to be looked upon as an informer but as a servant to both parties’.75SP19/119, ff. 27, 59. Not all his former associates regarded him with suspicion, for at some point during the early 1650s he joined a number of the engagers, among them Sir George Wentworth I, in writing to Sir Paul Neile*, Sir Thomas Ingram* and several other Yorkshire gentlemen resident at London, asking for their assistance with the committee.76Notts. RO, DDSR 221/94/43. Nevertheless, Nevile was more cooperative than most of his fellow engagers and expected to be rewarded for his work on the committee’s behalf. As he informed one of its officers early in 1652, ‘sundry Members’ had promised him that

if I would assist in the settling and managing of this business ... I should be excused for my part. But as yet I am sure I have suffered more than any man, and in effect the whole trouble lies upon me, who have done the state all the good service I can ...77SP19/119, ff. 44-5; CCAM, 900-1.

Among the ‘sundry Members’ whom Nevile was relying on were his kinsman Godfrey Bossevile and the leading Rumper Sir Arthur Hesilrige, of whom Nevile professed himself a ‘friend and servant’.78SP19/117, ff. 10a, 10b; CCAM 862-3.

Nevile’s royalist past caught up with him again in 1655, when he was threatened with decimation. In December, he petitioned the protector for exemption from the decimation tax and advised his friend Sir John Goodricke† to do likewise ‘before the storm fall’.79Southeby’s sale 14 Dec. 1993, Fairfax collection, lot 53: Nevile to Goodricke, 3 Dec. 1655. Soon afterwards, he persuaded Major-general John Lambert* to write on his behalf to the Yorkshire militia commissioners, asking that they stay proceedings against him for six weeks.80Southeby’s sale 14 Dec. 1993, Fairfax collection, lot 53: same to same, 22 Jan. 1656. Whether he succeeded in avoiding paying the tax is not known.

In February 1660, Nevile signed a petition to General George Monck* from the Yorkshire gentry ‘who adhered unto his late majesty’, requesting a free Parliament.81WYAS (Wakefield), C176/2. Re-appointed to the West Riding bench at the Restoration, he was an active magistrate during the early 1660s.82WYAS (Wakefield), QS 10/4, ff. 10, 11, 13, 29, 38, 45, 53, 80, 196. He died in the spring of 1666 and was buried at Royston on 5 April.83Royston par. reg. In his will, he left the bulk of his estate to his heir and executor Sandford Nevile.84Borthwick, Prob. Reg. 48, f. 27; Leeds Univ. Lib. MD335/3/12/3. No immediate member of his family sat in Parliament.