Richard Neville, Earl of Salisbury

“ The young Duke, who was married to Cicely Neville, died at the age of twenty-one, and was buried in the choir of the Abbey. As he left no children, the manor passed in 1449 to his sister Anne, the wife of Richard Neville the "King-maker." All the "King-maker's" estates were confiscated to the Crown after he fell at Barnet in 1471, but were eventually shared between his two daughters Isabelle and Anne. Isabelle married George, Duke of Clarence, Earl of Warwick and Salisbury, who in 1477, a few days after Isabelle's supposed death by poison at Warwick, was put to death in the Tower. ”

“ For the gentle little maiden, a slender, fair-haired, childish-faced creature, in her sixteenth year, was the motherless child and heiress of the stout Earl of Salisbury, the last of the Montacutes, or Montagues, who was at present fighting the King’s battles in France, but had sent his commands that she should be brought to Court, in preparation for fulfilling the long-arranged contract between her and Sir Richard Nevil, one of the twenty-two children of the Earl of Westmoreland. ”

“ The last provocation which sealed her fate was perhaps an act of her own—perhaps it was the precipitate zeal of her friends—perhaps, like her brother the Earl of Warwick, she had committed only the fresh crime of continuing to be dangerous. Be it as it may, May 27.on the day on which Sir John Neville suffered at York, and others among the conspirators at Tyburn, the grey head of the Countess of Salisbury fell upon the scaffold on the fatal green within the Tower. [17] To condemn is easy, instinctive, and possibly [18] right; to understand is also right, but is not easy. ”

“ At any rate, Neville was in Poitou in 1224, and again with Richard, earl of Cornwall, next year. He received in the same year a grant of two hundred marks for his custody of Pickering and Scarborough Castles, but died apparently in Gascony in October 1225. Several of Neville's letters are printed in Shirley's ‘Royal and Historical Letters’ (Rolls Ser.) He married Mabel, daughter and coheiress of Adam FitzSwane, who founded the abbey of Monk-Bretton, Yorkshire. By her he had issue two sons, John and Alan. ”

“ Neville married Ida, or Isabella, widow of Roger de Bertram, baron of Mitford. By her he had two sons, Robert and John; Robert, the elder, predeceased his father in 1271, and his son, Ranulf or Ralph, third baron, was father of Ralph de Neville (1291?–1367) [q. v.] ; from him were descended the earls of Salisbury and Westmorland and barons of Abergavenny, who were thus in the male line of Anglo-Saxon descent. A charter of Neville's, with his seal, is preserved in the British Museum (MSS. Index of Seals) . ”

“ He was lord of Glamorgan and Morgan, and succeeded in retaining possession of the castle and honour of Bergavenny, which was claimed by his father's youngest brother, who took his title therefrom [see under Edward Neville, Baron of Bergavenny] . But it was not until the sword was bared in the strife of factions in 1455 that Warwick made an independent position for himself, and overshadowed his father. In the meantime he remained with Salisbury, outwardly neutral in the struggle between his uncle Richard, duke of York, and his cousin Edmund Beaufort, duke of Somerset. ”

“ He left Sheriff-Hutton and three neighbouring manors to his wife for life. But his nephew John, lord Neville, brother of the second Earl of Westmorland, who had fought against him at Wakefield, was rewarded for his loyalty with the office of constable of Sheriff-Hutton and Middleham Castles, along with other revenues from the Wensleydale estates of Salisbury (Dugdale, i. 299; Fœdera, xi. 437) . In his will he also gave instructions that he should be buried in the priory of Bisham, near Great Marlow, in Berkshire, among the ancestors of his wife, the Montacutes, earls of Salisbury. ”

“ On the death of his uncle, Earl William, in 1397, he succeeded to his lands and dignity as Earl of Salisbury. The part that he took with reference to the peace and the king's marriage secured him Richard's confidence, and he was a favourite with him and a prominent member of the court party. With the people- at large, and specially with the Londoners, who were displeased at the peace and at the king's doings generally, he was unpopular. ”

“ Along with his eldest son, now Earl of Warwick and his colleague as warden of the western marches of Scotland, Salisbury helped to persuade York at Dartford to lay down his arms (Paston Letters, i. cxlviii) . But the continuance of Somerset in power, in defiance of the arrangement Salisbury had helped to mediate, must have irritated him, and he seems to have ignored the orders of the government in regard to the war which now broke out between the Neville and Percy clans in Yorkshire. ”

“ On 29 April 1463 Neville opened the second parliament of the reign with a discourse on the theme ‘Qui judicatis terram diligite justiciam’ (ib. v. 496) . Having proved himself a man of ability and ‘moult facondieux,’ as Chastellain says, the chancellor was entrusted, in the absence of Warwick in the north, with an important foreign mission in the summer of this year. The king saw him off, and took charge of the great seal at Dover, on 21 Aug.; and Neville, with his companions, the Earl of Essex, Lord Wenlock, and others, made his way to St. ”

“ You don’t know how hard it is to me to feel that every hand is turned against Neville, every heart hardened toward him. You see, all of us love Neville better, I think, than anything in the world; he was Aunt Sophia’s and Uncle Tremaine’s favorite son, though they always denied they had a favorite, but Richard and Archie knew it and all of us, and there never was any jealousy of Neville. ”

“ A Neville, nowadays, must vail his plume to a Woodville! And not the great barons whom it will suit Edward's policy to win from the Lancastrians, not the Exeters and the Somersets, but the craven varlets, and lackeys, and dross of the camp--false alike to Henry and to Edward--are to be fondled into lordships and dandled into power. Young man, I am speaking hotly. Richard Neville never lies nor conceals ”