Thomas Neville (died 1460)

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Alice Montagu, 5th Countess of Salisbury

Sir Thomas Neville (c. 1429 – 1460) was the second son of

Richard, Duke of York
.

Thomas took part in his father's battles, being present at the

Edward IV together won the Battle of Northampton. When the Duke of York also returned from his exile and claimed the throne from Henry VI, it appears that it was Thomas who was personally responsible for informing the duke of the Nevilles' collective disapproval of his plans. Joining his father Salisbury, and York's army, which travelled to Yorkshire in December 1460 with the purpose of suppressing Lancastrian-inspired disorder, he took part in the disastrous Battle of Wakefield. The Yorkists went down to a crushing defeat; Thomas was killed in the fighting, and, alongside those of his father and uncle, Thomas's head was impaled above one of the gates of the city of York
.

Early career, knighthood and marriage

Thomas Neville was the second son of

George. Richard was to become Earl of Warwick, and, as one of the most important politicians in the kingdom, earned himself the soubriquet "Kingmaker"; John became Marquess of Montagu and defender of the North; George, the youngest, had a career in the Church, becoming Archbishop of York.[1] The historian Michael Hicks suggests that seeing how closely the brothers cooperated as adults, they were probably close as children.[1]

In 1439, Maud, Countess of Cambridge, reported Thomas to the

knighted by King Henry VI on 5 January 1453.[1] With increasing tension between the Percys and Nevilles in the north, relations between the latter and the crown had come under strain, and his knighting may have been an attempt to ameliorate this.[9][10]

The king licensed Thomas Neville on 1 May 1453 to marry Maud

inscribed as marginalia, "T. Nevyll" and "Mawd Wyllwghby".[25][26][27][note 6]

The historian Ralph A. Griffiths has suggested that the announcement of Thomas's marriage was the immediate cause of the feud with the Percys.[29] Not only, says Griffiths, was any further Neville aggrandisement anathema to the Percys, but the new Cromwell connection gave the Nevilles access to the ex-Percy manors of Wressle and Burwell.[4] These had been granted to Cromwell in 1440[30] but the Percys still hoped to reclaim then.[4][note 7]

Feud with the Percy family

The site of the Battle of Stamford Bridge, 2006 photo
The site of the Battle of Stamford Bridge
Main article: Percy–Neville feud

The

medievalist Bertie Wilkinson has described the environment of the period. Not only was it "seriously divided" politically, but "the area was remote, exposed to Scottish attack, and impossible to control, at least by the government of Henry VI".[33]

By 1453, tension had turned to violence. It was not the two earls, as heads of their families, who were the cause, but their younger sons, who were responsible for its escalation.

retainers, they launched an opening assault on the Nevilles[36] on 24 August 1453. They were returning to Yorkshire with Thomas's new bride after the wedding at Cromwell's Tattershall Castle, Lincolnshire. The Nevilles were ambushed at Heworth, York by a Percy force of possibly 5,000 men.[36] This—effectively an assassination attempt[37]—was the most violent incident between the families for many years. Although the respective sizes of the opposing forces are unknown, the Nevilles would have had a substantial retinue with them. This encounter was the first in a series of skirmishes, assaults and numerous destructive episodes "of breaking and entering",[38] which saw Thomas "in the thick of the fighting".[39]

William Worcester's description of Heworth 1453
Et post nuptias in redeundo facta est maxima divisio inter Thomam Percy, dominum de Egremond, et dictum comitem, prope Eboracum. Initium fuit maximorum dolorum in Anglia.[40]After the wedding when returning home there was a very great division between Thomas Percy, Lord Egremont, and the said earl [of Salisbury] near York.[41] The beginning of the greatest sorrows in England.[42]

In response, he and his brother John began actively seeking out Percy retainers and their property. They inflicted severe damage to the estates of Sir William Plumpton, a Percy loyalist, in Knaresborough as part of a Neville "show of force" in January 1454.[43] With his brothers, John and Richard, as well as Salisbury, they faced the Earl of Northumberland and his sons at Topcliffe, North Yorkshire on 20 October 1453, although a negotiated peace averted battle.[44] The Crown tried to settle the feud, but Griffiths has described its response as "futile". Rather than take decisive action, it relied on writing letters to both the earls and their younger sons, regardless of how willing—or able—the former were to control the latter.[45] In the event, the feud continued for much of the next year with further violent encounters and only came to a halt with another battle at Salisbury's manor of Stamford Bridge, near York on 31 October 1454.[46][47] Thomas and John confronted and decisively beat Egremont and Richard Percy, Thomas capturing the latter as they attempted to escape.[48][49]

Later Career

Death of Cromwell

Maud's mother, Margaret had died in September 1454.

feoffees from several manors in Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire in December 1457,[54] and Thomas was still holding 35 manors—taken "by strong hand"—in September 1459.[57]

Cromwell's

entitled estate, the core of his wealth,[63] and would have brought them vast wealth under the 1451 will. Its later iteration, however, greatly reduced the amount of land available to his heirs. Although they legally challenged the second will, they were unsuccessful in breaking it, and seem to have been reduced to arguing over goods and chattels, such as drapes and bedding that Maud claimed she had been promised.[64] Legal disputation over the will continued until the 1470s.[65] Ultimately, commented Friedrichs, Thomas was never "able to cut very grand figures or achieve power based on Cromwell's wealth".[64]

Final years

Main article: Wars of the Roses
Chester Castle, colour photograph of 2015
Chester Castle, where Thomas Neville was imprisoned between September 1459 and July 1460

Government offices kept coming Thomas's way, and in 1457, he was appointed

sureties that they would "do no hurt" to Thomas.[75][76] In May 1458, he accompanied John and Warwick to Calais—of which the latter was now captain—as part of a diplomatic delegation to address infringements of the truce with Burgundy.[77]

By 1459 the domestic political situation—tense and partisan despite the king's efforts at reconciliation—had descended into outright

Tarporley, Cheshire,[81] the next day.[82] Hicks has suggested that this was due to his being wounded in battle and sent home;[81] it is also possible that they ventured too far from the main army in pursuit of fleeing Lancastrians.[80][83][84] In any case, they were imprisoned in Chester Castle for the next nine months.[85] Their capture endangered Salisbury's strategy: not only did he lose valuable support, but he was forced to linger longer at Market Drayton than he would otherwise have done.[86]

Due to his imprisonment, he was not present when the Yorkist army was

Ludford Bridge less than three weeks after Blore Heath. Following the rout, York went into exile in Dublin, while Thomas's father, brother Warwick and Edward of March took refuge in Calais.[87] Thomas was attainted in the Parliament of Devils in October 1459 along with the rest of his family.[88] He was not released until the exiles had returned in May the following year and defeated a royal army at the Battle of Northampton that June.[80][note 12] Released into the temporary protection of Thomas, Lord Stanley,[90] he was soon appointed to several important offices. On 22 August, he joined his father as Keeper of the Royal Mews,[91] responsible for the royal aviary. He had authority[92]

To purvey the king's right prises of

gyrfalcons for sale through the realm, paying 20s for a falcon, 10s for a tercel gentle, 13s. 1 d for a goshawk, and 6s 5d each for the tercel of a goshawk, saker, laners and laneret.[93]

This was part of the Nevilles' policy of filling the positions of political importance with their own sympathisers.[94][note 13] Thomas was also commissioned to arrest and imprison any who disturbed the peace,[95] and received grants of Duchy of Lancaster estates at the same time,[96] particularly in the Midlands, where he began to establish his own authority.[96]

The ruins of Sandal Castle
The remains of Sandal Castle, where Thomas Neville spent the last few weeks of his life, seen in 2008

When the Duke of York returned from Dublin in late September 1460, he slowly made his way to Westminster to meet the king and his peers—gathered for a forthcoming parliament—and arrived in October. To the surprise of all, he immediately claimed the throne. The Nevilles were as set against his claim as every other member of the nobility.

Westminster Palace on 11 October, when word reached the lords that York had evicted the King from his lodgings. York responded merely that he was intent on being crowned three days later. The lords slept on this, and then sent Thomas back that morning, where he found York preparing for his coronation.[99] Thomas informed the duke that his position was untenable "to both lords and people".[100] Although what was said between Thomas and the duke remains unknown, argues Johnson, his "mandate must have been both blunt and bluntly delivered",[101] as—whatever Thomas had said—York acquiesced to a compromise agreement.[97]

Battle of Wakefield

In the meantime, Lancastrian forces were regrouping in Yorkshire

chronicler William Worcester says, was "slain in the field" after around half an hour's fighting.[104][105][note 14] Their heads were put upon stakes and taken to York—"for a spectacle to the people and a terror to the rest of their adversaryes"—where they were displayed above the gates.[107]

Later events

The Burying of an Earle

The interment of the Earl of Salisbury at Breshall [Bisham], in the shire of Buckingham[note 15] the fifteenth day of February in the second year of King Edward the Fourth, and of Sir Thomas his son, in two coffins, in one chariot with six horses in trappings, the first in St George's arms, the other covered in black, a banner of St George before him, and two behind. First, before the conveying Of the body and bones of the said earl and his son, the earl of Warwick, son and heir of the said earl, rode after the chariot. Lord Montague on the right side afoot, Lord Latimer, his son, on the left hand with many knights and squires afoot on every side to the number of sixteen; the earl's banner and standard came next and immediately after the chariot; and before the earl of Warwick, meeting with the corpses a mile without the town, came two heralds and two kings of arms, bearing the coats of arms of the said earl at every corner of the chariot at which place they received the bodies and the bones so coffered...

A collection of ordinances and regulations for the government of the Royal household, 20th-century transcription by Joel T. Rosenthal,[109] first published by the Society of Antiquaries in 1790.[110]

In a letter to

in-laws, such as William, Lord Harrington, who had married Warwick's sister.[113]

Although Wakefield was a decisive blow for the Yorkists, the war was not yet over; even after news of the defeat reached Edward, now Duke of York, he continued recruiting a large army in the Welsh Marches. In early February, he inflicted a heavy defeat on the royalists under Jasper Tudor at the Battle of Mortimer's Cross. Edward made his way to London, where he met Warwick. Edward was proclaimed King Edward IV on 4 March. The Lancastrians had retreated to the north, however, and still posed a threat to the new regime. Accordingly, Edward raised a large army and followed them.[114] On 29 March 1461, the two forces clashed at Towton in what has been described as "probably the largest and bloodiest battle on English soil".[115][note 16]

The result was a decisive victory for the Yorkists.

Micklegate Bar[note 17] and buried at the Dominican Priory in York.[18]

Thomas Neville's "bodies and bones"

Bisham Priory, Buckinghamshire with his father on 15 February 1463, a date occasioned by the death and burial there of his mother Alice in December the previous year.[124][note 18] In a chariot drawn by six horses, accompanied by Warwick and John, Thomas and their father's bodies were conveyed south from Pontefract. They were met by another Neville brother, George, Bishop of Exeter, who conducted the service.[127] The historian Nigel Saul has described the occasion as a "dramatic act of family piety",[128] involving flourishes such as the presentment of Baldachin cloth to the newly interred.[129] It probably acted as the blueprint upon which Edward IV's reinternment of his father and brother in 1476 was based.[128] Warwick's choice of Bisham for his father's and brother's final resting place—rather than the Neville heartlands of northern England—was probably based on a perceived political benefits to emphasising the Montagu connection.[130] A "rich, pageant-filled affair",[131] the ceremony was accompanied by the promulgation of an elaborate commemorative roll of arms, celebrating the Neville family's lineage.[131] Neville is portrayed with his wife Maud, as well as his parents, brothers and their wives;[132] he and Maud wear their Arms with the tincture reversed.[133][note 19]

Many years later, the chronicler

male line, could not be split between two female heirs,[137] but Thomas's death at effectively freed the crown to elevate the remaining heir, Bourchier to the barony a month later.[138]

Notes

  1. ^ Maud's petition to the council exists and is held at The National Archives in Kew, classified under reference E28/63/31.[3]
  2. ^ Also called Matilda:[11] The given name Matilda was brought to England at the invasion, and became the version commonly used in official records; Maud remained the medieval vernacular.[12]
  3. ^ He continued this policy with the marriage he arranged for his other nice Joan, who wed Humphrey Bourchier, niece of Richard Duke of York.[17]
  4. ^ To put this figure in context, Salisbury's annual income has been estimated at £3,000 per annum.[18]
  5. ^ The minimum annual income expected of an earl at this time was £666 13s 4d, equivalent to 1,000 marks.[20]
  6. ^ Original manuscript held at the British Library as MS Harley Sloane 1685.[26] Chaucer was Thomas Neville's great-grandmother's brother-in-law.[28]
  7. ^ As indeed they did in 1458.[31]
  8. ^ The bulk of his estate was redirected towards funding his foundation of Tattershall College.[51]
  9. ^ There was a general orgy of plunder and pillage on Cromwell's death, not the least by his own servants, who in South Wingfield—one of Cromwell's most "sumptuous" manors—were alleged by the executors to have carried off over £800 worth of goods while Cromwell was still in his deathbed,[58] while in Norfolk, Thomas, Lord Scales drove away 1,000 of his sheep.[58]
  10. 34 Henry VI, or 5 February 1456.[59] Alexander Ramsay, in his 1857 reissue of Fenn's collection, reprints the same letter but erroneously gives the date as 1454. This is, of course, impossible.[60]
  11. archer, Thomas could not have afforded the necessarily large garrison for any substantial length of time.[71]
  12. ^ Acting as one of the king's personal bodyguard, the Nevilles' enemy Egremont was among one of the Lancastrian dead at Northampton.[89]
  13. ^ Hicks has called it "decidedly a Neville-dominated regime".[94]
  14. ^ Not all their men were killed; at least one retainer of Thomas', John Barowe, was captured and held for ransom.[106]
  15. ^ The antiquarian John Gough Nichols noted in 1863, however, that "Bisham or 'Bustelham', is there misprinted and is erroneously stated to be in the county Of Buckingham".[108]
  16. ^ Other similar descriptions of Towton from historians are as "Britain’s bloodiest day in a long history of sanguinary conflict",[116] "the largest, longest fought, and bloodiest day in English medieval history",[117] "the biggest, longest and bloodiest military engagement on British soil",[118] "the costliest encounter ever fought on British soil", and that "in the modern-day world, where something has to be the biggest, longest, even bloodiest, in order to be remarkable, then Towton has many claims to be that singular event on English soil".[119]
  17. ^ And replaced by Lancastrian heads, including that of the Thomas Courtenay, Earl of Devon, who, being sick, had remained in York when the Yorkists arrived. He was beheaded in Pavement the next day.[121][122]
  18. ^ The scholar Alexandra Buckle argues that this was in keeping for the period, which saw "a fashion for the re-internment of relatives among the noble elite",[125] and James Ross has pointed to similarities with the equally elaborate funerals of William Courtenay, Earl of Devon in 1511 and John de Vere, Earl of Oxford in 1513.[126]
  19. Richard III—presents the arms in their traditional colours, and, Wagner notes, no other similar usage by anyone else is known of.[133]

References

  1. ^ a b c Hicks 1998, p. 24.
  2. ^ Griffiths 1981, p. 568 + n.33.
  3. ^ Griffiths 1981, p. 599 n.33.
  4. ^ a b c d e Griffiths 1968, p. 593.
  5. ^ Pollard 1990, pp. 251–2.
  6. ^ Booth 2003, p. 102.
  7. ^ Hicks 1998, p. 49.
  8. ^ Hicks 1998, p. 62.
  9. ^ Griffiths 1981, pp. 698–9.
  10. ^ a b c Friedrichs 1990, p. 97.
  11. ^ Griffiths 1968, p. 597.
  12. ^ Hanks, Hardcastle & Hodges 2006.
  13. ^ Hicks 1998, p. 88.
  14. ^ a b c Storey 1999, p. 130.
  15. ^ Beckett 1988, p. 28.
  16. ^ a b c d Friedrichs 1988, p. 224.
  17. ^ Friedrichs 1990, p. 105.
  18. ^ a b c Pollard 2004.
  19. ^ Hicks 1998, p. 89.
  20. ^ Hicks 1998, p. 82.
  21. ^ Payling 2014, p. 5.
  22. ^ Friedrichs 2000, p. 217 n.23.
  23. ^ Friedrichs 2000, p. 223.
  24. ^ Owen 1988, p. 102.
  25. ^ Brooks 2018, pp. 115–116.
  26. ^ a b Askins 2000, p. 37.
  27. ^ Boffey & Edwards 2006, p. 45.
  28. ^ Brooks 2018, p. 118.
  29. ^ Griffiths 1968, pp. 593, 597.
  30. ^ Payling 2014, p. 6.
  31. ^ Griffiths 1968, p. 626.
  32. ^ Harriss 2005, p. 535.
  33. ^ Wilkinson 1969, p. 311.
  34. ^ Payling 1989, p. 894.
  35. ^ Pollard 1990, p. 255.
  36. ^ a b Hicks 1998, p. 87.
  37. ^ McKelvie 2020, p. 169.
  38. ^ Griffiths 1968, p. 595.
  39. ^ Friedrichs 1990, p. 103.
  40. ^ Stevenson 2012, p. 770.
  41. ^ Payling 2014, p. 7.
  42. ^ Dockray 2020, p. 67.
  43. ^ Wilcock 2004, p. 60.
  44. ^ Storey 1999, p. 132.
  45. ^ Griffiths 1968, p. 603.
  46. ^ Storey 1999, pp. 148–149.
  47. ^ Wolffe 2001, p. 274.
  48. ^ Storey 1999, p. 149.
  49. ^ Harriss 2005, p. 629.
  50. ^ Cokayne 1913, p. 552.
  51. ^ Friedrichs 2000, p. 220.
  52. ^ a b Sutton 2018, p. 74.
  53. ^ Davis 1993, p. 139.
  54. ^ a b c Payling 2014, p. 15 + n65.
  55. ^ Friedrichs 2000, p. 218.
  56. ^ Friedrichs 2000, p. 219.
  57. ^ a b c Friedrichs 1990, p. 111.
  58. ^ a b Friedrichs 1990, p. 111 n.100.
  59. ^ Cheney 1997, p. 22.
  60. ^ Ramsay & Fenn 1849, pp. 70–71.
  61. ^ Fenn & Ball 1949, pp. 121–124.
  62. ^ Davis 1971, p. 135.
  63. ^ Payling 2014, p. 29.
  64. ^ a b Friedrichs 1990, pp. 111–112.
  65. ^ Friedrichs 2000, p. 226.
  66. ^ Hicks 1998, p. 129.
  67. ^ a b Summerson 1993, p. 443.
  68. ^ Hicks 1998, p. 131.
  69. ^ Pollard 2007, p. 108.
  70. ^ Storey 1999, pp. 116–7.
  71. ^ a b Summerson 1993, p. 407.
  72. ^ Hicks 1998, p. 150.
  73. ^ Armstrong 1960, p. 46.
  74. ^ Griffiths 1968, p. 628.
  75. ^ Watts 1996, p. 346 n.357.
  76. ^ PRO 1910, pp. 440–441.
  77. ^ Hicks 1998, p. 101.
  78. ^ Watts 1996, p. 343.
  79. ^ Pollard 1990, p. 269.
  80. ^ a b c Horrox 2004.
  81. ^ a b Hicks 1998, p. 163.
  82. ^ Pollard 1990, pp. 271–272.
  83. ^ Simons 1966, p. 53.
  84. ^ Embree & Tavormina 2019, p. 212.
  85. ^ Sadler 2010, p. 75.
  86. ^ Goodman 1996, p. 27.
  87. ^ Gillingham 1993, p. 105.
  88. ^ Hicks 1998, p. 166.
  89. ^ Goodman 1996, p. 38.
  90. ^ Johnson 1988, p. 206 n.61.
  91. ^ Hicks 1998, p. 183.
  92. ^ Turner 2020, p. 213.
  93. ^ PRO 1910, p. 589.
  94. ^ a b Hicks 1998, p. 184.
  95. ^ Pollard 1990, p. 279.
  96. ^ a b Griffiths 1981, p. 865.
  97. ^ a b c Watts 2004.
  98. ^ Johnson 1988, p. 214.
  99. ^ Johnson 1988, pp. 214–215.
  100. ^ Hicks 1998, p. 189.
  101. ^ Johnson 1988, p. 215.
  102. ^ Hicks 1998, p. 213.
  103. ^ Dockray 2020, pp. 69–70.
  104. ^ Haigh 1996, p. 126.
  105. ^ Johnson 1988, pp. 222–4.
  106. ^ Mercer 2010, pp. 143–144 n.33.
  107. ^ Haigh 2002, p. 54.
  108. ^ Nichols 1863, p. 252 n..
  109. ^ Rosenthal 1976, p. 116.
  110. ^ Society of Antiquaries 1790, p. 131.
  111. ^ PRO 1912, p. 44.
  112. ^ Head 1970, p. 165.
  113. ^ Dockray 1992, p. 248.
  114. ^ Goodman 1996, pp. 41–55.
  115. ^ Gravett 2003, p. 7.
  116. ^ Sadler 2011, p. 1.
  117. ^ Haigh 2002, pp. 98, 170.
  118. ^ Boardman 1996, p. xiii.
  119. ^ Goodwin 2011, pp. 1, 188.
  120. ^ Ross 1986, pp. 51–55.
  121. ^ Goodman 1996, p. 52.
  122. ^ Scofield 1923, p. 166.
  123. ^ Payne 1987, p. 187.
  124. ^ Hicks 1998, p. 228.
  125. ^ Buckle 2013, p. 404.
  126. ^ Ross 2011, p. 224 n.3.
  127. ^ Scofield 1923, p. 269.
  128. ^ a b Saul 2013, p. 376.
  129. ^ a b Hicks 1980, p. 25.
  130. ^ Pollard 1990, p. 181.
  131. ^ a b Saul 2011, p. 294.
  132. ^ Payne 1987, p. 189.
  133. ^ a b c Wagner 1993, p. 86.
  134. ^ Mercer 2010.
  135. ^ Nichols 1847, p. 20.
  136. ^ Friedrichs 2000, p. 221.
  137. ^ Cokayne 1913, pp. 552–553.
  138. ^ Payling 2014, p. 16.

Works cited

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