Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 40.djvu/259

 of B.A., without having completed the full course, and those incepting under him as masters of arts were allowed as a particular favour to complete their regency in arts in one instead of two years (, Munimenta Academica, p. 730;, Register of the University of Oxford, p. vii). He secured the same privilege for his friends when on 12 May 1452 permission was given him to incept as master of arts, only twelve months after ‘determining’ as bachelor, and he was excused from the teaching and administrative duties of a regent master (ib. pp. ix. 10). A year later, 9 June 1453, when barely twenty-one at most, Neville succeeded Gilbert Kymer [q. v.], the court physician, as chancellor of the university, and, being twice re-elected, retained this position until 6 July 1457, when he resigned it (, pp. 660–661, 748;, Fasti Eccl. Angl. iii. 467). The prodigal feast which he is generally supposed to have given on this occasion seems to be due to a confusion with his installation feast at York twelve years later (, Balliofergus, p. 105; Colleges of Oxford, ed. Clark, p. 38).

But with such brilliant prospects of church advancement as the growing power of his family held out, Neville was content to perform his academical duties for the most part by deputy (, p. 742). No sooner had his father become chancellor of England under York as protector in April 1454 than he seems to have claimed one of the vacant bishoprics for his son, but the council would only consent to recommend the youth to the pope for the next vacancy, ‘considered the blood virtue and cunning he is of’ (Ord. Privy Council, vi. 168). In the meantime he was made archdeacon of Northampton, and prebendary of Tame, in the diocese of Lincoln (17 Aug. 1454), canon and prebendary of Thorpe at Ripon (21 Aug.), and on 21 Dec. 1454 ordained priest (, ii. 58, 221; Ripon Chapter Acts, Surtees Soc., p. 209;, De Præsulibus, ed. Richardson). The first see that fell vacant after the Yorkists had recovered at St. Albans in May 1455 the power they had lost by the king's recovery a few months before was that of Exeter, Edmund Lacy dying in September of this year. But the promise made to Salisbury for his son was either forgotten or ignored, and John Hales, archdeacon of Norwich, was at once promoted by Pope Calixtus III on the recommendation of the council. Probably they were desirous of avoiding the scandal of foisting a mere youth like Neville into high spiritual office. Matters had gone so far when the Nevilles insisted on the performance of the promise made to them, secured a renunciation by Hales, George Neville's election by the chapter (November), and royal letters calling upon the pope to undo his promotion of Hales and substitute Neville (Ord. Privy Council, vi. 265; Fœdera, xi. 367). He was declared to be a suitable person for a remote and disturbed see, as a member of a powerful noble family. Calixtus consented to stultify himself, though no doubt with reluctance, for he insisted that Neville's consecration should be delayed until he reached his twenty-seventh year (, p. 16). In the meantime he was to enjoy the title of bishop-elect and the revenues of the see. Gascoigne inveighs bitterly against his dissociation of the temporal advantages and spiritual duties of a bishopric as one of the worst clerical abuses of his time. The temporalities were restored to Neville on 21 March 1456, and he was summoned as bishop to councils (Fœdera, xi. 376;, i. 376; Ord. Privy Council, vi. 291, 295). Two months earlier (24 Jan.) he had been given the mastership of the rich hospital of St. Leonard at York (ib. p. 285). He also became archdeacon of Carlisle at some date prior to May 1463 (, iii. 249). Neville took a prominent part in the proceedings for heresy against Bishop Reginald Pecock [q. v.], who was favoured by the Lancastrian prelates. During Pecock's examination by the bishops in November 1457, the bishop-elect hotly reproached him with impeaching the truth of the writings of St. Jerome and other saints (, p. 211).

Neville cannot have more than entered upon his twenty-seventh year when he was consecrated on 3 Dec. 1458 (, Registrum Sacrum, p. 69). His political career may be said to begin in the following year, when he managed to avoid being fatally compromised in the rebellion of his father and brothers, and, after their flight and attainder in October, ‘declared himself full worshipfully to the king's pleasure’ (Paston Letters, i. 500). But when Warwick and Salisbury came over in force from Calais in June 1460, Neville, with William Grey, bishop of Ely, like himself a Balliol man, took an armed force on 2 July to meet them in Southwark, and next day assisted the Archbishop of Canterbury in receiving their oaths of allegiance to the absent Henry in St. Paul's (, pp. 772–3). He accompanied Warwick and the Earl of March to the battle of Northampton (10 July), and on their return to London with the captive king, the great seal resigned by the Archbishop of Canterbury was given to him on 25 July (Fœdera, xi. 458). The new chan-