Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 40.djvu/260

 cellor was now living in the parish of St. Clement Danes, ‘without the bar of the New Temple’ (ib.) The chronicler known as ‘Gregory’ (p. 212) makes him share Warwick's defeat in the second battle of St. Albans (17 Feb. 1461); but Worcester (p. 776) says that he awaited the result at Canterbury with the archbishop. He was present in the council of Yorkist peers which, at Baynard's Castle on 3 March, declared Edward of York king, and the next day at Paul's Cross, in the presence of the king, expounded and defended his title in an ‘eximius sermo,’ which is still extant (Archœologia, xxix, 128; Three Fifteenth-Century Chronicles, p. 173;, p. 777). On 10 March the great seal was regranted to him in the name of the new king (Fœdera, xi. 473). A week after Towton (7 April) he wrote a long Latin letter to the papal legate Coppini in Flanders, giving him a most interesting account of the campaign, and moralising on the civil strife: ‘O luckless race! ...... populumque potentem In sua victrici conversum viscera dextra, to use the words of Lucan. Alas! we are a race deserving of pity, even from the French.’ He concludes, however, with the expression of a hope that such storms will be succeeded by halcyon days (State Papers, Venetian, i. 370). When Edward opened his first parliament, on 4 Nov. following, Chancellor Nevill delivered an address on the text from Jeremiah vii. 3: ‘Amend your ways and your doings, and I will cause you to dwell in this place’ (Rot. Parl. v. 461).

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. Omer, where a joint conference had been arranged with France and Burgundy. At the end of September the conference was transferred to Hesdin, where both Louis XI and Duke Philip were present in person; and Neville succeeded in detaching the former from the Lancastrians by a truce for a year (8 Oct.), and in obtaining an extension of the commercial truce with Flanders from the duke. He left Hesdin on the 10th of the month, and on the 25th retook possession of the great seal (, p. 71;, iv. 338; Fœdera, xi. 504, 506–7, 513).

Early in April 1464 he was sent into the north of England to assist his brothers Warwick and Montagu in arranging a definite peace with Scottish commissioners at York, and after some delay a truce for fifteen years was concluded there on 3 June (ib. xi. 514–515, 524; Three Fifteenth-Century Chronicles, p. 178). The king's marriage with Elizabeth Wydeville in May was very distasteful to Warwick, but Edward was not in a position to ignore Neville's claims to the archbishopric of York, which fell vacant on 12 Sept. by the death of William Booth. He was given custody of the temporalities four days later, and a congé d'élire issued on 27 Sept.; but the bull of translation was not granted by the new pope, Paul II, until 15 March 1465 (Fœdera, xi. 533;, iii. 111). It was published in York Minster on 4 June, the temporalities were fully restored to him on the 17th, and on 22 or 23 Sept. he was enthroned in the minster. The occasion was seized to display the wealth and power of the Neville clan by a great family gathering and an installation feast whose extravagant prodigality has preserved its details for posterity (, p. 695; cf., Collections, ii. 341; Oxford Hist. Soc.; , p. 444). But the absence of the king and queen was noted as significant (, p. 785). The only member of the royal family present was the Duke of Gloucester, who sat at the same table as his future wife, Anne Neville, Warwick's younger daughter. There is reason to believe that this extravagance somewhat crippled Neville's resources (cf. Paston Letters, ii. 346, iii. 313). It is not surprising that he took an active part against the London friars, who this year revived the old demand for the evangelical poverty of the clergy (, p. 230).

In November and December he was again employed, with Warwick and Montagu, in negotiations with the Scots, and the truce was prolonged at Newcastle (Fœdera, xi. 556, 569). In April 1466 he held a provincial synod in the minster, and made new constitutions, in the preamble of which he is described as primate of England and legate of the apostolic see (, p. 445). But Edward IV had now resolved to make himself independent of the Nevilles. The first open blow was delivered at the chancellor during Warwick's absence in France in the summer of 1467. Neville was not asked to open the parliament, which met on 3 June, and five days later (8 June) the king went