Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 40.djvu/270

 Henry Percy, afterwards first earl of Northumberland [q. v.], and the Earl of Douglas (Fœdera, vii. 45).

Closely associated with the unpopular John of Gaunt and with the English reverses in France, seneschal of the household in the last years of Edward III, when scandals abounded, Neville did not escape the storm of national indignation which broke over the court in the spring of 1376. The wrath of the Good parliament was in the first place directed against Richard Lyons and William Latimer, fourth lord Latimer [q. v.], but Neville's turn soon came. Latimer, whose seat was at Danby in Cleveland, was a Yorkshire neighbour of Neville, who was to take Latimer's daughter Elizabeth for his second wife. The hostile St. Albans chronicler alleges that Latimer, by pecuniary and other promises, induced Neville to use threatening language to the commons on his behalf. Neville is said to have informed them, in ‘great swelling words,’ that it was intolerable that a peer of the realm should be attacked by such as they, and that they would probably fall into the pit they had dug for others. But the speaker, Sir Peter de la Mare [q. v.], curtly told him that it was not the place of one who would presently be arraigned himself to intercede for others (Chron. Angliæ, 1328–88, p. 80). Neville was accordingly impeached on three counts: for buying up the king's debts, like Latimer; for suffering his troops to plunder and outrage at Southampton in 1372; and for causing the loss of several Breton fortresses by neglecting to supply the full force of men he had undertaken to furnish (Rot. Parl. ii. 229). Against the two latter charges he defended himself with some force. On the first count two accusations were brought against him, one of which the complainant attempted to withdraw at the last moment. It almost looks as if he had been tampered with by the accused or his friends.

The commons petitioned that Neville should be put out of all his offices about the court, and he was sentenced to make restitution to those he had injured and pay a fine of eight thousand marks (ib.; Chron. Angliæ, p. 81). But the parliament of January 1377 reversed these proceedings. Neville was entrusted with a commission on the Scottish border, and, after the accession of Richard II in June, made governor of Bamborough Castle. In the following year, a more energetic policy abroad being determined upon, Neville was on 10 June appointed lieutenant of the king in Aquitaine, and empowered to treat with Peter, king of Arragon, and Gaston Phœbus, count of Foix (Fœdera, Record ed. iv. 43–4). A few weeks later (1 Aug.) the new lieutenant was ordered to send a force to aid Charles, king of Navarre, against Henry of Castille, whose throne was claimed by John of Gaunt (ib. vii. 200). Sailing from Plymouth, Neville apparently did not reach Bordeaux until 8 Sept., when he took up his residence in the abbey of St. Andrew; and, despatching Sir Thomas Trivet to help Charles of Navarre, he took an expedition down the Gironde, and after some delay recovered Mortagne near its mouth, subsequently taking the Tower of St. Maubert in the Medoc (, ed. Lettenhove, ix. 84–9, 101, xxii. 289). He was still in Aquitaine in 1380, but had returned to England by 5 July 1381, when he was ordered to provide men for the armed retinue assigned to John of Gaunt for his defence against the peasant insurgents (Fœdera, vii. 319). He is credited with having recovered eighty-three towns, castles, and forts during his lieutenancy; but on what authority Ralph Glover made this statement we do not know (, i. 297). During the remaining years of his life he was constantly employed on the Scottish border, first as joint warden of both marches, and afterwards as sole warden of the east march (ib.) According to Froissart (x. 522, ed. Lettenhove), he wished to join in Bishop Despenser's crusade of 1383, but the king would not give his permission. There seems no evidence to support the statement that he did service at some time against the Turks. His last days were embittered by the misfortunes of his brother, Archbishop Alexander, who in 1387 was driven from his see and the country by the lords appellant. He himself was refused payment of the arrears due to him for the defence of the marches (, ed. Lettenhove, xiii. 200). As late as 26 March 1388 he was placed on a commission to treat for peace with Scotland.

He died at Newcastle-on-Tyne on 17 Oct. 1388, the anniversary of the battle of Neville's Cross (Fœdera, vii. 572; ). In his will, dated 31 Aug. 1386, he left money to be divided among his carters, ploughmen, and herdsmen, founded a chantry in the Charterhouse at Coventry, and further endowed the hospital founded by his family at Well, near Bedale, Yorkshire (Wills and Inventories, Surtees Soc., i. 38). He was buried in the Neville chantry in the south aisle of Durham Cathedral, near his father and his first wife, Maud Percy. His tomb, sadly mutilated by the Scottish prisoners taken at Dunbar, who were confined there in 1650, is engraved in vol. iv. of Surtees's ‘History of Durham’ (cf., Durham Cathedral, p. 84;