Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 40.djvu/274

 her dower (Fœdera, xi. 676; ). But Montagu, who was lying at Pontefract, allowed Edward in March 1471 to land in Yorkshire, enter York, and march into the midlands without molestation (Arrivall of Edward IV, p. 6). This looked very like a double treason, and was afterwards so regarded by some writers (, p. 136;, p. 16). But the neutral position taken up by the Percies, who were very powerful in southern Yorkshire, may have so weakened Montagu that he hesitated to attack Edward's small but compact force, and he was always inclined to seize an opportunity of letting events decide themselves without committing him (ib.) Stow adds that he was deceived by letters from Clarence, who had secretly gone over to his brother's party, announcing that he was about to arrange a general settlement, and asking him in the meantime not to fight. But what authority he had for this statement does not appear. Montagu certainly joined Warwick at Coventry, and fought on his side at Barnet (14 April), where both were slain (Arrivall of Edward IV, pp. 14, 20). There are curiously discrepant accounts of his conduct in the battle. In one version he insists on Warwick's fighting on foot so that he must win or fall, and himself dies fighting gallantly in ‘plain battle’ (, i. 260; cf. Arrivall of Edward IV, p. 20). In another he is discovered putting on Edward's livery and slain by one of Warwick's men (, p. 16). The former, though in part the official version put forth by Edward, perhaps deserves most credence. The bodies of the two brothers were carried to London, and, after being exposed ‘open and naked’ for two days at St. Paul's to convince the people that they were really dead, were taken down to Berkshire and interred in the burial-place of their maternal ancestors at Bisham Abbey (, p. 297). Montagu seems to have been a man of mediocre talents and hesitant temper, who was drawn rather reluctantly into treason by the stronger will of his brother and the family solidarity.

He married, on 25 April, 1457 Isabel, daughter and coheiress of Sir Edmund Ingoldesthorpe of Borough Green, near Newmarket, by Joan, sister and eventually heiress of John Tiptoft, earl of Worcester (Paston Letters, i. 416; Rot. Parl. v. 387; cf. ). By her he had two sons and five daughters (, De Nova Villa, p. 224): (1) George, created Duke of Bedford on 5 April 1470; he was degraded from this and all his other dignities by act of parliament in 1478, when he may have been just coming of age, on the ground that he had no ‘livelihood’ to support them, his father's treason having frustrated the king's intention of attaching estates to the titles (Rot. Parl. vi. 173). Sir James Ramsay (ii. 426) suggests that the Bedford title was now needed for Edward's third son, George. George Neville died in 1483 without issue, and was buried in the church of Sheriff-Hutton, near York, a Neville castle and manor. The alabaster effigy, with a coronet, still remaining in the church, and often said to be young Bedford's (, Yorkshire, p. 157), is that of a mere child, perhaps the son of Richard of Gloucester, to whom Sheriff Hutton passed after Warwick's death; and the shield bears a cross, not the Neville saltire. Montagu's second son, John Neville, died in infancy (1460), and was buried at Sawston, Cambridgeshire.

The daughters were: (1) Anne, who married Sir William Stonor of Oxfordshire; (2) Elizabeth, married first to Thomas, lord Scrope of Masham (d. 1493), and secondly, before 1496, to Sir Henry Wentworth, who died in 1500 (she died in 1515); (3) Margaret, married first Thomas Horne, secondly Sir J. Mortimer, and thirdly Charles Brandon, duke of Suffolk [q. v.], who divorced her; (4) Lucy, married first Sir Thomas Fitzwilliam, and secondly Sir Anthony Brown, her grandson by whom was created Viscount Montagu in 1554. The dignity is supposed to have become extinct on the death in 1797 of Mark Anthony Brown, the ninth viscount, who had entered a French monastery, but various claims have since been set up to it (, Historic Peerage, ed. Courthope); (5) Isabel, married first Sir William Huddlestone of Sawston, secondly William Smith of Elford, Staffordshire.

[Rotuli Parliamentorum; State Papers, Venetian Series, ed. Rawdon Browne; Rymer's Fœdera, original edit.; Lords' Report on the Dignity of a Peer; Proceedings and Ordinances of the Privy Council, ed. Palgrave; William Worcester (ad pedem Stevenson's Wars in France, vol. ii.) and Register of Whethamstede in Rolls Ser.; English Chronicle, 1377–1461, ed. Davies, Gregory's Chronicle (see Eng. Hist. Rev. viii. 31, 565) in Collections of a London Citizen, ed. Gairdner, Three Fifteenth-Century Chronicles, ed. Gairdner, Warkworth's Chronicle, the Rebellion in Lincolnshire, and the Arrivall of Edward IV, all published by the Camden Soc.; the Continuator of the Croyland Chronicle, ed. Fulman, 1684; Fabyan's Chronicle, ed. 1811; Hall's Chronicle, ed. 1809; Chron. of the White Rose, ed. 1845; Paston Letters, ed. Gairdner; Wavrin, ed. Hardy (Rolls Ser.), and Dupont (Soc. de l'Hist. de France), Commines, ed. Dupont (Soc. de l'Hist. de France); George Chastellain, ed. Kervyn de Lettenhove, Brussels, 1863–6; Beaucourt's Histoire de Charles VII; Pauli's Geschichte Englands, vol.