Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 40.djvu/279

 bridge, called Ralph Neville of Condell (Cundall); (4) Alexander [q. v.], archbishop of York; (5) Sir William (d. 1389?) [q. v.] Their four daughters were: (1) Margaret, married, first (1342), William, who next year became Lord Ros of Hamlake (i.e. Helmsley, in the North Riding), and secondly, he dying in 1352, Henry Percy, first earl of Northumberland [q. v.]; (2) Catherine, married Lord Dacre of Gillsland; (3) Eleanor, who married Geoffrey le Scrope, and afterwards became a nun in the Minories, London (Wills and Inventories, i. 39); (4) Euphemia, who married, first, Reginald de Lucy; secondly, Robert Clifford, lord of Westmorland, who died before 1354; and, thirdly, Sir Walter de Heslarton (near New Malton). She died in 1394 or 1395. Surtees (iv. 159) adds a sixth son, Thomas, ‘bishop-elect of Ely,’ but this seems likely to be an error.

[Rotuli Parliamentorum; Calendarium Genealogicum, published by the Record Commission; Rymer's Fœdera, original and Record editions; Robert de Avesbury, Adam de Murimuth, Walsingham, Letters from Northern Registers and Registrum Palatinum Dunelmense in the Rolls Ser.; Chronicon de Lanercost, Maitland Club ed.; Galfrid le Baker, ed. Maunde Thompson; Froissart, ed. Kervyn de Lettenhove; Surtees's Hist. of Durham, vol. iv.; Longman's Hist. of Edward III; Dugdale's Baronage; Nicolas's Historic Peerage, ed. Courthope; Segar's Baronagium Genealogicum, ed. Edmondson; Selby's Genealogist, iii. 107, &c.; Foster's Yorkshire Pedigrees.] 

NEVILLE, RALPH, sixth and first  (1364–1425), was the eldest son of John de Neville, fifth baron Neville of Raby [q. v.], by his first wife, Maud, daughter of Henry, lord Percy (d. 1352) [q. v.], and aunt of the first earl of Northumberland (, De Nova Villa, p. 34;, Baronage, i. 297). He first saw service in the French expedition of July 1380 under the king's uncle Thomas of Woodstock, earl of Buckingham, afterwards duke of Gloucester, who knighted him (, vii. 321, ed. Lettenhove). Doubtless spending the winter with the earl in Brittany, and returning with him in the spring of 1381, Ralph Neville, towards the close of the year, presided with his cousin Henry Percy, the famous Hotspur (whose mother was a Neville), over a duel between a Scot and an Englishman (Fœdera, xi. 334–5). In 1383 or 1384 he was associated with his father in receiving payment of the final instalments of David Bruce's ransom (, i. 297). In the autumn of 1385 (26 Oct.), after the king's invasion of Scotland, he was appointed joint governor of Carlisle with the eldest son of his relative, Lord Clifford of Skipton in Craven, and on 27 March 1386 warden of the west march with the same colleague (, Official Baronage; Fœdera, vii. 538). On the death of his father (who made him one of his executors) at Newcastle, on 17 Oct. 1388, Ralph Neville at the age of twenty-four became Baron Neville of Raby, and was summoned to parliament under that title from 6 Dec. 1389 (Wills and Inventories, Surtees Soc. i. 42;, Historic Peerage).

A few days afterwards the new baron was appointed, with others, to survey the border fortifications, and in the spring of the next year his command in the west march was renewed for a further term. He was made warden for life of the royal forests north of Trent (24 May 1389), and got leave to empark his woods at Raskelf, close to York and his castle of Sheriff-Hutton. The king also gave him a charter for a weekly market at Middleham, and a yearly fair on the day of St. Alkelda, the patron saint of the church. In July 1389, and again in June 1390, he was employed in negotiations with Scotland ; Fœdera, vii. 672). In June 1391 he obtained a license, along with Sir Thomas Colville of the Dale and other northern gentlemen, to perform feats of arms with certain Scots (Fœdera, vii. 703). The Duke of Gloucester taking the cross in this year, commissioners, headed by Lord Neville, were appointed (4 Dec.) to perform the duties of constable of England ). In the summers of 1393 and 1394 he was once more engaged in negotiations for peace with Scotland, and rather later (20 Richard II, 1396–1397) he got possession of the strong castle of Wark on Tweed by exchange with Sir John de Montacute [q. v.], afterwards third earl of Salisbury.

Neville's power was great in the North country, where he, as lord of Raby and Brancepeth in the bishopric of Durham, and Middleham and Sheriff-Hutton in Yorkshire, was fully the equal, simple baron though he was, of his cousin the head of the Percies. His support was therefore worth securing by King Richard when, in 1397, he took his revenge upon the Duke of Gloucester and other lords appellant of nine years before. The lord of Raby was already closely connected with the crown and the court party by marriage alliances. He had secured for his eldest son, John, the hand of Elizabeth, daughter of the king's stepbrother, Thomas Holland, earl of Kent, who was deep in Richard's counsels, and he himself had taken for his second wife Joan Beaufort, daughter of John