Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 40.djvu/280

 of Gaunt, duke of Lancaster, the king's uncle (, i. 297; ). When the Earl of Arundel, one of the leading lords appellant, was put on his trial before parliament on Friday, 21 Sept. 1397, Neville, at the command of his father-in-law Lancaster, who presided as seneschal of England, removed the accused's belt and scarlet hood (, p. 13; Ann. Ricardi II, p. 214). He was no doubt acting as constable, an office of Gloucester's. The Earl of Warwick was also in his custody (Ann. Hen. IV, p. 307). In the distribution of rewards among the king's supporters on 29 Sept., Neville was made Earl of Westmorland (Rot. Parl. iii. 355). He held no land in that county, but it was the nearest county to his estates not yet titularly appropriated, and the grant of the royal honour of Penrith gave him a footing on its borders. He took an oath before the shrine of Edward the Confessor in Westminster Abbey on Sunday, 30 Sept., to maintain what had been done in this ‘parliamentum ferale’ (Rot. Parl. iii. 355).

But when Richard drove his brother-in-law Henry, earl of Derby, out of the realm, and refused him possession of the Lancaster estates on John of Gaunt's death, Westmorland took sides against the king, and was one of the first to join Henry when he landed in Yorkshire in July 1399 (, p. 24). He and his relative Northumberland, who had joined Henry at the same time, represented the superior lords temporal in the parliamentary deputation which on 29 Sept. received in the Tower the unfortunate Richard's renunciation of the crown, and next day he was granted for life the office of marshal of England, which had been held by the banished Duke of Norfolk (Rot. Parl. iii. 416; Fœdera, viii. 89, 115). With Northumberland he conveyed Richard's message to convocation on 7 Oct. (Ann. Hen. IV, p. 289). At Henry IV's coronation (13 Oct.) Westmorland bore the small sceptre called the virge, or rod with the dove, his younger half-brother, John Neville, lord Latimer, who was still a minor, carrying the great sceptre royal (, p. 33;, Glory of Regality, p. 66) [see under , fifth ]. The grant a week later (20 Oct.) of the great honour and lordship of Richmond, forfeited in the late reign by John, duke of Brittany, united his Teesdale and his Wensleydale lands into a solid block of territory, and gave him besides a vast number of manors and fees scattered over great part of England (Rot. Parl. iii. 427). The grant, however, was only made for his life, and clearly did not carry with it the title of Earl of Richmond, which was never borne by him, and was granted during his lifetime (1414) to John, duke of Bedford, with the reversion of the castle and lands on Westmorland's death (Third Report of the Lords on the Dignity of a Peer, pp. 96 et seq.). When the earl was in London he sat in the privy council, but as a great northern magnate he was chiefly employed upon the Scottish border (Ord. Privy Council, i. 100 et seq.; Fœdera, viii. 133). In March 1401, however, he was one of the royal commissioners who concluded with the ambassadors of Rupert, king of the Romans, a marriage between Henry's eldest daughter and Rupert's son Louis (ib. pp. 176, 178), and spent the summer in London (Ord. Privy Council, i. 144, 157). But in September he was employed on another Scottish mission, and in the March following was appointed captain of Roxburgh Castle (ib. p. 168; Fœdera, viii. 251; ).

The garter vacated by the death of Edmund, duke of York, in August 1402 was bestowed upon him. In July 1403 his relatives, the Percies, revolted, and Westmorland found an opportunity of weakening the great rival house in the north. One of Hotspur's grievances was the transference of his captaincy of Roxburgh Castle to Westmorland in the previous March (Rot. Scot. ii. 161). The day after the battle of Shrewsbury, in which Hotspur was slain, Henry wrote to Westmorland and other Yorkshire magnates charging them to levy troops and intercept the Earl of Northumberland, who was marching southward (Fœdera, viii. 319). Westmorland drove the old earl back to Warkworth, and sent an urgent message to Henry, advising him to come into the north, where reports of his death were being circulated by the Percies (Ann. Hen. IV, p. 371). The king arrived at Pontefract on 3 Aug., and three days later transferred the wardenship of the west marches, which Northumberland had held since 1399, to Westmorland. Hotspur was replaced as warden of the east march by the king's second son, John, a lad of fourteen, who must necessarily have been much under the influence of the experienced earl. On his return south, Henry directed Westmorland and his brother Lord Furnival to secure the surrender of the Percy castles (Ord. Privy Council, i. 213). But the order was more easily given than executed, and in the parliament of the following February Northumberland was pardoned by the king and publicly reconciled to Westmorland (Rot. Parl. iii. 525). Westmorland and Somerset were the only earls in the council of twenty-two whom the king was induced by the urgency