Thomas Neville (died 1460)

Thomas Neville was the second son of Richard Neville and his wife Alice Montagu, 5th Countess of Salisbury. He was probably born soon after his elder brother Richard in 1428, and certainly before 1432, by when his parents had had two more sons, John^[1] and George.^[2] Richard was to become Earl of Warwick, and, as one of the most important politicians in the kingdom, earned himself the soubriquet "Kingmaker"; John became Marquess of Montagu and defender of the North; George, the youngest, had a career in the Church, becoming Archbishop of York.^[1] The historian Michael Hicks suggests that seeing how closely the brothers cooperated as adults, they were probably close as children.^[1]

In 1439, Maud, Countess of Cambridge, reported Thomas to the royal council for attacking her house in Danby, near Eskdale, along with Sir Thomas Lumley. Maud complained that they and their men had hunted and shot deer in her park, but she was unable to do anything herself because the Nevilles and Lumleys were both powerful local families.^{[3][note 1]} Six years later, he was appointed joint steward of the Lancastrian Honour of Pontefract with his father and John.^[5] His first independent mention in government records came in 1448 when he was made steward of the Bishopric of Durham by his uncle, Robert, the Bishop. For this, he received wages of £20 per annum from diocesan revenues.^[6] His father appointed him his Steward of Bolton in 1450,^[7] and he became Sheriff of Glamorgan the same year, in which capacity he witnessed a charter of Warwick's on 12 March 1451.^[8] Warwick also appointed him to assist in the management of his Warwickshire estates, for which Thomas received an annuity.^[9] Alongside the King's two half-brothers, Edmund and Jasper Tudor, he was knighted by King Henry VI on 5 January 1453.^[10] With increasing tension between the Percys and Nevilles in the north, relations between the latter and the crown had come under strain, and his knighting may have been an attempt to ameliorate this.^[11][12]

The king licensed Thomas Neville on 1 May 1453 to marry Maud Stanhope,^{[note 2]} the widow of Robert, Lord Willoughby and a wealthy heiress.^[15] She was also the niece and joint-heiress of Ralph, Lord Cromwell,^[16] one of the richest men in the kingdom,^{[17][note 3]} Cromwell was involved in feuds with two powerful men at this time;^[19] Friedrichs suggests that, while a man such as Cromwell could always expect to attract his share of enemies, previously he had been able to confront them in courts of law, mostly successfully. She continues though that "the political enemies he acquired in his later years ... proved to be a very different story".^[20] In 1449, Sir William Tailboys violently assaulted Cromwell outside the Star Chamber in Westminster Palace in an attempted kidnapping,^[20] while three years later ("another and more powerful enemy")^[21] Henry Holland, Duke of Exeter disputed Cromwell's rights to Ampthill Manor and seized it by force. Exeter also engineered the dismissal of Cromwell from the royal council with accusations of treason.^[22][23]

Cromwell saw connecting his family to the Nevilles as a way of counterbalancing his enemies.^{[19][note 4]} The marriage cost him the massive sum of nearly £2,000^{[note 5]} in loans to Salisbury: "the price the Nevilles could extract was a measure of Cromwell's desperation", argues the medievalist Rhoda Friedrichs.^[19] This money was divided between the earl, Thomas and his brothers.^[19] The marriage was designed by Salisbury to provide Thomas with an estate "of genuinely comital proportions", says Hicks.^{[26][note 6]} As a marriage settlement from the Earl and Countess of Salisbury in Easter 1454, Thomas and Maud received two-thirds of the Yorkshire manors of Catterick, Danby Wiske and Aldborough.^[27] He and Maud shared similar literary interests.^[28] Friedrichs has suggested that his "political and military adventures had included his wife, even to the point of battle",^[29] and he is known to have owned an early copy of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales.^[30] They both inscribed as marginalia, "T. Nevyll" and "Mawd Wyllwghby".^{[31][32][33][note 7]}

The historian Ralph A. Griffiths has suggested that the announcement of Thomas's marriage was the immediate cause of the feud with the Percys.^[35] Not only, says Griffiths, was any further Neville aggrandisement an anathema to the Percys, but the new Cromwell connection gave the Nevilles access to the ex-Percy manors of Wressle and Burwell.^[5] These had been granted to Cromwell in 1440^[36] but the Percys still hoped to reclaim then.^{[5][note 8]}

The Nevilles were one of four major landowners in the north, along with Richard, 3rd Duke of York, the Crown (as Duke of Lancaster), and the Percy family, who were the earls of Northumberland. York and the King, however, were effectively absentee landlords; the two main families were the Nevilles and Percys. Although the families had cooperated in defence of the border with Scotland for 30 years, relations were often tense.^[38][5] The medievalist Bertie Wilkinson has described the environment of the period. Not only was it "seriously divided" politically, but "the area was remote, exposed to Scottish attack, and impossible to control, at least by the government of Henry VI".^[39]

By 1453, tension had turned to violence. It was not the two earls, as heads of their families, who were the cause, but their younger sons, who were responsible for its escalation.^[16] To what extent Salisbury may have been directing affairs from afar is unknown, but the historian A. J. Pollard has argued that Thomas was his father's "direct representative" in the struggle.^[5] Friedrichs has called Thomas "combatative [sic] and landless",^[12] while the historian Simon Payling believes him to have been "vigorous and youthful".^[40] Thomas's opponent Thomas Percy, Lord Egremont was similarly described by R. L. Storey as "quarrelsome, violent and contemptuous of all authority"^[16] and by Pollard as "wild and belligerent".^[41] With his younger brother Sir Richard Percy and their retainers, they launched an opening assault on the Nevilles^[42] on 24 August 1453. They were returning to Yorkshire with Thomas's new bride after the wedding at Cromwell's Tattershall Castle, Lincolnshire. The Nevilles were ambushed at Heworth, York by a Percy force of possibly 5,000 men.^[42] This—effectively an assassination attempt^[43]—was the most violent incident between the families for many years. Although the respective sizes of the opposing forces are unknown, the Nevilles would have had a substantial retinue with them. This encounter was the first in a series of skirmishes, assaults and numerous destructive episodes "of breaking and entering",^[44] which saw Thomas "in the thick of the fighting".^[45]

In response, he and his brother John began actively seeking out Percy retainers and their property. They inflicted severe damage to the estates of Sir William Plumpton, a Percy loyalist, in Knaresborough as part of an aggressive Neville demonstration of power in January 1454.^[49] With his brothers, John and Richard, as well as Salisbury, they faced the Earl of Northumberland and his sons at Topcliffe, North Yorkshire on 20 October 1453, although a negotiated peace averted battle.^[50] The Crown tried to settle the feud, but Griffiths has described its response as "futile". Rather than take decisive action, it relied on writing letters to both the earls and their younger sons, regardless of how willing—or able—the former were to control the latter.^[51] In the event, the feud continued for much of the next year with further violent encounters and only came to a halt with another battle at Salisbury's manor of Stamford Bridge, near York on 31 October 1454.^[52][53] Thomas and John confronted and decisively beat Egremont and Richard Percy, Thomas capturing the latter as they attempted to escape.^[54][55]

Maud's mother, Margaret had died in September 1454.^[56] Thomas's uncle-in-law, Lord Cromwell, had written his first will in 1451, but, probably unknown to his nieces or their husbands, he had re-written it three years later. The first will was extremely favourable to Maud; the second not nearly so, leaving them only 500 marks each and limited manors.^{[note 9]} Cromwell died on 4 January 1457,^[58] "richer than Fastolf and with even more claims against his estate".^[59] It is unknown where Thomas was at the time, but he attended Cromwell's funeral. The complexity of Cromwell's affairs led to many legal machinations,^[58] and as husband to one of his only heirs, Thomas was extensively involved in negotiations.^[60] Cromwell had already made a will in 1451, which was mostly concerned with bequests for servants and several charitable institutions. The main difference between that and the superseding will in 1454 was that—while they appeared superficially similar—the second will directed that the executors have discretion as to what institutions precisely benefitted.^[61] Friedrichs sums up the main provisions of the second will:

Instead of vestments to a few churches and alms to poor tenants, Cromwell commanded that all his lands which were not entailed were to be sold to the highest bidder and the money given to any charity the executors chose. Of all his holdings only the entailed lands were to go to the heirs.^[62]

She also argues that husband and wife "expected more and clearly felt justly entitled to more".^[63] She suggests that Thomas−following the "assumption that possession was nine-tenths of the law"^[64]—deliberately filed the 1451 will for probate. While the later will was known about, it was possible that if the earlier will could be proved first, it would be harder for the manors gained from it to be legally repossessed, regardless of the later will.^[65] He also took paralegal action and took physical possession, backed by arms, of all he could.^[12] He and his fellow heir jure uxoris, Humphrey Bourchier, illegally expelled Cromwell's feoffees from several manors in Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire in December 1457,^[60] and Thomas was still holding 35 manors—taken "by strong hand"—in September 1459.^[65]

Cromwell's executors later claimed that over £2,000 worth of goods, cash and food had been stolen from Tattershall on the day of the funeral.^{[65][note 10]} There seems to have been an expectation by contemporaries that Thomas would receive the support of his father in pursuing his case. John Fastolf, for example, writing to John Paston the day after Cromwell died^{[note 11]}, told him that "Master Neville, the which hath wedded my Lady have power or interest to receive the Lord of Willoughby's debts, then he to be laboured unto. And my Lord of Salisbury will be a great helper in this cause."^[69][70] Resolving the legal issues was a slow process. The couple did not receive a substantial portion of her inheritance until the next year when they gained lands worth around £1,000 yearly and an option on others worth £200 at purchase.^[60] The bulk of her inheritance comprised Cromwell's entitled estate, the core of his wealth,^[71] and would have brought them vast wealth under the 1451 will. Its later iteration, however, greatly reduced the amount of land available to his heirs. Although they legally challenged the second will, they were unsuccessful in breaking it, and seem to have been reduced to arguing over goods and chattels, such as drapes and bedding that Maud claimed she had been promised.^[72] Legal disputation over the will continued until the 1470s.^[73] Ultimately, commented Friedrichs, Thomas was never able to create a major political powerbase from Cromwell's wealth.^[72]

Government offices kept coming Thomas's way, and in 1457, he was appointed Chamberlain of the Exchequer, along with his fellow Cromwell co-heir, Bourchier.^[75] Later that year, his father and brother assigned Thomas their deputy—"lieutenant of the said city, castle and marches, as well in time of peace as of war"^[76]—on the West March towards Scotland, where they were joint Wardens. For this, he received a salary of 500 marks^[77] or £333 6s 8d, to be collected from the revenues of Penrith Castle;^[78] Salisbury, though was to have a third of all ransoms taken in the event that war broke out.^[76] Although R. L. Storey suggests that this was "less than a quarter" of Salisbury's and Warwick's official salary,^[79] more recently, Henry Summerson has argued that the wardenship was probably "a source of particular profit", at least in times of peace.^{[80][note 13]} A few months later, he stood as surety for his uncle William, Lord Fauconberg's good behaviour (who Hicks speculates may have been involved in piracy at this time).^[81]

The year following the Nevilles' defeat of the Percys saw national politics become increasingly divided and factional.^[82] The King had been incapacitated since August 1453,^{[83][note 14]} but in April the Chancellor, John Kemp died.^[86] This bought matters to a head. Only the king could appoint a new chancellor, so a new head of government was required until Henry's recovery. The lords chose Richard, Duke of York as Lord Protector, who in turn chose Salisbury as his new chancellor. However, these arrangements only lasted a year, for the king appeared to have recovered by February 1455. He immediately undid York's appointments. York and Salisbury retired to their far-flung estates.^[82] They wrote to Henry regarding their fear of political enemies, emphasising their loyalty to him. This was in spite of what they called the "doubtes and ambiguitees [and] jealousie" spread by their enemies.^[87] Henry and the Royal household left London in April 1455, and meanwhile, York and Salisbury marched south with a small army; they confronted and defeated the King at the Battle of St Albans in May.^[88][89][90]

Although Thomas's feud with the Percy sons was not directly connected to the battle, it was considered part of the general disorder.^[91] So, as part of the king's attempt to reconcile his divided nobility three years later, Salisbury entered into a bond for Thomas's good behaviour on 23 March 1458.^[92] Conversely, a few months later, the Earl of Shrewsbury was instructed to arrest around 30 men in Nottinghamshire until they could provide sureties that they would "do no hurt" to Thomas.^[93][94] In May 1458, he accompanied John and Warwick to Calais—of which the latter was now captain—as part of a diplomatic delegation to address infringements of the truce with Burgundy.^[95]

By 1459 the domestic political situation—tense and partisan despite the king's efforts at reconciliation—had descended into outright civil war.^[96][97] When Salisbury marched south from his castle at Middleham in September to join up with the Duke of York at Ludlow, Thomas and John marched with him in a 5,000-strong army.^[98] On 23 September 1459, they encountered a larger royal force at Blore Heath, which Salisbury defeated, killing its leader, James Tuchet, Baron Audley.^{[note 15]} Thomas and John were captured at Acton Bridge, near Tarporley, Cheshire,^[101] the next day.^[102] Hicks has suggested that this was due to his being wounded in battle and sent home;^[101] it is also possible that they ventured too far from the main army in pursuit of fleeing Lancastrians.^{[98][103][104]} In any case, they were imprisoned in Chester Castle for the next nine months.^[105] Their capture endangered Salisbury's strategy: not only did he lose valuable support, but he was forced to linger longer at Market Drayton than he would otherwise have done.^[100]

Due to his imprisonment, he was not present when the Yorkist army was routed at Ludford Bridge less than three weeks after Blore Heath. Following the rout, York went into exile in Dublin, while Thomas's father, brother Warwick and York's eldest son, Edward of March, took refuge in Calais.^[106] Thomas was attainted in the Parliament of Devils in October 1459 along with the rest of his family.^[107] He was not released until the exiles had returned in May the following year and defeated a royal army at the Battle of Northampton that June.^{[98][note 16]} Released into the temporary protection of Thomas, Lord Stanley,^[109] he was soon appointed to several important offices. On 22 August, he joined his father as Keeper of the Royal Mews,^[110] responsible for the royal aviary. His indenture of service recorded his authority^[111]

To purvey the king's right prises of falcons, goshawks, sakers, sakerets, 'laners', lanerets and gyrfalcons for sale through the realm, paying 20s for a falcon, 10s for a tercel gentle, 13s 1d for a goshawk, and 6s 5d each for the tercel of a goshawk, saker, laners and laneret.^[112]

This was part of the Nevilles' policy of filling the positions of political importance with their own sympathisers.^{[113][note 17]} Thomas was also commissioned to arrest and imprison any who disturbed the peace,^[114] and received grants of Duchy of Lancaster estates at the same time,^[115] particularly in the Midlands, where he began to establish his own authority.^[115]

When the Duke of York returned from Dublin in late September 1460, he slowly made his way to Westminster to meet the king and his peers—gathered for a forthcoming parliament—and arrived in October. To the surprise of all, he immediately claimed the throne. The Nevilles were as set against his claim as every other member of the nobility.^[116] According to P. A. Johnson, both Edward of March and the Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Bourchier, refused to confront the Duke of York, so on two occasions, "Thomas Neville was sent instead".^[117] He evidently backed his father in his resistance to York's claims, and first met with York at Westminster Palace on 11 October, when word reached the lords that York had evicted the King from his lodgings. York responded merely that he was intent on being crowned three days later. The lords slept on this, and then sent Thomas back that morning, where he found York preparing for his coronation.^[118] Thomas informed the duke that his position was untenable "to both lords and people".^[119] Although what was said between Thomas and the duke remains unknown, argues Johnson, his "mandate must have been both blunt and bluntly delivered",^[120] as—whatever Thomas had said—York acquiesced to a compromise agreement.^[116]

In the meantime, Lancastrian forces were regrouping in Yorkshire^[116] and raiding York's and Salisbury's estates and tenants.^[121] Thomas accompanied them when they marched out of London on 2 December 1460 to restore a semblance of order to the region; they arrived at York's Sandal Castle on the 21st of the month. It is possible that a Christmas truce was arranged. In any case, it is known that nine days later, York, his son Edmund, Earl of Rutland, Salisbury, Thomas, and many of their closest retainers led a sortie in strength to attack a Lancastrian army gathered near the castle. Details of the Battle of Wakefield are sparse, but the Yorkists—possibly outnumbered three to one—are known to have gone down to a crushing defeat.^{[note 20]} York died on the field. Rutland was probably knifed by Lord Clifford on Wakefield Bridge.^[132] Salisbury escaped but was captured and later executed at Pontefract Castle.^[25] Contemporaries report that Thomas died in battle. He was, says the Croyland chronicler, "without mercy or respect, relentlessly slain",^[132] while William Worcester wrote that he was "slain in the field" after around half an hour's fighting.^{[133][134][note 21]} Their heads were put upon stakes and taken to York—"for a spectacle to the people and a terror to the rest of their adversaryes"—where they were displayed above the gates.^[136]