Edward Neville, 3rd Baron Bergavenny

Edward Neville, de facto 3rd (de jure 1st) Baron Bergavenny (died 18 October 1476) was an English nobleman.[2]

Edward Neville
Baron Bergavenny
Died18 October 1476
Noble familyNeville
Spouse(s)Elizabeth de Beauchamp
Katherine Howard
IssueRichard Nevill
George Nevill, 4th Baron Bergavenny
Alice Nevill
Catherine Nevill
Margaret Nevill
Anne Nevill
FatherRalph Neville, 1st Earl of Westmorland
MotherJoan Beaufort
Arms of Edward Nevill, Baron Bergavenny: Gules, a saltire argent charged with a rose of the field (barbed and seeded proper).[1] These are his paternal arms of Neville differenced by a rose, the symbol of a 7th son. These arms are borne today by his descendants the Neville Marquesses of Abergavenny

Family edit

He was the 7th son[3] of Ralph Neville, 1st Earl of Westmorland, and Joan Beaufort, daughter of John of Gaunt and Katherine Swynford).

In 1436 he married Elizabeth de Beauchamp (died 18 June 1448), daughter of Richard de Beauchamp, 1st Earl of Worcester, and the former Isabel le Despenser, who later succeeded as de jure 3rd Baroness Bergavenny. They had four children:

  • Richard Nevill (before 1439 – before 1476), eldest son and heir apparent, predeceased his father;
  • George Nevill, 4th Baron Bergavenny (c. 1440–1492), 2nd and eldest surviving son and heir;
  • Alice Nevill, who married Sir Thomas Grey;
  • Catherine Nevill (born c. 1444), who married John Iwardby.

Shortly after his first wife's death, in the summer or autumn of 1448, he married Katherine Howard, a daughter of Sir Robert Howard and sister of John Howard, 1st Duke of Norfolk. His second wife bore him three additional daughters:

Career edit

Neville was knighted sometime after 1426.[4]

In 1438, Bergavenny, as he was now styled, was a justice of the peace for Durham.[4]

He was a captain in the embattled Duchy of Normandy in 1449.[4] His eldest son Richard was one of the hostages given to the French when the English surrendered the city of Rouen in that year.

After the death of his first wife, he was summoned to Parliament in 1450 as "Edwardo Nevyll de Bergavenny", by which he is held to have become Baron Bergavenny. At the time, however, this was considered to be a summons by right of his wife, and so he was considered the 3rd, rather than the 1st, Baron.

In 1454, he was appointed to the Privy Council assembled by the Duke of York as Lord Protector, along with his more prominent Neville kinsmen. He was a commissioner of array in Kent in 1461, and was a captain in Edward IV's army in the North the following year. He was again a commissioner of array in 1470, remaining loyal to Edward IV, unlike his nephew, the Earl of Warwick[4]

Ancestry edit

References edit

  1. ^ Blazon per Debrett's Peerage, 1968, which gives no tinctures for rose, which are however given as stated in brackets for Neville Barons Braybrooke
  2. ^ Pugh, T.B. (2004). "Neville, Edward, first Baron Bergavenny (d. 1476), nobleman". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online) (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/19929. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
  3. ^ 7th son as implied by the difference of a rose imposed upon his paternal arms of Nevill. However Debrett's Peerage, 1968, p.39 (re Marquess of Abergavenny) gives him as 6th son (and erroneously names him as Ralph)
  4. ^ a b c d Doyle, James Edmund (1886). The Official Baronage of England. Vol. I. London: Longmans, Green & Co. p. 3.

External links edit

Peerage of England
New creation Baron Bergavenny
1447–1476
Succeeded by