Richard Neville, 5th Earl of Salisbury ( 1400 – 31 December 1460) was a fifteenth-century English northern magnate. He was the eldest son by the second wife of Ralph Neville, 1st Earl of Westmorland, from whom he inherited vast estates in Yorkshire, which he augmented by marriage to Alice Montagu, daughter and heiress of Thomas Montagu, Earl of Salisbury, from where he received his title. He was a loyal Lancastrian for most of his life, serving the King, Henry VI, in France, on the border with Scotland, and in many of the periodic crises of the reign. This included the fall of Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, the fall of the Duke of Suffolk, Jack Cade's rebellion, and the revolt of the King's cousin Richard of York. He was also closely involved in an internecine feud with the senior branch of his family over the division of Ralph's estates from the late 1420s to the 1440s, and in the early 1450s his family and that of the powerful northern Percy family indulged in a violent local war, during which period Salisbury was a royal councillor.
Salisbury finally joined York in his last rebellion in the late 1450s and became a Yorkist leader during the early parts of the Wars of the Roses, joining the Duke in fighting at the First Battle of St Albans, where the King's force was defeated. In 1458, he participated in the Loveday, an attempt at reconciliation held in London. He was notably successful in the Battle of Blore Heath, but after the Yorkist army collapsed in the Rout of Ludford Bridge, Salisbury escaped to Calais, having been specifically excluded from a royal pardon. He returned to England with York in 1460, and took part in the disastrous Battle of Wakefield on 30 December that year. This resulted in a crushing Yorkist defeat at which his second-eldest son Thomas was slain on the field. Salisbury escaped the carnage but was captured the following day and executed in Pontefract Castle, where he was buried. Alice died around 1462, and two years later Salisbury was reinterred with her in the Montagu Mausoleum in Bisham Priory.
Background Family Sir Richard Neville's father, Ralph Neville, Earl of Westmorland, inherited his father's Barony in 1388, and was summoned to Parliament from 6 December 1389 to 30 November 1396 by writs directed to . In 1397 Neville supported Richard II's proceedings against Thomas of Woodstock and the Lords Appellant, and by way of reward was created Earl of Westmorland on 29 September of that year. However, his loyalty to the King was tested shortly thereafter. His first wife, Margaret Stafford, had died on 9 June 1396, and Neville's second marriage to Joan Beaufort before 29 November 1396 made him the son-in-law of King Richard's uncle, John of Gaunt, 1st Duke of Lancaster. Thus, when King Richard banished John of Gaunt's eldest son and heir, Henry Bolingbroke, on 16 September 1398, and confiscated Bolingbroke's estates after John of Gaunt's death on 3 February 1399, Westmorland was moved to support his brother-in-law. Bolingbroke landed with a small force at Ravenspur in July 1399. Westmorland and the Earl of Northumberland were in the deputation at the Tower which received King Richard's abdication, and Westmorland bore the small sceptre—the virge―at Bolingbroke's coronation as King Henry IV on 13 October 1399.
Richard Neville's mother, Joan Beaufort, was an illegitimate daughter of John of Gaunt, although she and her brothers were later legitimised. She was a great-aunt to King Henry VI, and so Neville and the King were cousins. Neville, argues Michael Hicks, was "very much a younger son" in the context of the Neville brood as a whole: his father had at least 21 children. Particularly in the North of England, comments Griffiths, royal blood was both socially and politically important, and "coursed through the veins of a number of lordly families" in the region.
Neville and his siblings, comments Hicks, made "excellent marriages... the most remarkable sequence of the 15th century". Apart from Sir Richard, his brothers William, George, and Edward married heiresses of the Fauconberg, Beauchamp and Beauchamp of Bergavenny families. His brother Robert—destined for the church and so unable to marry—nevertheless received swift promotion to Bishop of Durham. Of Salisbury's sisters, Katherine married the Duke of Norfolk, Anne married the Earl of Stafford, and Eleanor Neville married both Lord Despenser and later the Earl of Northumberland. At one stage, notes the author George Goodwin, Salisbury "at one time or another had four dukes, one viscount, and four earls as brothers-in-law".
Early life One of the earliest known events in Neville's career was his circumnavigation of Richard, Lord Scrope's will in 1420, indicating a willingness to indulge in sharp practice—what E. F. Jacob called "legal and extra-legal action in the pursuit of territorial power"—from an early age, possibly with the approval of his father. Scrope had married Margaret, Neville's half-sister, and after his death his estates became the subject of a bitter feud between Neville and Scrope's executor, Marmaduke Lumley, a dispute that Sir Richard won. He was, suggests Professor Anne Curry, part of a second generation of English nobility in the mid-15th century—as distinguished from the previous generation, such as Bedford and Montagu—less defined by the war in France or the careers that went with it.
Marriage Alice Montagu was the only surviving daughter of Thomas Montague, Earl of Salisbury, and his first wife Eleanor Holland, daughter of Thomas Holland, Earl of Kent. Their marriage had been contracted by 1421, as the ceremony took place on 12 February that year. Their marriage had been "facilitated" by Neville's mother, Joan Beaufort, who was a cousin of the King. Of all Westmorland's and Joan's children, Neville made the best marriage, and this completed his moulding as a high-ranking Lancastrian peer.
Neville's marriage to Alice Montagu was a stepping-stone, says the historian Mark Pushon, to a title "more in keeping with his future status as the leading territorial magnate in northern England". It also, with immediate effect—and similarly to his brothers' marriages or ecclesiastical appointments, augmented Neville influence in the north.
It was not without its difficulties. As the earldom was entailed in the male line, and Earl Thomas had a male heir—an elderly and childless uncle, Sir Richard Montagu—Neville's acquisition of the title had to be decided in council. This was an expensive procedure for Salisbury. The endowment descended to Sir Richard, and, although he died within a few months, it reverted to the crown rather than to Salisbury. It may be, posits Pollard, that lingering uncertainty surrounding Salisbury's right to the earldom encouraged Northumberland to launch his precedence suit.
Career to 1452
By 1431, Salisbury was openly aligned with Cardinal Beaufort's faction on the council. In 1432, reflecting the political tensions between Gloucester and Cardinal Beaufort, Salisbury's parliamentary summons explicitly requested that he not attend with more than a minimal retinue for fear of inflaming the situation. Following the death of the Earl of Warwick, Robert, Bishop of Durham, moved swiftly to occupy Barnard Castle, which he argued was traditionally the fiefdom of the bishops of Durham. Salisbury, as an executor of Warwick's will and a feoffee with responsibility for the Beauchamp estate, moved equally swiftly to evict his brother. Salisbury petitioned the King against Robert's actions and was then appointed to the commission created to examine them.
In 1442 Salisbury beat off a claim for precedence from the Earl of Northumberland. Northumberland claimed that the 1421 Act of Restitution—which had codified Salisbury's title—enshrined the notion that no other would "touch [Northumberland's] pre-eminence". Salisbury refuted this, counter-claiming that Northumberland deliberately omitted the most important passage which explicitly enshrined his "pre-eminence as earl". The 1387 creation of the Montagu earldom was thus earlier than that of Percy, whose earldom had been recreated in 1414.
Alice travelled to France and accompanied Margaret of Anjou back to England for her wedding in 1444. Two years later she was bequeathed a book, in French, the Gyron le Curtasse, from Richard of York's mother Maud, Countess of Cambridge. Alice and Salisbury were to be Maud's chief and secondary executor respectively. Salisbury was part of the deputation of August 1447, which arrested Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, in Bury St Edmunds on a charge of treason; the case never came to trial, for within the week, Gloucester had died in prison.
The Beauchamp inheritance In 1434, says A. J. Pollard, Salisbury sealed a "lucrative double-deal" with Richard Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick, by betrothing Salisbury's son Richard and daughter Cecily to Beauchamp's daughter Alice and his heir, Henry. The arrangements took some years to come to fruition and were intended to entwine the families. Although they cost Salisbury the-then massive sum of 5,000 marks——the marriages promoted the Neville family further. Salisbury intended that whichever marriage survived, either way, the extensive inheritance and titles would be the Nevilles's. The marriages took place two years later, when Alice was 15. Richard Beauchamp died in 1439, and Henry duly inherited the earldom; he had had a close relationship with the King, and this stood him in good stead when his title was elevated to Duke of Warwick in 1445. Henry and Cecily had a daughter, named Anne, the previous year, but Henry unexpectedly died on 11 June 1446. The baby Anne—now suo jure Countess of Warwick—says Hicks, was the "greatest heiress of her day.
Salisbury, as an executor of Duke Henry's will, received custody of the Beauchamp estates. Salisbury was a strong supporter of the young countess and helped see off rival claims to her earldom. He also succeeded in having royal advisors to the estate dismissed, enabling him to administer it in its entirety from London, as "a going concern... for the next heirs". For this purpose he took personal control of the Beauchamp family muniments: his letter to Beauchamp estate officials in Warwickshire instructs them to be gathered and sent to him under seal. Anne, however, died on 3 June 1449, and, there being no closer heirs than her aunt—Richard Neville's wife—Salisbury's son was summoned to parliament as Earl of Warwick jure uxoris. Warwick's claim, however, was not immediately secure: half-blood versus whole blood often complicated medieval inheritance disputes, as had occurred when Anne inherited in spite of having three half-sisters who lodged their own claims, as did Lord Beauchamp as the nearest—although distant—male heir. Although Warwick was summoned as Earl almost immediately, it was not until 1454 that his position was legally recognised and rival claims were dismissed; Christine Carpenter argues that there had been "uncertainty as to [the inheritance's] ultimate destination", and what was finally adjudged was "a rough and ready division that paid relatively little regard to absolute legal rights".
Warden of the West March The Wardens of the West and East Marches, respectively—Lord Huntingdon and the Earl of Northumberland—both resigned from office in 1436. It is possible that there had been political interference or direction involved, says Professor Pollard, and "it is conceivable that the parties were caught up, in ways no longer discernible, in the political manoeuvrings of the Duke of Gloucester and Cardinal Beaufort". Salisbury took that of the West March over at a reduced rate. He received arrears of from his wages as warden to help him fund his expedition to France in 1436.