Ralph Neville, 3rd Earl of Westmorland

Ralph Neville, 3rd Earl of Westmorland
Hornby Castle, Yorkshire, from Morris's Country Seats (1880)
Spouse(s)	Isabel Booth
Issue Ralph Neville Anne Neville
Noble family	Neville
Father	John Neville, Baron Neville
Mother	Anne Holland
Born	c. 1456
Died	6 February 1499 Hornby Castle, Yorkshire

Ralph Neville, 3rd Earl of Westmorland (c. 1456 – 6 February 1499) was an English peer. He was the grandfather of Ralph Neville, 4th Earl of Westmorland.

Family

Ralph Neville, born about 1456, was the only child of John Neville, Baron Neville, younger brother of Ralph Neville, 2nd Earl of Westmorland, and Anne Holland, daughter of John Holland, 2nd Duke of Exeter.^[1]

Career

Neville's father was slain fighting for the Lancastrians at the Battle of Towton on 29 March 1461, and attainted on 4 November of that year. On 6 October 1472 Ralph Neville obtained the reversal of his father's attainder and the restoration of the greater part of his estates, and thereby became Lord Neville (1459 creation).^[2]

On 18 April 1475 Neville was created a Knight of the Bath together with the sons of King Edward IV.^[3] He was a justice of the peace in Durham. For his 'good services against the rebels', on 23 March 1484 King Richard III granted Neville manors in Somerset and Berkshire and the reversion of lands which had formerly belonged to Margaret, Countess of Richmond.^[4] In September 1484 he was a commissioner to keep the truce with Scotland.^[5] On 3 November 1484 his uncle, Ralph Neville, 2nd Earl of Westmorland, died, and Neville succeeded as 3rd Earl of Westmorland and Lord Neville (1295 creation).^[6]

After the Yorkist defeat at Bosworth, Westmorland entered into bonds to the new King, Henry VII, of £400 and 400 marks, and on 5 December 1485, he gave custody (and the approval of the marriage of his eldest son and heir), Ralph Neville (d.1498), to the King.^[7]

Westmorland held a command in the army sent into Scotland in 1497^[8] after James IV supported the pretensions to the crown of Perkin Warbeck.^[9]

Death

Westmorland's eldest son died in 1498. Westmorland died at Hornby Castle, Yorkshire, the seat of his son-in-law, Sir William Conyers, on 6 February 1499, allegedly of grief for his son's death, and was buried in the parish church there.^[10] His grandson, Ralph Neville, succeeded to the earldom as 4th Earl of Westmorland.

Marriage and issue

Before 20 February 1473 Neville married Isabel, the daughter of Roger Booth, esquire, and niece of Lawrence Booth, Archbishop of York, by whom he had a son and a daughter:^[11]

• Ralph Neville, Lord Neville (d. 1498). As noted above, on 5 December 1485 his father had granted his custody (and the approval of the marriage of his eldest son) to the King. Accordingly, Ralph Neville married firstly, in the presence of King Henry VII and his Queen, Elizabeth of York, Mary Paston (born 19 January 1470), the eldest daughter of William Paston by Anne Beaufort, daughter of Edmund Beaufort, 2nd Duke of Somerset. She died of measles at court about Christmas 1489. There were no issue of the marriage. Ralph Neville married secondly, again in the royal presence, Edith Sandys (d. 22 August 1529), sister of William Sandys, 1st Baron Sandys, by whom he had two sons, Ralph Neville, 4th Earl of Westmorland, and a son who died young, as well as a daughter, Isabel, who married firstly, Sir Robert Plumpton, and secondly, Lawrence Kighley, esquire. After Neville's death in 1498, his widow, Edith, married Thomas Darcy, 1st Baron Darcy of Darcy, who was beheaded on Tower Hill 30 June 1537.^[12]
• Anne Neville, who married firstly William Conyers, 1st Baron Conyers, and secondly, Anthony Saltmarsh.^[13]

Footnotes

References

• Cokayne, George Edward (1959). The Complete Peerage, edited by Geoffrey H. White. XII, Part II. London: St. Catherine Press. 
• Doyle, James E. (1886). The Official Baronage of England. III. London: Longmans, Green. 
• Pollard, A.J. (2004). Neville, Ralph, second earl of Westmorland (b. in or before 1407, d. 1484). Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Retrieved 30 September 2012. 
• Richardson, Douglas (2011). Magna Carta Ancestry: A Study in Colonial and Medieval Families, ed. Kimball G. Everingham. II (2nd ed.). Salt Lake City.  ISBN 1449966381
• Richardson, Douglas (2011). Magna Carta Ancestry: A Study in Colonial and Medieval Families, ed. Kimball G. Everingham. III (2nd ed.). Salt Lake City.  ISBN 144996639X