Raby [q. v.], by his wife Alice, daughter of Sir Hugh de Audley of Stratton-Audley, in Oxfordshire, and aunt of Sir James Audley, one of the most gallant followers of the Black Prince (Beltz, Memorials of the Order of the Garter, p. 75). His brothers, Alexander, archbishop of York [q. v.], and Sir William (d. 1389?) [q. v.], are separately noticed. In the inquisition taken in 1368, after his father's death, John Neville is described as then twenty-six years of age (ib. p. 166). But this is undoubtedly an error, as both John and his next brother Robert were old enough to take part in the Earl of Derby's Gascon campaign of 1345. He was present with his father at the battle of Neville's Cross on 17 Oct. 1346, and accompanied the Earl of Lancaster to Gascony in 1349 (Froissart, viii. 9, ed. Lettenhove; ‘Durham Register,’ in Dugdale's Baronage, i. 296; Galfrid le Baker, p. 108). In April 1360 Edward III, approaching within two leagues of Paris, knighted Neville, with Lord Fitzwalter and others, who had undertaken to skirmish up to the walls of the city under the leadership of Sir Walter Manny (Froissart, v. 231). There is some reason to believe that he took part in the Black Prince's Spanish expedition in the spring of 1367 (Chandos, p. 152; Froissart, vii. 7).
His father died in August of this year, and early in the next Neville was summoned to parliament (Nicolas, Historic Peerage, p. 346). The lord of Raby and Brancepeth was expected to take his share in the arduous service of guarding the Scottish border, and the new baron was at once (1368) put on the commission entrusted with the custody of the east march (Dugdale, p. 296). Lord Burghersh dying in April 1369, Neville was given his garter (Beltz, p. 166). Next year he entered into an indenture to serve in France with 240 men, increased to four hundred on his appointment (20 May) to be admiral of the fleet from the Thames northward (Dugdale). Six weeks later he was ordered to assist in conveying the celebrated commander Sir Robert Knolles [q. v.] to France (Fœdera, vi. 658). He was still in command of the fleet at the end of May 1371 (ib. iii. 917, Record ed.) Later in the year he may have proceeded to the scene of the war in France (Dugdale). John of Gaunt, who in this year was left by the Black Prince as his lieutenant in Aquitaine, had in 1370 formally retained the services of Neville for life. He was to pay him fifty marks a year, and defray the expenses of himself and a small following in time of peace, and in time of war to assign him five hundred marks a year for the services of himself and forty well-armed men over and above the king's wages, if he were called to France. If the duke should call upon him to serve against the Scots, he was to provide fifty men and be paid in proportion (ib.)
The English steadily losing ground in France, Neville was commissioned in June 1372 to negotiate an offensive and defensive alliance with the king's son-in-law, John de Montfort, duke of Brittany, and a treaty was concluded on 19 July at London (Froissart, ed. Luce, vol. viii. p. xxx). Four days later Neville was ordered, in fulfilment of one of the provisions of the treaty, to take six hundred men to Brittany, where he was invested with an authority superior even to the duke's (ib. p. lxx; Fœdera, iii. 948, 953, 961, Record ed.) He lay at Southampton for fifteen weeks before he could get together sufficient vessels to transport his force, or so, at least, he afterwards alleged (ib. iii. 961; Rot. Parl. ii. 329). Sailing towards the end of October, he landed at Saint Mathieu, at the western extremity of the modern department of Finisterre (Froissart, vol. viii. pp. lix, 106). Leaving a garrison there, he presently took over, with Sir Robert Knolles, the command of Brest. The Breton lords were hostile to the English, and, on their invitation, Du Guesclin entered Brittany in April. The duke fled to England (28 April), and Brest was invested (ib. p. lxxi). The progress of the French arms, and the siege of Knolles's own castle of Derval, induced Neville and him, on 6 July, to enter into an engagement to surrender at the end of a month if John of Gaunt, who was bringing over an army, had not previously arrived (ib. p. clx). Knolles seems to have gone off to Derval; for Neville alone signed (4 Aug.) the repudiation of the promise to surrender, on the ground that the treaty had been violated by the French (ib. p. lxxxi). By 7 Aug. William de Montacute, second earl of Salisbury and Neville's younger brother, William (d. 1389?) [q. v.], brought to Brest the fleet with which they had been lying at St. Malo for some months (Arch. Hist. de la Gironde, xii. 328). Lancaster's advance from Calais at this juncture prevented the resumption of the siege of Brest, and Neville either returned at once to England with the fleet, or joined Knolles at Derval (Froissart, viii. 146; cf. Rot. Parl. ii. 329).
At the consecration of his brother Alexander as archbishop of York at Westminster, on 4 June 1374, Neville was present with a brilliant crowd of nobles (Registrum Palatinum Dunelmense, iii. 528). Towards the end of August he was commissioned, with the Bishop of Carlisle and others, to mediate between his nephew (and brother-in-law),
