Ralph de Neville, fourth baron Neville of Raby (1291?–1367) [q. v.], and his wife Alice, daughter of Sir Hugh Audley (Selby, Genealogist, iii. 107); Edmondson erroneously makes him the second son (Segar, Baron. Genealog. iv. 350). His elder brothers, Alexander, archbishop of York [q. v.], and John, fifth baron Neville of Raby (d. 1388) [q. v.], are separately noticed. In 1369 William is described as of Fencotes, Yorkshire, and received letters of protection on going abroad in the king's service; on 7 March 1372 he was appointed admiral of the fleet from the Thames northwards, but before the end of the year was again abroad, having appointed deputies to command the fleet during his absence. In the same year he joined William de Montacute, second earl of Salisbury [q. v.], and, sailing from Cornwall, landed in Brittany and relieved the castle of Brest, where his elder brother John was besieged by the French. In 1383 he was commissioned to treat for peace with both France and Scotland. In the same year he appears as a knight of the king's chamber, constable of Nottingham Castle, a friend of Wiclif, and one of the chief supporters of the lollard movement (Walsingham, Hist. Angl. ii. 159, and Ypodigma Neustriæ, p. 348; Capgrave, Chronicle, p. 245; Chron. Mon. S. Albani, p. 377; Stubbs, Const. Hist. iii. 31; Foxe, Acts and Mon. iii. 56); according to Edmondson he was gentleman of the king's bedchamber. In 1388 he was guarding certain prisoners, probably some of the king's friends who had in the previous year been charged with treason; he was evidently an adherent of the appellants, and from August to December 1389 attended the meetings of the privy council. His name does not appear after 1389, in which year he may have died. His wife's name was Elizabeth. Both Neville and his wife received bequests from his brother John (cf. will quoted in Rowland, Hist. of the Nevills, p. 16).
[Dugdale's Baronage, i. 295; Segar's Baronagium Genealogicum, ed. Edmondson, iv. 350; Rymer's Fœdera, Record ed., III. ii. 871, 898, 948, 953, ed. 1745 III. iii. 160, iv. 18; Rot. Origin. Abb. ii. 332; Nicholas's Proc. of Privy Council, vol. i.; Rolls of Parl. ii. 327 a; Froissart, ed. Lettenhove, xxii. 290; Selby's Genealogist, iii. 107; Foster's Yorkshire Pedigrees; Surtees's History of Durham, iv. 159; authorities quoted.]
NEVILLE, WILLIAM, Baron Fauconberg and afterwards Earl of Kent (d. 1463), was the second son of Ralph Neville, first earl of Westmorland (d. 1425) [q. v.], by his second wife, Joan Beaufort, daughter of John of Gaunt. Westmorland left him by will the barony of Bywell and Styford in Northumberland (Wills and Inventories, ed. Surtees Soc. i. 71). His brothers, Richard, earl of Salisbury [q. v.], Edward, baron Bergavenny [q. v.], and Robert, bishop of Salisbury [q. v.], are separately noticed. Knighted by the seven-year-old Henry VI at Leicester on Whit Sunday (19 May) 1426, Neville is said, though this rests only on the authority of Polydore Vergil, to have won his first military laurels under his elder brother's father-in-law, the Earl of Salisbury, at the siege of Orleans in 1428 (Leland, Collectanea, ii. 490; Polydore Vergil, ed. Camden Soc. p. 23). His father married him before 1424 to Joan; the heiress of the last Baron Fauconberg (also spelt Fauconbrygge) of Skelton Castle, in Cleveland, at the mouth of the Tees, which the Fauconbergs had inherited from the Bruces along with the patronage of the neighbouring Augustinian priory at Guisborough. Her father had died in 1407, when she must have been only a few months old (Dugdale, Baronage, i. 308). In her right, though till 1455 under his own name, her husband was summoned to parliament on 3 Aug. 1429 (Nicolas, Historic Peerage; Lords' Report on Dignity of a Peer, v. 236). After having been employed for some time in Scottish affairs, Fauconberg, with his elder brother, Salisbury, joined the Duke of York's expedition to France in the spring of 1436, in consideration of which he was allowed to temporarily enfeoff his brothers, Lord Latimer of Danby, in Cleveland, and Robert Neville, bishop of Salisbury, with his wife's manor of Marske in Cleveland (Ord. Privy Council, iv. 174, 336).
He was prominent in the campaign against the Duke of Burgundy in that year, and appears in 1439 in charge of an important post in Normandy, captain of Verneuil, Evreux, and Le Neufbourg, captain-general in the marches of the Chartrain, and governor of the vicomtés of Auge, Orbec, and Pont Audemer (ib. v. 386; D'Escouchy, ii. 543; Monstrelet, v. 264, 310). He was at the siege of Meaux in August (Ord. Privy Council, v. 386). In the following year he assisted his cousin Edmund Beaufort, earl of Dorset, to capture Harfleur (Wavrin, iv. 274). His services were rewarded with the garter, vacated by the death (1439) of Richard de Beauchamp, earl of Warwick, and now or later by the Norman lordship of Rugles, near Breteuil (Beltz, Stevenson, Wars in France, ii. 623). He served under the Duke of York in 1441–2, and in the autumn of the latter year was joined with him and others as commissioner for some proposed peace negotiations (Beaucourt, iii. 183; Ord. Privy
