My story starts many years ago when I was eleven, standing in the modest bungalow home of my sweet, genteel grandmother while she was talking to my mum. I was hanging around, and I clearly remember her talking of the fine Neville family that we were related to. They had been in the Domesday Book; there was a letter from Oliver Cromwell; there was a Family Bible, a Foxe's Book of Martyrs, and she told of how the family fortune had been lost through two (or three) recent marriages. They married down, is how my grandmother phrased it.
Now, this conversation must have made a deep impression on me, because I have never forgotten it.
Even though within seven years I would be passionately obsessed with Arthurian literature from medieval manuscripts (13th century Tristan and Iseult by Beroul was just the beginning!), and Thomas Hardy's novel Tess of the d'Urbervilles had quickly became one of my favourite books, by then these thoughts of the ancient Neville family were lying as dormant as a stone medieval knight on his tomb.
I loved medieval literature. I loved the Pre-Raphaelite painters who painted scenes of passion from the old legends. But I had an art career and a busy life, and while thoughts did pop into my head (when I watched the play Richard III I grinned to myself, Granny! when I saw Anne Neville), I really didn't think that much about it.
We visited Durham one time - I didn't know it was the seat of the Neville family with prominent members entombed in the Cathedral. We stayed in a hotel. My family were watching a tennis final in one room, and I was sat in the other, transfixed by the Hollow Crown BBC production of Richard II.
I was mesmerised.
I was so mesmerised, when I was studying as a mature student on Oxford University's fantastic Foundation Certificate in English Literature course, I studied the deposition scene for an essay. I translated Middle English for another. In another life I knew I would have liked to have been a medievalist, immersing myself in the stories and legends of people of long ago.
Of course, I was mesmerised too by Kyoto. As always, I was drawn to the ancient literature, and the 11th century history. I read several of the core Japanese texts in translation, and one of the aspects that fascinated me was that power-house family behind the Imperial throne. The author of The Tale of Genji, Murasaki Shikibu herself was from this family - the Fujiwara. They plotted to marry their daughters to emperors so that they could wield power from behind the throne as grandfathers.
Once Japan had reopened after its closure during the pandemic, one of the first places I went to see was Kōfuku-ji in Nara, because I was intrigued to see where the Fujiwara centred their power; where they moved, where their tutelary was.
I had an incredible fascination with the refined Kyoto courtly ways, just as I had been so drawn earlier in my life to the chivalry and courtly manners of England.
I began to tentatively look into some of the family stories that I remembered, searching the internet. I found our Victorian Neville family living in a house called Buckingham's - a name for a house that had always intrigued me as it sounded so connected to the aristocracy of the past.
It was only recently that I actually searched for an image of the house where my great-great grandmother played as a child. It's a beautiful, historic farmhouse now, but it began to dawn on me, that if this was marrying down, what had our ancestors lived in the past?
I wrote to a local historian in the area where my kindly grandmother had lived, and where I discovered there was once a manor called Little Hallingbury that had Neville history.
After much research, I discovered that Hugh de Neville, right-hand man to King John, present at the signing of the Magna Carta, and owner of Little Hallingbury Manor, was an ancestor, but not a direct one.
The historian was kind: she forwarded me information about the Neville family of Raby Castle near Durham, and recommended a book by Charles Young called The Making of the Neville Family.
I read about the 13th century Norman Isabel Neville whose name was chosen by her son over the Saxon-sounding name of his father. He took the name, Geoffrey FitzRobert de Neville, and he was the First Baron of Raby Castle.
I wondered at the middle names of my grandmother and her Neville grandmother: Isabella.
And then, one day, when I was early to meet a friend for coffee in town, I popped into the bookshop next door and began leafing through Dan Jones' book Plantagenets. There was a map of England showing the family strongholds across the country, and there were the Neville's, over much of it, and my focus was drawn to the Neville's of Suffolk.
Finally, my husband exhorted me to get on Ancestry! And I did, and my extraordinary family, who had lain dormant for all those decades, unrolled before me like a glittering medieval manuscript: they began to awake, and their stories make wonderful reading!
Of course it takes triple-checking facts, months of head-numbing attempts at understanding, and lots of researching transcribed manuscript documents, but with the help of the essays of an ancestor who researched our family just before the First World War, and with two wonderfully generous local historians based in Clavering and Lavenham, within months I had a dazzling view on my forebears where one year ago I had shadow and space.
What have I learned? Every story that you ever heard as a child will turn out to be true. The Irish family who came to London and changed their name? Check! The possibility of having twins? Check! The captain of a ship sailing out of Brixham? Yes - he was based in Plymouth! And these Neville's, what of them?
Well.
When I watched Shakespeare's Richard III and laughed to myself, Granny! when I saw Anne Neville - it turns out that it was true. We're related to Richard III too, and Edward IV, which means we are related to those little Princes in the Tower through their grandmother, Cicely Neville, known as the Rose of Raby.
And when I was riveted by Ben Whishaw playing Richard II, unkinging himself before Henry Bolingbroke, future Henry IV? My ancestors supported the deposition. They would very likely have been part of the discussion to have him removed. In that scene in the play I can imagine them now, in the room. Our ancestor William, youngest son of Ralph Neville and Alice Audley, who married Elizabeth Waleys in Suffolk, served Richard II. He is our direct line through my father up to the Neville's of Raby Castle.
When I studied the Shakespeare play Two Noble Kinsmen and it's source text, Chaucer's The Knight's Tale, I didn't know about my ancestor's friendship with Chaucer. I like to wonder, as he was a renowned knight of mettle, if he was the inspiration for the Tale!
His son John resided at Aspall Manor, where the Suffolk Cyder is now made, although John Neville's manor is long gone. He was married to Agnes Glanville, who had become part of the powerful Sackville family, and when her husband died she married John.
This line continues down through the centuries with ancestor Roger dying at Naylinghurst Hall; a successful malthouse and brewery owner; and a great uncle who did very well out of the wool trade in beautiful Lavenham. Generations of my dad's family lived in Long Melford and Lavenham, alongside Margaret Neville, who was married to Crécy hero John de Vere and lived in the Lavenham house that was used as Godric's Hollow in the Harry Potter movie franchise.
Margaret, sister of Warwick Kingmaker who aided those other Neville's, Edward IV and Richard III to the throne: would she have known my Neville ancestors? When Richard III and wife Anne Neville visited Lavenham Manor as Lords of the Manor, did they all know of one another?
The Raby Castle heraldic device is a wonderful family crest: a white saltire cross on a red shield. The Suffolk Neville device is a blue shield with three birds in gold, rising. I love this - I've been a birdwatcher since I was very small, and so it seems good to me!
At Raby Castle, in the Catholic chapel, there are portraits of the notable one-time residents of the castle. There is John the heir, looking dashing in his armour, and his son Ralph alongside his second wife Joan of Beaufort.
Joan was the niece of Richard II, daughter of John of Gaunt. Shakespeare gifts John one of the most beautiful speeches in our literature about England.
Ralph Neville had twenty-two children by two wives: his first wife Margaret Stafford, and his second wife Joan of Beaufort. Conflict between the adult children of Ralph Neville's two wives is at the heart of the English Wars of the Roses.
Imagine my surprise, when I decided to explore my mother's side of the family too, travelling up the family tree from my Gallipoli-fighting great grandfather. Not a direct line like a fired Crécy arrow like my father's, but once I had locked onto the Strickland family of Cumbria's Sizergh Castle I had the feeling that at any moment one of them would marry a Neville - and then it happened!
There was a Strickland ancestor, too, who led the field at Agincourt, carrying the banner of St George.
And there was another Strickland ancestor who was married to Agnes Parr, great aunt of Katherine Parr, sixth wife of Henry VIII.
My mother is descended from Beauchamp's, and Mortimer's, going all the way up to the illegitimate daughter of King John, and his father King Henry II, and his mother Eleanor of Aquitaine. And she's descended from John Neville, the heir of Raby Castle, and his son Ralph Neville and first wife Margaret Stafford, whose son Ralph married Joan de Beaufort's daughter Mary Ferrers, great granddaughter of Edward III.
Now, when I look at my history-story-stuffed family tree, I can see that not only are we related to the youngest Raby Castle Neville son in a direct line through my father's maternal grandmother, we are also related to the eldest Raby Castle son and heir, John, through my mum's maternal grandfather.
I loved reading about John Neville here:
...the troops under Duguesclin and Anjou marked time on the frontiers of Gascony, where they met with unexpected resistance. The following year [1378], the government in London sent an energetic lieutenant to Bordeaux, John Neville of Raby, who had no difficulty in restoring the situation. He contained the invaders' inadequate forces, recovered several fortresses from them, organized punitive raids, and even repulsed a raid by the Castilians on Bayonne. The French reconquest was definitely halted, and it was not resumed.
Conclusion
I feel very Neville. I feel a sense of sparkly wonder that this huge family, who had remained as a few unquestioned phrases in the back of my mind for decades, are vibrantly occupying their spectacular place in English history and in my imagination.
Shakespeare's History Plays have taken on a whole new meaning, as I begin to understand the role that many of my ancestors played in key moments of English medieval history.
I would like to visit my Suffolk roots: Lavenham, Long Melford, Aspall Manor, and Clavering Castle (through Ralph Neville-married Euphemia de Clavering, who appears across our family tree as a great grandmother three times!).
I'm filled with wonder that the story that my sweet, kind grandmother told was true. The Neville's are mentioned in the Domesday Book. Henry Neville was a supporter, but critic, I believe of Oliver Cromwell. The Family Bible? There is a very beautiful Neville Book of Hours kept at Berkeley Castle, which includes a dazzling illustration of the powerful medieval Neville family.
My story is a lot like Danny Dyer's, on the BBC ancestry programme Who Do You Think You Are? It's very similar to the show with Courteney Cox too, where she researches her ancestor Roger de Mortimer, who held the power behind the throne while Edward II was imprisoned in Berkeley Castle. He's our ancestor too, through his daughter Katherine.
And I've learned that having these stories in your ancestry isn't even that unusual - take a look at the link below!
We all, most of us, have family stories. What are yours?
Cathy
x
Further Reading
Sources
John William Waterhouse, The Lady of Shallott
Dante Gabriel Rossetti, How Sir Galahad, Sir Bors and Sir Percival Were Fed with the Sanct Grael; but Sir Percival’s Sister Died by the Way
The Met: Shoren-in Sonjun Shinnou, Tale of Genji
Charles R. Young, The Making of the Neville Family in England: 1166-1400, (Boydell Press).
British Library, Luttrell Psalter
Comentarios