1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Neile, Richard

NEILE, RICHARD (1562–1640), English divine, was educated at Westminster school and at St John’s College, Cambridge. His first important preferment was as dean of Westminster (1605); afterwards he held successively the bishoprics of Rochester (1608), Lichfield (1610), Lincoln (1614), Durham (1617) and Winchester (1628), and the archbishopric of York (1631). When at Rochester he appointed William Laud as his chaplain and gave him several valuable preferments. His political activity while bishop of Durham was rewarded with a privy councillorship in 1627. Neile sat regularly in the courts of star-chamber and high commission. His correspondence with Laud and with Sir Dudley Carleton and Sir Francis Windebank (Charles I.’s secretaries of state) are valuable sources for the history of the time.