ing year, and was also employed by Richard in his negotiations with the Cistercians (Coggeshall, p. 103). Dugdale's statement that he died in 1199 or before is apparently based on a misinterpretation of the authority he quotes (cf. Hardy, Rotuli de Oblatis, p. 103). Early in John's reign he was directed to exercise his office as it had been exercised in the time of Henry II, and in 1203 he witnessed the agreement for Queen Isabella's dowry (Rymer). From this time his name constantly occurs in the ‘Close’ and ‘Patent Rolls’ as witness to grants, and as one of John's chief advisers. In 1208 he was appointed treasurer; he adhered to John in his struggles with the pope and with the barons, and is naturally described by Matthew Paris as one of the king's evil counsellors. In 1213 he was warden of the sea ports in the counties of Devon, Cornwall, Dorset, and Southampton (Madox, Exchequer, i. 650). In 1215 Neville, with his father-in-law, Henry de Cornhill, and his son John, adhered to the king to the last. He was present at Runnymede, and signed the Magna Charta (Stubbs, Const. Hist. i. 581); for his services to John he received from him numerous grants of land, including Comb-Nevil, Surrey, which had belonged to the Cornhill family (Manning and Bray, i. 399).
On John's death, however, Neville joined the baronial party; he swore allegiance to Louis, and handed over to him the castle of Marlborough. For this defection he forfeited his offices, and in 1217 his lands in Lincolnshire were granted to William de Neville, probably a relative; before the end of the year, however, he made his peace, and some, if not all, of his lands were restored to him (cf. his letter to his cousin Ralph in Shirley, Royal and Hist. Letters, i. 68). It may have been he who was acting as justice in 1218, but more probably it was Hugh de Neville (d. 1234). Neville died in 1222 (Matthew Paris, Chronica Majora, iii. 71; John of Oxenedes, s.a.), and was buried in Waltham Abbey, which he had enriched by the grant of Horndon-on-the-Hill, Essex (Matthew Paris, iii. 71; Dugdale, Monasticon, ii. 187; Farmer, Waltham Abbey, pp. 66–8). He married, first, in 1195, Joanna, daughter and heiress of Henry de Cornhill of London; and secondly, Desiderata, daughter and heiress of Stephen de Camera. Among other lands which he received with his first wife was part of Oxted, Surrey, which passed with their daughter Joan to the Cobhams (Manning and Bray, Surrey, ii. 383). Neville's first wife has attained notoriety as having paid a fine into the exchequer, which has been frequently quoted as a curious instance of mediæval tyranny, and furnished Edmund Burke with an illustration (Burke, Thoughts on Present Discontents, ed. Payne, p. 9, and note; Hardy, Rot. de Oblatis, p. 275; Madox, Exchequer, i. 471; Archæologia, xxxix. 202). By her Neville appears to have had a son John, who confirmed his gift to Waltham Abbey. Henry, who predeceased his father in 1218, and Hugh de Neville (see below) were possibly other sons; and there was at least one daughter, Joan.
Several of Neville's charters are preserved in the British Museum (MSS. Nos. 54 B; 8, 9, 13, 14, 16, 17, 33, 35), and to two is affixed his well-known seal bearing a representation of a man slaying a lion. Matthew Paris gives the story of Hugh's encounter with a lion in the Holy Land, which was the origin of the line,
Viribus Hugonis vires periere leonis.
The story has been consistently repeated by later writers, but Ralph Coggeshall, who knew Neville, does not mention it; nor does Roger Wendover nor Hoveden. It is probable that Neville, like other crusaders, adopted for his seal a device he found prevalent in the East, and that the story was evolved from the seal (Nichols, Herald and Genealogist, iv. 516–18).
Hugh de Neville (d. 1234), apparently son of the foregoing, was appointed in 1223 chief justice and warden of forests throughout the kingdom. He married Joanna, daughter of Henry FitzGervase (Placita de Quo Warranto, p. 454); is said to have been buried at Waltham Abbey in 1234, and to have left a son John, who succeeded him as chief justice of forests. His son John, after accompanying Richard, earl of Cornwall, on a crusade to Palestine (1240–2), was in 1244 accused by Robert Passelew [q. v.] of serious infractions of the forest laws and other offences. He was condemned, fined two thousand marks, and dismissed from his offices; and dying in 1246, at his manor of Wetherfield, was buried in Waltham Abbey, leaving a son Hugh, who fought against the king at Evesham, was captured at Kenilworth, and died in 1269.
