Noviodunum, the early name of Nevers was in later times altered to Nebirnum. The quantities of medals and other Roman antiquities found on the site indicate the importance of the place at the time when Caesar chose it as a military depot for corn, money and hostages. In 52 B.C. it was the first place seized by the revolting Aedui. It became the seat of a bishopric at the end of the 5th century. The countship (see below) dates at least from the beginning of the 10th century. The citizens of Nevers obtained charters in 1194 and in 1231. For a short time in the 14th century the town was the seat of a university, transferred from Orleans, to which it was restored.
Counts and Dukes of Nevers. Having formed part of the duchy of Burgundy, the county of Nevers (Nivernais) was given by Duke Henry I. in 987 to his stepson, Otto William, afterwards count of Mâcon, who five years later handed it over to his son-in-law Landri. The first house of the hereditary counts of Nevers originated in this Landri, and was brought to an end in 1192 by the death of Agnes, Countess of Nevers, wife of Pierre de Courtenay (d. 1217). The county subsequently passed by successive marriages into the houses of Donzy, Châtillon and Bourbon. Mahaut de Bourbon brought the county of Nevers, together with those of Auxerre and Tonnerre, to her husband Odo (Eudes), son of Hugh IV., duke of Burgundy, in 1248. Her eldest daughter, Yoland, received the county of Nevers as her dowry when in 1265 she married Jean Tristan, son of King Louis IX. She became a widow in 1270, and in 1272 married Robert de Dampierre, who became count of Flanders. Her descendant by her second marriage, Marguerite, daughter and heiress of Louis II. de Male, count of Flanders, married successively two dukes of Burgundy, Philip I. de Rouvre and Philip II. the Bold. Philip (d. 1415), the third son of Philip the Bold, received the counties of Nevers and of Rethel and the barony of Donzy; his last male descendant, John, died in 1491. The house of Cleves then inherited the Nivernais, which was erected into a duchy by King Francis I. for Francis of Cleves in 1539. In 1565 Louis de Gonzaga (d. 1595), son of Frederick II., duke of Mantua, married Henrietta of Cleves, duchess of Nevers, and one of his descendants, Charles (d. 1665), sold the Nivernais to Cardinal Mazarin in 1659. The cardinal devised it to his nephew Philippe Jules Mancini, whose descendants possessed it until the French Revolution. The last duke of Nivernais, Louis Jules Barbon Mancini Mazarini, died in 1798.
NEVILLE, or Nevill, the family name of a famous English
noble house, descended from Dolfin son of Uchtred, who had
a grant from the prior of Durham in 1131 of “Staindropshire,”
co. Durham, a territory which remained in the hands of his
descendants for over four centuries, and in which stood Raby
castle, their chief seat. His grandson, Robert, son of Meldred,
married the heiress of Geoffrey de Neville (d. 1192–1193), who
inherited from her mother the Bulmer lordship of Brancepeth
near Durham. Henceforth Brancepeth castle became the
other seat of the house, of which the bull’s head crest commemorates
the Bulmers; but it adopted the Norman surname
of Neville (Neuville). Robert’s grandson, another Robert,
(d. 1282) held high position in Northumbria, and sided with
Henry III. in the Barons’ War, as did his younger brother Geoffrey
(d. 1285), ancestor of the Nevills of Hornby. This Robert’s
son Robert (d. 1271) extended the great possessions of the
family into Yorkshire by his marriage with the heiress of Middleham,
of which the powerful Norman castle still stands. The
summons of their son Ranulf (d. 1331) to parliament as a baron
(1294) did but recognize the position of the Nevills as mighty
in the north country. Ralph (d. 1367) the second baron—whose
elder brother “the Peacock of the North” was slain by the
Douglas in 1318—was employed by Edward III. as a commander
against the Scots and had a leading part in the victory of Nevill’s
Cross (1346), where David Bruce was captured, and by which
Durham was saved. His active career as head of his house
(1331–1367) did much to advance its fortunes and to make the
name of Nevill a power on the Scottish march. Of his younger
sons, Alexander became archbishop of York (1374–1388) and
was a prominent supporter of Richard II., attending him closely
and encouraging his absolutist policy; in consequence of which
he was one of those “appealed of treason” by the opposition in
1388 and being found guilty was outlawed, and died abroad
in 1392. His younger brother William, a naval commander,
took the opposite side, was a leading Lollard and a friend of
Wiclif, and in 1388–1389 acted with the lords appellant.
John, the 3rd baron (d. 1388), a warden of the Scottish marches and lieutenant of Aquitaine, a follower of John of Gaunt and a famous soldier in the French wars of Edward III., continued the policy of strengthening the family’s position by marriage; his sisters and daughters became the wives of great northern lords; his first wife was a Percy, and his second Lord Latimer’s heiress; and his younger son, Thomas, became Lord Furnival in right of his wife, while his son by his second wife became Lord Latimer. His eldest son Ralph (1364–1425), 1st earl of Westmorland (see Westmorland, Earls of), carried the policy further, marrying for his second wife a daughter of John of Gaunt and securing heiresses for five of his sons, four of the younger ones becoming peers, while a fifth, Robert, was made bishop of Durham (1438–1457). Among his daughters were the duchesses of Norfolk, Buckingham and York (mother of Edward IV. and Richard III.) and an abbess of Barking. The Nevills were thus closely connected with the houses of Lancaster and York, and had themselves become the most important family in the realm. Of the earl’s sons by his second marriage, Richard, earl of Salisbury (and three of his sons) and William, earl of Kent, are the subjects of separate notices.
The greatness of the Nevills centred in the “kingmaker” (Richard’s son) and the heads of his house, after the 1st earl were of small account in history, till Charles, the 6th earl, at the instigation of his wife, Surrey’s daughter, joined Northumberland in the fatal northern rising of 1569 to the ruin of his house. His estates, with the noble castles of Brancepeth and Raby, 'were forfeited; Middleham, with the Yorkshire lands, had been settled by the 1st earl on the heirs of his second marriage.
Although the senior line became extinct on the earl’s death abroad (1601), there were male descendants of the 1st earl remaining, sprung from George and Edward, sons of his second marriage. George, who was Lord Latimer, was father of Sir Henry, slain at Edgcote fight, and grandfather of Richard, 2nd lord (1469–1530), a soldier who distinguished himself in the north, especially at Flodden Field. His grandson (d. 1577) was the last lord, but there were male descendants of his younger sons, one of whom, Edmund, claimed the barony, and after 1601 the earldom of Westmorland, but vainly, owing to its attainder. In this line may still exist a male heir of this mighty house.
The heirs male of Edward, Lord “Bergavenny” (now “Abergavenny” co. Monmouth), who died in 1476, have retained their place in the peerage under that style to the present day by a special and anomalous devolution. His wife, the only child of Richard (Beauchamp), earl of Worcester (d. 1422), brought him the great estates which had come to her line with Fitz Alan and Despencer heiresses, and in 1450 he was summoned as Lord Bergavenny, though not seized of that castle. Their grandson, George (c. 1471–1535) the 3rd lord, was in favour with Henry VII. and Henry VIII., and recovered from the latter in 1512 the castle and lands of Abergavenny. He was prominent in the French campaigns of 1513–14 and 1523. On the death of his son, Henry, the 4th lord, in 1587, a long-famous contest ensued between his daughter, Lady Fane, and his heir-male, Edward Nevill, which was eventually ended by James I., in 1604, assigning the barony of Abergavenny to Edward's son and that of Despencer to Lady Fane. The former subsequently descended (on uncertain grounds) to the heirs-male with the old Beauchamp estates under special entails. In 1784 the then Lord Abergavenny received an earldom, and the next lord erected at Eridge, Sussex, the present seat of the family, on which the marquisate of Abergavenny and earldom of Lewes were conferred in 1876. Its Sussex estates are mainly derived through the Beauchamps, from the Fitz Alans, heirs of the Warennes.
The Nevills of Billingbear, Berks, were a junior line, of whom
