Edmund Neville (abt. 1555 - aft. 1619)

Born about 1555 in Worcestershire, England [uncertain]

Ancestors

Husband of Jane (Smythe) Neville — married 7 Aug 1587 in Tower of London, Middlesex, England

Died after 1619 after about age 64 in Brussels, Brabant, Spanish Netherlands [uncertain]

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Edmund Neville was a member of the aristocracy in England.

Biography

Edmund Neville, born before 1555 and died after 9 Dec 1620, was an English soldier of fortune, conspirator, political prisoner, and peerage claimant.

He was the son and heir of Richard Neville (died 1590), who is said to have held the manors of Pinvin and Upper Wyke in Worcestershire but if so was just a tenant, and his wife Barbara Arden, daughter of William Arden, of Park Hall at Castle Bromwich in Warwickshire, and sister of Edward Arden who was executed in 1583 as a Catholic traitor.

Once of age, he left England to join the Spanish army, fighting in France and the Netherlands until 1584, when he returned to England. Getting involved in a Catholic plot against Queen Elizabeth I, he was arrested for conspiracy and was held in the Tower of London, from which he was not released until late in 1598. While there, his first wife died and he married privately a second.

He laid claim to two different English peerages. The first was after John Neville, 4th Baron Latimer, died in 1577. The claim was groundless, as there were four daughters to inherit the title, but he nevertheless called himself Baron Latimer. Then in 1601 he claimed to be heir to Charles Neville, 6th Earl of Westmorland, a title which did not exist since its abolition by Parliament in 1571 on account of Charles' treason. King James I was sympathetic to reviving the title, and awarded him a pension of £600 a year, but the courts threw out the claim in 1604.

In 1614, being sued by his second wife who he had left, and close to or actually bankrupt, he fled with his third (bigamous) wife to the Spanish Netherlands, where he died in poverty in or after 1620.

His wives, one bigamous, were:

• Jeanne or Jane, whose last name was said to be Martignis and who was said to own lands at a place called Colombe in Hainaut. Her origins are unknown and she died when he was in the Tower, leaving him no children, some time after 1583,
• Jane Smyth, possibly the daughter of a Warwickshire landowner called Richard Smyth and his second wife Dorothy Wallop, who claimed to be the widow of a man called Grey from Derbyshire. He married her privately on 7 Jan 1588, while a prisoner in the Tower, after which she called herself Lady Latimer. This did not save her from being arrested as a prostitute in October and whipped by order of the sheriffs of London. In 1636, calling herself Countess of Westmoreland, she complained about arrears of the pension of £100 a year awarded her by King James I. Records differ over their children, but only one, who called herself Lady Dorothy Neville, lived to be married, her husband being Arthur Hill.
• Francesina Townshend, also recorded as Francellina or Francelliana, who was living with him as his wife before 1614 and probably survived him. She was the daughter of John Townshend, of Dereham in Norfolk, and his wife Elizabeth Catlin, and the sister of the poet Aurelian Townshend. During their exile in Brussels, she reportedly earned money as a medical practitioner to support them. Together they had one daughter, Francesina Neville, also recorded as Francellina or Francelliana, who married Hayward Townshend.

Sources

• George Edward Cokayne and Geoffrey White (ed.) “Complete Peerage of England, Scotland, Ireland, Great Britain and the United Kingdom”, Vol. XII, Part 2: Tracton to Zouche, 2nd edition, pages 560-565
• A. J. Loomie, “Neville, Edmund (b. before 1555, d. in or after 1620)” in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, 28 May 2015 https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/19927

See also

Wilipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edmund_Neville