Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Neville, Alan de
NEVILLE, ALAN de (d. 1191?), judge, son of Ærnisius de Neville, was probably descended from Gilbert de Neville, who commanded William the Conqueror's fleet [see under Neville, Hugh de. Alan's brother, also Gilbert de Neville, was an ancestor of the Nevilles of Raby [see under Neville, Robert de (d. 1282)]. He is first mentioned in 1165 as a judge of the exchequer, and may have been also a ‘Marescallus Regis.’ In the following year he was appointed justice of the forests, and continued till his death to be chief justice of forests throughout England (Roger de Hoveden, Rolls Ser. ii. 289). He held various lands in Lincolnshire (cf. Pipe Rolls, ed. 1844, pp. 25, 116, 137), and was granted the Savernake Forest in Wiltshire by Henry II (Madox, Exch. ed. 1769, ii. 220). He supported the king loyally against Becket (see Materials for Life of Becket, Rolls Ser. v. 73), and for this was excommunicated by the archbishop in 1166, afterwards receiving absolution from Gilbert Foliot, bishop of London, conditionally on his going to Rome on his way to Jerusalem and submitting there to the pope. In 1168 Becket excommunicated him again for committing his chaplain to prison. As late as 1189 he was holding pleas of the forest (Pipe Rolls, ed. 1844, 1 Ric. I). He died in 2 Richard I (3 Sept. 1190–2 Sept. 1191), leaving two sons, Alan, a justice itinerant in 1170, and Geoffrey de Neville, d. 1225 [q. v.]
[Foss's Lives of the Judges; Madox's Exch. ed. 1769, i. 125; Dugdale's Baronage, i. 287; Matthew Paris's Chronica Majora (Rolls Ser.), v. 234, 244; H. J. Swallow's De Nova Villa, Newcastle, 1885; Daniel Rowland's Hist. and Genealogical Account of the Family of Nevill, 1830.]