was Sir Henry Nevill (d. 1615), courtier and diplomatist, who became a leading figure in parliament under James I. His grandson, another Sir Henry (d. 1694), was an author of some note and a Republican opponent of Cromwell, by whom he was banished from London in 1654. The family became extinct in 1740, and in 1762 Richard Aldworth (1717–1793), on inheriting Billingbear, took the name of Nevill. From him descend the Lords Braybrooke.
Neuville is a common French name, and it is not clear whether all the Nevills who occur in the 12th and 13th centuries were of the same stock as the lords of Raby. The baronial line of Nevill of “Essex” was founded by the marriage, temp. Richard I., of a Hugh de Nevill to the heiress of Henry de Cornhill, a wealthy Londoner. He went on crusade with Richard I. and was afterwards an active supporter of John, who names him in the Great Charter (1215). His descendant, Hugh de Nevill, was summoned as a baron in 1311, as was his son John, who served in the French and Flemish campaigns, and died, the last of his line, in 1358.
See Rowland’s Historical and Genealogical Account of the Family of Nevill (1830); Drummond’s Noble British Families (1846); Swallow’s De Nova Villa (1885); and Barron’s sketch in The Ancestor, No. 6 (1903). Also Dugdale’s Baronage; G. E. C[okayne]’s Complete Peerage; J. H. Round’s Feudal England; and for the Nevill castles Mackenzie’s Castles of England. For the Kingmaker, see Oman’s monograph (1891). (J. H. R.)
NEVILLE, GEORGE (c. 1432–1476), archbishop of York and chancellor of England, was the youngest son of Richard Neville, earl of Salisbury, and brother of Richard Neville, earl of Warwick, known as the “Kingmaker.” He was educated at Balliol College, Oxford, and was from his childhood destined for the clerical profession, in which through the great influence of his family he obtained rapid advancement, becoming bishop of Exeter in 1458. From this time forward Neville took a prominent part in the troubled politics of the period. He was present with his brother Warwick at the battle of Northampton in July 1460, immediately after which the great seal was committed to his keeping. He took part in the proclamation of Edward of York as king, who confirmed his appointment as chancellor. In 1463 he was employed on a diplomatic mission in France; and in 1464, after taking part in negotiation with the Scots, Neville became archbishop of York. During the next few years he as well as his brothers fell into disfavour with Edward IV.; and in 1469, after a successful rising in Yorkshire secretly fermented by Warwick, the king fell into the hands of the archbishop, by whom, after a short imprisonment, he was permitted to escape. When Warwick was in turn defeated by the king’s forces at Stamford in 1470, Archbishop Neville took the oath of allegiance to Edward, but during the short Lancastrian restoration which compelled Edward to cross to Holland, Neville acted as chancellor to Henry VI.; and when the tide once more turned he again trimmed his sails to the favouring breeze, making his peace with Edward, now again triumphant, by surrendering Henry into his hands. The archbishop for a short time shared Henry’s captivity in the Tower. Having been pardoned in April 1471, he was re-arrested a year later on a charge of treason and secretly conveyed to France, where he remained a prisoner till 1475, when he returned to England; he died in the following year, on the 8th of June 1476. Archbishop Neville was a respectable scholar; and he was a considerable benefactor of the university of Oxford and especially of Balliol College.
See Thomas Rymer, Foedera, &c. (London, 1704); John Warkworth, Chronicle of the first Thirteen Years of the Reign of Edward IV., ed. J. O. Halliwell (Camden Soc., London, 1839); Paston Letters, ed. J. Gairdner (London, 1872–1875); The Historical Collections of a Citizen of London in the 15th century, ed. J. Gairdner (Camden Soc., London, 1876); Sir James H. Ramsay, Lancaster and York 1399–1485 (Oxford, 1892).
NEVILLE, RALPH (d. 1244), bishop of Chichester and chancellor of England, was a member of the great Neville family, but of illegitimate birth. In 1214 he became dean of Lichfield, and obtained several rich livings; and in 1224 he was consecrated bishop of Chichester. In 1226 he was appointed chancellor by the council governing during the minority of Henry III.; and when the king in 1236 demanded the return of the great seal, Neville refused to surrender it, on the ground that only the authority that had appointed him to the office had power to deprive him of it. In 1231 he was chosen archbishop by the monks of Canterbury, but the election was not ratified by the pope. He died in 1244.
Neville’s residence in London was a palace in the street opposite the Temple, which from this association obtained the name of Chancery Lane, by which it is still known; while the palace itself, after passing into the hands of Henry de Lacy, earl of Lincoln, was called Lincoln’s Inn after that nobleman when it became the abode of students of law. Neville bequeathed this property to the see of Chichester, and the memory of his connexion with the locality is further preserved in the name of a passage leading from Chancery Lane to Lincoln’s Inn which still bears the name of Chichester Rents.
NEVIN, JOHN WILLIAMSON (1803–1886), American theologian and educationalist, was born on Herron’s Branch, near Shippensburg, Franklin county, Pennsylvania, on the 20th of February 1803. He was a descendant of Hugh Williamson of North Carolina, and was of Scotch blood and Presbyterian training. He graduated at Union College in 1821; studied theology at Princeton Theological Seminary in 1823–1828, being in 1826–1828 in charge of the classes of Charles Hodge; was licensed to preach by the Carlisle Presbytery in 1828; and in 1830–1840 was professor of Biblical literature in the newly founded Western Theological Seminary of Allegheny, Pennsylvania. But under the influence of Neander he was gradually breaking away from “Puritanic Presbyterianism,” and in 1840, having resigned his chair in Allegheny, he was appointed professor of theology in the (German Reformed) Theological Seminary at Mercersburg, Pa., and thus passed from the Presbyterian Church into the German Reformed. He soon became prominent; first by his contributions to its organ the Messenger; then by The Anxious Bench—A Tract for the Times (1843), attacking the vicious excesses of revivalistic methods; and by his defence of the inauguration address, The Principle of Protestantism, delivered by his colleague Philip Schaff, which aroused a storm of protest by its suggestion that Pauline Protestantism was not the last word in the development of the church but that a Johannean Christianity was to be its outgrowth, and by its recognition of Petrine Romanism as a stage in ecclesiastical development. To Dr Schaff’s 122 theses of The Principle of Protestantism Nevin added his own theory of the mystical union between Christ and believers, and both Schaff and Nevin were accused of a “Romanizing tendency.” Nevin characterized his critics as pseudo-Protestants, urged (with Dr Charles Hodge, and against the Presbyterian General Assembly) the validity of Roman Catholic baptism, and defended the doctrine of the “spiritual real presence” of Christ in the Lord’s Supper, notably in The Mystical Presence: a Vindication of the Reformed or Calvinistic Doctrine of the Holy Eucharist (1846); to this the reply from the point of view of rationalistic puritanism was made by Charles Hodge in the Princeton Review of 1848. In 1849 the Mercersburg Review was founded as the organ of Nevin and the “Mercersburg Theology”; and to it he contributed from 1849 to 1883. In 1851 he resigned from the Mercersburg Seminary in order that its running expenses might be lightened; and from 1841 to 1853 he was president of Marshall College at Mercersburg. With Dr Schaff and others he was on the committee which prepared the liturgy of the German Reformed Church, which appeared in provisional form in 1857 and as An Order of Worship in 1866. In 1861–1866 he was instructor of history at Franklin and Marshall College (in which Marshall College had been merged), of which he was president in 1866–1876. He died at Lancaster, Penn., on the 6th of June 1886.
See Theodore Appel, The Life and Work of John Williamson Nevin (Philadelphia, 1889), containing Nevin’s more important articles.
NEVIS, an island in the British West Indies, forming with St Kitts one of the five presidencies in the colony of the Leeward Islands. Pop. (1901) 12,774. It lies in 17° 14′ N. and 62° 33′ W., and is separated from St Kitts by a shallow channel 2 m. wide at its narrowest point. In form it is almost round, and from the sea has the appearance of a perfect cone, rising gradually to the height of 3200 ft. Its total area is 50 sq. m. Although the
