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(6th E. Westmoreland)
Born: 18 Aug 1542 / 28 Aug 1543
Died: 16 Nov 1601, Nieuwpoort, Flanders
Father: Henry NEVILLE (5° E. Westmoreland)
Mother: Anne MANNERS
Married: Jane HOWARD (C. Westmoreland) ABT 1563
Children:
2. Anne NEVILLE
3. Thomas NEVILLE WESTMORELAND
5. Eleanor NEVILLE
Son of Henry Neville, 5th Earl of Westmoreland, by his first wife, Lady Anne Manners, second daughter of Thomas, 1st Earl of Rutland. He married in 1563 Jane, dau. of Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, and sister of Thomas Howard, fourth Duke of Norfolk.
One of the leaders of the Northern Rebellion, the most trusty of his adherents where his uncles George and Christopher Neville.
Lord Westmorland found protection and concealment for a long time at Fernyhurst Castle, Lord Kerr's house in Rosburghshire, but meanwhile the Earl's cousin Robert Constable, was hired by Sir Ralph Sadler to endeavour to track the unfortunate nobleman, and, under the guise of friendship, to betray him. Constable's correspondence appears among the Sadler State Papers - an infamous memorial of treachery and baseness.
In the Summer of 1570, the Earl of Westmoreland, fearing that the same betrayal that happened to the Earl of Northumberland might also happen to him, left Scotland for Flanders; but his vast inheritance was confiscated, and he suffered the extremity of poverty and would never see his wife, Jane Howard (d. 1593) and four daughters again. Brencepeth, the stronghold of the Nevilles in war, and Raby, their festive Hall in peace, had passed into strangers' hands, and nothing remained for the exiled Lord.
A spy-report sent from Paris to London in Aug 1585 states that Charles Neville, the fugitive earl of Westmoreland, might, as part of a concerted Catholic invasion of England, land in Cumberland or Lancashire, bringing with him the son(s) of Henry Percy, 8° Earl of Northumberland. The historians wonder which son(s) the spy-report refers to, as sources indicate that all sons were in England at the time of their father's suicide/murder.
In 1588, Westmoreland comanded a force of 700 English fugitives in the seaports of Flanders, who with the army of 103 companies of foot and 4000 horse, making together 30,000 men under the Duke of Parma; and besides 12,000 men brought by the Duke of Guise to the coast of Normandy, intended for an attack on the West of England, under cover and protection of the Spanish Armada.
Westmoreland subsisted on a miserable pittance from the King of Spain, dying penniless and forgotten on 16 Nov 1601.
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