B: 1035 Neuville, Allier, Auvergne, France D: 1086 Walcot, Licolnshire, England
Gilbert I de Neville; held in the year 1086 carucates (a carucate was an area of land that could be cultivated by an eight-ox plough team throughout a single year) at Waltcot, Lincolnshire and Yawthorpe, together with others in that part of England by 1115-18; kinship is plausible but has not been provern with [son Geoffrey]. [Burke's Peerage]
Th e e-mail from Dennis Theriot indicates that many people feel that Gilbert's supposed role as William the Conqueror's Admiral of the Fleet is more legendary/contrived than historical:Charles R Young recently wrote a book called "The Making of the Neville Family, 1166-1400, The Boydell Press, 1996. To quote him: "The first of the Nevilles to emerge from obscurity was Alan, who became notorious as a justice of the forest under King Henry II after conducting the first comprehensive forest eyre in 1166. However, the family was not new to England. Alan's ancestry can be traced to Gilbert de Neville listed in the Domesday Book in 1086 as holding Walcot in Lincolnshire from Peterborough Abbey. Another Neville named Ralph who also held land from the abbey may have been Gilbert's brother and was certainly the ancestor of a related branch of the family. Through connections with Peterborough Abbey and lands in Normandy the family can be shown to have originated from a place in the duchy called Neville from which the surname was derived. In 1125 both Gilbert and Ralph continued to hold lands in England from the abbey for the service of one knight and one-third of a knight respectively." .... "Gilbert was a minor landholder in Lincolnshire as early as 1086 and into the early twelfth century, but there is no real evidence that he had been the steward of William the Conqueror and prominent at the Battle of Hastings. This story can be dismissed as the invention of later antiquaries anxious to please members of the Neville family after the family had become prominent and at a time when descent from a companion of the Conqueror carried social prestige."... "The more prosaic reality is that Alan's success as chief justice of the forest under Henry II a century after the conquest was the first step by any member of the family toward royal service and the prominence the family was to obtain in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. He set a precedent in royal service that was followed by the next generations of Nevilles who held offical positions under the sons and grandson of King Henry." So much for "The Admiral".
Wife UNKNOWN
B: 1039 Normandy, France D: 1088 Normandie, France
