Robert de Neville  Robert de Neville, 2nd Baron Neville of Raby (c. 1223–1282), was a medieval English nobleman. The Neville family in England go back to at least the 11th century, and the historian Horace Round speculated that they were part of the pre-Norman aristocracy of Northumbria. By the 13th century, the Nevilles had become, through shrewd marriages and royal patronage, major landholders, and concomitantly rose to a position of regional hegemony regularly being appointed to the important royal offices. By the time Neville reached adulthood, and for the rest of his life, English politics was in a state of partisanship; the King, Henry III was increasingly unpopular with his nobility and the tension between them, never resolved, erupted in constitutional crisis and eventually civil war. Simon de Montfort, previously a favourite of Henry's, who had married his sister Eleanor, led the opposition. Robert de Neville was the eldest son of Geoffrey fitz Robert (later Geoffrey de Neville, d. c. 1242), and the grandson of Robert fitz Meldred, Lord of Raby. The identity of Robert de Neville's mother, however, is disputed among scholars. Pollard, for example, writing in the Dictionary of National Biography in 1894 suggested that she was Margaret, daughter of Sir John de Longvillers. However, this Margaret was married until 1285, and there is evidence from a Lincolnshire fine of 1247 which refers to one Robert de Neville, knight, and his mother, Joan. Robert had younger brothers, Geoffrey—who was to start a cadet branch of the family in Hornby, Lancashire—John, and Hugh. Robert possessed estates in Burreth, Lincolnshire by 1242 and on his father's death in 1254 he succeeded to his patrimony, including the Lordship of Raby and Brancepeth in Durham; he performed fealty to the king on 7 May that year following the deaths of his grandmother and grandfather, from whom he received further lands. They probably included the manors of Ulnaby and Carlbury. However, notes Young, the nature of the surviving evidence—mostly existing in the form of the inquisition post mortem taken after his death—is not sufficient for scholars to make anything other than "an approximate estimate of their wealth".