![]() ![]() Both brothers survived the war, but William was dead by 1661. ![]() In 1644, they fought at Newark in 1646 at Ashby de la Zouch. From then on Thomas Neville and his elder brother William were at war, whether they wished to be or not. His enemy – the Parliamentarian Lord Grey of Groby – stormed the house and took his father prisoner the building was burned to the ground. He had seen his rich father ordered to give up the house he had grown up in and had heard him say that ‘rather than yield to dishonourable persons, I will make my house my grave’. Thomas Neville had had better reason than most to join the king’s army. Thomas Neville was the last man to remember that turmoil, the last surviving field officer from a once-great but defeated army, the army of King Charles I. ![]() But the changes he had witnessed were accompanied by violence and terror unmatched in the history of his country. He had seen wonders, and had even made them happen. He was an ordinary gentleman, but in his lifetime he had been among those who had seen the Middle Ages finally disappear, and the modern era emerge. ![]() One night in 1712, a man named Thomas Neville lay dying in his own bed, surrounded by family and friends. ![]()
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