Alexander Neville

Monument with kneeling effigies of Alexander Nevile and his brother Thomas Nevile, Canterbury Cathedral. Alexander Neville (1544–1614) was an English scholar, known as a historian and translator and a Member of the House of Commons.

Life Alexander Neville was the brother of Thomas Nevile, Dean of Canterbury, and son of Richard Neville of South Leverton, Nottinghamshire, by Anne Mantell, daughter of Sir Walter Mantell (d.1529) of Nether Heyford, Northamptonshire. His mother's sister, Margaret Mantell, was the mother of the poet Barnabe Googe.

Alexander was educated at St John's College, Cambridge, and graduated M.A. in 1581, at the same time as Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex. On leaving the university he seems to have studied law in London, where he became acquainted with George Gascoigne. He is one of the five friends whom Gascoigne describes as challenging him to write poems on Latin mottoes proposed by themselves. Neville soon entered the service of Archbishop Matthew Parker apparently as a secretary, and edited for him Tabula Heptarchiae Saxonicae.

He attended Parker's funeral on 6 June 1575, and wrote an elegy in Latin heroics. He remained in the service of Parker's successors, Edmund Grindal and John Whitgift.

Neville was a Member of Parliament, representing Christchurch in the Parliament of 1585, for Peterborough in 1597 and Saltash in that of 1601. Thomas Newton included it in his Seneca his Tenne Tragedies, London, 1581. In 1587 appeared Neville's Academiae Cantabrigiensis lacrymse tumulo ... P. Sidneij sacratae per A. Nevillum, Cambridge, 1587, with a dedication to the Earl of Leicester. Sir John Harington commended this poem in his annotations on Ariosto's Orlando Furioso (bk. 37).

Neville also contributed English verses to his cousin Barnabe Googe's Eglogs and Sonettes, 1563.