Richard Neville, 5th Earl of Salisbury KG PC (1400 – 31 December 1460) was an English nobleman and magnate based in northern England who became a key supporter of the House of York during the early years of the Wars of the Roses.

He was born in 1400 at Raby Castle in County Durham, the third son (and tenth child) of Ralph de Neville, 1st Earl of Westmorland, by his second wife, Joan Beaufort, the youngest of the four legitimised children and only daughter of John of Gaunt, 1st Duke of Lancaster (third surviving son of King Edward III), by his mistress, later wife, Katherine Swynford.

Ralph's marriage to Joan Beaufort, at a time when the distinction between royalty and nobility was becoming more important, can be seen as another reward; as a granddaughter of King Edward III, she was a member of the royal family.

Although unlike Calais, it did not require a permanent garrison, the incessant raiding and border skirmishes meant that there would always be a ready supply of trained and experienced soldiers at the Warden's command.

As Warden of the West March, Salisbury was in a position to exert great power in the northwest, in spite of holding only Kendal and Penrith.

The Percys resented the fact that their tenants in Cumberland and Westmorland were being recruited by Salisbury, who even with the reduced grant of 1443 still had great spending power in the region.

[2] With his economic power as Warden, Salisbury could provide better support for Percy tenants than Northumberland, unpaid in regard to the East March for years, could hope to.

The fact that Salisbury lost 2,000 horses trying to respond to this attack, and was then excluded (along with Northumberland) from the subsequent peace negotiations, can only have inflamed relations between the two families.

[citation needed] On 24 August 1453, Thomas Percy, Lord Egremont, assembled a force of men-at-arms and archers perhaps as large as 1,000 strong, intending to waylay Salisbury and his family at Heworth Moor, outside York, as he made for Sheriff Hutton.

Salisbury had been attending the wedding of his son Thomas in Tattershall Castle, Lincolnshire, and although his escort would have been smaller, it would have been better armed than Egremont's York craftsmen and tradesmen.

Salisbury and his retinue fought them back, arriving unscathed at Sheriff Hutton, but the episode marked the beginning of what was virtually a private war.

Maud[citation needed] was due to inherit the manors of Wressle and Burwell from her uncle, Lord Cromwell, who had obtained them from the Percys through litigation.

[4] When King Henry VI tried to assert his independence and dismiss York as Protector, Salisbury joined him in fighting at the First Battle of St Albans, claiming that he was acting in self-defence.

He was notably successful in the Battle of Blore Heath, but after the Yorkist army collapsed in the Rout of Ludford Bridge, Salisbury escaped to Calais, having been specifically excluded from a royal pardon.

Although the Lancastrian nobles might have been prepared to allow Salisbury to ransom himself due to his great wealth, he was nevertheless dragged out of Pontefract Castle and beheaded by the local population, to whom he had been a harsh overlord.

The effigy of a lady alongside him wears a headdress which is not thought to be of the right date to be his wife, but she may represent one of the earlier Countesses of Salisbury buried at Bisham.