In the armed feud between both houses, which broke out in 1453 and lasted two years, Thomas and his brother John launched a series of raids, ambushes and skirmishes across Yorkshire against the Percy family.

Thomas joined his father Salisbury's and York's army, and travelled to Yorkshire in December 1460 with the purpose of suppressing Lancastrian-inspired disorder.

[2] Richard was to become Earl of Warwick, and, as one of the most important politicians in the kingdom, earned himself the soubriquet "Kingmaker"; John became Marquess of Montagu and defender of the North; George, the youngest, had a career in the Church, becoming Archbishop of York.

Maud complained that they and their men had hunted and shot deer in her park, but she was unable to do anything herself because the Nevilles and Lumleys were both powerful local families.

[11][12] The king licensed Thomas Neville on 1 May 1453 to marry Maud Stanhope,[note 2] the widow of Robert, Lord Willoughby and a wealthy heiress.

[26][note 6] As a marriage settlement from the Earl and Countess of Salisbury in Easter 1454, Thomas and Maud received two-thirds of the Yorkshire manors of Catterick, Danby Wiske and Aldborough.

[28] Friedrichs has suggested that his "political and military adventures had included his wife, even to the point of battle",[29] and he is known to have owned an early copy of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales.

They inflicted severe damage to the estates of Sir William Plumpton, a Percy loyalist, in Knaresborough as part of an aggressive Neville demonstration of power in January 1454.

[49] With his brothers, John and Richard, as well as Salisbury, they faced the Earl of Northumberland and his sons at Topcliffe, North Yorkshire on 20 October 1453, although a negotiated peace averted battle.

[51] In the event, the feud continued for much of the next year with further violent encounters and only came to a halt with another battle at Salisbury's manor of Stamford Bridge, near York on 31 October 1454.

[61] Friedrichs sums up the main provisions of the second will: Instead of vestments to a few churches and alms to poor tenants, Cromwell commanded that all his lands which were not entailed were to be sold to the highest bidder and the money given to any charity the executors chose.

[12] He and his fellow heir jure uxoris, Humphrey Bourchier, illegally expelled Cromwell's feoffees from several manors in Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire in December 1457,[60] and Thomas was still holding 35 manors—taken "by strong hand"—in September 1459.

Although they legally challenged the second will, they were unsuccessful in breaking it, and seem to have been reduced to arguing over goods and chattels, such as drapes and bedding that Maud claimed she had been promised.

[76] Although R. L. Storey suggests that this was "less than a quarter" of Salisbury's and Warwick's official salary,[79] more recently, Henry Summerson has argued that the wardenship was probably "a source of particular profit", at least in times of peace.

[80][note 13] A few months later, he stood as surety for his uncle William, Lord Fauconberg's good behaviour (who Hicks speculates may have been involved in piracy at this time).

[87] Henry and the Royal household left London in April 1455, and meanwhile, York and Salisbury marched south with a small army; they confronted and defeated the King at the Battle of St Albans in May.

[91] So, as part of the king's attempt to reconcile his divided nobility three years later, Salisbury entered into a bond for Thomas's good behaviour on 23 March 1458.

[98] On 23 September 1459, they encountered a larger royal force at Blore Heath, which Salisbury defeated, killing its leader, James Tuchet, Baron Audley.

[113][note 17] Thomas was also commissioned to arrest and imprison any who disturbed the peace,[114] and received grants of Duchy of Lancaster estates at the same time,[115] particularly in the Midlands, where he began to establish his own authority.

[115] When the Duke of York returned from Dublin in late September 1460, he slowly made his way to Westminster to meet the king and his peers—gathered for a forthcoming parliament—and arrived in October.

[121] Thomas accompanied them when they marched out of London on 2 December 1460 to restore a semblance of order to the region; they arrived at York's Sandal Castle on the 21st of the month.

In any case, it is known that nine days later, York, his son Edmund, Earl of Rutland, Salisbury, Thomas, and many of their closest retainers led a sortie in strength to attack a Lancastrian army gathered near the castle.

[142] Although Wakefield was a decisive blow for the Yorkists, the war was not yet over; even after news of the defeat reached Edward, now Duke of York, he continued recruiting a large army in the Welsh Marches.

[143] On 29 March 1461, the two forces clashed at Towton in what the armourist Christopher Gravett has called "probably the largest and bloodiest battle on English soil".

[25] Thomas Neville's "bod[y] and bones"[152] were reinterred in the Montagu mausoleum of Bisham Priory, Buckinghamshire with his father on 15 February 1463, a date occasioned by the death and burial there of his mother Alice in December the previous year.

[153][note 25] In a chariot drawn by six horses, accompanied by Warwick and John, Thomas and their father's bodies were conveyed south from Pontefract.

[157] Warwick's choice of Bisham for his father's and brother's final resting place—rather than the Neville heartlands of northern England—was probably based on a perceived political benefits to emphasising the Montagu connection.

[160] A "rich, pageant-filled affair", continued Saul,[161] the ceremony was accompanied by the promulgation of an elaborate commemorative roll of arms, celebrating the Neville family's lineage.

[163][note 26] Many years later, the chronicler John Warkworth, attempting to establish the reasons for Sir Robert Welles support of Warwick and Clarence in their rebellion against Edward IV, suggested that it was due to familial ties.

An unhappy marriage, it brought Clifton into conflict with powerful Yorkists such as Anthony Woodville and Humphrey Bourchier; he was beheaded after the Battle of Tewkesbury, also in rebellion against King Edward.