Alan de Neville (forester)

Alan de Neville (sometimes Alan de Neuville; died c. 1176) was an English nobleman and administrator who held the office of chief forester under King Henry II of England.
Neville first appears in the historical record as the butler of Count Waleran of Meulan in 1138. Neville may have been in Waleran's service prior to this, but the first secure appearance is in 1138. For serving as butler, Neville received rents from the market dues at Pont Audemar worth 100 shillings annually. He appears as a witness to a charter of Waleran's to the Abbey of Tiron, which is dated sometime before 1141. Neville witnessed ten other of Waleran's charters, ending in the 1150s.
In 1153 Neville was serving the future King Henry. By 1163, Neville was in charge of hearing the pleas of the forest in Oxfordshire, and possibly also Buckinghamshire, Bedfordshire, Leicestershire, Warwickshire, Cambridgeshire, Huntingdonshire, and Northamptonshire. He was present at the Council of Clarendon, where he was among the king's followers. In 1166 he was named chief forester of the royal forests, an office that was responsible for the royal officials in charge of administrating the forests as well as the system of royal courts that enforced the forest law. Neville headed the royal efforts to enforce the forest law, which banned cutting down timber, clearing new farm fields, poaching, or the creation of enclosures within the royal forest. Any offences against the forest law were subject to monetary fines, which were an important source of royal revenue. The royal forest included not only the forests owned by the king, but also many forests on lands held by other persons. After Neville's appointment as chief forester, he was in charge of hearing offences against the forest law and also imposing punishments. His activities were resented by the people subject to forest law.
Neville supported the king during the Becket controversy between the king and Thomas Becket, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and was excommunicated by the archbishop twice. One excommunication occurred when Neville imprisoned one of Becket's chaplains, William of Salisbury, for six months in Corfe Castle in connection with Becket's actions against the king. Neville was absolved from this excommunication by Gilbert Foliot, the Bishop of London, after Neville decided to go on crusade. Becket was angered by the bishop's action, even though Foliot made the absolution contingent on Neville getting a penance from the pope on his way to the Holy Land.
During 1166, Neville was in charge of Staffordshire for the general eyre undertaken in that year, and also tried the pleas of the forest for Devonshire and Worcestershire, and perhaps elsewhere. The abbot of Battle Abbey in 1167 sent a monk to plead with Waleran of Meulan to intervene and stop Neville's exactions on the abbot's manors. After the Revolt of 1173–74, Neville was in charge of a forest eyre held from 1176 to 1178 which resulted in fines totaling 12,000 pounds from breaches of the forest law during the revolt. It appears that the king intended this eyre to be a punishment, and used the forest law because it was solely dependent on the king's will rather than being based in customary law.
Married to the daughter of the lord of Pont Audemer, Neville died around 1176. After his death, the monks of Battle Abbey petitioned the king to have Neville's body buried at their monastery, perhaps hoping through this action to secure some of Neville's estate. The king is supposed to have replied "I will have his money, you can have his body, the demons of hell his soul. Hugh de Neville, who was chief forest justice under Kings Richard I, John, and Henry III, was probably his grandson. Neville was succeeded in office by Thomas fitzBernard.
The Chronicle of Battle Abbey claimed that Neville "most evilly vexed the various provinces throughout England with countless and unaccustomed persecutions". According to the historian Robert Bartlett, Neville's exactions earned him a "reputation for harshness verging on extortion".