Richard Neville, 5th Earl of Salisbury (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 the father of Richard Neville, 16th Earl of Warwick, the "Kingmaker". Origins 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. The Neville lands were primarily in County Durham and Yorkshire, but both King Richard II and King Henry IV (Joan's cousin and half-brother respectively) found the family useful to counterbalance the strength of the Percys on the Scottish Borders. This led to Ralph's earldom being granted in 1397, and to his appointment as Warden of the West March in 1403. 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. The children of Ralph's first wife, Margaret Stafford, made good marriages to local nobility, and his eldest son had married into royalty in the person of Elizabeth Holland, but his Beaufort children married into even greater families. Three of Richard's sisters married dukes, the youngest Cecily, married Richard, Duke of York. Marriage Richard married Alice Montagu, daughter and heiress of Thomas Montagu, 4th Earl of Salisbury. The date of Richard and Alice's marriage is not known, but it must have been before February 1421, when as a married couple they appeared at the coronation of Queen Catherine of Valois. At the time of the marriage, the Salisbury inheritance was not guaranteed, as not only was Thomas Montacute still alive, but in 1424 he remarried (to Alice Chaucer, granddaughter of the poet Geoffrey Chaucer). This second marriage was without issue and when Thomas Montagu died in 1428, Richard Neville and Alice were confirmed as the Earl and Countess of Salisbury. Salisbury came into possession of greater estates than, as a younger son under primogeniture, he could reasonably have expected. Strangely, his eldest half-brother