128 
At that time the Bishops of Durham were princes claiming to 
be independent of the king ; and Beck, treating a command of the 
king with contempt, Penrith manor was taken from him. He was, 
however, no loss to Penrith, for there is no record of him bringing 
his fighting proclivities to the protection of Cumberland. 
No further grant of the manor was made by the Crown for eighty 
years, when in 1378 Richard II. gave it to the Duke of Brittany 
in exchange for Brest, that town being of value to the English King 
as a key to France, This arrangement held for eighteen years, 
when the King gave up Brest and regained Penrith, and in 1397 
granted it to Ralph Nevill, the powerful lord of Raby. Nevill 
had married as his second wife Joanna Beauford, the King’s kins- 
woman. He had just been created Earl of Westmorland, and 
appointed to several high offices of state; amongst others he was 
made Lord Warden of the Western Marches, in which he held 
large powers, military and magisterially, for the protection of the 
north-west against the Scots. Then Penrith Castle would be com- 
menced: for we know that when the manor was granted to the 
Scottish Kings, it was a condition of the grant that there was no 
castle there ; and in the time intervening between their occupation 
and the grant to Nevill, there is no reason to suppose a castle 
would be built. The grant is to Ralph Nevill and his heirs male 
by his second wife, Joanna Beauford. 
A busy life had Penrith’s feudal lord. Born in 1365, he’ was a 
warrior from his youth upwards; a ready and efficient servant of 
whatever king wore the crown, without troubling himself much 
about whys and wherefores. He served three kings in succesaion 
without quarrelling with one of them; he also had the great good 
fortune, or the clever tact, to be always on the winning side—a 
position ever dear to the heart of an Englishman. 
King Richard II. had commenced his reign as a boy, petted and 
loved by the people; but as a man he became tyrannical and 
unconstitutional ; and when he granted the manor of Penrith to 
Ralph Nevill, he was already tottering on his throne, from which 
in two years time he was driven by the decree of Parliament a 
poverty-stricken exile, never more to occupy English soil until 
brought to be buried in it. 
