 He was wounded while on active service in the Peninsular War, and after the close of the Napoleonic War, took holy orders, holding family livings in Norfolk and Suffolk.The deaths of his two elder brothers made him heir to his father's earldom, to which he succeeded in 1843, but he was in delicate health and died in 1845.The third son of Henry Nevill, 2nd Earl of Abergavenny and his wife Mary Robinson, he was born on 25 December 1789 and baptised on 27 February 1790 at Isleworth, Middlesex.