Arms of Woodville: Argent, a fesse and a canton conjoined gules
Woodville followed his father into service with the Duke of Bedford. In 1433 the Duke had married the 17-year-old Jacquetta of Luxembourg; she was the Duke's second wife and he was significantly older and in ill health. When the Duke died in 1435, Jacquetta was left a childless and wealthy widow. She was required to seek permission from King Henry VI before she could remarry, but in March 1437 it was revealed that she had secretly married Richard Woodville who was far below her in rank and not considered a suitable husband for the lady still honoured as the king's aunt. The couple were fined £1000, but this was remitted in October of the same year.
Despite this inauspicious start, the married couple soon prospered, thanks mainly to Jacquetta's continuing prominence within the royal family. She retained her rank and dower as Duchess of Bedford, which initially provided an income of between £7000 and £8000 per year, though over the years this diminished as a result of territorial losses in France and collapsing royal finances in England. Richard Woodville was honoured with military ranks, in which he proved himself a capable soldier.
Further honours for both came when Henry VI married Margaret of Anjou, whose uncle was Jacquetta's brother-in-law (Jacquetta's sister Isabelle married Margaret of Anjou's paternal uncle Charles du Maine). The Woodvilles were among those chosen to escort the bride to England, and the family benefited further through this double connection to the royal family. Sir Richard was raised to the rank of Baron Rivers in 1448. Therefore their children would grow up enjoying considerable privilege and material comfort.
Woodville was created Baron Rivers by King Henry VI on 9 May 1448. Two years later, as Sir Richard, he was invested as a Knight of the Garter in 1450. He was appointed seneschal of Gascony in 1450 (but failed to reach it before its fall) then lieutenant of Calais in 1454–55. He was appointed Warden of the Cinque Ports in 1459 to defend Kent against invasion by the Yorkist earls (but was captured at Sandwich).
The power of this new family was very distasteful to the old baronial party, and especially so to the Earl of Warwick. Rivers was regarded as a social upstart, and in an ironical episode, his future son-in-law in 1460, while accepting his submission, had rebuked him for daring, given his lowly birth, to fight against the House of York. The Privy Council, in its horrified response to the King's marriage, said bluntly that Richard Woodville's low social standing in itself meant that the King must surely know "that Elizabeth was not the wife for him". Early in 1468, the Rivers estates were plundered by Warwick's partisans, and the open war of the following year was aimed at destroying the Woodvilles. After the Yorkist defeat at the Battle of Edgecote on 26 July 1469, Rivers and his third son John were taken prisoners at Chepstow. Following a hasty show trial, they were beheaded at Kenilworth on 12 August 1469.
Richard Woodville's eldest surviving son Anthony succeeded him in the earldom.
Robert Glover, Somerset Herald, noted another 'Richard' who would seem to have been born before Richard the 3rd Earl.[7] A 'Richard Woodville, esquire for the body' was present at the christening of Prince Arthur (son of Elizabeth and Henry VII) on 24 September 1486 in Winchester Cathedral; Arthur's grandmother, Elizabeth Woodville, served as his Godmother, and her younger brother Edward was also present at the ceremony.
The Visitation of Buckinghamshire of 1566 mentions the marriage of William Dormer of Wycombe (only later of Ascott House) to "Agnes, da. of Sir Richard Woodvyle, Erle Ryvers" but does not say whether the father was the first or the third earl, who the mother was or whether Agnes was legitimate. Considering though that she is thought to be born about 1458 the more likely candidate is the senior Richard Woodville.
^"Knighteston" in the hundred of Ottery St Mary: Pole, Sir William (d.1635), Collections Towards a Description of the County of Devon, Sir John-William de la Pole (ed.), London, 1791, p.148; Modern "Knightstone", per Pevsner, Nikolaus & Cherry, Bridget, The Buildings of England: Devon, London, 2004, pp.528-9
^The Complete Peerage, Volume XIV. St Catherine's Press. p. 549.
^Michael Hicks, 'Woodville, Richard, first Earl Rivers (d. 1469)', Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, édition en ligne, septembre 2011.
^Her brother Richard's 1492 postmortem inquisition names her as being "34 or more". Calendar of Inquisitions Post-Mortem, Henry VII, vol. I, No. 681 (Richard, Earl of Ryvers)
^Pugh, T.B, ed., 1963, The Marcher Lordships of South Wales, 1415–1536. Cardiff: University of Wales Press, p. 241
^Blair, C. H. Hunter, ed. Visitation of the North, Part III: A Visitation of the North of England Circa 1480-1500, p. 58.
Cokayn, George E. (1887). Complete Peerage of England, Scotland, Ireland, Great Britain and the United Kingdom, Extant, Extinct, or Dormant. London: G. Bell & Sons. p. 207.
1 Briefly joined the Lancastrians. 2 Briefly joined the Yorkists. 3 Defected from the Yorkist to the Lancastrian cause. 4 Initially a Yorkist who later supported the Tudor claim. 5 Initially a Lancastrian who later supported the Tudor claim.
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