Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 62.djvu/418

 attempt (, p. 9). Edward made him lieutenant of Calais and entrusted him with the operations in the Channel against the rebels and their protector Louis XI (, p. 529;, ii. 231; but cf. ). He is credited by Wavrin (v. 604) with a victory over Warwick's fleet in the Seine. He shared Edward's subsequent exile in the Low Countries, and, returning with him in 1471, rescued him from an awkward situation at York and helped to secure him victory at Barnet (ib. pp. 611, 640, 647, 652). While the king was crushing the Lancastrians at Tewkesbury, Rivers beat off the Bastard of Fauconberg's attack upon London, and was made councillor (8 July) to the young Prince of Wales (, p. 19; ).

Rivers's recent vicissitudes of fortune had, however, made a great impression on his mind; having been relieved, as he afterwards explained in the preface to the ‘Dictes and Sayings of the Philosophers,’ by the goodness of God he was exhorted to dedicate his recovered life to his service. In October 1471 he obtained a royal request for safe-conduct for a voyage to Portugal ‘to be at a day upon the Saracens’ (Fœdera, xi. 727; Paston Letters, iii. 14, 32). The king was reported to have been not best pleased with his leaving him (ib. iii. 11). There was a rumour that he had sailed on Christmas-eve (ib. iii. 33). He returned in any case before 23 July following, when he was empowered to arrange an alliance with the Duke of Brittany (Fœdera, xi. 760). Soon after he took over a thousand men-at-arms and archers to Brittany, but in November was said to be coming hastily home, disease having made great ravages among his men (Paston Letters, iii. 59). In February 1473 he became one of the Prince of Wales's guardians and chief butler of England. But his present prosperity did not cause him to forget the ‘tyme of grete tribulacion and adversite’ by which it had been reached, and in the summer of this year he went by sea to the jubilee and pardon at Santiago de Compostella. He returned, perhaps through Italy, to be appointed (10 Nov.) governor to the young prince, a dignified post which, as he tells us, gave him greater leisure for his literary occupations. But it was not uninterrupted. In the first year of his office he was twice sent to try and induce Charles the Bold to abandon the siege of Neuss for a campaign against Louis XI, and in 1475 he took part in the military parade which ended at Picquigny (, i. 321; ). But his badge was now the scallop-shells, and in the autumn he went on a pilgrimage to Rome, whence he visited the shrine of St. Nicholas at Bari and other holy places of southern Italy (Paston Letters, iii. 162; Excerpta Historica, p. 245; Cal. State Papers, Venetian, i. 133). Returning from Rome early in 1476, he was robbed of all his jewels and plate, estimated as worth a thousand marks or more, at Torre di Baccano, a few miles north of the city. Some of the stolen property was sold at Venice, and Rivers having applied for restitution, the signoria decided that this should be done gratuitously, out of deference for the king of England and his lordship (ib. i. 136). Sixtus IV invested him with the title of defender and director of papal causes in England ( at the end of ‘The Cordyale,’ 1478). On his way north he visited (7–8 June) the camp at Morat of the luckless Duke Charles (cf. Charles the Bold, iii. 370–1). A greater honour than any that had yet befallen Rivers was presently in contemplation. His first wife had died during his visit to Compostella. In 1478 a marriage was arranged for him with Margaret, sister of James III of Scotland (Fœdera, xii. 171; Acts of the Parliament of Scotland, ii. 117). Edward bestowed upon him Thorney and three other honours, the Scots parliament voted twenty thousand marks for the marriage, and a safe-conduct was sent to the bride on 22 Aug. 1479 (ib. ii. 120; Fœdera, xii. 97, 162;, ii. 437). But the match was suddenly broken off owing, it is surmised, to the discovery of Edward's intrigues with her brother's subjects.

When the king died (9 April 1483), Rivers was at Ludlow with the young prince; most of his relatives were in London. Edward's nomination of Gloucester as protector meant the end of the Woodville predominance. But if Edward IV supposed that the Woodvilles would quietly accept a subordinate position, he miscalculated. Rivers started from Ludlow with the young king, his own half-brother Richard Grey, and a retinue limited by orders to two thousand, on 24 April, and was at Stony Stratford on the 29th. Learning that Gloucester on his way south from Yorkshire had just reached Northampton, ten miles in his rear, Rivers and Grey rode back to meet him. Gloucester and Buckingham entertained them at supper in apparent cordiality, but next morning took steps to prevent them reaching the king before themselves. Rivers protested, but was charged with attempting ‘to set distance between the king and them,’ put under arrest with Grey, and sent off in safe keeping to Sheriff-Hutton Castle, near York, which had come to Gloucester through