Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 62.djvu/421

 and died between 1440 and 1442 (, ii. 166).

Richard Woodville the younger was knighted by Henry VI at Leicester on 19 May 1426 (, ii. 491). It was probably he who commanded a troop in France in 1429 and conveyed the wages of the Duke of Burgundy's forces to Lille in the following year (Fœdera, x. 454). He is said to have been taken prisoner in the attack upon Gerberoi in May 1435, but must have soon obtained his release, as he served under Suffolk in 1435–6 (, p. 64;, ii. 230). The foundation of his fortunes was his surreptitious marriage, apparently in 1436, with Jacquetta of Luxemburg, the young widowed Duchess of Bedford. She had to pay (23 March 1437) a fine of 1,000l. for marrying without the royal license (Rot. Parl. iv. 498;, p. 436). Woodville received a pardon on 24 Oct. following (Fœdera, x. 677). The mésalliance gave great offence to Jacquetta's relatives (, p. 207). The statement afterwards made (ib. p. 455) that Woodville and Jacquetta had two children before marriage is doubtless a mere calumny.

Woodville served under Somerset and Talbot in the attempt to relieve Meaux in 1439 (ib. p. 257; ). His reputation as an accomplished knight caused him to be selected to ‘deliver’ the redoubtable Pedro Vasque de Saavedra, chamberlain of the Duke of Burgundy, who came to London in 1440 to ‘run a course with a sharp spear for his sovereign lady's sake’ (Fœdera, x. 828; Paston Letters, i. 41;, iii. 455). They met in lists at Westminster on 26 Nov., but the king stopped the combat after the third stroke. In June 1441 Woodville once more went to France, in the train of the Duke of York, and helped to relieve Pontoise (, ii. 37). He became a knight banneret and captain of Alençon (25 Sept. 1442). On 9 May (Dugdale gives 29th) 1448 he was raised to the peerage by letters patent as Baron Rivers. His choice of title is puzzling. Dugdale thought he took the name of the old family of Redvers or De Ripariis, earls of Devon; and his addition to his arms of an inescutcheon bearing a griffin segreant, which was part at least of their device, has been held to confirm this hypothesis (Complete Peerage, vi. 371). But the inclusion among the seigniories granted him in support of his new dignity of a barony of Rivers and a casual reference (in a letter of 1475) to his son under the name of Lord Anthony Angre suggest a connection with the barony of Rivers or De Ripariis of Aungre (Ongar) in Essex, which had been for some time in abeyance (ib. v. 398;, ii. 230; Cal. State Papers, Ven. i. 136). No connection with either family seems to have been discovered by genealogists.

Rivers took part in the suppression of Cade's rising in June 1450, and, though the rumour that he was to succeed the murdered Suffolk as constable of England had proved baseless, he was admitted to the order of the Garter (4 Aug.) and the privy council (Paston Letters, i. 128; Ord. Privy Council, vi. 101). The French having now begun the conquest of Aquitaine, Rivers received a commission as seneschal of the province on 18 Oct. 1450, and was to take out a strong force; but the transports remained idle at Plymouth for nine months, and the expedition was abandoned on the news of the fall of Bordeaux (ib. vi. 105, 115;, ii. 146). He seems to have spent the following years at Calais as one of the lieutenants of the Duke of Somerset, who had been appointed its captain in September 1451, and was thus unable to support the duke and the king at the battle of St. Albans (Ord. Privy Council, vi. 276; ;, vi. 46). He was summoned to the great council in January 1458 which arranged a temporary reconciliation between the two parties, the unreality of which was illustrated in the following July by his appointment to inquire into the Earl of Warwick's piratical attack upon the Lübeck salt fleet (Ord. Privy Council, vi. 292; Fœdera, xi. 415). When hostilities were resumed in 1459 and Warwick and the Earl of March were driven out of the country and took refuge at Calais, Rivers was stationed at Sandwich to guard against a landing. He was surprised in his bed, however, one morning shortly after the New Year 1460 by Sir John Dynham with a small party from Calais, and carried across the Channel with his son Anthony (, p. 771). On their arrival at Calais the captives were bitterly ‘rated’ by the Yorkist leaders for having joined in stigmatising them as traitors. Warwick reminded him that his father was but a squire brought up with Henry V, and that he himself had been ‘made by marriage and also made lord,’ and ‘that it was not his part to have such language of lords, being of the King's blood’ (Paston Letters, i. 506).

When and how they escaped from their captors does not appear, but they fought at Towton on the side of King Henry, whom Rivers accompanied in his flight to Newcastle (Cal. State Papers, Ven. i. 105–6). On