 Anthony
Woodville,
Earl Rivers (1440-1483)
Born: 1440 probably
at Grafton Regis, Northants
Earl Rivers
Died: 25th June 1483 at Pontefract Castle, Yorks West Riding
Anthony, son of Richard Woodville, the 1st Earl
Rivers, and Jacquetta, Duchess of Bedford, was the brother of Edward
IV's Queen.
He first appears on record, in 1460, as fighting on the Lancastrian side during
the War of the Roses, but transferred his allegiance and, after his sister's
marriage, was loaded with wealth and honours by the Yorkist King. He was a
curious product of that bloodstained age, for not only was he a considerable
scholar and author, the earliest patron of Caxton and the translator of the
first book printed in England, but also, in the last twelve years of his life, a
devotee and an ascetic. He was incessantly going upon pilgrimages, and throwing
up secular offices to do so, and, after his execution, a hair shirt was found
next to his skin. On the death of Edward IV, he was at Ludlow with his nephew,
Edward V, and, at once, started for London, intending to confront and probably
to overthrow Richard
of Gloucester who had become Protector; but that astute
Royal Prince was too quick for his rival and, after an apparently friendly
meeting, arrested the Earl and sent him to be beheaded at Pontefract in June
1483.
Edited from Emery Walker's "Historical
Portraits" (1909).
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