WYDEVILLE, Richard

A younger son, Richard had probably been born by 1382, when his father, John, disinherited two of his half-brothers in favour of the male issue of his new wife, Isabel Passelow. A figure of some significance, John Wydeville held public office in several counties and sat as a knight of the shire for his native Northamptonshire in five later 14th-century Parliaments.20 The Commons 1386-1421, iv. 913-15. An esquire of the King’s hall and chamber in his final years,21 E101/408/25, f. 7. Richard formed his connexion with the house of Lancaster early in his career, and in 1460 the Yorkist earl of Warwick would berate his son and heir, Lord Rivers, for assuming the dignity of a peer while ‘his fader was but a squyer and broute vp with Kyng Herry the Vte’.22 Paston Letters ed. Davis, i. 162.

Some years before Henry V succeeded to the throne, Wydeville was found a wife in Joan Bittellesgate, from a minor gentry family of Devon.23 Her father was assessed on an income of £20 p.a. in Devon in 1412: Feudal Aids, vi. 419. Either he or a namesake died shortly bef. 20 Nov. 1441: CFR, xvii. 196. Although she fell heir to the family lands, they did not come into the hands of the Wydevilles until 1478: C1/54/3; Devon RO, Petre (Bonville) mss, 123M/TB472. In January 1408 the couple received a grant of property in Calais worth 20 marks p.a., notwithstanding an existing annuity of 80 marks that the King had previously assigned Richard from duchy of Lancaster estates.24 CPR, 1408-13, p. 43; 1413-16, p. 44. Another grant to the Wydevilles in the following June, of an annuity of £40 from the prince of Wales’s manor of Kirton-in-Lindsey, Lincolnshire, confirms Richard’s association with the future Henry V, and it is likely that Wydeville was among those individuals whom the prince retained for life in this period. In August 1408 Henry made a further grant to the couple of an annuity of £20 for their lives from the fee farm of Drogheda, and in the following month Wydeville took up office as joint collector of the customs in Ireland.25 CPR, 1413-16, pp. 53, 195, 336.

While Wydeville maintained his connexions with his native county, his fortunes lay in serving the Crown. His father’s death in 1401 had seen the bulk of the family’s extensive estates settled on his half-brother, Thomas, and a military career was the natural route for him to take. By 1411 he was in the retinue of the King’s second son, Thomas of Lancaster, at Guînes, although his grant of office in Ireland might indicate an earlier connexion with the latter, who visited the lordship as the King’s lieutenant there in 1408. The accession of Henry V in March 1413 saw the confirmation of Wydeville’s grants of the previous reign, with that of the property in Calais explicitly intended to ensure ‘that Richard be not retained by anyone else.’26 CPR, 1413-16, p. 44. By November 1414 he was serving as deputy to Thomas Fitzalan, earl of Arundel, warden of the Cinque Ports. It was in this capacity that in May 1415 he was commissioned to muster the contingents assembling at Dover in preparation for the invasion of France. It is not clear if Wydeville served alongside Arundel at the siege of Harfleur (where the latter succumbed to dysentery) or the King at the battle of Agincourt, but he certainly took part in the campaigns from 1417 to reduce Normandy. The first evidence of his employment in the affairs of the English in that duchy is a commission of June 1418 for the mustering of the men of his retinue. In the following December he was himself appointed to a like commission, to muster the soldiers in the retinue contributed by the prior of the Irish Hospitallers. In February 1419 the King granted him the lands of Preaulx and Dangu in the bailiwicks of Rouen and Gisors, and those in Nauville lately held by the Norman knight, Sir Peter de Bourbon. Through these grants, Wydeville emerged as one of the leading figures in the permanent English establishment in the duchy.27 DKR, xli. 711, 715, 717, 718, 719, 720, 745; R.A. Massey, ‘Land Settlement in Lancastrian Normandy’, in Property and Politics. ed. Pollard, 81. Confirming his importance there was his appointment as bailli of Gisors, Vernon, Les Andelys and Lyons-la-Forêt in November 1419. In February 1420, moreover, he became bailli of Chaumont and was empowered to hear pleas usually heard before the bailli of Senlis, which lordship had recently refused fealty to the English King. In April the same year, Wydeville was among those commissioned to treat with a French delegation for the surrender of Melun castle. More importantly still, in January 1421 he was made seneschal of Normandy and, in a separate grant, given responsibility for the proper administration of the King’s forests and waterways there. By this time he was also captain of the castle at Gisors, although he had relinquished that post by November 1421.28 DKR, xli. 806; xlii. 345, 360, 368, 398; E101/49/37; 50/7; E159/207, brevia Easter rots. 6, 7d. By the latter part of Henry V’s reign, he had also entered the service of Richard Beauchamp, earl of Warwick, one of the leading English commanders in France. When servants of the household of the King’s brother, Humphrey, duke of Gloucester, were preparing to distribute gowns on behalf of their master in late January 1419 the list of intended recipients included Wydeville, then Warwick’s steward.29 Westminster Abbey muns. 12161. The duration of Wydeville’s stewardship and the circumstances in which he had gained it are unknown, and within a decade he would find himself at odds with Beauchamp. Following the death of Henry V, Wydeville continued to pursue his career in France. By March 1423 he was captain of Caen, a position he retained throughout the 1420s, and a member of the council of the young King’s uncle and Regent of France, John, duke of Bedford. The duke’s chamberlain by September 1423, he fought under that lord at the battle of Verneuil in August 1424, and immediately after that great English victory he and a retinue of 32 men prepared for further service in Maine.30 Add. 21156, ff. 19, 23; Fr. mss, 25767/67; A.E. Curry, ‘Military Organization in Lancastrian Normandy’ (Council for National Academic Awards Ph.D. thesis, 1985), app. pp. clvi, clxix.

A few months later, however, Wydeville was back in England where his connexion with Bedford drew him into a major political power struggle. On 26 Feb. 1425, amidst anti-alien riots and general unrest in the capital, the Council assigned custody of the Tower of London to him, with a garrison of 30 men-at-arms and 50 archers.31 PPC, iii. 167. The resulting controversy arose from the fact that Wydeville received the appointment during the absence of the Protector of England, Humphrey, duke of Gloucester, then absent trying to recover the inheritance of his wife, Jacqueline of Hainault, from the duke of Brabant. Yet with Bedford also absent in Normandy, the appointment was both pragmatic and political: the previous constable, John Holand, earl of Huntingdon, was still languishing in France, having been captured at the battle of Baugé. The grant to Wydeville was almost certainly instigated by the chancellor, Henry Beaufort, bishop of Winchester, with Bedford’s approval, and it set the stage for a confrontation between Beaufort and Duke Humphrey when the latter returned to London in April. Trouble began when Gloucester ordered Wydeville’s lieutenant, Robert Scott*, to deliver to him Friar John Randolph, who had been imprisoned in the Tower for his association with Queen Joan in 1419 on charges of witchcraft. Scott took the matter to Wydeville, who enraged Duke Humphrey by refusing him access to the Tower. This sparked a major crisis in the relationship between Beaufort and Gloucester. On 30 Oct. Henry Chichele, archbishop of Canterbury, and the earl of Stafford brokered an uneasy compromise between the two sides, and on the following day Wydeville was discharged of his responsibilities at the Tower. He was protected from retaliation for his actions by the arrival of his patron, Bedford, in England at the end of that year.32 Griffiths, 74-76.

During the first session of the Parliament held at Leicester in February and March 1426 the Lords addressed the quarrel between Beaufort and Gloucester. At the same time, probably with Bedford’s assistance, Wydeville secured letters of privy seal to the Exchequer discharging him of any debts and process against him arising from his custody of the Tower.33 E159/202, brevia Hil. rot. 14d, Easter rot. 1; E403/675, m. 7. The Parliament was also noteworthy for Bedford’s knighting of the young King on 19 May. At the same ceremony, the King himself dubbed 24 new knights, among them Wydeville’s own son, Richard, and his son-in-law, John Passhele. For the son of an esquire to be knighted alongside the scions of the houses of Plantagenet, Mowbray, Percy and de Vere was an indication of the high esteem in which Wydeville was held by the Regent.34 Griffiths, 80-81.

The confidence that Bedford placed in Wydeville is clear from the latter’s inclusion on an embassy to Burgundy in the summer of 1426. It appears that the purpose of the mission was to improve Anglo-Burgundian relations, strained by the rift between Duke Philip of Burgundy and his cousin Jacqueline of Hainault, Gloucester’s wife. Escorted by 41 horsemen, he and his fellow ambassadors, Sir William Oldhall*, Master John Estcourt and Nicholas Harley, left London for Flanders on 1 Aug. Before their departure, the Exchequer paid both Oldhall and Wydeville £50 and Estcourt and Harley 50 marks each towards their wages and expenses. While it is possible that Wydeville played a secondary role to Oldhall, his daily allowance of 13s. 4d., compared with the 20s. paid to the latter, reflected his non-knightly status rather than his relative importance to the mission. Away for just over two months, the ambassadors reported back to the Council on the following 10 Oct. In February 1427 it granted a petition they had submitted for arrears of their wages, and in the same month the Exchequer made assignment of the £7 owed to Wydeville.35 G.L. Harriss, Cardinal Beaufort, 158; E404/42/299; 43/188; E101/322/14; PPC, iii. 201, 244; E403/675, m. 9; 765, m. 4; E159/203, brevia Hil. rot. 21.

It appears that Wydeville did not accompany his master when Bedford returned to France in March 1427, since he took out letters of protection on the following 28 June, prior to departing England as the new lieutenant of Calais.36 DKR, xlviii. 250. He took up office under the captain of the town, his erstwhile patron the earl of Warwick, and his associates in its administration included Richard Buckland*, another servant of the duke of Bedford whom he had helped to purchase the Northamptonshire manor of Edgcote in 1424. Once at Calais, however, he came into conflict with Warwick; an indication, perhaps, of tensions arising from the apparent appointment of officers of the garrison over the head of its captain. In 1428, when the Council relieved Warwick of his command at Calais and appointed Bedford in his place, it was Wydeville who bore the letters commanding the earl’s officers there to deliver the town and marches to the duke. As is shown by a letter that Wydeville, Buckland and another of the duke’s servants, Lewis John*, wrote to Bedford on the following 28 June, Warwick clearly took offence at the manner of his removal. Declaring that the earl ‘sheweth himself alwaye hevy lord’ to them, ‘surmetting upon thayme that they were causers’ of his dismissal, they asked that Bedford and the Council should send letters to Warwick absolving them from blame. Bedford assured them of his good lordship and intervened on their behalf with the earl, but this was not the end of the matter. Soon Buckland was concerned to hear that Beauchamp regarded him as the ‘first fynder, chief sterer, and grettest causer’ of his dismissal. Furthermore, there were rumours that Wydeville had encouraged this assumption by showing Warwick a communication he had received from John and Buckland ‘against his lordship’ in the matter of the captaincy. Buckland wrote reproachfully to Wydeville in response, declaring that ‘I can not remembre me, that ever I wrote to yow any thing that shulde cause my saide lorde of Warrewyk to be thus displesed towardes my personne’.37 J.T. Driver, ‘Richard Buckland’, Northants. Past and Present, ix. 316; Letters Margaret of Anjou (Cam. Soc. lxxxvi), 34-43; CP25(1)/292/66/84.

As it happened, this affair did not end Wydeville’s friendship with Buckland or involvement in the affairs of Calais, and they were associated with each other in the early months of 1430, when he and Buckland fulfilled a diplomatic mission of major importance. As a prelude to Henry VI’s coronation expedition to France, Duke Philip of Burgundy had agreed to put 1,500 men in the field at English expense and the pair travelled to Lille to deliver to him 12,500 marks in gold; both were rewarded 100 marks each for their trouble.38 PPC, iv. 31-33; E403/693, mm. 12, 20; E404/46/345; Harriss, 195. In the following year Wydeville and two other servants of the duke of Bedford, Robert Whittingham I* and Robert Darcy I*, took on the task of settling a dispute between John Reynwell*, the mayor of the Calais staple, and some of his fellow staplers.39 PPC, iv. 85.

By this stage of his career, Wydeville had acquired interests in Kent, with which he had already enjoyed a connexion for well over a decade. Having held office in that county in Henry V’s reign, he had made a good match for his elder daughter, Elizabeth, to John Passhele in February 1424. A landowner in Kent and Sussex and active in the French wars like his father-in-law, Passhele was also the stepson of another soldier, William Swinburne†, who had left 20 marks each towards the marriage of Wydeville’s daughters in his will.40 The Commons 1386-1421, iv. 551. In 1425 Wydeville acted alongside Bedford as a feoffee of property at Lee, Bankhurst and Detling in Kent, and in the later 1420s he took on the same role, with regard to two other manors in the county. He and his wife acquired their own property in Kent in 1428, when they purchased the manor of La Mote near Maidstone from Archbishop Chichele.41 CP25(1)/1/114/298/105; 302/206; M. Mercer, ‘Kent and National Politics’, (London Univ. Ph.D. thesis, 1995), 16. More important, however, for Wydeville’s integration within Kentish political society was the marriage the following year between his younger daughter, Joan, and William Haute* of Bishopsbourne. Made on 18 July 1429, the agreement for the match settled on Joan jointure in lands to the value of 100 marks a year, as well as other properties, to be selected by Wydeville and his advisors from the ‘best and the suerest’ from the Haute estates, worth £40 p.a. for her dower. Furthermore, Haute promised to ‘make discontinue and defeet’ an entail in favour of his own daughter by his first wife, ‘as lafully and in als strangge wyse as the councell of the foresaid Richard and William can best devyse’. For his part, Wydeville agreed to give Joan and her new husband 400 marks as her marriage portion, to provide Joan’s chamber with appropriate furnishings and to pay the expenses of the wedding ceremony, which was to be conducted at Calais. The match may have been engineered by the captain of Rysbank tower in the Calais marches and owner of Leeds castle in Kent, Sir John Stuard. Stuard was an old comrade-in-arms of Wydeville in whose retinue Haute had recently agreed to serve.42 Excerpta Historica ed. Bentley, 249-50; Mercer, 14. Shortly after his marriage, Haute joined Wydeville and the lawyer Thomas Bodulgate*, as feoffees for Sir John Passhele’s lands in Kent, Sussex and Oxfordshire. The purpose of these arrangements is unclear, but they gave Wydeville control over three Sussex manors, another in Smeeth, Kent, and a moiety of a manor at Chipping Norton in Oxfordshire for the next six years.43 Centre for Kentish Studies, Maidstone, Scott mss, U1115/T19/1.

Despite the marriages of his daughters and his acquisition of property in Kent, Wydeville was not immediately involved in the affairs of the county thereafter. He remained in Calais as Bedford’s lieutenant until he returned to England in late 1432 and continued to acquire interests elsewhere, including a farm of lands at Chesham, Buckinghamshire, that he and the Londoner, William Estfield*, obtained from the Exchequer in the summer of the same year.44 CFR, xvi. 100, 153, 202. In February 1433 Wydeville was appointed to a commission of oyer and terminer in Kent but his election as a knight of the shire in the following June is somewhat surprising. The primary purpose of the Parliament of 1433 was to discuss the war in France, and the duke of Bedford returned from Normandy to answer criticisms, fuelled by his brother, over his conduct as Regent. It is unlikely that Bedford, who had little property or following in Kent, influenced the election of Wydeville, or that the latter could have gained his seat with the help of the duke of Gloucester, to whom the other knight of the shire, John Pirie*, almost certainly owed his return.

In short, the marriage alliance with the Hautes and the other associations he had already formed with Kent might best explain Wydeville’s election to the Commons, and it may be remarked that William Haute attested his return. There is no evidence for Wydeville’s activities at Parliament, although as a duty arising from his Membership as a knight of the shire he administered in Kent the taking of the oath against maintenance agreed before the dissolution. During the second session he was pricked as sheriff of Kent and while sheriff he attended meetings of the great council held in the spring of 1434. Very much on the agenda was the duke of Gloucester’s criticism of Bedford’s conduct of the war, and both Wydeville and his son-in-law Haute subscribed their names to the King’s directive that the matter should go no further. Later, in February 1435, he was allowed £65 for his reasonable costs in discharging his shrievalty, notwithstanding the £30 he had been amerced for allowing six prisoners to escape from Maidstone gaol.45 C219/14/4; CCR, 1429-35, p. 271; PPC, iv. 213; E159/211, brevia Hil. rot. 6d, recorda Trin. rot. 2.

Meanwhile, Wydeville had resumed his military career. In June 1434 he had been appointed to two commissions to muster soldiers assembled at Sandwich and destined for Normandy in the army led by the earl of Arundel, and on the 20th of the same month, a commission was issued for the muster at Calais of a retinue of 19 men-at-arms and 60 archers of his own, an expedition on which he was to be accompanied by his son, Sir Richard.46 E403/715, mm. 8, 11. His departure may have been delayed, for in the first weeks of July he was appointed to a commission to inquire into concealments and instructed to take further musters at Dover. By the beginning of 1435 he was once again serving as Bedford’s lieutenant at Calais, although precisely when he replaced Sir William Oldhall, whose relations with the garrison had been compromised by its mutiny over wages in the summer of 1433, is not known. In February 1435 Wydeville served on an embassy appointed to discuss matters of trade with the duke of Burgundy and the Four Members of Flanders, a mission on which he was accompanied by his son-in-law Haute.47 DKR, xlviii. 303, 304.

On the following 14 Sept., the duke of Bedford died at Rouen. By then the situation in France had reached a crisis, prompting the English delegates at the Congress of Arras to leave it on hearing the news of a separate peace negotiated between the duke of Burgundy and Charles VII of France. Calais was now in imminent danger of a Burgundian assault and on 1 Oct. Wydeville was appointed the King’s lieutenant there, with instructions to govern and defend the town and marches until a suitable captain could be appointed. Seven days later, he was placed on a commission to settle the arrears of wages due to Bedford’s retinue. He immediately set about improving the defences of Calais, beginning work on a brick bulwark to house artillery by the Milkgate.48 Ibid. 306, CPR, 1429-36, p. 489; The Brut (EETS, cxxxvi), ii. 573; Griffiths, 200-1. On 29 Oct. the duke of Gloucester agreed to serve as captain of the town and marches. Initially, Wydeville remained in Calais as his lieutenant – presumably a somewhat uneasy relationship given his past dealings with that lord – and on 17 Dec. he was appointed to another sensitive diplomatic mission, meeting the representatives of the Hanse to discuss the redress of their grievances. By the middle of March 1436, however, Sir John Radcliffe*, one of Gloucester’s closest servants, had replaced him as lieutenant and he returned to England.49 DKR, xlviii. 308; Griffiths, 202.

Back at home, Wydeville remained closely involved in the preparations for the defence of Calais, and in April the Council despatched him to Winchelsea to inform Edmund Beaufort, earl of Mortain, that his army, originally destined for Anjou and Maine, was to be diverted to the town.50 E403/723, m. 1. On 19 May Wydeville took out letters of protection in preparation for his own return across the Channel, having indented to serve in the retinue of William de la Pole, earl of Suffolk, which had likewise been diverted (in this case from Normandy) to form part of the relief army for Calais. His own retinue consisted of 30 archers and he was again accompanied by his son-in-law, Haute. The army, under the overall command of the duke of Gloucester, arrived in early August, just after Mortain and the Calais garrison had defeated the Burgundians, although Wydeville crossed the Channel before that date, for on 18 July he had been among those commissioned to muster contingents of the army when it disembarked.51 CPR, 1429-36, p. 476; DKR, xlviii. 312; E403/723, m. 13.

Wydeville did not remain in Calais long once the army had been disbanded. Although he returned briefly with his old friend Sir John Stuard and the teller of the Exchequer, William Baron*, in the late summer or early autumn of 1436 to take musters of the garrison,52 E403/723, m. 15. his appointment to the commission of the peace in Kent in October that year marked his return to an active role in local affairs. In the following January he became constable of the royal castle at Rochester, and during the course of the following months he was placed on several ad hoc commissions. In the same period he was also involved in the private affairs of the Kentish gentry.53 CCR, 1435-41, p. 260, 262.

Despite his concerns in Kent and overseas, Wydeville had retained connexions with his home county of Northamptonshire, where his interests were augmented by the will his half-brother, Thomas, who died in 1436. In the will, made two years earlier, Thomas assigned his capital manor of Grafton Regis and the hundred of Cleyley on Richard and his male heirs, while bequeathing his purchased estates to his heirs-general, his sister, Elizabeth, and the descendants of his other sister, Agnes. He also directed his feoffees to buy for the same heirs-general further lands with a capital value of 200 marks. Such arrangements appear to betray the tension that could arise between the sanctity of entails and practical considerations of family and finance, since it is very likely that Grafton was entailed to the heirs-general and that the compensation was a salve to his conscience and an investment in his soul’s salvation. (This, at any rate, was the interpretation adopted in a Chancery case by Thomas Wydeville’s great-niece, Agnes, and her husband, Thomas Wylde, against the surviving feoffees in the early 1450s.)54 G. Baker, Northants. ii. 162; C1/19/330-1. As a mark of the new status he acquired in Northamptonshire following the death of his half-brother, Richard Wydeville was pricked as sheriff of the county in November 1437, and in March 1439 he was appointed one of the commissioners to raise an extraordinary loan there.

It was nevertheless in Kent that Richard lived out his remaining days. In May 1440, perhaps realizing he had not long to live, he took the precaution of having a writ directing the bailiff or receiver of the manor of Kirton-in-Lindsey to pay the £40 annuity due to him and his wife in survivorship enrolled in both the Chancery and the Exchequer.55 E159/216, brevia Trin. rot. 3; CCR, 1435-41, p. 314. He drew up his last will on 29 Nov. 1441 and probably died before the year was out.56 Reg. Chichele, ii. 608; CP, xi. 19. The will was an uncomplicated document, and it appears that he had already settled his manors in Northamptonshire and the Mote in Kent on his son. At his death he probably enjoyed an income from lands and fees of about £170 p.a.57 E159/212, recorda Hil. rot. 14 (iv). In the will Wydeville asked for his goods and chattels to be delivered to his wife Joan for the performance of his will and settlement of his debts, and ordered the sale of his manor of Shadford in Bedfordshire for the same purpose. He appointed her and his son, Sir Richard, as his executors, for which role he also named William Haute, the abbot of St. Mary Graces by the Tower of London and Robert Barbour of Maidstone. Joan outlived him by at least a few years, for in August 1446 the sheriffs of Drogheda were ordered to pay her the arrears of her annuity from the fee farm of that town.58 CCR, 1441-7, p. 340.

The career of Wydeville’s son and heir, Sir Richard, deserves some notice. Like his father, he served first the duke of Bedford and later Henry VI, and he fell prisoner to the French in Normandy in May 1435. He had regained his liberty by the time of Bedford’s death in the following September and controversially married the duke’s widow, Jacquetta of Luxembourg, not long afterwards. Created Lord Rivers in May 1448, he was a stalwart of the Lancastrian cause during the 1450s, serving as a King’s councillor, seneschal of Aquitaine and lieutenant of Calais under the duke of Somerset.59 CP, xi. 20-22; Patronage, Pedigree and Power, 62-64; Oxf. DNB, ‘Woodville, Richard, first Earl Rivers’. Seized by the Yorkists at Sandwich in early 1460 but subsequently released, he was again captured and imprisoned after fighting for Henry VI at the battle of Towton. Yet he soon reconciled himself to the new regime, gaining a pardon and participating in Edward IV’s Scottish campaign of 1462. Rivers’s fortunes had turned full circle by May 1464 when the King married his daughter, Elizabeth, and two years later he was created Earl Rivers. Yet the rewards and patronage he and his family won through the royal marriage also sowed the seeds of his downfall, causing as they did great resentment among more established members of the nobility. When the duke of Clarence and earl of Warwick rose in rebellion against the King in 1469, they identified Rivers and his son, Sir John Wydeville, as being among those of ‘myschevous rule opinion and assent’ who had subverted the King and the ‘common weal’, and both Wydevilles were executed after falling into the rebels’ hands.60 J. Warkworth, Chron. Reign Edw. IV (Cam. Soc. x), 7, 46; C.D. Ross, Edw. IV, 132.