Richard Woodville, 3rd Earl Rivers Richard Woodville, 3rd Earl Rivers Richard Woodville, 3rd Earl Rivers (1453 – 6 March 1491) succeeded his brother, Anthony Woodville, as the third Earl Rivers. He was the son of Richard Woodville, 1st Earl Rivers, and Jacquetta of Luxembourg, and was the brother of the English queen Elizabeth Woodville. Richard was born in 1453. During the Readeption of Henry VI in 1470 he might have accommodated himself to the short-lived restoration of the Lancastrian regime, as Richard was pardoned by King Edward IV, the husband of his sister Elizabeth, on his return to power in 1471. Unlike his older brother
Elizabeth Woodville to the throne with any degree of validity. To strengthen his claim and unite the two feuding noble houses, Elizabeth Woodville and Margaret Beaufort agreed that the latter's son should marry the former's eldest daughter, Elizabeth of York, who upon the death of her brothers became the heiress of the House of York. Henry Tudor agreed to this plan and in December 1483 publicly swore an oath to that effect in the cathedral in Rennes, France. A month earlier, an uprising in his favour, led by Buckingham, had been crushed. Richard III's first Parliament of January 1484 stripped Elizabeth of