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 was going to marry his beautiful and young niece Elizabeth of York. In 1485, Henry Tudor invaded England and defeated Richard III at the Battle of Bosworth Field. As King, Henry VII married Elizabeth of York and had the Titulus Regius revoked and all found copies destroyed. Elizabeth Woodville was accorded the title and honours of a queen dowager. Scholars differ about why Dowager Queen Elizabeth spent the last five years of her life living at Bermondsey Abbey, to which she retired on 12 February 1487. Among her modern biographers, David Baldwin believes that Henry VII forced her retreat from