Richard Wydeville

Richard Wydeville (also written contemporaneously as Wydville and Woodville) (died 1441) was an English landowner, soldier, diplomat, administrator and politician. His son married an aunt of King Henry VI and they were the parents of the wife of the next king, Edward IV. Origins He was the younger son of John Wydeville (died before 1401), a Northamptonshire landowner with a long career as administrator and politician, and his second wife Isabel, widow of Robert Passelow, of Drayton Parslow. The heir to the family lands was his elder brother from his father's first marriage, Thomas Wydeville (died about 1435), who followed his father as an administrator and politician. From at least 1268, the Wydeville family had been tenants in the village of Grafton Regis, where they occupied the manor house next to the church, and had acquired lands in neighbouring parishes. According to Hasted, it was John Wydeville who acquired the manor of Mote at Maidstone in Kent, which eventually came to Richard. Career By 1411 he was serving in France in the garrison of Guînes, then part of the English territory of the Pale of Calais, under the Duke of Clarence, King Henry V's brother. In 1415 and 1417, he was a captain in Henry Vs forces fighting in France, later coming under the command of another brother of the King, the Duke of Bedford.