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, 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. 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. In 1423 he was Chamberlain to the Duke of Bedford, Treasurer of Normandy, and Captain of the city of Caen. followed in 1426 by being one of a mission sent to negotiate with Philip III, Duke of Burgundy. in the parish of Ottery St Mary in Devon, and his wife Joan Beauchamp. She is a great great-grandmother of Katherine Parr, the sixth, and final, wife of King Henry VIII.

His widow died some time after 17 July 1448, when she had property in Ireland, and was probably buried at Maidstone.