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.
Some years before Henry V succeeded to the throne, Wydeville was found a wife in Joan Bittellesgate, from a minor gentry family of Devon.
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.’
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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,
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.)
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.
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.