WOODVILLE, LIONEL, BISHOP OF SALISBURY

(c. 1446–1484)

The third son of Richard WOODVILLE, Earl Rivers, and the brother of Elizabeth WOODVILLE, wife of EDWARD IV, Lionel Woodville (or Wydeville), bishop of Salisbury, involved himself in the political turmoil of 1483 by helping to plan BUCKINGHAM’S REBELLION against RICHARD III. Educated at Oxford in canon (i.e., church) law, Woodville began his ecclesiastical career in 1478 when he was appointed dean of Exeter (i.e., head of a community of clergy residing at Exeter Cathedral). A year later, he was made chancellor of Oxford University, and in 1480 he acquired a prebendary (i.e., an endowment for the support of clerical services) at St. Paul’s Cathedral in LONDON. In 1482, he received the wealthy bishopric of Salisbury.WOODVILLE, LIONEL, BISHOP OF SALISBURY 303 Woodville was in London when Edward IV died in April 1483; the bishop fled into SANCTUARY at Westminster with his sister the queen when they learned of the arrest of their brother Anthony WOODVILLE, earl Rivers, by Richard, duke of Gloucester, as Rivers was escorting his nephew, EDWARDV, to the capital. By June, Woodville had left sanctuary, but in the autumn, after Richard III had usurped the throne and, according to rumor, had ordered the murders of Edward V and his brother, Woodville helped organize a rebellion of Woodville supporters and former servants of Edward IV that aimed at placing Henry Tudor, earl of Richmond (seeHenry VII, King of England), on the throne. When the uprising failed, Woodville fled the country to join Richmond in BRITTANY, where the bishop died in June 1484.

See alsoPlantagenet, Richard, Duke of York²(d. c. 1483); Stafford, Henry, Duke of Buckingham; all other entries underWoodville