lieutenant-general in 1702. In 1694 he succeeded his father as 4th Earl Rivers. He served abroad in 1702 under Marlborough, who formed a high opinion of his military capacity and who recommended him for the command of a force for an invasion of France in 1706. The expedition was eventually diverted to Portugal, and Rivers, finding himself superseded before anything was accomplished, returned to England, where Marlborough procured for him a command in the cavalry. The favour shown him by Marlborough did not deter Rivers from paying court to the Tories when it became evident that the Whig ascendancy was waning, and his appointment as constable of the Tower in 1710 on the recommendation of Harley and without Marlborough’s knowledge was the first unmistakable intimation to the Whigs of their impending fall. Rivers now met with marked favour at court, being entrusted with a delicate mission to the elector of Hanover in 1710, which was followed by his appointment in 1711 as master-general of the ordnance, a post hitherto held by Marlborough himself. Swift, who was intimate with him, speaks of him as “an arrant knave”; but the dean may have been disappointed at being unmentioned in Rivers’s will, for he made a fierce comment on the earl’s bequests to his mistresses and his neglect of his friends. In June 1712 Rivers was promoted to the rank of general, and became commander-in-chief in England; he died.a few weeks later, on the 18th of August 1712. He married in 1679 Penelope, daughter of Roger Downes, by whom he had a daughter Elizabeth, who married the 4th earl of Barrymore. He also left several illegitimate children, two of whom were by Anne, countess of Macclesfield. Rivers’s intrigue with Lady Macclesfield was the cause of that lady’s divorce from her husband in 1701. Richard Savage, the poet, claimed identity with Lady Macclesfield’s son by Lord Rivers, but though his story was accepted by Dr Johnson and was very generally believed, the evidence in its support is faulty in several respects. As Rivers left no legitimate son the earldom passed on his death to his cousin, John Savage, grandson of the 2nd earl, and a priest in the Roman Catholic Church, on whose death, about 1735, all the family titles became extinct.
See William Coxe, Memoirs of Marlborough (3 vols., London, 1818); Letters and Despatches of Marlborough, 1702–1712, vol. v., edited by Sir G. Murray (5 vols., London, 1845); Gilbert Burnet, History of his own Time (6 vols., Oxford, 1833); F. W. Wyon, History of Great Britain during the Reign of Queen Anne (2 vols., London, 1876); G. E. C., Complete Peerage, vol. vi. (London, 1895.
RIVERS, RICHARD WOODVILLE, or Wydeville, Earl (d. 1469), was a member of a family of small importance long settled at Grafton in Northamptonshire. His father, Richard Woodville, was a squire to Henry V., and afterwards the trusted servant of John of Bedford, in whose interest he was constable of the Tower during the troubles with Humphrey of Gloucester in 1425. The younger Richard Woodville was knighted by Henry VI. at Leicester in 1426. He served under Bedford in France, and after his master’s death married his widow Jacquetta of Luxemburg. The mésalliance caused
some scandal, but Woodville enjoyed the king’s favour and
continued to serve with honour in subordinate positions in
France. He also distinguished himself at jousts in London
(Chronicles of London, 146, 148). On the 9th of May 1448
Henry VI. created him Baron Rivers. His associations made
him a strong Lancastrian. For some years he was lieutenant
of Calais in Henry’s interests. In 1459, when stationed at
Sandwich to prevent a Yorkist landing, he was surprised by
Sir John Dinham, and taken prisoner with his son Anthony
to the earl of Warwick at Calais. He was, however, released
in time to fight for Henry VI. at Towton. Early in the reign
of Edward IV. Rivers recognized that the Lancastrian cause
was lost and made his peace with the new king. The marriage
of his eldest daughter, Elizabeth, widow of Sir John Grey of
Groby, to Edward on the 1st of May 1464, secured the fortunes
of his family. Rivers was appointed treasurer on the 4th of
March 1466, and a little later created earl. Elizabeth found
great alliances for her younger brothers and sisters, and the Woodville
influence became all-powerful at court. The power of
this new family was very distasteful to the old baronial party,
and especially so to Warwick. Early in 1468 Rivers’s estates
were plundered by Warwick’s partisans, and the open war of
the following year was aimed to destroy the Woodvilles. After
the king’s defeat at Edgecot, Rivers and his second son, John,
were taken prisoners at Chepstow and executed at Kenilworth
on the 12th of August 1469. Rivers had a large family. His
third son, Lionel (d. 1484), was bishop of Salisbury. All his
daughters made great marriages: Catherine, the sixth, was
wife of Henry Stafford, 2nd duke of Buckingham (q.v.).
Bibliography.—The chief contemporary authorities are the Paston Letters, ed. Dr James Gairdner, The Chronicles of London, ed. C. L. Kingsford (1905), and the Chronicles of Commines and Waurin. See also some notices in Calendars of State Papers, Venetian, ed. Rawdon Browne. For modern accounts see Sir James Ramsay’s Lancaster and York (1892), The Political History of England, vol. iv., by Professor C. Oman, and The Complete Peerage, by G. E. C[okayne]. For Earl Anthony’s connexion with Caxton consult William Blades’s Life of Caxton (1861–63). (C. L. K.)
RIVERSIDE, a city of southern California, U.S.A., and the
county-seat of Riverside county, situated on the Santa Ana
river, in the San Bernardino valley. Pop. (1890) 4683; (1900)
7973 (1525 foreign-born); (1910) 15,212. It is served by the
Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fé, the Southern Pacific and the San
Pedro, Los Angeles & Salt Lake railways. The city occupies a
slope (about 800–1000 ft. above sea-level), rising toward the east
is beautifully built and is a winter and health resort. In the
Albert S. White Park there is a notable collection of cacti; and
Huntington Park is high and rocky, is well planted with trees
and has a finely shaded automobile drive. Magnolia Avenue,
bordered with pepper-trees, is 10 m. long and 130 ft. wide; and
Victoria Avenue is similarly parked and lined with semi-tropical
trees. Riverside is the seat of an important (non-reservation)
boarding-school for Indians, Sherman Institute (1903), which in
1908 had 699 student sf Riverside is devoted to the cultivation
of oranges, lemons and other subtropical fruits, and has a large
trade in these products. It is in the centre of the finest orange
district of the state; near Huntington Park is the state citrus
experiment station (1906), with an experimental orchard of
20 acres. The cultivation of navel oranges was first introduced
from Brazil into the United States at Riverside in 1873; the two
original trees, protected by an iron railing, were still standing
in 1909. The domestic water supply is obtained from artesian
wells. In 1870 the site of the present city, then called Jurupa
Rancho, the name of the old Spanish grant, was purchased by
the Southern California Colony Association. The settlement
was chartered in 1883 as a city, with limits including about
56 sq. m. Riverside county was not organized until ten years
later. From 1895 there were no saloons in the city.
RIVES, WILLIAM CABELL (1793–1868), American political leader and diplomat, was born in Nelson county, Virginia, on the 4th of May 1793. He attended Hampden-Sidney and William and Mary colleges, was admitted to the bar, and practised in Nelson county (till 1821) and afterwards in Albemarle county. In politics a Democrat, he served in the state constitutional convention in 1816, in the Virginia House of Delegates in 1817–19 and in 1822, and in the Federal House of Representatives in 1823–29. From 1829 to 1832 he was minister to France; in 1833 he entered the United States Senate, but in the following year resigned. From 1836 to 1845 he again served in the Senate, and in 1849–53 he was again minister to France. In February 1861 he was a delegate to the Peace Conference in Washington; he opposed secession, but was loyal to his state when it seceded, and was one of its representatives in the Confederate Congress during the Civil War. He died at the country estate of Castle Hill, Albemarle county, Virginia, on the 25th of April 1868. Rives was the author of several books, the most important being his Life and Times of James Madison (3 vols., Boston, 1859–68), the completion of which was prevented by his death. He was the father of Alfred Landon Rives (1830–1903), an engineer of some prominence, whose daughter, Amélie Rives (1863– ), became well known as a novelist, her best known book being The
