Richard de Redvers

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Richard de Redvers (died 8 September 1107) was a Norman nobleman, of Reviers in Normandy, who accompanied William the Conqueror to England in 1066. He was held by some to have been the Earl of Devon. He assumed the name of Richard de Ripariis, later anglicized to Redvers or, less commonly, Rivers.

The precise origins of Richard de Redvers are unclear. He was possibly the son of Baldwin FitzGilbert, Sheriff of Devonshire and brother of Richard FitzGilbert who established the de Clare family, but it is also possible that the two families were entirely separate.

Richard FitzGilbert, first Earl of Devon, is often confused with his father's kinsman, Richard FitzGilbert de Clare. He was one of the earliest Norman settlers of England, and although he did not, at first, receive as large a share of the plundered property of the Saxons as that which fell to the lot of his brother Baldwin de Brion, he held six manors as sub-tenant to the latter; five under the Earl of Mortaigne, uterine brother^[1] to King William; two, under William the Porter and Ralph de Pomeroy respectively; besides the Manor of Levaton in that part of the parish of Ipplepen (now Woodland), which was his own demesne in the year 1087.

It is more likely however that Richard de Redvers was connected to the Lords of Vernon, and most probably the son of William, Lord of Vernon.

Richard de Redvers was one of the principal supporters of Henry I in his initial struggle against his brother Robert Curthose for control of the English throne. Henry bestowed on him the towns of Tiverton, Honiton (1100) and the honour of Plympton, together with a yearly pension of one-third of the revenue of that county. The Lordship of the Isle of Wight was also bestowed on him in 1102, which remained in his lineal descendance through a series of De Redvers and De Vernons until the reign of King Edward I.

[edit] Family

In the cartulary of Carisbrooke he is called the nephew of William Fitzosbern, 1st Earl of Hereford, and the grant of the Isle of Wight to him after the death of Roger de Breteuil, certainly gives some support to the assertion. William Fitzosbern had at least one other daughter besides the unfortunate Countess of Norfolk, of whom we learn no more than that she became the mother of Raynold de Cracci. Her daughter may have been the wife of Richard de Redvers, which would justify the expression "nepos," used indifferently for nephew or grandson.

According to other sources, his wife was Lady Adeliza, a daughter of William Peverel of Nottingham and his wife Adelina of Lancaster.

Richard de Redvers had children: