Richard Edgcumbe (died 1489)

Sir Richard Edgcumbe or Edgecombe (ca. 1443 – 8 September 1489) was an English courtier and politician.

He was the son of Piers Edgecumbe, of Cotehele, , Cornwall, and Elizabeth Holland. From 1467 to 1468, he was the Member of Parliament for . He was a Lancastrian and had his lands confiscated in 1471 by the Yorkist Edward IV, although these were returned to him the next year.

Angered by Richard of Gloucester’s usurpation of the throne in 1483 and the rumours of the murder of Edward V and his brother in the Tower of London, Edgcumbe joined the rebellion led by Henry Stafford, 2nd Duke of Buckingham to dethrone the Yorkist Richard III and replace him with the Lancastrian Henry Tudor. When the rebellion collapsed and Henry’s ships fled, Edgcumbe’s arrest was ordered and a troop of soldiers commanded by the notoriously brutal Sir Henry Trenowth of Bodrugan were sent to arrest him. He hid himself on the wooded hillside of his Tamarside home, Cotehele, and when his hiding-place was discovered, threw his pursuers off the scent by filling his cap with stones and throwing it into the river, fooling his pursuers into thinking he had drowned and thus escaping certain death. After his escape he fled to Brittany and joined Henry Tudor with whom he returned to England in 1485. He was knighted later that year after the Battle of Bosworth, where Henry Tudor and the Lancastrians were victorious.

He held important offices in the new reign: MP for Tavistock once again in 1485, Privy Councillor, Chamberlain of the Exchequer, Comptroller of the Royal Household, High Sheriff of Devon, 1487 and Ambassador to Scotland.

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