Anthony and his father, Sir Richard Woodville (afterward 1st Earl Rivers), fought for the Lancastrians against the Yorkists in the early years of the Wars of the Roses (1455–85). After the Lancastrian army was decisively defeated in 1461, the Woodvilles supported the newly crowned Edward IV. The marriage of Anthony's sister Elizabeth to Edward IV in 1464 made the Woodvilles preeminent at court.

During the next several years Anthony Woodville earned an international reputation for his bravery in tournaments. He succeeded to his father's earldom when the elder Woodville was killed by rebels under Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick, in 1469. Warwick drove Edward and Rivers into exile in October 1470, and, after their return to England in March 1471, Rivers helped defeat Warwick at the Battle of Barnet (April 14). In addition, he held London while Edward destroyed a Lancastrian army at Tewkesbury, Gloucestershire, on May 4. Rivers then became increasingly involved with literary and spiritual concerns. His translation of a French moralistic work as Dictes and Sayenges of the Phylosophers (1477) was the first dated book printed in England. Several months after Edward's death (April 1483), Richard, Duke of Gloucester (later King Richard III), the regent for young King Edward V, had Rivers executed for alleged treasonable activities. (Upon the death of his brother and heir in 1491, the peerage of Rivers became extinct.)