Edward I V of England

Edward IV (28 April 1442 � 9 April 1483) was the King of England from 4 March 1461 until 3 October 1470,[1][2] and again from 11 April 1471... more

by John Straton

Title

Edward I V of England

Artist

John Straton

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Photograph

Description

Edward IV (28 April 1442 � 9 April 1483) was the King of England from 4 March 1461 until 3 October 1470,[1][2] and again from 11 April 1471 until his death in 1483. He was the first Yorkist King of England.[3] The first half of his rule was marred by the violence associated with the Wars of the Roses, but he overcame the Lancastrian challenge to the throne at Tewkesbury in 1471 to reign in peace until his sudden death. Before becoming king, he was 4th Duke of York,[4] 7th Earl of March, 5th Earl of Cambridge and 9th Earl of Ulster. He was also the 65th Knight of the Order of the Golden Fleece.
Edward of York was born at Rouen in France, the second son of Richard, 3rd Duke of York (who had a strong genealogical claim to the throne of England[5]), and Cecily Neville.[6] He was the eldest of the four sons who survived to adulthood.[7] His younger brother Edmund, Earl of Rutland, died along with his father at Wakefield on 30 December 1460.[8]

With the support of his cousin Richard Neville, 16th Earl of Warwick ("The Kingmaker"), Edward's father, Duke of York routed the Lancastrians at the First Battle of St. Albans on 22 May 1455.[9] At this battle, several prominent Lancastrians including Edmund, Duke of Somerset, Henry Percy and Lord of Clifford were killed.[10] Additionally, Somerset's son Henry Beaufort, Earl of Dorset, Thomas, Earl of Devon and Buckingham were all wounded. This was the first battle of the conflict that became known as the Wars of the Roses.

The Duke of York's assertion of his claim to the crown in 1460 was the key escalation of the Wars of the Roses. When the Duke of York was killed during the Battle of Wakefield on 30 December 1460,[8] his claim to the throne of England did not die with him. Instead it passed to Edward.

Edward and Warwick were able to defeat the Lancastrians in a succession of battles�at Northampton on 7 July 1460,[11] at Mortimer's Cross on 2�3 February 1461 and at Towton on 29 March 1461[12] At the Battle of Northampton, the Yorkish forces captured King Henry VI and held him as a prisoner.[13]

With King Henry VI in captivity, his queen, Margaret of Anjou led a Lancastrian army north into the Midlands to fight against uprisings there. Meanwhile in the south Edward's and Warwick's Yorkish forces united and occupied London on 26 February 1461.[14] Although the War of the Roses would continue until the Battle of Tewkesbury on 4 May 1471, control of the capital at London with its departments of state and its financial power and symbolic prestige, gave the Yorkist forces under Edward a powerful advantage in the war against the Lancastrians. On 17 February 1461, Lancastrian forces attacked the Yorkish forces once again at St. Albans. In the ensuing battle, Henry VI was freed from captivity by the Lancastrians.[14] However, even though St. Albans is only 22 miles from London, the Lancastrians did not retake the capital city. Thus they forfeited to the Yorkists, in the eyes of the public, all their remaining legitimacy to the throne of England.

Meanwhile in London, Warwick had Edward declared King in March 1461.[14] Edward strengthened his claim to the throne by virtually wiping out the Lancastrian army over the course of 1461. Defeat of the Lancastrians and the decimation of their army at the Battle of Hexham on 15 May 1464 spelled the end of the Lancastrian resistance to the Yorks.[15] King Henry VI escaped from the battle field and disappeared into the remote Pennine Mountains in northern England, and was hidden for an entire year by devoted Lancastrians.[15] After spending a year in hiding Henry VI was finally caught and imprisoned in the Tower of London.

Even at the age of nineteen, Edward exhibited remarkable military acumen. He also had a notable physique and was described as handsome and affable. His height is estimated at 6 ft 4 in (1.93 m), making him the tallest among all English, Scottish and British monarchs to date.[16]

Overthrow[edit]
The Earl of Warwick, believing that he could continue to rule England through Edward IV, pressed him to enter into a marital alliance with a major European power. Indeed, Warwick had already made preliminary arrangements with King Louis XI of France for Edward to marry Louis' daughter, Anne of France.[17] Edward then alienated Warwick by secretly marrying Elizabeth Woodville, the widow of a Lancastrian sympathiser, on 1 May 1464.[18]

Edward's marriage to Elizabeth Woodville has been criticised as an impulsive action which did not add anything to the security of England or the York dynasty.[19] Christine Carpenter argues against the idea that it had any political motivation, and that Edward's creation of a strong Yorkist nobility meant he did not need the relatively "lightweight connections" of the Woodvilles,[20] whereas Wilkinson, writing in 1964, described the marriage as both a "love match, and also a cold and calculated political move".[21] J. R. Lander suggested in 1980 that the King was merely "infatuated," echoing P. M. Kendall's view that he was acting out of lust.[22]

Elizabeth's mother was Jacquetta of Luxembourg, widow of Henry VI's uncle, John of Lancaster, Duke of Bedford, but her father, Richard Woodville, 1st Earl Rivers, was a newly created baron. When Elizabeth's marriage to Edward IV became known in October 1464, Elizabeth's twelve unmarried siblings became very desirable matrimonial catches. Katherine Woodville married Henry Stafford, grandson and heir to the Duke of Buckingham; and Anne Woodville became the wife of William, Viscount Bourchier, eldest son and heir of the Earl of Essex; and Eleanor Woodville married Anthony Grey, son and heir of the Earl of Kent.[23]

However, the new found prestige of the Woodville family created animosity among the nobility of England, but nowhere did it create as much animosity as with King Edward's closest advisor�Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick. Warwick resented the influence the Woodville family suddenly obtained over the King.[24] Over time, as Warwick became progressively more alienated from King Edward, his intentions turned toward treason. In the autumn of 1467, Warwick withdrew from the court to his Yorkshire estates.[25] With the aid of Edward's disaffected younger brother George, Duke of Clarence, Warwick led an army against Edward IV.[26]

The main part of the king's army (without Edward) was defeated at the Battle of Edgecote Moor on 26 July 1469,[27] and Edward was subsequently captured at Olney. Warwick then attempted to rule in Edward's name, but the nobility, many of whom owed their preferments to the king, were restive, and with the emergence of a local rebellion in the north, it became increasingly clear that Warwick was unable to rule through the King.[28] He was forced to release Edward on 10 September 1469.[29]

At this point Edward did not seek to destroy either Warwick or Clarence but instead sought reconciliation.[30] Nevertheless, when a private feud in Lincolnshire broke out between Sir Thomas Burgh of Gainesville in Lincolnshire and Lord Welles also of Lincolnshire, a few months later in March 1470, Warwick and Clarence chose this opportunity to rebel against Edward IV again.[31] The Lincolnshire Rebellion against King Edward IV was defeated and Warwick was forced to flee to France on 1 May 1470.[32] There, he made an alliance with the former Lancastrian Queen--Margaret of Anjou.

Louis XI, who had just come to the throne of France with the death of his father, King Charles VII on 25 July 1461[33] had been looking for a way to trouble Edward IV by reinvigorating the Lancastrian claim to the throne of England.[26] In an accord between Louis XI, Queen Margaret and himself, Warwick agreed to restore Henry VI in return for French support for a military invasion of England. Warwick's invasion fleet set sail from France for England on 9 September 1470.[34] This time, Edward IV was forced to flee to Flanders when he learned that Warwick's brother, John Neville, 1st Marquess of Montagu, had also switched to the Lancastrian side, making Edward's military position untenable.
Henry VI was briefly restored to the throne in 1470 in an event known as the Readeption of Henry VI, and Edward took refuge in Flanders, part of Burgundy, accompanied by his younger brother Richard, Duke of Gloucester. Since the marriage of Edward IV's sister, Margaret of York, to Charles, Duke of Burgundy on 3 July 1468, the Duke of Burgundy had been Edward's brother-in-law. Despite the fact that Charles was initially unwilling to help Edward, the French declared war on Burgundy. This prompted Charles to give his aid to Edward, and from Burgundy he raised an army to win back his kingdom.

When Edward returned to England with a relatively small force, he avoided capture. The city of York only opened its gates to him after he promised that he had just come to reclaim his dukedom, as Henry Bolingbroke had done seventy years earlier. The first to join him were Sir James Harrington[36] and William Parr, who brought 600 men-at-arms to Edward at Doncaster,[37] and as he marched southwards he began to gather support, including Clarence (who had realised that his fortunes would be better off as brother to a king than under Henry VI). Edward entered London unopposed, where he took Henry VI prisoner. Edward and his brothers then defeated Warwick at the Battle of Barnet, and with Warwick dead he eliminated the remaining Lancastrian resistance at the Battle of Tewkesbury in 1471. The Lancastrian heir, Edward of Westminster, Prince of Wales, was killed on the battlefield. A few days later, on the night that Edward re-entered London, Henry VI died. One contemporary chronicle claimed that his death was due to "melancholy," but it is widely suspected that Edward ordered Henry's murder to remove the Lancastrian opposition completely.

Edward's two younger brothers George, Duke of Clarence, and Richard, Duke of Gloucester (later King Richard III of England), were married to Isabel Neville and Anne Neville. They were both daughters of Warwick by Anne Beauchamp and rival heirs to the considerable inheritance of their still-living mother, leading to a dispute between the brothers. In 1478, George was eventually found guilty of plotting against Edward, imprisoned in the Tower of London and privately executed on 18 February 1478: according to a long standing tradition he was "drowned in a butt of Malmsey wine".

Later reign and death[edit]
Edward did not face any further rebellions after his restoration, as the Lancastrian line had virtually been extinguished, and the only rival left was Henry Tudor, who was living in exile.

In 1475, Edward declared war on France, landing at Calais in June. However, the failure of his ally Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, to provide any significant military assistance led him to undertake negotiations with the French. He came to terms with the Treaty of Picquigny, which provided him with an immediate payment of 75,000 crowns and a yearly pension of 50,000 crowns, thus allowing him to 'recoup his finances.'[38] He also backed an attempt by Alexander Stewart, 1st Duke of Albany, brother of King James III of Scotland, to take the Scottish throne in 1482. Gloucester led an invasion of Scotland that resulted in the capture of Edinburgh and the king of Scots himself, but Albany reneged on his agreement with Edward. Gloucester decided to withdraw from his position of strength in Edinburgh. However, Gloucester did recover Berwick-upon-Tweed.

Edward's health began to fail, and he became subject to an increasing number of ailments. He fell fatally ill at Easter 1483, but lingered on long enough to add some codicils to his will, the most important being his naming of his brother Richard, Duke of Gloucester, as Protector after his death. He died on 9 April 1483 and was buried in St George's Chapel, Windsor Castle. He was succeeded by his twelve-year-old son, Edward V of England (who was never crowned) and then by his brother, Richard.

It is not known what actually caused Edward's death. Pneumonia and typhoid have both been conjectured, as well as poison. Some attributed his death to an unhealthy lifestyle, as he had become stout and inactive in the years before his death.

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December 27th, 2014