Edward IV

King of England (r. 1461-1470, 1471-1483)

• Born: April 28, 1442
• Birthplace: Rouen, Normandy, France
• Died: April 9, 1483
• Place of death: Westminster Palace, England

Utilizing instruments of government inherited from the Lancastrian kings, as well as molding pragmatic methods that anticipated those of the Tudors, Edward of York restored both the authority and prestige of the English monarchy following the dangers and drift of the reigns of the Lancastrian kings. He was aided in this success by the end of the Hundred Years’ War, which had become both a distraction and a financial and military disaster for the English monarchy.

Early Life

Nothing is known of the childhood of Edward IV. He was the son of Richard, duke of York, and of Cecily Neville, daughter of Ralph, earl of Westmoreland. Edward was not born to kingship; he won it at the battles of Mortimer’s Cross and Towton Field (both fought in 1461). Although he was proclaimed king between the fighting of the two battles, domestic conflict with the deposed Henry VI and his supporters, foreign complications with France and Burgundy, and the whirling allegiance of Richard Neville, earl of Warwick (the “kingmaker”) prevented the full and unchallenged exercise of Edward’s royal power until 1471, by which time Henry VI and his son as well as Warwick lay dead.

England, exhausted by 116 years of intermittent and ultimately unsuccessful war in France in the Hundred Years’ War, and by the Wars of the Roses, which kept parts of England in turmoil from 1455 until 1471, was ready for a period of tranquillity guaranteed by abundant governance and wise foreign policy. Edward IV provided both.

The young king was handsome, magnificently dressed and groomed, affable, open in his relations with all but those who posed a threat to his rule (such as his brother George, duke of Clarence, who was executed in 1478, allegedly drowned in a barrel of that sweet Mediterranean wine now known as Madeira). Sir Thomas More in his work History of King Richard III (1543) described Edward as

a goodly parsonage, and very Princely to behold, of hearte couragious, politique in counsaille, in aduersitie nothynge abashed, in prosperitie, rather ioyfulle than prowde, in peace iuste and mercifull, in warre, sharpe and fyerce, in the fields, bolde and hardye, and natheless no farther than wysedom woulde, aduenturous.

More also noted Edward’s inclination to “fleshlye wantonnesse” and to overindulgence in the pleasures of the table, which led to corpulence in his early middle age.

Life’s Work

Edward’s rule did not really begin until after the bootless attempt by Warwick to restore Henry VI to his lost crown ended at the Battle of Barnet in 1471; Warwick died in the battle, and the captured Henry VI died shortly thereafter Edward IV could hardly tolerate the continued existence of his predecessor. The last Lancastrian king could not be permitted to live; he, alive, would have been a threat to the rule of Edward IV, a focus for the loyalties of those elements of the polity who opposed the policies and rule of the first Yorkist king. Thus, Henry paid the ultimate price for royal failure in fifteenth century England in 1472. Barnet marked the last attempt of overmighty nobles to control or to replace the king; the Wars of the Roses were now over.

From 1471 to 1483, Edward ruled England with vigor and efficiency, providing the businesslike government usually associated with the rule of the Tudors. This period of his reign was facilitated not only by the death of old rivals, but by the eclipse of the Nevilles and of the Woodvilles, the family of his queen, and also by the settlement of the lingering diplomatic problems with France in 1475. As of 1471, then, Edward was unencumbered by extraneous considerations: Domestic conflict was ended and foreign peace achieved, Parliament and council no longer enjoyed public approbation, and attainder (often more important as a threat than as actuality) had undermined the position of the greater nobility. For the first time since the death of Edward III in 1377, the king could concentrate on being king.

Edward IV relied heavily on his administrative officials in the conduct of his government, since council and Parliament had declined in public esteem, although the precedent for the council acting as the Tudor Court of Star Chamber falls to this reign. The Lancastrian parliaments had not inspired general confidence; owing to the lack of effective rule by kings who were successively moribund, absent, or sickly, parliaments had fallen under the control of magnates and their affinities; lacking any real counterbalance to his authority, Edward governed his country with little need to regard institutional opposition as a reality.

Like the Tudors who were to succeed his brother Richard III in 1485, Edward was astute in favoring, and in winning the support of, the middle classes. This is why monarchy is regarded as a progressive force in the English Middle Ages; the first Yorkist king allied himself and his policies with the new class rising to a political influence that, under the Tudors, was to be commensurate with their economic importance. Edward and his immediate successors knew where money was to be found, and he cultivated the people who had it. The commoners were worth cultivating: They were the source of funds and of attainders against those viewed by the king as dangerous. Yet there were few parliaments convened in Edward’s reign, a reflection of the fact that his own personal financial resources were sufficient to maintain a large portion of his needs and of the ending of the French wars. Parliament was not an independent body in the fifteenth century; it was controlled by either the king or the magnates, and so it was to remain until the turbulent seventeenth century. As well, Edward utilized fiscal means derived from sources not granted from Parliament, especially the “benevolences,” which were a form of compulsory loan. Edward was not the first English king to find extraparliamentary sources of funding the expenses of government; the precedents go at least as far back as the reign of King Edward I (r. 1272-1307).

Edward was a king who pursued pragmatic policies; there is evidence neither of system nor of theory in his rule. He did much to tidy up the disorder of the Lancastrian period (1399-1461), both in foreign and in domestic policies. The continental involvements of England were ended, and the internal disruption so characteristic of the earlier fifteenth century livery and maintenance, private war, brigandage beyond the power of the government to control was effectively stifled by the end of Edward IV’s reign. Edward’s tools of suppression came to be known as courts of high commission (in this reign, the precursor of the Court of Star Chamber) and special judicial commissions sent out into the shires to hear and determine (oyer and terminer) cases of criminal conduct. In addition, the reign of Edward IV witnessed yet another innovation usually attributed to the Tudors: Although not yet so called, the Council of Wales and that of the North were in being before the end of Edward’s custody of his office. These local councils acted with the king’s power in areas distant from London, where endemic local strife made prompt official response necessary.

The cause of Edward’s death is not precisely known. Whatever the precise etiology, it is likely that he died of some complication probably left undefined lest the delicate be offended of what More, quoted above, called an excess of “fleshly wantonness.”

Significance

While to place kings and reigns into semantic boxes is poor history, Edward IV may be described both as the last medieval and the first modern king of England. He did much to centralize royal authority, to place his rule on a sound financial basis, and to restore its standing both in domestic and in foreign eyes. By the end of his reign, there was no effective domestic challenge remaining to his rule in England. He also brought the culture of his court into conformity with contemporaneous developments in the courts of the Continent, patronizing Humanists, and William Caxton.

Bibliography

Chrimes, S. B. Lancastrians, Yorkists, and Henry VII. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1964. A standard history of late fifteenth century England, stressing dynastic politics.

Chrimes, S. B. “The Reign of Edward IV.” In Fifteenth-Century England, 1399-1509: Studies in Politics and Society, edited by S. B. Chrimes, C. D. Ross, and R. A. Griffiths. New York: Harper and Row, 1972. An excellent brief introduction to the reign.

Clive, Mary. This Sun of York: A Biography of Edward IV. London: Macmillan, 1973. This engaging text represents popular history at its best. Includes illustrations, genealogical table, maps, bibliographic references, and index.

Dockray, Keith, ed. Edward IV: A Sourcebook. Stroud, Gloucestershire, England: Sutton, 1999. Useful compendium of primary historical sources relating to Edward’s life and reign. Includes bibliographic references and index.

Falkus, Gila. The Life and Times of Edward IV. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1981. Another popular and well-written work of popular history. Well illustrated.

Hughes, Jonathan. Arthurian Myths and Alchemy: The Kingship of Edward IV. Stroud, Gloucestershire, England: Sutton, 2002. Study of Edward’s reigns and the rhetoric and propaganda that facilitated his acquisition and exercise of power. Looks at the portrayal of Edward as the second Arthur who would reunify and heal England and at the influence of alchemy on his propaganda and chosen symbols. Also analyzes the brief embrace of Roman imperial culture when Arthurian myth seemed ineffective. Includes illustrations, bibliographic references, and index.

Kendall, Paul Murray. Warwick the Kingmaker. New York: W. W. Norton, 1957. The best biography of Richard Neville, who dominated both the person and the policy of Edward IV in the first nine years of his reign.

Lander, J. R. Crown and Nobility, 1450-1509. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1976.

Lander, J. R. Government and Community: England, 1450-1509. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1980. These two books constitute the best narrative and analytical portrayal of English politics and society in the Yorkist period.

Ross, Charles. Edward IV. Rev. ed. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1997. The major biography, although not definitive. Ross finds Edward culpable for the evils that followed his reign in that of his youngest brother, Richard III. Ross’s evaluation of the positive policies of Edward are more critical than is that of the present article.

Scofield, Cora. The Life and Times of Edward the Fourth. 2 vols. London: Frank Cass, 1923. Reprint. New York: Octagon Books, 1967. A thorough work that remains a standard narrative history of the reign of Edward IV.

Storey, R. L. The End of the House of Lancaster. London: Barrie and Rockliffe, 1966. The dynastic politics of the fifteenth century are presented in a social context.