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To commemorate the Yorkists’ epic victory over the Lancastrians at Tewkesbury, London held a huge celebration to welcome King Edward and his men back into the city. The king made his triumphant entry on 21 May 1471 with his brothers Richard and George leading the procession through the city. In their train, King Edward’s enemy and now prisoner, Margaret of Anjou, was put on full display as a sort of trophy to cap off Edward’s victory. That same evening, King Edward and his brothers took a bold step they deemed necessary in order to secure Edward’s new reign. They knew that keeping King Henry VI alive in the Tower would only encourage more Lancastrian rebellions, so they decided to do something about it. On the very night of Edward’s re-entry into London, old King Henry died in the Tower. The official report from Edward’s government was that the feeble old king died of natural causes, but that is highly suspect.1 The York brothers had the motive and the means to snuff out the last Lancastrian king, and they knew they had to distinguish all rivals to the throne or Edward’s reign would never be secure.
King Edward’s rule was infinitely steadier after the death of King Henry VI and soon everything else fell into place. His reinstatement as king of England caused Calais to surrender to his authority, and even Wales was now under relative control.2 Edward’s new man in Wales, Sir William Herbert, became the new earl of Pembroke after forcefully taking Pembroke Castle from Henry VI’s half-brother, Jasper Tudor. Jasper feared Edward would put them to death like he had Henry VI, so Jasper fled with his 12-year old nephew, Henry Tudor, and sought exile in Brittany, France.
After sixteen years of fighting between the Houses of York and Lancaster, it finally seemed as if the war was over and all the leading Lancastrians flushed out of the kingdom. England had itself a glorious, young, warrior king who was handsome, charming, and chivalrous. His throne was secure as there were no remaining Lancastrians with a strong enough royal bloodline to challenge Edward’s rule. The difficulty now for Edward would come from within his own house. It seems there were certain family members who were not content with the rewards they received for helping Edward win back his crown. The result was infighting between the three York brothers and the Woodvilles which would ultimately lead to the downfall of Edward IV, the death of his two young sons, and the crowning of King Richard III.
A bitter quarrel developed between Edward’s two brothers not long after they were back in London. The main cause of the strife was the distribution of lands and titles from their turncoat cousin Warwick.3 Since George was married to Warwick’s eldest daughter Isabel, he expected to get the bulk of Warwick’s estates. Richard threw a major wrench into George’s plan when in June 1471 he asked King Edward permission to marry Warwick’s other daughter, Anne Neville, and split George’s inheritance. Although he certainly had a lot to gain in the marriage, there are indications that Richard and Anne genuinely loved each other. They had grown up together at Middleham Castle and had been childhood sweethearts, so the marriage wasn’t entirely for Richard’s financial benefit.4
George threw an enormous tantrum when he learned of Richard’s marriage proposal. Edward ordered George to back down and accept Richard’s upcoming marriage, but George did just the opposite. He took physical custody of Anne and hid her away at a friend’s house so Richard couldn’t marry her.5 When Richard returned from fighting the Scots in the North, he had to search for her desperately before he found out that his brother George hid her. Once he did find her, he smuggled her away and kept her safely in sanctuary until they could be married in the spring of 1472. The newlyweds set up their primary household at Middleham Castle, their childhood home. The following year, Anne gave birth to the couple’s first and only child, a son named Edward in honour of his uncle, the king.
George deeply resented both brothers for infringing upon the Neville estates and he decided to take action. By the spring of 1473, he was plotting a new rebellion with the staunch Lancastrian earl of Oxford, and King Louis XI of France.6 Throughout the summer George waited for the right moment to take revenge on his brother Richard. In September 1473, Richard led his army south at the king’s request, leaving northern England vulnerable. George took the opportunity to stir up another rebellion with the northerners. George’s ally, the earl of Oxford, raised his banner calling men to muster but King Edward’s men quickly encircled and captured him. Although George had never got so far as to raise his own army, King Edward found evidence that he was involved in Oxford’s attempt at a rebellion. As usual, Edward was extremely lenient with George and did not punish him at all for this recent bout of misdoings.7 Once again, King Edward found himself in the role of peacemaker, trying to reconcile his two brothers. Soon Edward’s ‘great enterprise’ would bring the three of them together in harmony, at least for a brief time.
In 1475, all of King Edward’s attention would be focused on preparing to invade France. He had promised to pick up the reins from Henry V and press England’s claim to the French throne, or at the very least win back some of the French territories that were lost during the reign of Henry VI. Such a huge expedition required a lot of financial support and parliament readily made several large grants of money to Edward. The king also coerced the wealthiest nobles and citizens loan him money which he termed ‘benevolences’.8 Next, Edward needed a huge army for his expedition and for that his brothers and noblemen raised as many as 12,000 men.9 Although impressive, it wasn’t nearly enough to make an impression in France so Edward allied with Burgundy to launch a joint invasion.
On 4 July 1475, Edward’s huge fleet sailed across the English Channel and landed in Calais, one of the few places in France that the English still commanded. It was there that the duke of Burgundy was to rendezvous with Edward and join their forces into one gigantic army. Charles was late, not arriving until 14 July, and even then he did not bring an army but only a small retinue of his personal bodyguards. Charles explained to Edward that his army was engaged hundreds of kilometres away at Lorraine and could not march to join Edward’s army. This was a huge disappointment for Edward and seemed to kill all resolve he had to fight the French.10
The king was only 33 years old at the time but was growing increasingly indifferent and gluttonous in his middle age. After spending the last fifteen years fighting, Edward was now focused on enjoying the spoils of his wealth, including lots of drinking and whoring with his closest mates, Hastings and Woodville.11 To avoid fighting King Louis XI alone, Edward proposed a peace treaty which the French readily accepted. In the Treaty of Amiens, King Louis promised to pay King Edward 50,000 crowns per year. In return, Edward promised to leave France and marry his eldest child, Elizabeth of York, to Louis’ son, the dauphin.12
Edward and his huge fleet returned to England in September 1475 with virtually nothing accomplished. It was an utter disappointment. Richard was completely against the treaty and urged his brother to do what he promised and expend the money he had raised to fight the French, win back lands, and bring glory to England.13 But Edward did not have the will to fight. This was certainly a breaking point in the relationship of Richard and Edward. Richard was supremely disappointed in his brother Edward, who was not living up to the shining, glorious young king he had once been. Being an open opponent of the king’s treaty with France earned Richard much praise and esteem from the people back in England, especially in the north where Richard was the preeminent noble. Disgusted by his brother’s actions in France, Richard left Edward’s court and retired to Middleham Castle for nearly two years.14 He didn’t return to London until the spring of 1477 when the king sent him an urgent summons to help deal with George who was stirring up trouble again.
The unravelling of George, Duke of Clarence, began with the death of his wife Isabel on 12 December 1476, after giving birth to their first living son. Days later, the baby boy also died. Whether George mourned the loss of his wife and son is not recorded, but judging by his actions, he wasn’t too torn up about it. In fact, just weeks after the deaths George put forth a marriage proposal to Mary of Burgundy, heiress to Duke Charles, who had died just three weeks after Isabel. George saw this as a way to finally get revenge on Richard because it would make George richer and more powerful than his brother. Edward, however, quashed the idea right away. Instead, Edward put forth the queen’s brother, Anthony Woodville, Earl Rivers, as a candidate for Duchess Mary’s future husband. George then put forward a proposed match between himself and a Scottish princess to which Edward again refused.15 The king did not want his back-stabbing brother to have more power than he already did because George was a dangerous man. He had proved it many times before and it was likely that he would betray Edward again if he got the chance.
George found the entire situation with the blocked marriages and the Woodville interference intolerable so he made his resentment felt all around court. He refused to eat or drink at Edward’s court and openly accused the king of trying to poison him.16 He started spreading rumours that Edward was a bastard and had no right to the throne, then attempted to stoke uprisings in East Anglia.
In April 1477, George decided to take the law in his own hands by arresting and executing one of the queen’s maids for poisoning his wife, when it was most likely that she died innocently from childbirth complications, not by Woodville malice. Edward retaliated by hanging a member of George’s household for casting horoscopes predicting the king’s death. When George found out what Edward had done, he burst into the king’s council meeting and accused Edward of using witchcraft and poison to bring about his downfall.17 George then reasserted that Edward was a bastard and should not be sitting on the English throne. He left the king’s presence and called his men to arms, managing to stir some small uprisings in Cambridgeshire and Huntingdonshire.
At this point Edward finally had enough of George and his egotistical behaviour. In June 1477, Edward summoned George to appear before him at Westminster. When George arrived, he was accused by Edward of ‘subverting the laws of the realm and presuming to take justice into his own hands’.18 George was arrested and placed in the Tower of London. Edward convened parliament in January 1478 to try the case against George. On 7 February 1478, the sentence of death was announced. Even though Richard had his own trouble with George, he pleaded with Edward to spare their brother’s life.19 It took eleven days before King Edward could bring himself to order the execution, and even then, George didn’t suffer the public execution of a traitor. Instead, he was privately executed. As the story goes, George was allowed to choose the manner of his death, and being a great lover of drink, he chose to be drowned in a butt of malmsey wine.20
This shocking turn of events caused Richard to retreat north again, away from politics and the intrigues of court. He had always been loyal to his brother Edward but he found the execution of their brother George to be intolerable. Richard blamed the Woodvilles for George’s death and hated them for corrupting his beloved brother Edward.21 Richard stayed away from Edward’s court for two years, returning to London only briefly in the summer of 1480 to be appointed Lieutenant-General in the North and to receive authorisation to raise men for the defence of the Scottish borderlands. Richard spent the vast majority of 1480–82 fighting the Scots. Edward was supposed to lead an army into Scotland but pawned off the responsibility on Richard so he could continue his pleasure-loving, gluttonous ways. Alone, Richard achieved victory against the Scots on 24 August 1482, when Berwick Castle to fell to him.
After Richard’s great victory over the Scots, he made a trip to London over Christmas 1482 to receive thanks from the king and to attend a meeting of parliament in January. Richard was shocked at the state of court of which he had been absent for the past four years. Edward had continued his downward spiral into lasciviousness and the Woodvilles were in complete control of government. Richard saw what he perceived as a monumental waste as his brother could have been a great and glorious king. He was now an overweight, apathetic, former shell of himself.22 After parliament ended, a disappointed Richard rode north again to the safe, comfortable surroundings of Middleham Castle. Unbeknownst to him, that was the last time he was to see his brother Edward alive.23