EDWARD IV dated the start of his reign from 4 March 1461, the day he was acclaimed by the Londoners and took his seat on the throne in Westminster Hall. But his claim to be king of England received its real confirmation three weeks later, on 29 March, when he led the Yorkists to victory at Towton. This was the largest battle of the Wars of the Roses, and the decisiveness of its outcome forced the acknowledgement of Edward’s title by all but the most committed Lancastrians. There were, however, aspects of the situation which were less comfortable for the new king. The deposition of Henry VI was the first to draw its validity from a trial of military strength. Both previous depositions — of Edward II and Richard II — had rested on a much broader political consensus. A military verdict was necessary in 1461 precisely because there was no general agreement that Henry should go. Edward IV was also the first king to have his predecessor still at large when he assumed the title. Henry VI and his wife had remained at York while Towton was fought and had fled to Scotland on hearing the news of their army’s defeat.
Edward IV thus faced, in a particularly acute form, the need to establish himself as the rightful and effective ruler of England. The early years of his reign saw almost continuous military involvement in the north of England, where the Lancastrians could call on Scottish support, and more sporadic activity in Wales and elsewhere. It was not until the Yorkist victory of Hexham in 1464, followed by the surrender of the Northumbrian castles still held by the Lancastrians, that Edward’s military hold on his realm could be considered entirely secure — a hold recognised by a truce agreed with Scotland in June.
This confrontational approach was not typical of the early years of Edward’s reign. From the outset the new king showed himself consistently willing to take former Lancastrians into favour and make use of their services. Given the narrowness of Edward’s power base such a policy made good practical sense; but it also marked a deliberate attempt to restore political life to normality after the factionalism of the previous decade, and as such was one expression of Edward’s self-identification as the redeemer of an oppressed people. The policy produced some dramatic failures, including Sir Ralph Percy, the Lancastrian commander of Dunstanborough, who was allowed to retain the command when the Yorkists took the castle in 1461, only to open his gates to the Lancastrians in the following year. But in general men were as eager to support the de facto king as he was to have their backing, and it is some measure of Edward’s success that when Henry VI was finally betrayed and captured in July 1465 it was in Lancashire, the hereditary heartland of his dynasty.
Alongside Edward’s search for domestic security went the need to secure recognition for his dynasty in Europe. In the context of the 1460s the most immediate opening for England on to the European stage was the growing tension between France, on the one hand, and the duchies of Brittany and Burgundy on the other, caused by the manifest desire of Louis XI to draw them more firmly under French control. It was by no means obvious where Edward’s own interests lay in this conflict. France was the old enemy, but Charles, count of Charolais, the heir (and already effective ruler) of the duchy of Burgundy, had Lancastrian sympathies, as had Francis II, the duke of Brittany. There were also obvious diplomatic advantages for England in delaying a decision. The need of both sides to acquire English backing, or at least deny it to their opponents, gave Edward a European importance which he would otherwise hardly have merited, and which would inevitably be diminished when he committed himself. Once it had become clear that Edward had chosen to back Burgundy, Charles was able to drive a hard bargain in the negotiations of 1467—8.
The Burgundian alliance was formalised in the marriage of Duke Charles to Edward’s sister Margaret — the only one of the Yorkist royal family to make a ‘dynastic’ marriage. Discussions of possible European brides for Edward and his brother George, duke of Clarence, had been a feature of earlier diplomacy, but nothing had come of them. Edward, indeed, had taken himself out of the running by his marriage, on 1 May 1464, to an English widow, Elizabeth Grey (nee Woodville). The marriage was kept secret until the following autumn, a tacit admission that Edward himself was aware of the awkwardness of the situation.
Edward’s action was undoubtedly an error of judgement, and many commentators have seen the Woodville marriage as the great mistake of his reign. Socially, the king had married beneath himself. Elizabeth’s father was a modest landowner, who had been made Earl Rivers in recognition of his marriage to Jacquetta of Luxemburg, the widow of Henry V’s brother, John, duke of Bedford. In spite of this European dimension, which may have helped to nudge Edward towards a Burgundian alliance, an important diplomatic opportunity had been lost. Edward’s marriage removed a valuable bargaining counter just as English pretensions to European power were coming to fruition. Worse, the king’s delay in admitting the marriage — which left his ambassadors negotiating a French match which had now become impossible — exposed the regime to charges of bungling and bad faith.
The impact of the marriage on domestic politics is less straightforward. Elizabeth brought a large, and largely unmarried, family into the royal circle: two sons by her first husband, as well as five brothers and six sisters. Within eighteen months Edward had found aristocratic husbands for all the queen’s sisters. This series of marriages is unlikely to have been prompted only by the king’s infatuation with his new wife. Edward, with his usual pragmatism, was seizing the opportunity to ally his dynasty more securely with the English nobility — an interpretation strengthened by the fact that he showed much less interest in finding brides for his wife’s male kin. The marriages consolidated links with existing allies of the house of York, such as the Herberts and Bourgchiers, but also forged new alliances with the Staffords and FitzAlans. This is not to say that the advantages were all on the king’s side. By the mid-1460s his dynasty was sufficiently well established for marriage into the extended royal family to confer welcome prestige and influence, and the grants which accompanied several of the marriages should probably be seen not as Edward buying grudging acquiescence, but as the first fruits of an alliance valued by both sides.
Not everyone, however, could be persuaded to view the Woodvilles in so positive a light. The king’s marriage signalled a turning-point in Edward’s relations with his erstwhile ally, Richard Neville, earl of Warwick. To at least one contemporary observer, the earl had been the key player on the duke of York’s behalf in the critical months of 1460. Warwick had then emerged not only as the public voice of Yorkist negotiation but also, it seems, as a powerfully persuasive voice in the political deals going on behind the scenes. It is doubtful whether Edward IV ever relied on his cousin as thoroughly as the duke of York had done in those months, but the regime’s early insecurity meant that any change did not become immediately apparent. With hindsight, Edward’s marriage, and the creation of an extended royal family which followed it, provide the first clear indication that Warwick’s pre-eminence was being eroded.
This may well have been less obvious at the time and the earl’s immediate response was not overtly hostile. He was one of two noblemen, the king’s brother Clarence being the other, who escorted Elizabeth Woodville on her first public appearance as queen; and he was later to stand godfather to her first child. Significantly, Warwick also made a bid for his own niche within the royal family by floating the possibility of a marriage between one of his daughters and Clarence, who was at this point still the king’s heir male. Edward’s response was unwelcoming, and in the course of the next few years relations between the two men cooled as it became increasingly obvious that Warwick’s influence was waning.
The political tensions which this induced are reflected in the stirrings of Lancastrian activity noticeable in the late 1460s. None of this activity amounted to very much, but it suggests that opposition to Edward IV was coming to seem viable again, and also that contemporaries were well aware of where the blame for that lay. It was claimed in both England and France that Warwick had a hand in the unrest, and although this was probably no more than wishful thinking on the part of the conspirators, that in itself is testimony to the importance being attached to the earl’s disaffection.
That disaffection finally erupted into open conflict in 1469. In the early summer there was a major rising in the north-east of England. It was fuelled by a range of local grievances, but the ‘Robin of Redesdale’ who headed it was one of Warwick’s retainers and the unrest served to draw the king north just as the earl’s own schemes came to fruition. On 11 July Clarence married Warwick’s eldest daughter, Isabel, at Calais. On the following day the two men issued a manifesto, couched as a list of popular grievances which they had resolved to bring to the king’s attention ‘for the honour and profit of our said sovereign lord and the common weal of all this his realm’. The complaints were targeted at named associates of the king, including several members of the extended royal family which Edward had created in the mid-1460s. They were accused of forcing up taxes, to make good the financial shortfall their own rapacity had caused, and of maintaining wrongdoers so that the law could not be enforced. The two nobles called for the offenders to be punished and for the king to be better counselled in future.
The tone of the manifesto was in many ways reminiscent of the criticisms which York had levelled against the circle around Henry VI in the 1450s. Like York, the two lords argued that the cure for misgovernment was a greater royal reliance on the advice of the princes of the blood. Like York, too, they found that this was not something which could be imposed on the king; and the events of 1469—70 offer a speeded-up replay of the dilemmas which had confronted Duke Richard between 1450 and 1460.
At first their resort to force seemed to give Clarence and Warwick all they could have wanted. The defeat of the royal army at Edgecote on 26 July was followed by a series of executions which cold-bloodedly removed several of Edward’s closest associates. The king himself fell into the rebels’ hands and was taken by Warwick to the Neville stronghold of Middleham in Wensleydale. But although the rebels had succeeded in destroying one power structure, they found themselves unable to create another to take its place. Their failure was spelt out by an upsurge of violent disorder as men realised that royal authority was in abeyance. At the beginning of September Warwick tacitly admitted defeat by calling on the king’s help to repress a Lancastrian rising in the north — the Nevilles’ own sphere of influence. When Edward then summoned his supporters to accompany him back to London the earl was in no position to resist.
Once back in charge the king seemed willing, as at the beginning of his reign, to trade forgiveness of past disloyalty for future service. He was careful to emphasise that Warwick and Clarence were ‘his best friends’ and that their grievances would be taken seriously. But the two men must have feared that Edward was merely biding his time until he could have his revenge — a reading of the situation which was current among the king’s own servants and which received some confirmation early in 1470 when Edward restored Henry Percy to the earldom of Northumberland.
The last Percy earl had died fighting for Lancaster at Towton, in 1461, and the ensuing forfeiture of his estates had left the way clear for the Neville domination of the north. By restoring the Percies — the obvious counterweights to the Nevilles — Edward was signalling an intention to limit that domination. Both Clarence and Warwick were required to give up their shares of the forfeited Percy estates. The real loser, however, was Warwick’s younger brother John, who had become earl of Northumberland in 1464. As a loyal supporter of Edward IV, John, unlike Warwick and Clarence, was compensated for his losses, but compensated in a way which wrote off his existing interests. His new title of Marquess Montagu represented nominal promotion but carried none of the local authority of the earldom he had lost, while the land he received in exchange lay predominantly in the south-west — confronting him with the task of building a new power base in an area where he had no inherited interests.
There is no reason to believe that Edward IV wanted to diminish John Neville’s power. The land which he was given had formed the core of the Courtenay earldom of Devon, and had most recently been held by the king’s close associate, Humphrey Stafford, whose death after Edgecote had freed it for redistribution. Its size and coherence made it a suitable endowment for a new marquess, and it may also be that Edward had some idea of using Neville as a replacement for Stafford as his representative in the region, just as he used his brother Gloucester to replace another of the rebels’ victims, William Herbert, earl of Pembroke, in Wales. But the episode is symptomatic of Edward’s tendency to manipulate landed interests for his own advantage, apparently unaware of — or unconcerned by — the resentment that might arouse in the people who found themselves unceremoniously shifted. Although Edward was to show himself in other respects a very shrewd man-manager, there was a streak of calculating ruthlessness in him which was to emerge more strongly in the 1470s and which could sometimes, as in this case, backfire.
John Neville did not immediately make his resentment felt, although his brother and Clarence were soon to move back into opposition. In the spring of 1470 the two men utilised unrest in Lincolnshire to stir up renewed rebellion, with the aim (according to the official version of events) of setting Clarence on the throne. This version has been disputed, with a few writers going so far as to claim that the rebels’ aims were exaggerated by Edward to justify an attack on Warwick and Clarence. But if the deposition of Edward IV was not already their intention, it was soon to become so. When the rising collapsed the two men fled to France, where Warwick announced his intention of allying with the exiled Lancastrians to restore Henry VI to the throne. Whatever their position in spring, by summer they had been pushed down the same slippery slope as York: deposition now seemed the only way out of the vicious circle of disloyalty and mistrust.
In September 1470, Warwick and Clarence, with French support, landed in the West Country. This time John Neville backed them, and turned the troops which he had been raising in Edward’s name against the king. Edward, caught unawares by the defection of his former ally, escaped to the Low Countries, leaving Clarence and Warwick to retrieve Henry VI from the Tower and reinstate him as king of England.
Edward’s arrival in Burgundian territory was a considerable embarrassment for his brother-in-law, Duke Charles. As part of the price Warwick had paid for French backing, the new regime in England was committed to support a French invasion of Burgundy. Charles’s initial reaction was to keep Edward at a distance — both literally and figuratively — to avoid giving any cause of offence to the new Anglo-French alliance. It was only when Louis XI declared war on Burgundy in December 1470 that the duke abandoned his neutrality and agreed to support a Yorkist invasion of England.
That invasion took place in March 1471. Edward IV, now reconciled with Clarence, defeated Warwick at the battle of Barnet and then went on to over come a Lancastrian army at Tewkesbury three weeks later. As in 1461, Edward’s claim to the throne had been vindicated by battle. But there was one major difference. Prince Edward of Lancaster died in the rout at Tewkesbury. As long as he had been alive, and beyond Edward IV’s reach, the Yorkists had had every reason to keep the imprisoned Henry VI alive: there were obvious advantages in having the Lancastrian claimant in safe custody. With the prince’s death, that argument lost its force, and Henry VI was killed on the night of Edward IV’s victorious return to London, Yorkist claims that he died of ‘pure displeasure and melancholy’ probably then, as now, commanding little credence.