by Charles Ross
As for the Woodvilles, Ross concluded that their influence on English political life was ‘malign’. Not only was Edward’s marriage to Elizabeth Woodville a major blunder and a shock to contemporaries, but the patronage extended to her large family created a royal faction that courted much unpopularity. Neither the queen nor her talented brother Anthony, Earl Rivers, has received major study; but Hicks’s examination of the Woodvilles as a political family underscores Ross’s verdict.21 A measure of dissent has been voiced: the king’s marriage did at least present Edward with a ready-made, grown-up family which, if deployed carefully, might have broadened his support among the nobility, and D. E. Lowe judged the aggrandisement of the Woodvilles ‘a deliberate and shrewd move of royal policy’.22 Moreover, Elizabeth’s religious and cultural interests make possible a more admiring verdict than Ross allowed when viewing her as queen and politician.23
Several studies of the nobility have been completed since 1974, either of noble fortunes across the generations or of the environment in which individuals moved and safeguarded their interests and estates. The young Henry, duke of Buckingham played a muted role in Edward’s reign, though Carole Rawcliffe’s study of the Stafford family highlights the suspicion in which his royal blood was held by Edward IV, and the grudge that Henry bore against the royal family as he grew up – factors which doubtless contributed to his actions in 1483.24 The Hollands, relatives of the Lancastrians, have been studied by Michael Stansfield. The care with which Edward supervised the last of the brood, Henry Holland, duke of Exeter, married him to his sister and, after he parted from her, kept him under restraint – until he was lost overboard when the king’s expedition returned from France in 1475 – demonstrates the king’s determination to control the nobility and subdue potential troublemakers.25 The Bourgchiers, who were Edward’s kinsmen, have been studied by Linda Clark: Henry Bourgchier was given the earldom of Essex by Edward IV in 1461.26 Three of the ‘new nobility’ patronised by Edward at the outset of his reign – William Hastings, created Lord Hastings, William Herbert of Raglan, created Lord Herbert and, in 1468, earl of Pembroke, and John Howard, made a baron in 1470, have also been studied since Ross wrote.27 As a result, historians, can now evaluate Ross’s conclusion that Edward strove to contain the disputes of the nobility and was able to remove Clarence in 1478 without arousing open hostility from them.
As Ross averred, England may have paid a high price for the advancement of the Woodvilles and Gloucester, with disastrous consequences in 1483 when noble position, royal patronage and extraordinary provincial power combined with soaring ambition. The Woodville position in Wales and the Marches, following the revival of the prince’s council in 1471, has been revealed in detail by D. E. Lowe.28 Wales, the Marches and the border shires became a Woodville fiefdom in a pragmatic act of regional delegation of royal government. Ross may have exaggerated the sinister significance of Earl Rivers’s powers and, in particular, the novelty of the military authority that was confirmed to him six weeks before King Edward died. Nevertheless, by 1483 the Woodvilles were all-powerful in Wales and the west, where their authority may have been resented by Buckingham and mistrusted by Gloucester.
Ross seems also to have exaggerated Edward’s responsibility for the creation of Gloucester’s unique position in the north. Gloucester created his own northern affinity and extended his power beyond what the king authorised: political independence and opportunities in Scotland may have mattered more to Richard than obligations to his brother and king. In the lordship of Middleham and the city of York, and in the king’s duchy of Lancaster estates in the north, he acquired land and rights, and developed ties of loyalty with gentry and citizens alike; although Ross consulted the York House Books, their publication in a new, full edition reveals Gloucester’s activities with greater clarity.29 Ross also mistook the scope of the king’s most beneficent grant to Richard, in 1483: it did not include Westmorland, and palatine powers were confined to lands which his brother might gain in southern Scotland and did not extend to his English estates too. It was Richard who made his position in the north a danger to the realm, albeit on foundations provided by Edward. Pollard goes so far as to say that Edward had no choice but to acquiesce in his brother’s aggrandisement, as the price of controlling the north and protecting the Anglo-Scottish border.
With these adjustments made, Ross’s conclusion is compelling: Edward created two powerful, regional affinities in the hands of ambitious individuals close to the king. Whether or not these individuals were openly suspicious of, or hostile to, one another is an open question, but Edward had inadvertently created a situation fraught with danger by the time he died – and one which Gloucester was the first to exploit.30
Gloucester’s apologists put great store not simply by his loyalty to Edward IV but also by his command of the English forces in Scotland in the last years of the reign. Ross’s account of the war has been praised by English and Scottish historians alike, though his judgement of Edward’s diplomacy is controversial.31 The king’s entanglement in Scotland seems another misjudgement, with war distracting the king from more pressing continental affairs; yet once in the Lowlands, the army’s retreat from Edinburgh seemed to Ross a lost opportunity, an example of Edward’s indecision and even his weakening grip in his last months. Others believe that Ross over-stated his case and underestimated the significance of Anglo-Scottish relations at this juncture: the recovery of Berwick was important to his reputation and the realm’s defence. A Gloucester who cherished independent power for himself in the north is likely to have appreciated these facts and he accordingly prosecuted the campaign with vigour. Once again, Edward may have had little choice – or inclination – but to support Richard’s ambitions. As for the withdrawal from Edinburgh, this appears less of a puzzle (in Ross’s judgement) when the king’s confrontation with France and the costs of war and the garrisoning of Berwick are taken into account.32
Anglo-Scottish relations were intimately connected with continental diplomacy, notably towards France, Burgundy and Brittany. ‘The marriage of the century’ in 1468 between Edward IV’s sister and Charles the Bold, duke of Burgundy, and the multi-faceted significance of the Anglo-Burgundian connection in the 1460s and 1470s, continue to attract attention, adding detail to the picture painted by Ross in Edward IV.33 There was a hardening of England’s attitude to the Hanseatic League and even a rash of privateering clashes. Edward’s negotiations for a peace with the Hanse, which provided naval assistance for his return from exile in 1471, led to the treaty of Utrecht in 1474. This treaty was an essential preliminary to his invasion of France in 1475 and may therefore be judged one of Edward’s successes; in T. H. Lloyd’s estimation, Ross ‘authoritatively challenges the usual view of a sell-out by Edward IV’.34
Edward’s motives in taking an army to France in 1475 continue to remain uncertain. Ross believed that his lengthy diplomatic, financial and military preparations suggest serious war plans: had it not been for Charles the Bold’s ambitions and preoccupation elsewhere, the English army might have posed as serious a military threat as Lous XI feared. J. R. Lander remains unconvinced: for him the war was defensive on Edward’s part, designed to pre-empt French interference in England. Likewise, whereas Ross blamed Edward for failing to support Duke Charles’s heiress, Mary of Burgundy, against French aggression in 1477, Lander is inclined to interpret his caution as a fear of what Louis might do if England intervened.35
Ross sustained his critical view of Edward’s continental relations right down to the end of the reign, when his diplomatic plans were unravelling, thereby endangering England’s security. In addition to war with Scotland, he noted deteriorating relations with the Hanse and the unwelcome reconciliation between Mary of Burgundy’s husband, Maximilian of Austria, and Louis XI, leaving Edward diplomatically isolated. Lander’s charge that such an assessment lacks perspective carries some weight: what were the benefits of the Scottish campaign, and should Edward be blamed for events beyond his control?36
French and Burgundian cultural influence on Yorkist England was great, and Ross alluded to it in his chapter on Edward I V’s court. He was inclined to moderate Edward’s reputation as a patron of the arts and of the printing press established at Westminster in 1477. The flurry of quincentenary studies of William Caxton confirmed that Edward had a minor role in patronising the new technology and commissioning printed books. On the other hand. Ross emphasised the Netherlandish influences on his court, especially on the magnificence and splendour that created an impressive stage for his public and private activities.37 They may date from before his exile: visits of high-ranking Burgundians to England, the tournaments associated with them, and the marriage of the king’s sister in 1468 provided a context. The surviving engraving of the king and the original of the famous portrait in The Royal Collection, which Ross used on the dust-jacket of his book – and which may date from c. 1471–5 – are believed to have been executed in England, though Netherlandish in inspiration or technique. Their purpose may have been propagandist rather than decorative, to mark Edward’s restoration to the throne in 1471. Netherlandish influence on his building enterprises was also detected by Ross, and his works at Windsor, Eltham and Nottingham have been documented recently by Simon Thurley.38
Considerable attention has been given to the books collected by Edward, the ‘first king to commission books in any quantity’, most of them from abroad, especially Burgundy. His illuminated manuscripts of historical and literary works were commissioned for formal use and reflect the courtly taste of the age.39 Ross’s suggestion that they are the literary and artistic dimension of his luxurious court, where they were designed to be read and admired, rather than a reflection of the king’s personal interests, commends itself to recent commentators.40
This flair for artistic display, with its counterpart in propagandist writings, figures less prominently in Edward IV than in Ross’s subsequent paper on ‘Rumour, Propaganda and the Wars of the Roses’. Yorkist uses of propaganda have been identified in studies of genealogy, prophecy and myth, and in analyses of the propagandist accounts of Edward IV’s return from exile (or ‘Arrivall’) which were circulated abroad as well as in England, to proclaim his victory and deter his enemies.41
The arts of propaganda and modes of communication (a littlestudied subject) bear on the effectiveness of royal government in fifteenth-century England.42 Ross concentrated on the relationship between the crown and the nobility, and the king in his household, court and council.43 But throughout his career, he was alive to regional, provincial dimensions of royal rule and noble society, not least in Yorkshire and the north. Since 1974, more attention has been given to the king’s government and the enforcement of its will in the shires of England, and to relations between the crown and the nobility, gentry and townsfolk. It is a shift of emphasis of which Ross approved, and it underscores his awareness of the links between the king’s household and court and provincial power structures.44 On parliament, the most formal of these links, A. R. Myers stressed the recovery of the king’s initiative in legislation under Edward IV more heavily than Ross did.45 On the other hand, Nicholas Pronay noted how the chancery changed from ‘an administrative department with a certain amount of judicial business to becoming one of the four central courts of the realm’, perhaps as a result of an increase in mercantile cases which Edward may have regarded as more profitable to the crown.46 Ross’s reluctance to see marked innovation in government as opposed to pragmatic change and ad hoc decisions offers an agenda for discussion of such subjects as the king’s legislation, his treatment of the criminal and the overmighty, and continuity of administrative service from the Lancastrian era.47 Ross was equally guarded in attributing administrative novelty and notable success to Edward’s management of the royal finances and landed wealth. There were precedents in the 1450s for Edward’s use of the household, and the chamber within it, as a more effective organ of financial administration.48 Whatever doubts may be expressed about endorsing his contemporary reputation as a restorer of the royal finances, manifestly the near-bankruptcy of Henry VI’s later years was repaired by the new king; yet when he died only modest cash reserves were left to his son.49
Ross’s conclusion on Edward IV is an indictment of the king: ‘He remains the only king in English history since 1066 in active possession of his throne who failed to secure the safe succession of his son’. Some writers have expressed reservations about this verdict; yet the anxious words of the warden of Tattershall College, Lincolnshire, in a letter to William Waynflete, bishop of Winchester, just ten days after the death of the king on 9 April 1483, have a foreboding ring of truth:
For nowe oure soveren lord the kyng ys ded hose soule Jhesu take to his grete mercy we wet not hoo schal be oure lord noo schal have the reule a boute us …50
July 1997
1 A. Crawford, ‘A Bibliography of Charles Ross’, in Kings and Nobles in the Later Middle Ages, ed. R. A. Griffiths and J. Sherborne (Gloucester, 1986), 304–7.
2 C. L. Scofield, The Life and Reign of Edward the Fourth, 2 vols (1923).
3 Reviews: Historical Journal, 18 (1975), 879–81 (Delloyd Guth); American Hist. Rev., 81 (1976), 572–3 (J-R. Lander); EHR, 91 (1976), 369–74 (B. P. Wolffe); History, 61 (1976), 105–6 (C. F. Richmond). See also K. Dockray, ‘Edward IV: Playboy and Politician’, The Ricardian, 10/131 (1995), 306–25.
4 J. R. Lander, Government and Community: England, 1450–1509 (1980), 45, 51; cf. A. R. Myers, ‘Parliament, 1422–1509’, in The English Parliament in the Middle Ages, ed. R G. Davies and J. H. Denton (Manchester, 1981), 342–7.
5 The Politics of Fifteenth-Century England: John Vale’s Book, ed. M. L. Kekewich, C. F. Richmond, A. F. Sutton, L. Visser-Fuchs and J. L. Watts (Stroud, 1995), 178–80 (’Short chronicle of events, 1431–71’); L. Visser-Fuchs, ‘English events in Caspar Weinreich’s Danzig Chronicle, 1461–1495’, The Ricardian, 7/95 (1986), 310–20; idem, ‘Sanguinis Haustor-A Burgundian view of England, 1471 ibid., 7/92 (1986), 213–19.
6 See also A. J. Pollard, ‘Dominic Mancini’s narrative of the events of 1483’, Nottingham Medieval Studies, 38 (1994), 152–63, for a critique.
7 These three works are conveniently reprinted in Three Chronicles of the Reign of Edward IV (Gloucester, 1988), with a new introduction by K. Dockray; the first has been independently reprinted in facsimile by Llanerch Enterprises (1990).
8 The Cely Letters and Papers, 1472–1488, ed. A. Hanham (Early English Text Soc., 273, 1975); The Plumpton Letters and Papers, ed. J. Kirby (Camden Fifth Ser., 8, 1996), with the greatest concentration of dated letters between 1480 and 1510; Paston Letters and Papers of the Fifteenth Century, Parts I and II, ed. N. Davis (Oxford, 1971, 1976). The Stonor Letters and Papers, 1290–1483, ed. C. L. Kingsford (Camden Third Ser., 29, 30, 1919), has been reprinted, with a new introduction by C. Carpenter (Cambridge, 1996). On the Celys, see A. Hanham, The Celys and their World (Cambridge, 1985). On the Plumptons, see J. Kirby, ‘A Fifteenth-century Family; The Plumptons of Plumpton and their Lawyers, 1461–1515’, Northern Hist., 25 (1989), 106–19, and idem, ‘A Northern Knightly Family in the Waning Middle Ages’, ibid., 31 (1995), 86–107.
9 The Crowland Chronicle Continuations, 1459–1486, ed. N. Pronay and J. Cox (1986); below p. 430.
10 H. A. Kelly, ‘The Last Chroniclers of Croyland’, The Ricardian, 7/91 (1985), 142–77; idem, ‘The Croyland Chronicle Tragedies’, ibid., 7/99 (1987), 498–515; A. Hanham, ‘Richard Lavender, continuator?’, ibid., pp. 516–19; L. Visser-Fuchs, ‘A Commentary on the Continuation’, ibid., pp. 520–2; D. Williams, ‘The Crowland Chronicle, 616–1500’, in England in the Fifteenth Century, ed. D. Williams (Woodbridge, 1987), pp. 371–90; M. Condon, ‘The Crowland Chronicle Continuations, 1459–1486’, Hist, and Archaeology Rev., 3 (1988), 5–11; A. Hanham, ‘Croyland Observations’, The Ricardian, 8/108 (1990), 334–41.
11 M. A. Hicks, ‘Edward IV, the Duke of Somerset and Lancastrian Loyalism in the North’, Northern Hist., 20 (1984), repri
nted in his Richard III and his Rivals (1991), ch. 8; A. J. Pollard, North-eastern England during the Wars of the Roses (Oxford, 1990), 228–9
12 R. H. Britnell, ‘The Economic Context’ in The Wars of the Roses, ed. A. J. Pollard (1995), 44, 57, and references cited there; C. E. Challis, A New History of the Royal Mint (Cambridge, 1992).
13 M. A. Hicks, ‘The Case of Sir Thomas Cook, 1468’, EHR, 90 (1978), reprinted in his Richard III and his Rivals, ch. 23; A. F. Sutton, ‘Sir Thomas Cook and his “troubles”: an investigation’, Guildhall Studies in London History, 3/2 (1978), 85–108; cf. John Vale’s Book, ed. Kekewich et al., 89ff, which stresses official panic rather than political intrigue by the Woodvilles.
14 P. Holland, ‘The Lincolnshire Rebellion of March 1470’, EHR, 103 (1988), 849–69.
15 A. J. Pollard, ‘Lord FitzHugh’s Rising in 1470’, BIHR, 52 (1979), 170–5.
16 P. W. Hammond, The Battles of Barnet and Tewkesbury (Gloucester, 1990).
17 S. M. Wright, The Derbyshire Gentry in the Fifteenth Century (Chesterfield, 1983); I. Rowney, ‘Resources and Retaining in Yorkist England: William, Lord Hastings and the Honour of Tutbury’, in Prosperity and Politics: Essays in Later Medieval English History, ed. A. J. Pollard (Gloucester, 1984), 139–55; idem, ‘The Hastings’ Affinity in Staffordshire and the Honour of Tutbury’, BIHR, 57 (1984), 35–45; C. Carpenter, Locality and Polity: A Study of Warwickshire Landed Society, 1401–1499 (Cambridge, 1992); with an overview by M. A. Hicks, ‘Lord Hastings’ Indentured Retainers?’, in his Richard III and his Rivals, ch. 12.
18 M. A. Hicks, ‘The Last Days of Elizabeth, Countess of Oxford’, EHR, 100 (1988), reprinted in his Richard III and his Rivals, ch. 16.
19 See also C. Carpenter, ‘The Duke of Clarence and the Midlands: a Study in the interplay of local and national polities’, Midland Hist., 11 (1986), 23–48.