Edward IV

by Charles Ross

  1 Apparently because King Charles would not agree to substitute an elder daughter, Jeanne, for the infant Madeleine; J. Stevenson, Letters and Papers Illustrative of the Wars of the English in France, I, 79–82, 83–6, 160–3, 168–70; G. Du Fresne de Beaucourt, Histoire de Charles VII, IV, 142–3. In 1452 and again in 1455–6 there were further proposals for a marriage between Edward and a daughter of the dissident French conspirator, Jean, duke of Alençon (ibid., VI, 41, 52–4).

  2 Ibid., VI, 260–1; Thielemans, Bourgogne et Angleterre, 372; Scofield, I, 28–9. Ramsay, Lancaster and York, II, 210–11, wrongly represents this as a wholly Yorkist-inspired negotiation.

  1 Scofield, I, 211.

  2 Dunlop, James Kennedy, 227, 241; and above, pp. 40–50.

  3 Scofield, I, 327.

  4 J. Gairdner, Letters and Papers Illustrative of the Reigns of Richard III and Henry VII, I, 31; Scofield, I, 320.

  5 R. Fabyan, The New Chronicles of England and of France, 654.

  1 Scofield (I, 177–8) suggested that they met early in June 1461, when Edward spent three days at Stony Stratford on his way back to London, and pardoned Lord Rivers as he left there (12 June), but, apart from this coincidence, there is no evidence to support this conjecture.

  2 Gregory, 226, and Kingsford, English Historical Literature, 97, for the date of the chronicle.

  3 Commynes, I, 203.

  4 More, Richard III, 4.

  5 Mancini, 67.

  6 CC, 564.

  7 See below, p. 232, for Commynes’s story about the ladies of Paris.

  8 Gregory, 226.

  1 More, Richard III, 64. Edward is said to have told his mother that Elizabeth ‘is a widow and hath already children, by God’s Blessed Lady I am a bachelor and have some too: and so each of us hath a proof that neither of us is like to be barren’.

  2 Mancini, 61 (and the editor’s notes, p. 109); More, 60–1; Hall, Chronicle, 264; C. Fahy, ‘The Marriage of Edward IV and Elizabeth Woodville; a new Italian Source’, EHR, lxxvi (1961), 660–72. J. R. Lander, ‘Marriage and Polities’, 131 n., dismisses the Italian narrative as ‘essentially a pleasant tale’, but, as Fahy points out, its inaccuracies do not detract from the fact that it is an independent and unadulterated source nor from the general line of the story.

  3 E.g. B. Wilkinson, Constitutional History of England in the Fifteenth Century, 146–8, who suggests it was ‘both a love match and a cold and calculated political move’ and that ‘his immoderate promotion’ of the queen’s relatives also had strong political motives.

  4 The whole subject has been fully discussed in a valuable study by J. R. Lander, ‘Marriage and Politics: the Nevilles and the Wydevilles’, BIHR, xxxvi (1963), 119–52, on which much of what follows is based. Lander, however, whilst arguing convincingly against attaching too much importance to the marriage and its consequences in Yorkist politics, goes too far in the other direction. In particular, as indicated below, he underestimates the unpopularity of the queen’s family, and their role in the feuds which led to the deposition of Edward’s heir in 1483.

  1 See below, pp. 97 ff., 336–7.

  2 CPR, 1461–7, 81, 97, 188; Lander, op. cit., 130–1.

  3 Lander, op. cit., 134. For Elizabeth’s descent, D. MacGibbon, Elizabeth Woodville, 45 n., and genealogy at p. 225. In a pageant presented at Coventry in 1474 she was said to have been descended from the Magi (Coventry Leet Book, 393).

  4 Waurin, ed. Dupont, II, 327–8.

  1 PL, III, 203–4.

  2 For the growth of demarcations within the peerage, and a sharp separation of peers from others, see K. B. McFarlane, The Nobility of Later Medieval England (1973), 122–5.

  3 Lander, op. cit., 132.

  4 For the negotiations of spring and summer 1464, see Scofield, I, 320–9, 343–51; Calmette and Perinelle, 49–54.

  1 CSP, Milan, I, 109.

  2 The date of this council meeting is given as 14 September (Scofield, I, 354; cf. Calmette and Perinelle, 61, who give 28 September). Since Elizabeth’s official presentation as queen took place on 29 September (Annales, 783), and on 3 October Wenlock wrote to Lannoy to inform Louis of the marriage (Waurin, ed. Dupont, II, 326–7), it is unlikely that either of these would have been so long delayed if the announcement took place as early as 14 September.

  3 Lander, ‘Marriage and Polities’, 133 and n., where contemporary references to the marriage are collected.

  1 This point was stressed by Lord Wenlock in his letter to Lannoy (Waurin, ed. Dupont, II, 326–7).

  2 Polydore Vergil, 117.

  3 It has generally been accepted on the authority of Miss Scofield, I, 344–5, 347, and in EHR, xxi (1906), 732–7, that Warwick was on the Continent negotiating for the marriage between 17 June and 5 August and 10–30 August 1464; it is now clear that he was in the north negotiating with the Scots (A. L. Brown and B. Webster, ‘The Movements of the Earl of Warwick in the summer of 1464: a correction’, EHR, lxxxi (1966), 80–2).

  4 Letter to Lannoy, cited above.

  5 K. B. McFarlane, ‘The Wars of the Roses’, 114.

  6 See especially J. R. Lander, ‘Marriage and Polities’, 135–43, whose interpretation I have largely followed except where otherwise indicated. For a list of the marriages, see MacGibbon, Elizabeth Woodville, 222–5.

  1 Annales, 783. Her wealth derived from a disproportionately large share of the ducal inheritance of Norfolk, which she had held since her first husband’s death in 1432.

  2 Ibid., 783–5.

  3 For a different view, see Lander, ‘Marriage and Polities’, 136 and notes. Lander appears to assume that the old lady herself was anxious for a new husband. See also his comments on the Holland marriage (p. 137), which seem prejudiced against the Nevills.

  1 Isabel was born on 5 September 1451, Anne on 11 June 1456. Their marriages eventually took place in 1469 and 1470.

  2 Lander, op. cit., does not mention this quite legitimate grievance of Warwick’s. T. B. Pugh, Glamorgan County History, III, 199, suggests that Edward’s opposition to the match ‘may well have been decisive’ in determining the earl to rebel.

  3 Mancini, 75 (‘whom he scorned to wed on account of her humble origin’).

  1 Numbers vary according to source; see Scofield, I, 376. In 1461 Edward had created 32 KBs (ibid., I, 182). A contemporary account of the coronation is published in G. Smith, The Coronation of Elizabeth Woodville (1935); see also MacGibbon, Elizabeth Woodville, 45–55; Scofield, I, 375–7.

  2 A contemporary herald’s account of this tournament is printed in Bentley, Excerpta Historica, 176–212; and see below, pp. 110, 259.

  3 Above, pp. 70–77.

  1 Lander, op. cit., 140; Pugh, Fifteenth-Century England, 91.

  2 The grants to Scales and other Woodvilles are analysed by Lander, 141–2.

  3 According to the Annales, 517, Edward tried to provide for Richard in 1468 by pressing him on the Knights Hospitaller as their Prior in England, but without success.

  4 See below, pp. 98, 336–7, for his career after 1471.

  5 A. R. Myers, in ‘The Household of Queen Margaret of Anjou, 1452–3’, Bull. John Rylands Library, xl (1957–8), 1–21, and his ‘The Household of Queen Elizabeth Woodville, 1466–7’, Bull. John Rylands Library, 1 (1967–8), 207–35, 443–81, compares the income and expenditure of the two queens.

  1 See above, pp. 70 ff., for the grants to the Nevills, Herbert, Stafford and Audley.

  2 CC (First Continuation), 542; Waurin, ed. Dupont, II, 331–3; CSP, Milan, I, 131; Mancini, 61–5, 69; GC, 202–3; More, 7, 9, 15; Annales, 783 ff.

  3 Especially emphasized by Mancini, 69 (‘certainly detested by the nobles, because they, who were ignoble and newly made men, were advanced beyond those who far excelled them in breeding and wisdom’), with reference to the younger male Woodvilles.

  4 For examples, see below, pp. 100–1.

  1 For accounts of Scales, see DNB (s.n., Woodville); Bentley, Excerpta Historica, 240–5; CP, XI, 22–4; J. Rous, Historia Regum Anglie,
ed. T. Hearne, 212. The death-day ballad was printed incompletely in Rous, op. cit., 214, and more fully in J. Ritson, Antient Songs (1790), 87–8.

  2 Mancini, 67–9; Commynes, II, 14. See also the approving remarks of More, 14.

  3 More, 51.

  4 E. W. Ives, ‘Andrew Dymmock and the Papers of Anthony, Earl Rivers, 1482–3’, BIHR, xli (1968), 216–25.

  5 More, 10–11; Mancini, 69; Ives, op. cit., 221–2, who mentions that Dymmock’s papers contain no fewer than four copies of an informer’s confession, specially prepared for circulation. It should be noticed, however, that the supposed bad relations between Hastings and the queen’s family did not prevent their doing business together; for examples, see below, p. 336.

  1 GC, 208.

  2 Especially Lander, op. cit., 139 and passim.

  3 T. B. Pugh, The Fifteenth Century, 92–3.

  4 GC, 204–8, and below, Appendix I. See also below, pp. 100–1, for the misrepresentation of the legal aspects of the case by the chronicler. Apart from Fabyan’s Chronicle, which has a common origin with the Great Chronicle, the only source to mention illegal despoliation by Rivers and Fogge is Annales, 790.

  1 Markham was, in fact, dismissed from his post soon after 23 January 1469 (Foss, Judges of England, 435). Though accepted by Foss and others, the story that Rivers procured his dismissal probably derives from the Great Chronicle via the Elizabethan antiquary, John Stow (Annales, 420). But dismissals of chief justices were very rare in Edward’s reign.

  2 GC, 207–8, 213. The details of gifts to the queen’s council are in Fabyan, Chronicle, 656–7.

  3 Particularly by Bellamy, ‘Justice under the Yorkist Kings’, 143–5.

  1 P.R.O., K.B. 9/319/mm. 7, 35–7, 40, 49–51. Another prominent Londoner, Sir John Plommer, who, like Cook, had been made a Knight of the Bath in 1465, was also found not guilty of any treason.

  2 Scofield, I, 461. For Edward’s relations with London, see below, pp. 353–6. There is, however, no truth in the later story that Elizabeth Woodville procured the death of the Irish earl of Desmond on the grounds that he had urged against Edward’s marrying her, and thought a divorce desirable. It can be dismissed as a Tudor fabrication (E. Curtis, Hist, of Medieval Ireland, 1110–1513, 378–9; G. H. Orpen, EHR, xxx (1915), 342–3; and see also below, pp. 203–4).

  3 For their alleged share in the fall of Clarence, see below, p. 244.

  1 Acts of Court of the Mercers’ Company, ed. L. Lyell and F. D. Watney, 118–27.

  2 Great Red Book of Bristol, ed. E. W. W. Veale (Bristol Record Society Publications, xviii, 1953), iv, 84–6.

  3 Ives, ‘Andrew Dymmock … and Earl Rivers’, 223–4; and for Greys and the Exeter inheritance, see below, pp. 336–7.

  4 Mancini, 65, 69.

  5 RP, VI, 140.

  1 CC, 564.

  2 CC, 565.

  3 Mancini, 69.

  Chapter 6

  THE BURGUNDIAN ALLIANCE AND THE BREACH WITH WARWICK, 1465–1469

  In England’s domestic politics the later 1460s are dominated by Edward’s growing estrangement from Richard, earl of Warwick, and the latter’s gradual drift into open rebellion. In foreign affairs the key issue in England’s increasingly active involvement in European politics was whether she should enter into a firm alliance with either France or Burgundy against the other. Between these two themes there is a more than casual connection. For it was essentially over the direction of foreign policy that the differences between the king and the earl were most sharply apparent, within the wider context of Edward’s continuing assertion of his political independence.1

  From the beginning of 1465, certain factors in England’s foreign situation begin to stand out more clearly. First, the expansionist and centralizing policies of King Louis XI of France produced a growing tension between the French Crown and many of its greatest subjects, especially the dukes of Burgundy and Brittany. In 1465 this feudal and provincial reaction erupted into civil war, but the princely coalition – the League of the Common Weal – was soon broken up by Louis at the cost of concessions to some of its leaders. Continuing pressure by Louis on Burgundy and Brittany combined to maintain a state of constant unease on the Continent. In this situation England, with Edward increasingly secure on her throne, assumed a new importance. Neither side across the Channel wished to see her actively committed to the other, and first France, and then Burgundy and Brittany, actively sought her alliance. Next, and of great importance in Anglo-French relations, is the attitude of Warwick himself. We can probably never know how far his advocacy of an Anglo-French alliance was based upon principle rather than self-interest, but there is no doubt that King Louis’s systematic courting of the earl’s goodwill, treating him as the arbiter of English policy, tempted his ambition and increasingly involved his prestige. As he was drawn more deeply into Louis’s schemes, it became increasingly difficult and humiliating for him to accept the obvious decline of his influence over his royal master. His dilemma was sharpened, since (as there is good reason to believe) Woodville influence was being exerted equally strongly towards an English alliance with their Burgundian kinsmen.

  Finally, the diplomatic situation was complicated by questions of commercial interest and national sentiment. The duke of Burgundy’s dominions formed England’s most important overseas market, especially for cloth. But the dukes had to take account of pressure from their own cloth-manufacturing interests, anxious to keep out competition from much cheaper English goods; and in October 1464, Duke Philip was persuaded to place an embargo on the import of English cloth into his territories.1 For the well-organized mercantile lobby in England, one advantage of a treaty with Burgundy would be the restoration of free trade. But commercial considerations were not wholly on the side of a Burgundian alliance. France, too, was potentially a great market for English exports, and Louis was at pains to dangle before English eyes the advantages of a favourable commercial treaty. These were probably greater than most Englishmen realized, as the treaty of 1475 was to prove. Protagonists of a French alliance had, however, to reckon with the deep and strong popular feelings in England which still regarded France as the ancient and traditional enemy. War with France had become almost the only cause for which the commons in parliament were ready to vote money. Though Burgundy might not be wholly popular with the merchant class, there was a legacy of wider prejudice against France; and, in inclining towards a Burgundian connection, Edward, rather than Warwick, proved a better judge of popular opinion.2

  In the early months of 1465 the diplomatic situation was still full of uncertainty for England. During the illness of Duke Philip, Burgundy was temporarily under the control of his heir, Charles, count of Charolais, who still retained strong Lancastrian sympathies.1 King Louis was urging an active alliance between France and England against Burgundy. In Brittany, Duke Francis II, who had earlier shown sympathy towards the Lancastrians, was now being forced by Louis’s provocative policies, aimed at undermining the independence of the Breton duchy, into a posture hostile to France. Friendship with England was a natural consequence of his sense of insecurity, and here too commercial considerations played a part, for England was Brittany’s most important market.2 On 8 May 1465, Edward appointed a powerful embassy, headed by Warwick, Hastings and Wenlock, with a very wide brief. It had instructions to treat at will with the king of France, the duke of Burgundy, and the duke of Brittany for treaties of peace, friendship or commerce. In other words, it was intended as a means of finding out what these princes might offer for English support without committing her to anything definite.3 But it had little chance to achieve anything, for France was now convulsed by the War of the Public Weal, begun in the spring by an attack from Brittany led by Louis’s dissident brother, Charles. Louis was able to confront his opponents one by one; Charolais was checked at the battle of Montlhéry (16 July 1465) and soon afterwards the League broke up. Louis, however, had to surrender to Burgundy Boulogne, Guines and the ‘Somme towns’ by the treaties of Conflans and St Maur
(October 1465), and to install his brother Charles as duke of Normandy.4

  From all this England remained carefully aloof. Probably Edward was wary of a league which included Margaret of Anjou’s brother, Duke John of Calabria, as well as Charolais, whom he could not yet trust. He may have feared that any attempt to exploit Louis’s difficulties would lead the French king to give aid to Queen Margaret, who was in Paris in October 1465, trying to unite the adversaries in France in a plan to restore Henry VI.1 Above all, he had not the sinews of war to hand. He did not react when Louis boldly ejected his brother from Normandy and resumed possession of the duchy. He had been encouraged to do this by what has been called ‘an undoubtedly treasonable message’ from the earl of Warwick, telling him that England would not attempt any offensive at this time.2

  1466 saw Edward moving steadily closer to a firm connection with Burgundy. Charles of Charolais’s mistrust of Louis, and his wish to prevent an Anglo-French alliance, led him to take the initiative. A widower since the death in August 1465 of his second wife, Isabel of Bourbon, he now overcame his Lancastrian sympathies sufficiently to revive the notion of an Anglo-Burgundian marriage alliance. Late in 1465 or early in 1466 he sent his agent, Guillaume de Cluny, to England to make a tentative proposal that he should marry Edward’s nineteen-year-old sister, Margaret of York. This young lady was already virtually betrothed to Don Pedro of Portugal, who had recently been proclaimed king by the Catalan independence movement.3 Edward’s response was the appointment of an embassy on 22 March 1466, again headed by Warwick, Hastings and Wenlock, to negotiate with both Burgundy and France.4 With Charolais it was to discuss the restrictions on commerce, to treat regarding the marriage of Margaret of York, and to propose a further marriage between Charles’s daughter, Mary of Burgundy, and George, duke of Clarence. Warwick can scarcely have relished this part of his task. Not only did he prefer the French connection in general but he also had plans to marry Clarence to his elder daughter, Isabel. It was possibly at this meeting with Charolais at Boulogne on 15 April 1466 that he first conceived the violent dislike he later had for Charles.5 It is not surprising that no agreement was reached. To Louis the English envoys were to make offers for a truce or a peace treaty, and perhaps to sound him about an alternative marriage for Margaret of York. No difficulty was found in agreeing, on 24 May, the terms of a truce to last until March 1468. Although he could offer no marriage for Margaret as attractive as the match with Charolais, he may already have been prepared to bid high for an English alliance.1 News of Louis’s activities seems to have reached the ears of Charolais, and his fears of a league between France and England merely served to make his own approaches more vigorous. On 23 October 1466 he concluded with Edward a secret treaty of amity and mutual assistance. Whilst committing neither side to anything very specific, this is of interest as a sign of Edward’s intentions and of Charolais’s now active interest in an English alliance.2