Edward IV

by Charles Ross

  1 Rymer, Foedera, XII, 14–15. Cf. Commynes, II, 46.

  2 Commynes, II, 47–8, 52–3; Vaesen, Lettres de Louis XI, VI, 12; Calmette and Perinelle, 196–8.

  3 Commynes, II, 52–4; CSP, Milan, I, 204–9.

  4 Commynes, II, 54–9, for details of the English spree.

  5 Ibid., 63–7 (my translation: that of A. R. Scobie, Commynes, II, 274–7, is often misleading: e.g. Edward did not speak ‘very good French’, merely ‘assez bon françois’).

  1 Rymer, Foedera, XII, 15–21. The crown was defined as 33 ‘grand blancs’ of French money, of which the English equivalent was given by Fabyan as 4s. Hence the down-payment was worth £15,000 sterling, and the annual pension £10,000 as correcdy stated by the Croyland Chronicler, 558.

  1 Commynes, II, 75; GC, 224; PL, V, 237; Calmette and Perinelle, 206.

  2 Commynes, II, 52, 241–2. Record evidence survives to confirm that pensions were paid to Hastings, Howard, Montgomery, Rotherham and Morton (Calmette and Perinelle, 214–16, 374–5: quittances given by them to Louis’s agents), but not for the other three.

  3 Commynes, II, 242–3.

  4 Ibid., 241–2; Scofield, II, 147.

  5 CC, 559.

  1 Calmette and Perinelle, 209; Scofield, II, 148.

  2 Calmette and Perinelle, 207 (for the verse); Commynes, II, 70–1.

  3 Ibid., II, 78–9.

  1 CC, 558; CC, 224; Kingsford, Chronicles of London, 187.

  2 CSP, Milan, I, 211, 217.

  3 CC, 559.

  1 Commynes, II, 76. For the remission of the tax, see Records of the Borough of Nottingham, II, 388–9.

  2 Below, pp. 368–70.

  3 Calmette and Perinelle, 208, 214–16.

  1 Calmette and Perinelle, 210–12; Scofield, II, 157–9.

  Chapter 10

  FAMILY, POLITICS AND FOREIGN

  RELATIONS, 1475–1480

  The five years following the Treaty of Picquigny saw Edward at the peak of his career. Peace at home and abroad brought his realm an interlude of quiet and prosperity all too rare in fifteenth-century England. The Crown had benefited not only from the tactful accommodation with France but from the rising profits of customs duties and the absence of any extraordinary demands on income. With his debts paid, and a handsome reserve in his treasury, Edward’s accounts at last showed a substantial credit. He now had the money and the leisure to indulge freely his taste for private pleasure, to finance his building schemes, to enlarge his collection of manuscripts and jewels, and to maintain a splendid court. With a large and growing family to provide for, he could set out on the search for suitable dynastic marriages. Abroad, France and Burgundy competed for his alliance, or at least his benevolent neutrality. Amidst all this confident security, only his final breach with Clarence, and the duke’s attainder and death in February 1478, provided an unhappy epilogue to the political strife of his earlier years.

  (i) The Fall of Clarence

  Clarence soon showed that he had failed to learn any lessons from his previous experience of intrigue and treachery, and eventually he tried his brother’s patience too far. Contintental gossips believed that there was still mistrust between them, and that the duke would be the natural leader of any rebellion.1 That Edward himself had little confidence in his brother became clear soon after the death of Duke Charles of Burgundy in January 1477. Clarence’s wife, Duchess Isabel, had died at Warwick Castle on 22 December 1476, having never fully recovered from the birth of her second son, Richard, in the previous October. The duke was thus free to marry again, and his sister, the dowager duchess Margaret of Burgundy, is said to have urged Edward to allow him to wed Charles’s daughter and heiress, Mary of Burgundy. But Edward would not hear of it. The dangers were obvious, for the ducal house of Burgundy had a respectable claim to the English throne.1 Backed by its great resources, Clarence might easily have been tempted to try again to overthrow his brother. He was also believed to be circulating stories that Edward was a bastard with no right to rule.2 Louis XI fanned Edward’s suspicions by reporting remarks credited to Duchess Margaret about what Clarence would do in England if he became master of Burgundy. Nor would Edward countenance an alternative marriage for Clarence when James III of Scotland proffered the hand of his sister, Margaret.3

  Clarence and the king were now on thoroughly hostile terms. Rebuffed over the Burgundian match, the duke behaved with typical petulance, appearing rarely at court, saying nothing in council, and showing a reluctance to eat or drink in the king’s house, as though he feared poison. It is more than likely that he and his councillors were involved in a variety of treasonable plots, though no specific proof survives. Edward now resolved to teach him a sharp lesson, which anyone less foolish than Clarence might have taken to heart. The arrest of an Oxford astronomer, Dr John Stacey, who was suspected of using his magic arts for evil purposes, led to his confession under torture that he was involved with a member of Clarence’s household, Thomas Burdett, esquire, of Arrow Park in Warwickshire, and another astronomer, Thomas Blake, a chaplain of Stacey’s college of Merton, Oxford. On 12 May 1477 appointed an especially powerful commission of over and terminer, whose members included five earls, twelve barons and six justices, to try these men on charges of having ‘imagined and compassed’ the death of the king and the prince of Wales, of using the magic arts to accomplish this, and of predicting their early deaths. Burdett was further charged with having circulated treasonable writings inciting men to rebellion. On 19 May all were found guilty and ordered to be drawn to Tyburn and hanged. Blake was saved at the eleventh hour by the intercession of one of Edward’s councillors, James Goldwell, bishop of Norwich, but the other two were put to death on the following day.1

  This was clearly a staged political trial, and the fate of Burdett had obvious implications for Clarence. But he chose to ignore the warning. Whilst Edward was at Windsor, the duke burst into a council meeting at Westminster, and directed his spokesman, Dr John Goddard, to read out the declarations of innocence which Burdett and Stacey had made. His choice of Goddard was deliberately tactless, for this Franciscan preacher had expounded Henry VI’s claim to the throne at St Paul’s Cross in September 1470. This act of defiance merely angered Edward further. Returning to Westminster, he summoned Clarence before him, and, in the presence of the mayor and aldermen of London, personally charged the duke with having violated the laws of the realm and having threatened the security of judges and jurors. His accusation referred, in all probability, to Clarence’s high-handed action shortly before against one Ankarette Twynho, a former servant of Duchess Isabel, whom he suspected of having poisoned her. Taken by force from her home in Somerset, she was carried off to Warwick, brought before the justices of the peace, found guilty and hanged on 15 April 1477. The jury claimed that ‘for fear [they] gave the verdict contrary to their conscience’. In all this, it was now alleged, the duke had acted ‘as though he had used a king’s power’, not to mention the ‘inordinate hasty process and judgement’ which had followed. On these charges Clarence was arrested towards the end of June 1477, and committed to the Tower. There he remained until parliament met at Westminster on 19 January 1478. The chief reason for its being summoned was to arraign the duke on charges of high treason.2

  Opening the session, the chancellor, Bishop Rotherham, took as his theme the text, ‘The Lord is my ruler, therefore I shall not want’, and ominously quoted the words of St Paul, ‘For he beareth not the sword in vain’.3 The king then introduced his own bill of attainder against his brother. He reminded parliament of his notable record of clemency to former opponents, even the ‘great movers, stirrers, and executors of … heinous treasons’, but his leniency had been ill-repaid. He was now threatened by ‘a much higher, much more malicious, more unnatural and loathly treason, than at any time hath been compassed, purposed and conspired’. What gave this new treason its special heinousness, he explained, was that it sprang from his own brother, who, of all earthly creatures, owed him loyalty and love, ‘beside t
he duty of ligeance, by nature, by benefit, by gratitude, and by gifts and grants of goods and possessions’. To further his evil aims of destroying the king and his family, the duke had tried ‘by might to be gotten as well outward as inward’ (an echo of King Louis’s insinuations about the Burgundian marriage) and by many ‘subtle contrived ways’ to alienate Edward’s subjects. The duke’s servants had gone round the country claiming that Burdett had been unjustly put to death; stories had been put about that the king was a bastard; the duke had demanded oaths of loyalty and claimed that the king had disinherited him; he had tried to send his son overseas to Flanders or Ireland and replace him by a double at Warwick Castle; and he had secretly preserved an exemplification under the great seal of an agreement made in 1470, during the Readeption of Henry VI, which recognized him as heir to the throne if Henry VI’s issue failed in the male line.

  Nevertheless, the king concluded, he could still have found it in his heart to forgive Clarence, on account of their nearness of blood and the tender love he had felt for him in his youth, if only the duke had not continued in his evil ways. He had clearly shown himself to be ‘incorrigible’, and the safety of the realm demanded his punishment. The king therefore asked for a sentence of high treason, and that the duke should be deprived of all his titles and of all estates and other properties granted to him by the Crown.1

  Very little serious effort was made to substantiate the king’s accusations, and a recent enquiry has shown that one major charge – that concerning the exemplification of 1470 – may well have been invented by Edward himself.2 It is true that witnesses were produced in parliament in support of the royal indictment, but, according to the Croyland Chronicler, they behaved more like accusers. The duke was allowed to make an answer: he denied all the charges, and demanded that he might prove his innocence by the ancient method of wager of battle. No one spoke in his defence. Parliament then declared itself satisfied of the truth of the allegations, and the duke of Buckingham was appointed on 7 February as steward of England to pronounce the formal sentence of death. In all this due forms of law had been observed. The most unusual feature of these proceedings was the dominant role played by the king personally.1 If it was without precedent for the indictment to be brought by the king himself, rather than by the lords or commons, this could be defended on the ancient legal maxim that the king’s word, so long as it was based on his own personal knowledge of the facts, was ‘the most perfect of records’. As such it was accepted by a complacent assembly which contained an exceptionally high proportion of royal servants and retainers of court peers.2

  Even after the death sentence had been pronounced, Edward seemed to hesitate before taking the final step. Clarence was returned to the Tower and there remained for a further ten days until the commons’ speaker, William Allington, came into the house of lords to ask that the verdict be duly carried out. On 18 February the duke was privately put to death in the Tower, partly to spare him the shame of a public execution, and partly to lessen a scandal which reflected on the whole York family. Very probably, as many contemporaries believed, and as later tradition has it, he met his death by drowning in a butt of malmsey wine.3

  Not surprisingly, Edward’s reputation has suffered from this act of judicial fratricide. Some contemporaries roundly condemned this ‘fact most horrible’, and claimed that Edward himself bitterly repented it. Modern historians have tended to echo their disapproval of what Bishop Stubbs rather unjustly called ‘the crowning act of an unparalleled list of judicial cruelties which those of the next reign supplement but do not surpass’.1 Certainly Edward alone must bear full responsibility for his brother’s execution. There is no evidence at all to support later charges that Duke Richard of Gloucester brought about his brother’s downfall, even if we need not believe Dominic Mancini’s story that Gloucester mourned Clarence’s death.2 Nor is it at all likely that, as the same author alleged, Edward yielded to pressure from his queen; she was thought to believe that her son’s succession to the throne was threatened by Clarence, who was spreading stories that she was not the king’s legitimate wife. Such tales reflect rather the general unpopularity of the Woodvilles and the rumours current in the poisoned political atmosphere of 1483.3

  Yet in fairness to Edward it should be remembered that he had already shown exemplary patience with his brother. It is doubtful whether he would have been allowed to remain at liberty for so long in any other fifteenth-century state. To his shameful record of treason against his sovereign, he had added the crime of treachery against his own brother, which was significant because it was exceptional; and Edward was merely reflecting contemporary opinion when he declared that this was the special ‘heinous, unnatural and loathly’ aspect of Clarence’s behaviour. It is hard not to believe that Clarence was guilty of treasonable activities even after his pardon in 1471, and in this, as the king claimed, he had shown himself to be incorrigible. He had learned no lesson and would take no warning. By 1478 the removal of Clarence had become a political necessity. It is not wholly convincing to argue that it was a political misjudgement, a symptom of a decline in Edward’s grasp of affairs brought by an untrammelled power which blurred his sense of caution.4 Certainly, some contemporaries saw Clarence’s downfall as an ominous sign of potential despotism. The Croyland Chronicler remarked that1

  After the perpetration of this deed, many persons left king Edward, fully persuaded that he would be able to lord it over the whole kingdom at his will and pleasure, all those idols being removed … [to whom] … the multitude, ever desirous of change, had been in the habit of turning in times past. The king … after this period performed the duties of his office with such a high hand, that he appeared to be dreaded by all his subjects, while he himself stood in fear of no one.

  Yet, he added, so firmly was the realm in the grip of Edward’s trusted servants that no man could risk starting trouble without being ‘immediately charged with the same to his face’. He was a king to be feared as well as loved, and Clarence’s overthrow was a convincing assertion of his power.

  (ii) Marriage Politics and Diplomacy

  By the end of 1475 Edward had already sired two sons and five daughters by Queen Elizabeth Woodville.2 They were later to have three more children. Of these ten, one daughter, Margaret, died in infancy, as did their third son, George of Windsor (1477–9). The two youngest daughters, Catherine (born 1479) Bridget (born 1480), were still too young when their father died to be the objects of serious marriage plans. But schemes for the marriages of the six elder children constantly preoccupied Edward and his queen in the years following 1475. The search for suitable dynastic marriages forms a prominent theme in fifteenth-century continental diplomacy, and, if successful, they might change the political map of Europe, like the Hapsburg-Burgundian and Burgundian-Spanish marriages which created the Empire of Charles V. Edward IV was no less concerned than his foreign contemporaries to win recognition for his dynasty and to advance his diplomatic schemes by means of judicious marriage alliances. These, therefore, loom large in English foreign policy between 1475 and 1483, but it will be convenient, and certainly less confusing, to consider separately here his efforts to provide for his growing family. They proved highly successful in the six years between Picquigny and the end of 1481.

  Like most English medieval kings, Edward looked abroad for a suitable bride for his heir, Edward, prince of Wales. During the winter of 1476 the court was considering the advantages of a marriage between the six-year-old prince and the Infanta Isabella, daughter and at that time heiress apparent of Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile. This plan was still under discussion in 1478, but the birth of a son to the Spanish rulers made the match less attractive to Edward, who was already beginning to look elsewhere. Towards the end of that year Maximilian of Austria proposed a marriage alliance between an English prince and his sister, daughter of the Emperor Frederick III, but Edward was more interested – because of her family’s great wealth – in marrying the prince of Wales to a daug
hter of Duke Galeazzo Maria of Milan, who had been murdered in 1476. His widow, Bona of Savoy, whose hand had been offered to Edward himself in 1474, was hostile to the match, and also to a scheme for the new duke of Milan to marry an English princess. Though her brother-in-law, Louis of France, deigned to write to her on Edward’s behalf, nothing came of it. The shrewd Milanese ambassador in France, Giovanni Andrea Cagnola, commented on the avarice which is a marked feature of Edward’s dynastic diplomacy in his later years. In April 1479 he was reporting to his employers that

  the chief difficulty which they speak of will be owing to the great quantity of money which the king of England will want from your Excellency for the dowry and for presents, as they say he knows you have a great treasure, and he proposes in this way to obtain a good share of it, as being in any case one who tends to accumulate treasure.

  Edward soon turned elsewhere.1

  During 1479 and 1480 England was moving rather warily and uncertainly towards closer ties with her traditional allies, Burgundy and Brittany. An important feature of his negotiations with Duke Francis II was a proposal that his elder daughter and eventual heiress, Anne of Brittany, should marry Prince Edward. This was already under discussion in September 1480, and Edward was to ratify the final agreement on 10 May 1481. Again the bargaining was marked by greed on Edward’s side. Anne, then four years old, was to marry Edward as soon as she reached the age of twelve; if she died, her sister Isabella should take her place, and similarly Edward should be replaced if necessary by his brother, Richard; her dowry should be 100,000 crowns. But if the duke had a son before the marriage, this would be increased to 200,000 crowns. If he had a son after the marriage, this child was to marry one of Edward’s daughters, who herself should have a dowiry of 100,000 crowns provided by the duke, whilst Anne’s dowry was to be the same. One Breton scholar commented that it seemed that ‘to marry his daughters without dowries was the objective which this miser set before himself in the last years of his life’.1 Had it taken place, this match might have kept Brittany out of the hands of France, but would surely have involved war with the French king, who could not afford to see such a major fief pass into English hands.