Edward IV

by Charles Ross

  3 P.R.O., E. 404/74/1; and, for financial difficulties at the time, pp. 372–3 below.

  4 P.R.O., E. 28/91.

  1 Wolffe, Royal Demesne in English History, 223–4. Henry spent £200,000 on plate and jewels in 1491–1509.

  2 G. F. Warner and J. P. Gibson, Catalogue of Western Manuscripts in the Old Royal and King’s Collections in the British Museum, I, xi-xii. Most of what follows is based upon this work, esp. vol. II, 54, 139–41, 170, 173–6, 258, 261–2, 313–16, 347, and on Margaret Kekewich, ‘Edward IV, William Caxton and Literary Patronage in Yorkist England’, Modern Language Review, lxvi (1971), 481–7. Both Henry V and Henry VI had considerable collections of books, of a much more strongly patristic and theological character than Edward’s, but these were largely dispersed by gift or by will; see K. B. McFarlane, Lancastrian Kings and Lollard Knights, 115–17, 233–8; R. Weiss, ‘Henry V I and the Library of All Souls College’, EHR, lvii (1942), 102–6; and, for aristocratic book-collecting in general, K. B. McFarlane, ‘The Education of the Nobility in Later Medieval England’, in The Nobility of Later Medieval England, 228–47.

  3 Warner and Gibson, I, xii.

  1 R. Vaughan, Philip the Good, 155–7; L. Van Praet, Recherches sur Louis de Bruges, Seigneur de Gruthuyse (Paris, 1831), 84–264, and, for the Bastard, A. Boinet, ‘Un bibliophile de XVième siècle. Le Grand Bâtard de Bourgogne’, Bib. de l’École des Chartes, lxvii (1906), 225–69.

  2 For this, and Waurin’s dedication, see Kekevvich, op. cit., 485; and see Pl. 21.

  1 Kekewich., 485–6.

  2 Kingsford, English Historical Literature, 39, 142, 144; K. B. McFarlane, ‘William Worcester: A Preliminary Survey’, in Studies Presented to Sir Hilary Jenkinson, ed. J. Conway Davis, 210 ff.

  3 W. Blades, The Life and Typography of William Caxton, I (1861), 130.

  1 Ibid, 141, 149, 156; CPR, 1467–77, 149–50.

  2 H. S. Bennett, Chaucer and the Fifteenth Century, 206–8.

  3 Blades, op. cit., 161, 165.

  4 In 1479 Caxton received a payment of £20 for unspecified services to Edward, which may be unconnected with his printing; and in two of his prologues he was working under the king’s ‘protection and sufferance’; W. J. B. Crotch, The Prologues and Epilogues of William Caxton (Early English Text Soc., Original Series, 176, 1928), cix, cxi-cxii, cxiv.

  5 Ibid., cix.

  1 Warner and Gibson, op. cit., I, xii.

  2 McFarlane, Nobility of Later Medieval England, 243–4.

  3 Ibid., 228–47; and for Worcester, R. J. Mitchell, John Tiptoft.

  4 Nicolas, Privy Purse Expenses …, 125–6, 152.

  1 Full references to the scholarly activities of these men can be found in Emden, Biog. Reg., Univ. Oxford, s.n.

  2 Vaughan, op. cit., 157–8.

  3 J. Saltmarsh in VCH, Cambridgeshire, III, 379, for King’s; Scofield, II, 435–8; H. Maxwell Lyte, History of Eton College, 59–80; Nicolas Barker and Robert Birley, ‘Jane Shore’, Etoniana, nos 125 (June 1972) and 126 (December 1972), esp. Part III, ‘Jane Shore and Eton’, 408–10.

  1 R. Chandler, Life of William Waynflete, 150–1. It is often said (e.g., VCH, Oxfordshire, III, 17; Scofield, II, 440) that Edward’s death soon after prevented his endowment of the lectureship being realized, but the university’s letter of thanks to the king specifically says that he had founded it, and refers to the great increase in the number of students in the faculty of theology as a consequence (H. Anstey, Epistolae Academiae Oxon. (Oxford Hist. Soc., xxxvi, 1898), 478–9).

  2 R. G. D. Laffan in VCH, Cambridgeshire, III, 408.

  3 J. Rous, Historia Regum Angliae, ed. T. Hearne (Oxford, 1745), 211; The Rows Roll. Edward’s building works are also celebrated in John Skelton’s elegy on his death (Complete Poems, ed. P. Henderson (1959), 2–4).

  1 Scofield, II, 166–91, 237–8, 245. A contemporary description of the re-interment is in B.M., Harleian MS. 48 ff. 78–91.

  2 Scofield, II, 249–50; Calendar Papal Registers, XIII, 626; he had a similar indult on 11 September 1481 (ibid., 260–1, and for one on the same grounds to James III of Scotland, ibid., 224).

  1 Scofield, II, 283–4, 293–5, 319–20, 337–8; Myers, Household of Edward IV, 236. Further details of his itinerary for July 1481-June 1482 are in B.M., Add. MS. 24512.

  1 R. A. Brown, H. M. Colvin and A. J. Taylor, The History of the King’s Works, I, 241, 452–3; II, 570–1, 650, 729, 764–5; John Leland, Itinerary, I, 95–6; Devon, Issues of the Exchequer, 500; and, for building at Hertford Castle (new brick gatehouse) and other castles not mentioned above, Brown, et al., op. cit., 656, 680–1, 732, 804.

  2 Brown, Colvin and Taylor, op. cit., 1, 536–7; II, 936–7, 949, 1001; also 1017, for work at Woodstock; and see PL 24 b.

  3 Cal. Papal Registers, XIII, 8, 582.

  1 Cal. Papal Registers, XIII, 737; A. G. Little, ‘The Introduction of the Observant Friars into England’, Proc. British Academy, x (1921–3), 455–71. He also founded two chantries in the church of Allhallows, Barking, in the city of London, and the queen built the chapel of St Erasmus at Westminster Abbey (Scofield, II, 430).

  2 A. K. B. Roberts, St George’s Chapel, Windsor Castle, 1348–1416 (Windsor, 1947), 1–14.

  3 For the Golden Fleece, see Vaughan, Philip the Good, 160–2; and for Urbino, above, p. 213.

  4 G. F. Beltz, Memorials of the Order of the Garter (1841), lxx-lxxi, lxxiii, clxii-clxvi.

  1 F. L. Harrison, Music in Medieval Britain (1958), 20–5. The king also maintained a company of minstrels to play at court festivals, using trumpets, woodwind instruments called shawms, and small pipes (Myers, Household of Edward IV, 131–2).

  2 CPR, 1467–77, 368, 554; Cal. Papal Registers, XIII, 668–9. For Edward’s many benefactions to Windsor, see CPR, 1467–77, 461, 484, 551; 1476–85, 142, 172, 178, 181, 219, 222, 228, 242, 255, 260, 285, 333. For the building of the chapel, Scofield, II, 431–4; Brown, Golvin and Taylor, op. cit., II, 875, 884–8, correcting in some particulars, W= J. St John Hope, Architectural History of Windsor Castle (1913), esp. 398–406, 429–44; M. R. James, The Woodwork of St George’s Chapel, Windsor (Windsor, 1933).

  1 For further details on this, see below, pp. 417–18.

  2 J. H. Harvey, Gothic England, 114.

  3 Brown, Colvin and Taylor, op. cit., I, 198–9, 241, 425, 472, and Appendix A, II, 1024, for comparisons.

  1 CC, 559, 563.

  Chapter 12

  WAR, DIPLOMACY AND DISILLUSION,

  1480–1483

  From 1480 onwards Edward’s mounting difficulties on the Continent were compounded by a new problem, the deterioration of his relations with Scotland into open war. More than anything else this distraction on his northern borders weakened his diplomatic position elsewhere, and made it more difficult for him to intervene effectively in the Franco-Burgundian rivalry, though it also provided him with an excuse for not doing so when importuned for help by Maximilian of Austria. To a considerable degree the Scottish problem explains the growing hesitations which mark Edward’s relations with his continental neighbours in these closing years of his reign.

  Yet Edward himself was largely to blame for the outbreak of the war with Scotland. Since the treaty of October 1474, relations between the two countries had remained generally cordial. Edward continued to pay the instalments of the marriage portion of his daughter, Cecily, as they fell due, and both sides had avoided any significant breach of the truce. In 1478 James III proposed to strengthen the friendship between the two dynasties still further by offering his sister, Margaret, as a bride for Anthony, Earl Rivers, whose first wife, Elizabeth Scales, had died five years before. With Edward’s approval a marriage-treaty was drawn up in December 1478, and the king himself planned to attend the wedding, to take place at Nottingham in October 1479.1

  Soon after, these amiable relations were transformed. The Scots government began to commit or condone serious breaches of the truce, and there was much raiding and pillaging on the English side of the border. Edwar
d also had reason to suspect that Louis XI was now attempting to distract England from any potential commitment to Burgundy by encouraging James III to cause trouble for England, in the traditional pattern of the ‘Auld Alliance’.2 James was unresponsive to enquiries about the reasons for the truce-breaking, and blamed the English. Edward’s reaction was sharp. Early in 1480 Alexander Legh was sent to Scotland to demand reparations for breaches of the truce. If these were not forthcoming, he was to tell James that Edward, on the advice of his council and with the consent of his people, had determined to make rigorous and cruel war on Scotland. Old claims were revived by Legh’s instructions to serve notice on James that he was unlawfully in occupation of Berwick, Roxburgh and other places, which of right belonged to the king of England, that he had not done homage to Edward, and that he had wronged the earl of Douglas, who had appealed to Edward as Scotland’s sovereign lord. However, to avoid the effusion of Christian blood, Edward would rest content if James handed over his son and heir as a guarantee of his intention to carry through the proposed marriage with Cecily of York, and would surrender Berwick forthwith.1

  The English government now prepared to back this Palmerstonian manifesto with military preparations. Duke Richard of Gloucester was appointed lieutenant-general on 12 May 1480, with power to call out the levies of the northern counties, and on 20 June commissions of array for the defence of the border were issued in Yorkshire, Cumberland and Northumberland. These preparations were probably defensive at first and designed to discourage further Scots incursions. But during the summer of 1480 the earl of Angus carried out a large-scale and successful raid across the East March which ended in the burning of Bamborough, twenty miles inside English territory. Gloucester and Northumberland called out their retainers and the northern levies, and late in the summer carried out a counter-raid.2

  Now Edward and his council took the crucial decisions which led to open war. In spite of heavy pressure from Louis XI, James III was not really anxious for war. Himself a man of pacific temperament, he suffered, as did so many Scottish kings, from the chronic turbulence and violence of his nobility, whom he was quite unable to dominate.3 He therefore sent a herald and a pursuivant to London to suggest a discussion of common grievances. This overture was rudely brushed aside, and at a Westminster council meeting in November 1480 Edward resolved to go north in person the following year, and teach the Scots a punishing lesson.1

  By the end of the year preparations for a summer invasion of Scotland had already begun. Much attention was given to the deployment of naval power to support the land forces. Since 1471 the king had been much concerned with the creation of an effective royal navy, so neglected since the days of Henry V. A small nucleus of king’s ships existed in the 1460s, and this was increased by systematic purchases after the restoration. Thus the Antony, which had brought him home from exile, was bought from her master, Mark Symondson, for £80 in 1472; a Spanish ship known as the Falcon was bought in 1475 for £450; in 1481 £1,000 was paid to Genoese merchants for the Carvel of Portugal; John, Lord Howard, sold the Mary Howard, which was to serve as his flagship on the 1481 campaign, for either 500 or 1,000 marks; and these and other purchases brought the total to fifteen or sixteen ships. Payments for repairs and maintenance to these ships accounted for regular and substantial expenditure in these years.2 In December 1480 the able and experienced Thomas Rogers, who had been one of Warwick’s captains, was appointed as Edward’s first Clerk of the King’s Ships, and his supervision of the maintenance and organization of the royal vessels enabled them to go out regularly and speedily on patrol. John, Lord Howard, was appointed captain of the main fleet, to serve from mid-May to the end of August 1481, with 3,000 men under his command, and on 14 May Sir Thomas Fulford, with 300 troops, was appointed to command an independent squadron patrolling off the west coast of Scotland. By May, bombards and no fewer than 250 brass handguns were being delivered from the artillery storehouses in Calais for use on the king’s ships, and Edward took the prince of Wales with him to Sandwich for a royal inspection of the fleet.3

  Preparations for the land campaign were going ahead at the same time. A stream of royal mandates was issued between February and April to procure victuals and transport for the king’s household and the army going to the north. Rivers undertook to supply a force of 3,000 men, the marquis of Dorset another 600, and Lord Stanley was to bring 3,000 archers from Lancashire. The king’s usual concern for his own well-being appears in the purchase of eighty butts of the sweet and expensive malmsey wine ‘for the use of the king and his army against the Scots’.1 On the useful precedent of the 1460s attempts were also made to foment dissidence in Scotland. The exiled earl of Douglas was still on hand to act as an agent provocateur, and two payments of 100 marks each were made to him for ‘his divers services and diligences’ in this connection. How much success he had is not known, but he failed to win over Edward’s former ally, John MacDonald, Lord of the Isles, who now supported James III.2

  All this cost a great deal of money. More than £2,500 was spent on buying ships; Howard was paid £5,500 as an advance for the wages of his soldiers and sailors; and a further £10,000 was provided for Gloucester’s men in the north. To find the necessary finance for these forces and for the army which he proposed to lead in person, Edward first had recourse to the device used in 1475, the levy of benevolences on all who could be bullied or persuaded into making contributions. This seems to have produced a satisfactory response, including 5,000 marks from the city of London. The king also called for payment of the three-quarters of a subsidy (about £24,000) which had been voted to him as part of the war-taxation of 1475, and then remitted after his return. The people of Lancashire were excused from contributing to this in return for a promise to supply 1,000 archers at their own expense; and the city and county of York were likewise exempted because of their services in the past year and what was expected of them in the future. Finally, the king obtained a clerical tenth from the province of Canterbury.3

  It is important to realize that by the early summer of 1481 England’s resources were fully committed to war with Scotland, with the inevitable corollary that nothing serious could be undertaken on the Continent. Both Edward III in the past and Henry V III later, at the time of Flodden, successfully conducted defensive operations against Scotland whilst campaigning in force in France. But it was unthinkable in military terms to contemplate offensive ventures both across the border and across the Channel, and the expense would in any case have been far beyond Edward’s resources without extensive and unpopular parliamentary taxation. The Scottish entanglement was thus to hamper Edward’s continental diplomacy to a serious degree.

  Though England’s public attitude remained uncompromising, with Edward telling the pope of his intention to punish the Scots for their treacherous attacks upon his realm, in practice all this military preparation produced remarkably little.1 In the late spring John Howard and the fleet made a damaging raid on the Firth of Forth, carrying off several large vessels and destroying others, and burning the township of Blackness. Radcliffe’s squadron kept watch off the west coast of Scotland, fending off warships and privateers, whilst a third flotilla patrolled the Channel to protect against French intervention – all evidence of a well-conceived naval strategy.2 Late in July or early in August, Howard reappeared in the Forth, but this time he achieved little, and by 18 August his fleet was back in port at Sandwich.

  The movements of the English land force remain obscure. Since the king himself eventually decided not to go north, in all probability captains like Rivers and Hastings, who normally accompanied the king, and whose contingents formed the main field army, also stayed in the south. So Gloucester and Northumberland had to rely on what forces they could raise in the north, although (judging from the events of 1482) these could easily constitute an invasion army. It is doubtful whether they attempted anything more than a raid in force, since they did not know until late in the year that the king had decided not to join them. James II
I, however, raised troops and three Scots forces crossed the border, causing ‘great burning, hardship and destruction’ before withdrawing.3

  What paralysed the English invasion plans in 1481 were Edward’s own delays and his final decision not to lead his army in person. As late as 22 June he ordered the adjournment of sessions in the court of king’s bench on account of the war against the Scots, but he lingered, nevertheless, in the neighbourhood of London. Not until September did Edward move to Woodstock, where he stayed a fortnight, reaching Nottingham only at the end of October: there he lodged a further three weeks.4 It was now too late for full-scale campaigning on the border, and the English commanders in the north settled down to a lengthy and wearying siege of Berwick, But intermittent warfare continued all along the border during the winter of 1481–2, and the destruction of crops and cattle added to the suffering caused by a bad harvest and a hard winter.1

  Perhaps there was some truth in the taunts of Edward’s continental critics that he now preferred the bed to the battlefield and the banqueting-table to the tent. But it is more likely that he wished to keep contact with his complex foreign diplomacy, and one specific reason for his staying so long in the south was his plan to visit Calais in order to meet Maximilian of Austria.2 He later justified his decision not to march in person against the Scots in a letter to the pope on the grounds of ‘adverse turmoil’ in England, brought about by his demand for the remitted subsidy combined with the high price and shortage of corn. But it is hard to believe that he really thought the security of his throne was threatened or the patience of his subjects sorely tried.3 The whole affair suggests a certain irresolution in Edward’s mind. He could easily have placed the Scots campaign entirely in the charge of Gloucester and Northumberland, or he could have gone north while the season lay before him. But, after much money had been spent and so many preparations made, he did neither: and his lingering in the south effectively destroyed the chances of a vigorous campaign for that year.