EDWARD IV

HISTORY Of ENGLAND - By - H. W. DULCKEN P.H.D.

Published By - Ward Lock & Co Limited - 1903

THOUGH Edward was received with acclamation by the citizens of London, his throne was not yet established in safety. To the north of the Trent and the Humber, the Lancastrians had assembled in great force and he instantly set out to do battle against them. The Duke of Somerset was now the leader of Queen Margaret's army, which amounted to sixty thousand men near York, where King Henry and the young Prince of Wales were residing. The chief of Edward's partisans was the renowned Earl of Warwick, Richard Neville, whose power and importance earned him the name of the" King-maker;" and with him was Lord Fitzwalter, who was sent forward to secure the pass of Ferrybridge on the Aire, in Yorkshire. This task he accomplished, but was a few days afterwards attacked, and his force routed by Lord Clifford. Fitzwalter was slain in the combat : but soon afterwards the same fate befell Clifford, who was killed in a second fight, in which Lord Falconbridge recovered the pass. On the 29th of March was fought a battle more sanguinary and more extensive than the war had yet produced. It was at Towton, a few miles from York. The battle, interrupted by the darkness, was continued the next day. The whole number of slain is stated at thirty-seven thousand but this estimate appears too high. Among the slain were the Earls of Northumberland and Wiltshire. The Dukes of Somerset and Exeter escaped to the Scottish border, carrying King Henry and Queen Margaret with them.

Edward entered York, where he caused the heads of the Earls of Wiltshire and Devon to be fixed up in lieu of the remains of his father. Returning in triumph to London, he was crowned with great magnificence at Westminster; and his two brothers, George and Richard, were created Dukes of Clarence and Gloucester. Meanwhile the proscribed faction was making efforts to secure help in Anion in Scotland, and in the next year Oueen Margaret proceeded to France, in the hope of obtaining men and money to renew the struggle. King Louis Xl. was induced to lend twenty thousand crowns, on the security of the town of Calais, and gave permission to Peter De Breze, seneschal of Normandy, to raise two thousand men in the queen's cause. Margaret induced a number of Borderers to join her standard, and obtained some slight successes in the capture of the castles of Alnwick, Bumborough, and Dunstanburgh Presently Edward advanced in person to besiege the three fortresses, which were surrendered to him, on the stipulation that the Dluke of Somerset and Sir Richard Percy, with some of their friends, should be pardoned, and restored to their honours. Early in 1463, Queen Margaret sailed for Flanders with De Breze, the Duke of Exeter, and a small band of followers. King Henry found refuge in the castle of a Welsh vassal. In the next year Somerset and Percy went over to the side of the red rose and Alnwick Castle was seized by a discontented vassal of Edward, Sir Ralph Grey. Percy met his death in battle against the Earl of Montacute, the brother of Warwick, at Hedgley Moor, on the 25th of April, 1464; and Somerset was defeated on the 15th , of May, near Hexham. He fell into the hands of his enemies, and was at once beheaded. King Henry contrived to fly in. time to distance pursuit. For more than a year he remained concealed in Lancashire ; but at the end of that time he was taken prisoner by Sir John Harrington at Waddington Hall, and carried to London. He was then lodged in the Tower, where he remained for some years. Queen Margaret also had gone through many perils before she found an asylum with her father in France. On one occasion she and her young son met one of the outlaws, many of whom were then lurking in the woods. The queen, with great presence of mind, said, " My friend, I commit to your care the son of your king ." The outlaw brought mother and child to a place of safety.

The affairs of the nation were now for a time carried on by the Nevilles. King Edward gave himself up to pleasure and dissipation ; but, in spite of his vices, preserved his popularity with the citizens of London.

The Earl of Warwick, who, as well as his brothers, desired to see the king married, was entrusted with a mission to the Continent to negotiate for Edward's union with the Princess Bona of Savoy, the sister-in-law of Louis XI. During his absence from England, Edward made the acquaintance of Lady Elizabeth Grey, daughter of Jacquetta of Luxemburg, Duchess Dowager of Bedford, and of Sir Richard Woodville, of Grafton, in Bedfordshire, whom the widowed duchess had married after the duke's death. The Lady Elizabeth herself was the widow of Sir John Grey, of Groby, who had been killed fighting on the Lancastrian side. The fair young widow had a suit to him for the restoration to her children of the confiscated lands of her late husband. The wit and grace of the fair suppliant won the gay king's heart on May-day morning, in 1464, they were privately married, and in May, 1465, the queen was crowned. The relatives of the new queen were now advanced to dignities in a manner that excited surprise and jealousy.

These proceedings offended the Nevilles, who found their influence interfered with by that of the queen's family. In another marriage, too, the Earl was offended. He was again dispatched, in 1467, to the Continent, to treat with Louis XI. concerning an alliance of Margaret with a French prince. But during his absence, the marriage of Margaret with the Count de Charolais, the son and heir of Philip, Duke of Burgundy, was arranged.

In 1469 the eldest daughter of Warwick, Isabella, was married to the king's brother, George, Duke of Clarence. At the same time a peasant rising occurred in Yorkshire, under Robert Hilyard, commonly called Robin of Redesdale and although Hilyard himself was taken and executed, new leaders were found, and it was believed that the rising was secretly favoured by Warwick. The Lords Herbert and Stafford were despatched against the rebels ; but Stafford retired, and Herbert was defeated and slain at Edgcote, on the 26th of July. The queen's father, Earl Rivers, and one of her brothers, John Woodville, were taken and put to death by the insurgents. The king had already written urgently to Warwick and Clarence to come back from Calais. They now appeared and met the king at Olney, but he was placed in a kind of imprisonment. But a second reconciliation was soon afterwards effected. The renewed amity was to be cemented by a marriage of Edward's eldest daughter to George, the son of the Earl of Northumberland. A new insurrection broke out in Lincolnshire; and the king, though he seems to have suspected the Nevilles of having a hand in it, gave the Earls of Warwick and Clarence a commission to raise troops for its suppression. He himself marched against the rebels, whom he defeated. Edward then turned openly against Warwick and Clarence, and proclaimed them traitors. They were obliged, after a short time, to retreat southwards, and disband their forces. Warwick and Clarence, on Louis' invitation, repaired to Amboise, where the French court was then held. Louis invited the exiled Queen Margaret to Amhoise, and there reconciliation was effected between Margaret and Warwick, A marriage was concluded between Warwick's younger daughter, Anne Neville, and Edward, Prince of Wales Clarence and Warwick were to join their forces for the restoration of Henry VI.

Warwick landed on the Devonshire coast on the 13th of September, 1470. King Edward found his own men deserting, and was obliged for the moment to yield to the storm, and make his escape into Holland. Warwick proceeded to London, where, under the name of Henry VI, and with the aid of Clarence, he ruled England for a short time.

Fortified with assistance, rendered by the Duke of Burgundy, King Edward landed on the 14th of March, 1471, at the mouth of the Humber, at Ravenspur, where Henry IV. Had disembarked in 1399. At Pontefract, Warwick's brother Montacute allowed his small force to pass southward, When once he had crossed the Trent he was in the Yorkist country, and many flocked to his standard. Near Coventry the Duke of Clarence marched over, with his whole force, to the side of his brother Edward. After passing two days in London, where he was received with enthusiasm, Edward marched forth to meet the Lancastrian army, which was advancing along the great north road. At Barnet, twelve miles north of the capital, the decisive battle of the war was fought. Lord Montacute had joined his brother. From early morning on the l4th of April until noon the contest raged but by that time it was decided in favour of the Yorkists. The great king-maker and his brother, the marquis, both lay dead on the plain.

On the very day of the fatal battle that destroyed all the hopes of her party, Margaret landed at Weymouth, in Dorsetshire with her son and some troops, Frenchmen and others. On the 4th of May, 1471, King Edward attacked her at Tewkesbury, where was fought the closing battle of the long struggle of the roses. A spirited charge by Richard, Duke of Gloucester, seconded by King Edward and Clarence, broke the line of the Lancastrians, and the battle quickly ended in their total defeat and rout. Queen Margaret was taken prisoner, and also her son. Young Edward was stabbed to death "by Death of the king's servants," say the contemporary chroniclers, " by the Dukes of Clarence and Gloucester," according to the accounts of the Elizabethan writers, Holinshed and Hall. Soon afterwards Henry VI. lay dead in his prison in the Tower. Popular rumour ascribed his death to murder, and pointed to the Duke of Gloucester as the slayer.

Thus did King Edward triumph over the House of Lancaster, and the long and disastrous war found its termination in the triumph of the White Rose. Of the partisans of the ruined faction, some escaped to the Continent, and others obtained by submission the reversal of their attainders. The sketch of the character of Henry VI., as given by Mackintosh, gives a true picture of the feeble king. He was as void of manly as of kingly virtues," says that historian. " No station call be rained for which he was fitted, but that of a weak and ignorant lay-brother in a monastery."

The principal foreign event of the reign of Edward was an expedition to France, undertaken with the avowed intention of recovering Guienne and the other provinces that had once belonged to the English. But Louis Xl. was sufficiently astute to see that his brother of England had no very serious intention of conquering France with the eighteen thousand men who constituted his army. Edward consented to an interview with the French king, with the idea of arranging an accommodation. At the town of Pecquigny, not far from Amiens, where the Somme is crossed by a bridge, a strong barrier or grating was erected across the centre of the structure, and to this the two kings advanced to pay their greetings to each other through the interstices, and to express the joy that the propitious meeting aroused in them. Seventy-five thousand crowns paid down, and an annuity of fifty thousand to Edward, with a further stipulation that the dauphin Charles should marry a daughter of Edward, constituted the price at which the astute French monarch bought a truce of seven years and, in addition to this, Louis consented to pay a ransom of fifty thousand crowns for the release of Margaret of Anjou.

Clarence had married Isabella, the elder daughter of Warwick, the king-maker; and after the death of that powerful noble, at Barnet, he had claimed the earl's inheritance. In this, however, he had found a rival in his younger brother Richard, Duke of Gloucester, who had married Warwick's younger daughter, the Lady Anne. When, after the death of his wife Isabella, in 1476, Clarence became a suitor for the hand of Mary, of Burgundy, the suspicion and distrust of the king extended, not to the duke alone, but to his followers and favourites. Among these was one Thomas Burdett, who, on the occasion of the king's killing a favourite buck, while hunting in Burdett's park at Narrow, had exclaimed in anger that "he wished the horns of the deer had been in the belly of the man who slew it " Burdett was executed and Clarence was himself accused of treason and sorcery, arrested by the king's order, and conveyed to the Tower. Some weeks later, it was announced that the duke had died in the Tower . Popular rumour asserted that he had been drowned in a butt of malmsey wine.

From that time Edward seems to have given himself up, without restraint, to the life of licentiousness and dissipation which doubtless shortened his days. The best known among his numerous favourites was one Mistress Jane Shore, the wife of a London goldsmith. When war broke out with Scotland, the king entrusted the management of successive campaigns in the north to his brother, Richard of Gloucester. The war, however, led to no important consequences for England.

Mary of Burgundy, the rich heiress, who was married to the Archduke Maximilian of Austria, met her death from an accident. She left two daughters and Louis Xl. at once saw that a marriage with one of these would be a far more advantageous match for his son than the proposed English match, and accordingly negotiated a marriage between the dauphin Charles and Mary's elder daughter, "Ia gentile demoiselle Margot." Edward was furious at the insult put upon himself and his daughter, and declared he would avenge himself by an invasion of France.

But licentious pleasures and the indulgence of his passions had undermined his strength. He was only forty-one years old, but his manly beauty had changed to bloated corpulence. A sudden illness brought him to the grave, He died on the 9th of April, 1483, in the forty-second year of his age, after a reign of twenty-two years.

In his character, which was stained by odious vices, ambition and cruelty were the leading features. Gratitude and mercy were unknown to him. His selfishness, like his ambition, was boundless, and he never hesitated in the gratification of either. Even in that savage period he was noted for harshness and cruelty, which contrasted singularly with his amorous and Epicurean habits. On the whole his fortune was far better than he deserved. He died in prosperity, and his sins were visited upon his innocent children .

Among the domestic events of his reign, the most important was the introduction into England of the art of printing by William Caxton, who, established himself in the almonry at Westminster, continued for a series of years to issue from his printing press a number of works, of which "The Game and Playe of the Chesse" is supposed to have been the first.