Historical books
J. P. Kenyon on Edward IV, a king who would not behave
Edward IV's career was one of the most spectacular of any English king's. As the great-grandson of Edmund, Duke of York, Richard ll's younger brother, he was born with a plausible claim to the throne if ever the main line, stemming from John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, should fail. It failed in one sense, though not in another; the third Lancastrian king, Henry VI, grew to manhood feeble minded, and entirely dependant on his forceful wife, Margaret of Anjou. Edward made his bid for the throne in 1460, with the support of a considerable body of magnates, including the powerful and ambitious Richard Nevill, Earl of Warwick, 'the Kingmaker.' They defeated Henry VI at Northampton, and Queen Margaret at Towton the following year; the royal pair fled abroad, and Edward was duly crowned king. For the next eight years England was superficially quiet, united under a successful and respected sovereign. But in 1469 a raging storm blew up out of a clear sky. The king's younger brother, the Duke of Clarence, conspired with the Kingmaker to sieze Edward in an abrupt coup d'etat, and they only released him the following year to
suppress a general rebellion they had themselves fomented. Edward tried to outlaw them, but they turned the tables on him by recalling Queen Margaret, and Henry VI. Edward was deposed, and fled to the Continent in danger of his life.
But he bounced back in 1471. Landing with a small party at Ravenspur, at the Humber mouth, whence Henry, Duke of Lancaster, had launched his bid against Richard II in 1399, he took immediate advantage of the dithering of his enemies. He reconciled himself with Clarence, and defeated Warwick at Barnet. The Kingmaker was killed on the field, and Henry VI was clapped in the Tower, where he predictably, if mysteriously, died. His son and heir, another Edward, was conveniently killed at the battle of Tewkesbury, the last serious Lancastrian stand. The mettlesome Queen Margaret was imprisoned, and later ransomed to Louis XI of France, 'King Spider,' who was thus able to suppress her claims to Anjou.
So, for the last twelve years of his reign Edward IV was uncontested king, arguably the first since Henry V's premature death in 1422. With two promising sons growing to manhood, and the support of his brilliant brother Richard, Duke of Gloucester, he could discount the lurking threat posed by Henry Tudor, the last Lancastrian claimant. The only apparent threat came, in fact, from the egregious Clarence, and he died obscurely — though probably in the traditional butt of malmsey — in 1478. Yet on Edward's death in 1483 it was the loyal and trusted Gloucester who usurped the throne, and reigned as Richard III.
So much is well known: it is more difficult to fill in the outline. Like so many medieval rulers and saints, Edward IV is a two-dimensional construct, a heraldic figure difficult to see in the round. But the Eyre Methuen 'English Monarchs' series, under the editorship of David Douglas, has a reputation for making such figures come alive — Frank Barlow's Edward the Confessor and W. L. Warren's Henry II were triumphs in this respect — and the expectations roused by Charles Ross's Edward IV* are not disappointed. It lacks, perhaps, that sense of drama which took Warren's Henry II to the verge of literature; indeed, at times it bogs down in the geneaological verbiage that is the bane of medieval history, so that whole pages are reminiscent of the first chapter of St Matthew, with its, "And Judas begat Phares and Zara of Tamar [whatever happened to her'?]; and Phares begat Esrom; and Esrom begat Aram . . ." and so on. But if it is solid and chunky, it is also satisfying and definitive; it is subject to amendment in matters of fact, but its basic structure is unlikely to be challenged.
It confirms the contemporary picture of Edward as a ferocious, unstoppable fighting man, and a ruler of awe-inspiring presence. (When his coffin was opened in 1789, and his skeleton measured, it was found to be 6ft 31/2in tall, making him a giant in a period when average height was significantly lower than it is today.) He was also strikingly handsome; "of visage lovely, of body mighty, strong and clean made"; and he was a man of overwhelming personal charm. He was a noted conqueror of women as well as men, but his concupiscence (except in one instance) never seems to have dulled the edge of his cunning. He was an active, superintending ruler, who was responsible for several innovations in the administration of law and government. In the open-handed way expected of medieval kings, he was immediately available to all. The success of his political career testifies to his daring, courage and skill.
Yet he was a man of paradox. His view of kingship was entirely pragmatic, and few of his innovations had any lasting effect, though some of them were taken up by his successors. He extended clemency to his opponents time and time again, to an extent almost unheard-of in a strong medieval king, yet when his anger fell it fell with savage cruelty, rousing a resentment only heightened by his previous indulgence. To the conventional barbarities of executions for treason he added slow death by impalation, not always preceded by the formalities of a trial. His pride and self-confidence excited him to a pitch of recklessness which was most evident in his handling of the nobility.
To portray the nobility of the Wars of the Roses as uniformly power-hungry and warcrazy is, of course, an exaggeration: like all men of wealth, they had a vested interest in the 'stability of the social order and the rule of law, and a love of strong leadership which would provide both. Yet Edward's conduct towards them — a willingness to delegate authority usually characteristic only of weak rulers; and an arbitrary recklessness typical of the worst tyrants —.invited trouble.
His personal effectiveness was such that he managed to postpone this trouble beyond his death, and even in the crisis of 1469-71 Warwick and Clarence secured very little support from their own class. Yet the pettiness of the man comes through, and abroad his reputation was low. It was an Italian who remarked, "He was wont to show himself to those who wished to watch him, and he siezed any opportunity of revealing his fine stature more protractedly and more evidently to onlookers." The lusts of the flesh did not betray him often, to our knowledge, but when they did it was with resounding effect, as with his mesalliance with Elizabeth Woodville. The unpopularity of this upstart Queen Elizabeth and her numerous relatives, and the disturbed state of the nobility, led straight to the great posthumous fiasco of his reign, the deposition and murder of his sons.
It seems almost incredible that a ruler of his ability could not ensure the peaceful continuation of his line; but the truth emerges from this book. His rule was over-personalised, even for his time; his success depended on the immediate application of his own talents. Gloucester, as Regent or Protector of the Realm, seemed the man most likely to perpetuate these arrangements — for 'arrangements' they were — and after Clarence's black and fatal ingratitude it must have seemed unlikely that the other brother would go the same way. But the state of England as Edward left it called for the continued application of an authority which only seasoned, adult kingship could give — or so Richard III thought, and he was probably right. It was Edward's misfortune, and the measure of his basic incompetence, that he had forged a system which could not be handed down to men less experienced and able than himself.
J. P. Kenyon is G. F. Grant Professor of History at the University of Hull
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