Edward IV

by Charles Ross

  The university of Oxford, which in 1479 was prudent enough to choose the queen’s brother, Lionel Woodville, dean of Exeter, as its chancellor, fared rather better at Edward’s hands. In September 1481, on one of his frequent visits to Oxford from nearby Woodstock, he was splendidly entertained at Bishop Waynflete’s new college of Magdalen, along with his company of three bishops and several lords and ladies, including his mother-in-law, the duchess of Bedford, and his sister, the duchess of Suffolk. The following day he attended a public disputation in the university and listened to a formal address, presumably in Latin, to which it is reported that he replied satis feconde et faconde (fluently and inventively) to every article of the address. Soon afterwards he founded a free lectureship in divinity. This seems to have been his sole significant educational benefaction.1 His queen, on the other hand, was a notable patron of Queens’ College, Cambridge, which had been begun by Margaret of Anjou: in 1475 the college received from her a set of statutes as its ‘true foundress’.2

  After 1471, and still more after 1475, security at home, increased leisure, and above all the possession of ample funds, enabled Edward to indulge his leanings towards magnificence on a far greater scale than before. In the later years of the reign the court became an important centre of patronage for architects and masons, sculptors and glaziers, goldsmiths and jewellers, dealers in fine fabrics and tapestries, and illuminators of manuscripts. Among these varied activities the king’s taste for building was the most important and certainly the most expensive.

  Edward fully deserves the reputation of being a great builder credited to him by the contemporary antiquary, John Rous of Warwick.3 Even in his impecunious early years he pushed ahead with such building schemes as he could afford, and in the second decade of the reign he was in a position to finance much more ambitious and costly projects. The nature of his patronage was largely dictated by two considerations – his own personal tastes and the movements of the court. It is characteristic of him that, except at Windsor – the spiritual centre of the regime – his attention was devoted essentially to secular buildings, and that the main objects of his patronage were his favourite residences in south-eastern England, whose embellishment, improvement and modernization closely concerned a monarch with strong ideas of personal comfort.

  After 1475 there was far less need for the king to tour his country to check rebellion and disorder. The more distant parts of his realm saw him but rarely. In 1476 an act of family piety took him on one of his infrequent visits to the north of England. This was for the transfer of the bodies of his father, Duke Richard, and his younger brother, Edmund, earl of Rutland, from the humble graves at Pontefract priory, where they had been buried after their deaths at Wakefield in 1460, to the family vault at Fotheringhay Castle. This was carried out with suitable splendour. A large company of lords and ladies accompanied Edward on his solemn progress south to Fotheringhay, and the final ceremonies took place on 29–30 July in the presence of the whole royal family, ending with a funeral feast in which some thousands of people are said to have shared and which cost the very large sum of £300. The king stayed on there – his favourite home outside the Thames valley-until the middle of August 1476, and then made a progress through the counties of Nottingham, Worcester and Oxford before returning to Windsor on 8 October. In August 1478 Edward visited Nottingham, returning to Windsor and Greenwich later in the month. In September he went north again to Pontefract and York, coming back to Greenwich for the hunting in October.1

  Thereafter he rarely moved from the vicinity of his capital, except for visits to his hunting lodge at Woodstock. 1479 was a year of plague, causing many deaths, among them probably that of his third son, George of Windsor, who was little more than a year old. The pestilence was especially virulent in London, and the king lay low at Eltham and Sheen, enjoying a dispensation from the pope to eat meat, eggs and food prepared with milk during Lent, since (it was claimed) fish was injurious to his health.2 In 1480 much of the summer was spent in entertaining his sister, Duchess Margaret of Burgundy, on a suitably lavish scale, but Edward was not far from London throughout the year. In 1481 his proclaimed intention to lead his army in person against the Scots proved, as usual, little more than a public-relations exercise. His journey north did not begin until September, was delayed by a fortnight’s stay at Woodstock, and a visit to Oxford, and ended comfortably enough with a three-week sojourn in his new apartments at Nottingham Castle. Thereafter a journey north to Fotheringhay in May-June 1482 in connection with the Scottish war was to be his only move outside the south-east. Yet even during this later part of his reign the court was far from stationary. The household accounts for September 1478 to September 1479 show that the king changed the place of his night’s lodging about sixty times within the twelve month.1

  Edward was not primarily interested in military architecture. Even so, large sums were spent on certain key fortresses, especially on work which reflects his interest in artillery. On the defences of Calais and the Pale castles he spent more heavily and continuously than any king before him: the works there cost between £1,000 and £2,000 a year throughout the reign. His extensive transformation of the castle of Guines, completed under the early Tudors, made it one of the earliest fortresses under English control to be fully adapted to the needs of artillery warfare. Likewise at the Tower of London he built a new brick barbican or bulwark for gun emplacements. At the end of the reign large sums were spent on repairs to the castle and town walls of Berwick, damaged during the sieges of 1481 and 1482. But at Nottingham and Fotheringhay Castles, the only northerly places where he spent much time after 1471, his building works were intended for residential purposes. At Nottingham, where £3,000 was spent between 1476 and 1480, he built a new polygonal tower, with ‘marvellous fair’ windows and chambers, which was much admired by John Leland when he visited it during Henry VIII’s reign: he described Edward’s new tower as ‘the most beautifullest and gallant building for lodging … an exceeding fair piece of work’. At Fotheringhay extensive building was going on from the early years of the reign, and new chambers, latrines, turrets and a kitchen were erected. Further building there was in progress in 1478 when a royal purveyor visited Cambridge in search of masons, and accepted a bribe of 2s 6d from the Fellows of King’s College to refrain from impressing the men at work on their still unfinished chapel. Similar work may have been in hand at Dover Castle, for which two million bricks were purchased in 1480, but the precise nature of the operations is not known.1

  Edward’s chief love was for the pleasant palaces of the Thames valley, just as his great rival, Louis XI, loved the smiling valley of the Loire. Here – at Windsor, Sheen, Westminster, Eltham and Greenwich – the court spent most of its time after 1475. Large sums had been spent on Sheen (which, like Greenwich, formed part of the queen’s jointure) by Henry V and Margaret of Anjou, so only minor repairs were needed there during Edward’s reign, but at Greenwich, formerly Margaret of Anjou’s manor of La Plesance, he made various enlargements and improvements. As at Westminster Palace, these were aimed primarily at greater comfort and privacy. Considerable sums were spent on Westminster, including the making of a great chamber ‘unto our dearest wife the queen in her lodging, and for a privy kitchen of new to be made within the said palace’. His major building work of this kind, however, took place at Eltham Palace in Kent. Here the magnificent new hall was begun soon after November 1475, when Roger Appleton was appointed master and surveyor of the king’s works, and it was probably complete before the king’s death. It ranks with Westminster Hall and Hampton Court as one of the three surviving royal halls of first-class size.2

  It is characteristic of Edward that his rather sparse patronage of religion was expressed in close connection with his favourite residences, where colleges or religious houses could be used by the royal family. Both Edward and his queen patronized the Carthusian monastery at Sheen, founded by Henry V in 1414. In August 1479 they obtained a licence from Pope Sixtus IV to attend divine se
rvices in a chapel separate from the monastic choir.3 At Greenwich the king was directly responsible for the introduction into England of the admired continental order of Observant Franciscans. The moving spirit in this venture was probably his sister, Duchess Margaret of Burgundy, who had strong connections with the Order, and who spent much time at Greenwich during her visit to England between July and September 1480: she may well have felt that her brother’s soul stood in need of prayer. Soon after her return, he sent for the vicar-general of the Observants, and offered him a site for a new house adjacent to his palace at Greenwich, and in January 1481 he obtained papal approval for his scheme. The site was formally transferred on 2 July 1482 by the bishop of Norwich, and the new house begun.1 None of this, however, compares in importance with his much more ambitious patronage of the college of St George at Windsor.

  Edward is said to have had a special affection for Windsor Castle, and also took a great interest in the Order of the Garter, for which the chapel of St George within the castle had been re-founded by Edward III.2 Like the dukes of Burgundy with their order of the Golden Fleece, Edward used membership of the Garter as a diplomatic weapon. Foreign rulers or princes whose friendship he wished to win were elected from time to time, among them Ferdinand I, king of Naples, Francesco Sforza, duke of Milan, Duke Charles of Burgundy, King Ferdinand of Castile and Aragon, and John II, king of Portugal. They also included Federigo da Montefeltro, duke of Urbino, commander of the papal troops, elected in 1474: his influence at Rome helped to procure from Sixtus IV a grant of indulgences and remission of sins to all visitors to the Garter Chapel at Windsor on 1 October 1476.3 But for Englishmen, election to the Order remained very much a mark of Edward’s personal favour. Neither high birth nor even kinship with the king automatically gained a man entry into this charmed circle. Thus his cousin, John Mowbray, duke of Norfolk, and his brother-in-law, John de la Pole, duke of Suffolk, had to wait until 1472 before being elected, but personal friends like William Hastings and William Herbert were made knights as early as 1462. Even relatively obscure men such as Sir John Astley (1462) and Sir Robert Harcourt (1463) were preferred to established and prominent servants like Lords Ferrers, Mountjoy and Howard (1472). The king himself, whenever possible, kept the feast of St George (22 April) at Windsor. It was there, for example, that he was girded with the sword and cap of maintenance sent him by Pope Sixtus IV, a ceremony which ushered in seven days of feasting.4

  Part of Edward’s plan for the greater splendour of Windsor was to increase ‘the number of ministers daily serving Almighty God in the said chapel’. Edward Ill’s foundation had provided for a warden and twelve canons, thirteen priest-vicars, four clerks and six choristers, but when the collegiate establishment was incorporated by act of Parliament in 1483 this had been complemented by a further thirteen clerks and thirteen choristers. Windsor was one of the three Chapels Royal – the others being St Stephen’s, Westminster, and the Chapel of the Royal Household – which upheld England’s considerable reputation for music in the fifteenth century. The Royal Free Chapel of the Household was also incorporated in 1483, with a dean and three canons, and twenty-four chaplains and ‘gentleman clerks’, selected especially for their musical ability, both in singing and organ-playing. Already by 1471 this courtly musical establishment was of such repute that the duke of Milan sent his chapel master to seek out English singers and musicians and retain them for the duke’s service.1

  At the centre of all this activity at Windsor was the building of the new chapel of St George, Edward’s supreme achievement as a patron of architecture. To ‘daily serve Almighty God in the said chapel’ was only part of his purpose. It was also intended as a monument to the splendour of the House of York in this world, and as a fitting royal mausoleum in which his own bones should find their rest. Building work on the new chapel was heralded by the appointment on 19 February 1473 of Richard Beauchamp, bishop of Salisbury, a prelate already associated with the Order of the Garter, and soon to become its dean and first chancellor, as master and surveyor of ‘the king’s new works’ at Windsor Castle and in the chapel of St Mary and St George. He was given power to take stonecutters, carpenters and other workmen, and to acquire stone, timber, glass, lead and other necessaries.2 Before the new chapel could be begun, a number of existing buildings had to be demolished, chiefly the great hall and lodgings of the vicars choral. This had advanced sufficiently by 1477 for Edward to appoint a clerk or controller of the works, Thomas Chanceller, and his senior staff. The true architect of the chapel (apart from its west front and vaults, which were later additions) was probably the master-mason, Henry Janyns, who had worked at Eton College, and whose father, Robert, had built the beautiful bell-tower at Merton College, Oxford.

  Thereafter the work was pushed on apace. By March 1478 so many stonecutters had been drawn into the king’s service that at Oxford the chancellor of the university had difficulty in finding men to work on the new Divinity School. Money to finance the building came partly from the profits of baronial estates in the king’s hands during minority, and partly from exchequer drafts. The choir and aisles were the first parts of the chapel to be carried to their full height and roofed in, but the stone vault had not yet covered the timber roof when Edward died. Carving of the choir stalls and canopies was in hand in 1478–9, and soon after work was proceeding on Edward’s great tomb on the north side of the choir,1 Though the nave was yet unfinished, and the lantern-tower (later omitted from the plan) not even begun, the choir was ready to receive the body of its royal patron in April 1483.

  Meanwhile, Edward had been lavishing money on rich vestments and hangings, on statues in precious metals, and on fine service books for the embellishment of the chapel. These were an essential part of the whole concept of sumptuous and dignified luxury so much admired in the later middle ages, providing a colourful match for the decorative panelling of the walls, the intricate carving of vault, screen and stalls, and the stained glass of the windows. The king’s reward was a triumph, even in this great age of English architecture and craftsmanship, a building which ranks with Henry VII’s Chapel at Westminster and King’s College Chapel at Cambridge among the last and most perfect achievements of the English Gothic style.2

  Deficiencies in the documentary evidence forbid any precise calculation of the total cost of Edward IV’s building schemes. Even in his impecunious early years, however, the annual expenditure of the clerk of the king’s works was about £600 as compared with a rate of about £400 under Henry VI. The scale of spending certainly rose considerably after 1471, and higher still after 1475. Windsor alone cost £6,572 in the years 1478–83, a period when large sums were also being spent on the substantial works at Calais, Nottingham Castle, Eltham Palace and elsewhere. It seems likely that Edward devoted more money to building than any other English king since Edward III.3

  There was an element of pardonable pride in the Croyland Chronicler’s comments on the splendour of Edward’s later years:1

  for collecting vessels of gold and silver, tapestries, and decorations of the most precious nature, both for his palaces and for various churches, and for building castles, colleges, and other distinguished places … not one of his predecessors was at all able to equal his remarkable achievements.

  And, he added,

  you might have seen, in those days, the royal court presenting no other appearance than such as fully befits a most mighty kingdom.

  1 J. Fortescue, The Governance of England, 125.

  2 So phrased in the 1485 act of resumption, RP, VI, 336.

  3 GC, 215.

  1 CC, 563, and below, pp. 259–62, 354–5, 414.

  2 Kingsford, Chronicles of London, 176; cf. GC, 198; P.R.O., Warrants for Issues, E. 404/72/1 (21 June).

  1 The Travels of Leo of Rozmital, ed. and trans. M. Letts (Hakluyt Soc., 2nd ser., cviii, 1957), 46–7.

  2 For an admirable description of the contemporary Burgundian court, see R, Vaughan, Philip the Good, 127–63.

  3 Myers, The Hou
sehold of Edward IV, 4–5. For contemporary accounts of the tournaments of June 1467, see S. Bentley, Excerpta Histórica, 171–213; Sydney Anglo, ‘Anglo-Burgundian Feats of Arms at Smithfield, June 1467’, Guildhall Miscellany, II, vii (1965).

  1 P.R.O., Warrants for Issues, E. 404/74/1, no. 35.

  2 Below, pp. 264–6.

  3 Myers, op. cit., 4.

  4 Anglo, The Great Tournament Roll of Westminster (Oxford, 1968), 32–4.

  1 See below, p. 275.

  2 ‘The Record of Bluemantle Pursuivant’, in Kingsford, English Historical Literature, 385–8.

  3 Scofield, I, 283; Myers, op. cit., 45–6.

  1 F. Devon, Issues of the Exchequer, 491; 493–4, for 1468 above; N. H. Nicolas, Privy Purse Expenses of Elizabeth of York: Wardrobe Accounts of Edward the Fourth, 145–52, for 1480; CC, 563, for Christmas 1482.

  2 Myers, op. cit., 102–4, 108–9; J. P. Cooper, ‘The Social Distribution of Land and Men in England, 1436–1700’, EconHR, 2nd ser., xx (1967), 419–21; Thorold Rogers, Six Centuries of Work and Wages, 327.

  1 CPR, 1461–7, 96.

  2 Scofield, I, 375 (for 1465); II, 433 (1478); P.R.O., E. 404/74/2 (Elizabeth’s ornament, not paid for until 1470); A. A. Ruddock, Italian Merchants and Shipping in Southampton, 1270–1600 (Southampton, 1951), 74. This huge sum may be no exaggeration, for Edward’s father, Duke Richard, had owned a jewelled collar valued at £2,666, and Henry V had one worth £5,162 (McFarlane, The Nobility of Later Medieval England, 98).