Edward IV

by Charles Ross

  65,503

  1462–65

  7,044

  25,855

  7,074

  57,449

  1465–69

  9,316

  39,664

  5,492

  93,942

  1469–71

  7,811

  27,610

  3,411

  53,421

  1471–76

  9,091

  43,129

  4,729

  115,475

  1476–79

  7,502

  51,889

  6,887

  120,333

  1479–82

  9,784

  62,586

  6,927

  179,340

  *Annual averages in 3-year periods except 1446–8, 1448–50 and 1469–71 (2-year periods), 1465–69 (4-year period), and 1471–76 (5-year period).

  (Reproduced from M. M. Postan, chapter IV of The Cambridge Economic History of Europe, ed. M. Postan and E. E. Rich (1952), II, 193.)

  The consequences of all this may be seen in the steadily improving trade figures of the later years of the reign. Cloth exports first reached and then overtook the high levels of the late 1440s. There was an even larger expansion in the export-import trade in miscellaneous merchandise, a recovery in the wine trade, and even a temporary expansion in the volume of wool exports within the context of that trade’s long-term decline.1 Moreover, if we except the Hanseatic sector, a growing share in all this activity was in the hands of native English merchants: by 1483 those who made their living from commerce and industry had good reason to be grateful to their king. It is no surprise to find that the essential features of Yorkist commercial policy were pursued with equal vigour, but with no less risk of subordination to diplomatic and dynastic objectives by Henry VII.2

  1 E. F. Jacob, The Fifteenth Century, 645, and the comments of Chrimes in History, xlviii (1963), 27; S. B. Chrimes, Lancastrians, Yorkists and Henry VII, 125; J. R. Lander, ‘Edward IV: The Modern Legend’, 52.

  1 K. B. McFarlane, The Nobility of Later Medieval England, 122–5.

  1 Edward’s peerage creations are usefully listed by T. B. Pugh, in Fifteenth-Century England, 116–17; see also his comments, pp. 88–91.

  2 Chrimes, Henry VII, 138–40.

  3 Pugh, op. cit., 115.

  4 Chrimes, op. cit., 140.

  5 Edward created 36 knights of the Garter, of whom 21 were English noblemen, including members of the royal family; Henry created 37, including 16 noblemen; G. F. Beltz, Memorials of the Order of the Garter, clxii-vi; CP, II, App. B, 542–7.

  1 Above, pp. 68 ff.; below, pp. 373–7.

  2 See above for details, pp. 199–203.

  3 Morgan, ‘The King’s Affinity’, 19.

  1 Above, pp. 194–8, for policies in Wales; for Buckingham, Morgan, op. cit., 18.

  2 CPR, 1476–85, 63, 67, 69, 134; Scofield, II, 205 (Buckingham at the marriage of Anne Mowbray, January 1477).

  3 Above, p. 230 n.; Morgan, op. cit., 18 and n.

  4 Mancini, 75; More, Richard III, 89; Polydore Vergil, English History, 193; T. B. Pugh, op. cit., 111.

  5 Bentley, Excerpta Historica, 370–2; Morgan, op. cit., 18.

  1 See above, pp. 248–9. As there noted, the other co-heir to the Mowbrays, William, Lord Berkeley, had signed away his rights to Edward IV, but Richard III was able to win his allegiance by creating him earl of Nottingham (28 June 1483) and allowing him his share of the Norfolk lands.

  2 Following the forfeiture of the Holland lands in 1461, the king gave most of them to Duchess Anne and her heirs by the duke (22 December 1461) and then on 26 August 1467 vested them in her daughter, with remainder to the duchess and the heirs of her body (CPR, 1461–7, 104–5; 1467–77, 32–3).

  3 Ibid., 456–7; RP, VI, 106–8.

  4 CPR, 1476–85, 212, 263, 283–4. He had also been given, after his second marriage, a life-interest in some of the Holland estates (CPR, 1467–77, 582; 16 March 1476).

  1 RP, VI, 215–18; CP, V, 212–15. Because of the attainder of the duke of Exeter, Nevill had no strict legal right to the inheritance, but Woodville greed undoubtedly prevented any chance of the attainder’s being reversed in Nevill’s favour as heir male. The fact that an act of parliament was felt necessary to legalize the arrangement (including the provision for Richard Grey, who had no claims at all) suggests that it was felt to be arbitrary.

  2 Pugh, in Fifteenth-Century England, 112.

  3 Cited by McFarlane, 4 Wars of the Roses’, 119.

  1 W. H. Dunham, Lord Hastings’ Indentured Retainers, 46.

  2 One or two injunctions concerning the enforcement of the statutes against livery and maintenance have survived in municipal records (printed by Myers, English Historical Documents, IV, 1108–9, 1132), in 1479 the Bristol authorities said that a certain evildoer ought to be fined £2,800 for breaches of the statute of 1468, though no action was taken (Great Red Book of Bristol, IV, 72) but lords were a different matter: see further below, pp. 412–13.

  3 J. M. W. Bean, The Decline of English Feudalism, 1215–1540, 215–16, 238–42; C. D. Ross, ‘The Reign of Edward the Fourth’, in Fifteenth-Century England, 60–1.

  4 Chrimes, Henry VII, 208–16, for a general survey of these policies.

  1 J. R. Lander, ‘Bonds, coercion and fear: Henry VII and the Peerage’, in Florilegium Historiale: Essays Presented to Wallace K. Ferguson, 328–67; ‘Attainder and Forfeiture’, 119–52.

  2 C. J. Harrison, ‘The Petition of Edmund Dudley’, EHR, lxxxvii (1972), 82–99. Lander was able to show that ‘out of 62 peerage families a total of 46 or 47 were for some part of the reign at the king’s mercy, and only 16 escaped … the system was so extensive that it must have created an atmosphere of chronic watchfulness, suspicion and fear’ (‘Bonds, coercion and fear’, 347).

  3 R. L. Storey. ‘The Wardens of the Marches of England towards Scotland, 1377–1489’, EHR, lxxii (1957), 605–7.

  1 Storey, op. cit., 608–9; for the appointments, Rotuli Scotiae, II, 472, 479, 486, 498, 501, 515, 518; CPR, 1494–150g, 213; and I am indebted to Miss S. S. M. Taylor’s researches for information about the bonds.

  2 M. E. James, ‘A Tudor Magnate and the Tudor State’, 15–24.

  3 Lander, Wars of the Roses, 29; Conflict and Stability, 175–6; ‘Bonds, coercion and fear’, 348–51.

  4 Printed in Grants from the Crown during the Reign of Edward V, ed. J. G. Nichols (Camden Soc., 1854), xliii; reprinted by Chrimes, Eng. Constitutional Ideas, 172.

  1 For these or similar views, W. Stubbs, Constitutional History of England, III, 273–6; J. E. A. Jolliffe, Constitutional History of Medieval England, 491–3; H. L. Gray, The Influence of the Commons on Early Legislation, 126–38; A. R. Myers, English Historical Documents, 1327–1485, 368.

  2 B. P. Wolffe, The Royal Demesne in English History, 143–4, following the views of A. F. Pollard, Parliament in the Wars of the Roses, 15 ff., and see also Wilkinson, Constitutional History of England in the Fifteenth Century, 142–6, 284–5.

  1 RP, V, 462–3, 487; J. S. Roskell, The Commons and their Speakers in English Parliaments, 1376–1523, 80–1.

  2 W. H. Dunham, Jr, The Fane Fragment of the 1461 Lords’ Journal, 57–8; Pollard, op. cit., 5.

  3 RP, V, 372. It has recently been suggested (by G. L. Harriss in EHR, lxxxviii (1973), 172) that far from representing a conscious programme, as Wolffe believed, this famous statement was designed to soften up his subjects for taxation in the following year.

  4 H. G. Richardson, “The Commons and Medieval Polities’, TRHS, 4th ser., xxviii (1946), 38, 41–3; Dunham, op. cit., 33–4; but cf. Patricia Jalland, ‘The Influence of the Aristocracy on Shire Elections in the North of England, 1450–70’, Speculum, xlvii (1972), 483–507.

  1 Derived from Wedgwood, Hist. Pari., Register, 433–46; for slightly different figures, see J. S. Roskell, The Commons in the Parliament of 1422, 136.

  2 Roskell, op. cit., 27; K. B. McFarlane, ‘Parliament and Bastard
Feudalism’, TRHS, 4th ser., xxvi (1944), 53–79. Both were considering primarily aristocratic influence on elections, but for a persuasive challenge to this opinion, see P. Jalland, op. cit.

  3 M. McKisack, The Parliamentary Representation of the English Boroughs in the Middle Ages, 44–6, as revised by Roskell, Commons in the Parliament of 1422, 125–44, and K. Houghton, ‘Theory and Practice in Borough Elections to Parliament during the Later Fifteenth Century’, BIHR, xxxix (1966), 130–40.

  1 Houghton, op. cit., 136–8. He suggests that the Cornish M.P.s were largely returned by Lord Hastings, as receiver-general of the Duchy, and Sir John Fogge, as administrator of the Duchy lands for the prince of Wales. For the similar use of the prince of Wales’s and the duke of York’s electoral influence by Earl Rivers in January 1483, see Ives, ‘Andrew Dymmock and the Papers of Anthony, Earl Rivers, 1482–3’, 222–3.

  2 Wedgwood, Hist. Pari., Biog., s.n.; and for the influence of the wardens of the West March in N.W. England, Jalland, op. cit., 495–501.

  3 Dunham, Lord Hastings’ Indentured Retainers, 33–4.

  1 Roskell, Commons and their Speakers, 344.

  2 Ibid., 271–93, 333–6.

  1 Dunham, Fane Fragment, 65–78 (my italics).

  2 Discussed by Wolffe, Royal Demesne, 144–58.

  3 Myers, op. cit., 368; Gray, Influence of the Commons on Early Legislation, 138–62.

  1 The definition is by Chrimes, Eng. Const. Ideas, 248–9.

  2 Statutes of the Realm, II, 360–476.

  3 Gray, op. cit., 127–8, 130–2.

  4 H. Hallam, View of the State of Europe during the Middle Ages (1860 edn), III, 198. Even the much larger body of legislation produced by Henry VIF’s reign (192 statutes) has been said recently to do little to justify Bacon’s claim that legislation was Henry’s ‘pre-eminent virtue and merit’ (Ghrimes, Henry VII, 177–84).

  5 Cf. Wolffe, Royal Demesne, 145–7.

  1 CFR, 1461–71, 4, 6.

  2 RP, V, 497–8, and above, pp. 55–6.

  3 RP, V, 499.

  1 Wolffe (op. cit., 146) claims that this grant, so early in the reign, reflects the commons’ confidence in the king, by contrast with Henry VI, who had to wait thirty-one years for the same privilege. But Richard III and Henry VII were both granted the customs for life in the first years of their respective reigns, before much confidence could have been established, and, as noted above, the absence of a commons’ grant had not stopped Edward collecting the customs on his own authority. For the mercantilism of this parliament, see below, pp. 359–60.

  2 Above, pp. 119–20, 124.

  3 PL, V, 178, and above, p. 214–16.

  1 Above, p. 236.

  2 Scofield, II, 304–5, 386.

  3 RP, VI, 198.

  4 Edward’s figures include the tax voted by the parliament of January 1483, which he never lived to collect, but excludes the three-quarter subsidy remitted after his return in 1475. For Henry VII, see R. Lockyer, Henry VII, 55, citing the unpublished work of Dr R. S. Schofield, on parliamentary lay taxation. For the comparison with the Lancastrians, Wolffe, Royal Demesne, 146.

  1 For English overseas trade in general during Edward’s reign, see E. Power and M. M. Postan, Studies in English Trade in the Fifteenth Century (1933), esp. chapter I, ‘English Foreign Trade from 1446 to 1482’, by H. L. Gray; chapter III, ‘The Economic and Political Relations of England and the Hanse from 1400 to 1475’ by M. M. Postan; E. M. Carus-Wilson and O. Coleman, England’s Export Trade 1275–1547 (1963), which, despite its title, deals only with wool and cloth; E. M. Carus-Wilson, Medieval Merchant Veriturers (1954, 2nd edn 1967), which reprints several important studies, including her ‘Overseas Trade of Bristol’ from Power and Postan, op. cit., chapter V; E. E. Power, ‘The English Wool Trade in the Reign of Edward IV, Cambridge Historical Journal, ii (1926), 17–35, reprinted and expanded in chapter II of Power and Postan; A. A. Ruddock, Italian Merchants and Shipping in Southampton, 1270–1600 (Southampton, 1951); M. R. Thielemans, Bourgogne et Angleterre; N.J. M. Kerling, Commercial Relations of Holland and Zeeland with England (Leiden, 1954); and M. E. Mallett, ‘Anglo-Florentine Commercial Relations 1465–1491’, EconHR, 2nd ser., xv (1962), 250–5. What follows is closely limited to a discussion of royal impact on the commercial fortunes of England 1461–85.

  2 Scofield, II, 404–14, for Edward’s trading activities in general; for information on the tin trade I am indebted to Dr John Hatcher, of the University of Kent, whose forthcoming study, to be published shortly, is entitled ‘The English Tin Industry and Trade before 1550’.

  1 Power, ‘Wool Trade’, 22; Gray, ‘English Foreign Trade’, 326–8.

  2 Mallett, op. cit., 260 and n.

  3 CC, 569; my italics and translation; the rendering given by Riley, Ingulph’s Chronicle, 474, is misleading.

  4 CPR, 1476–85, 342; Scofield, II, 415–16; E, Miller, in Cambridge Economic History of Europe, III, 101,

  1 D. B. Quinn, ‘Edward IV and Exploration’, Mariner’s Mirror, xxi (1935), 275–84; ‘The Argument for the English Discovery of America between 1480 and 1494’, Geographical Journal, cxxvii (1961), 227–85.

  2 Richmond, ‘English Naval Power’, 10; CPR, 1467–77, 318; 1476–85, 317.

  3 Below, pp. 378–9.

  1 CChR, VI, 188.

  2 Above, p. 175; Gregory, 228.

  3 Ibid., 232.

  4 GC, 228.

  1 Fabyaris Chronicle, 667, and for Heryot as a royal factor, above, p. 351.

  2 Richard III, 5.

  3 Wedgwood, Hist. Pari., Biographies, 241, for Crosby; Steel, Receipt of the Exchequer, 344, CPR, 1461–7, 371, 475, and 1467–77, 149, and S. Thrupp, The Merchant Class of Medieval London, 268, 278, for Bryce and Vaughan, and see her chapter V passim for further connections.

  4 Acts of Court of the Mercers’ Company, 51–140 passim; Dunham, Fane Fragment, 65–7; and above, pp. 101, 304. In 1461 there is evidence that a bill to remedy the hurts of the merchandises of London was first lobbied by the London merchants and then put into parliament by the king’s own hand.

  1 Mallett, ‘Anglo-Florentine Commercial Relations’, 252–3; Scofield, II, 420–8; Raymond de Roover, The Medici Bank, 63, which includes some very questionable suggestions about Edward’s indebtedness in the early 1470s.

  1 For the rivalry of Staple and Merchant Adventurers, see G. Schanz, Englische Handelspolitik gegen ende des Mittelalters, I, 344 ff.; for the Staple in public finance, W. I. Haward, ‘The Financial Transactions between the Lancastrian Government and the Merchants of the Staple’, in Power and Postan, op. cit., 293–321; and Power, ‘The Wool Trade’, in ibid., 72 ff.; and above, p. 379.

  2 Power, ‘The Wool Trade’, 79–90; J. H. Munro, ‘An Economic Aspect of the collapse of the Anglo-Burgundian alliance’, EHR, lxxxv (1970), 225–44; Thielemans, Bour-gogne et Angleterre, 349 ff., and the corrections suggested by Munro, ‘The Costs of Anglo-Burgundian Interdependence’, Revue Beige de Philologie et d’Histoire, xlvi (1968), 1234–6; and for the problem of English bullion shortage in general, H. A. Miskimin, ‘Monetary Movements and Market Structure: Forces for Contraction in Fourteenth-and Fifteenth-Century England’, Journal of Economic History, xxiv (1964), 470–90.

  3 Power, ‘Wool Trade in the Reign of Edward IV, 18–22.

  1 Kerling, op. cit., 80; and for the customs duties, Cams-Wilson and Coleman, op. cit., 22–3, 194–5.

  2 Carus-Wilson, Medieval Merchant Venturers, xxiv-xxv, xxviii-xxix, xxxiv; Edward Miller, ‘The Economic Policies of Governments’, being chapter IV of Cambridge Economic History of Europe, ed. M. M. Postan and E. E. Rich, III, 355.

  3 Postan, ‘Economic and Political Relations of England and the Hanse’, in Power and Postan, op. cit., 120 ff.; Carus-Wilson, ‘The Iceland Trade’, in ibid., 177–81.

  4 Postan, op. cit., 98–9; Carus-Wilson and Coleman, 194–5.

  1 R. Flenley, ‘London and Foreign Merchants in the reign of Henry VI’, EHR, xxv (1910), 644–55; M. S. Guiseppi, ‘Alien Merchants i
n England in the Fifteenth Century’, TRHS, new ser., ix (1895), 75–98; Ruddock, op. cit., 173–80; Acts of Court of the Mercers’ Company, 140; Scofield, I, 196–7, 272–3; Postan, ‘England and the Hanse’, op. cit., 91–3, 99–100, 132.

  2 Above, p. 347.

  3 See the works cited above, p. 357, n. 2.

  1 3 Edw. IV, c. 1; RP, V, 501–3; SR, II, 392–5.

  2 SR, II, 403–13 (4 Edw. IV, caps 1–5). For the Burgundian embargo, see Myers, English Historical Documents, 1042–3.

  3 To those cited above should be added, 4 Edw. IV, c. 8, for the protection of the craft of homers.

  4 RP, V, 508–9.

  1 7 Edw. IV, caps 1 and 2, worsted manufactures and Devon cloths; 8 Edw. IV, c. 1, Norfolk cloth manufactures; 12 Edw. IV, c. 3, customs regulations; c. 5, northern wools; 17 Edw. IV, c. 1, bullion regulation; 22 Edw. IV, c. 2, fishpacking; c. 3, silk manufactures; c. 5, fulling of hats and caps. In Edward’s last parliament, January-February 1483, a poll-tax was imposed on alien residents, with exemption for Hansards, Spaniards and Bretons (RP, VI, 197–8).

  2 R. B. Wernham, Before the Armada, 64–5.

  1 Carus-Wilson, Medieval Merchant Venturers, 272–8; H. Touchard, Le Commerce Maritime Breton au Jin du Moyen Age, 185–7; Carus-Wilson, The Expansion of Exeter at the Close of the Middle Ages, 8–9; Postan, ‘England and the Hanse’, Power and Postan, op. cit., 130–1; Kerling, Commercial Relations of Holland and Zeeland with England, 76 ff.

  2 Mallett, ‘Anglo-Florentine Commercial Relations’, 254–8.

  3 Ruddock, Italian Merchants … in Southampton, 212–13. The Genoese were already unpopular for their destruction of the expedition of the Bristol merchant, Robert Sturmy, to the Mediterranean in 1457. This hostile act produced a great outcry in England, especially in London; Ruddock, 173–5.