Edward IV

by Charles Ross

  1 B. P. Wolffe, ‘Henry VII’s Land Revenues and Chamber Finance’, EHR, lxxix (1964), 227.

  2 Above, pp. 261 ff, and chapter 11.

  3 Above, pp. 334–7.

  4 McFarlane, Nobility, 284.

  1 For 1422, see J. S. Roskell, The Commons in the Parliament of 1422, 98–100, 103–7; and for the equally sharp contrast with the succession of the nine-year-old Edward VI in 1547, see Mortimer Levine, Tudor Dynastic Problems, 1460–1571, 76. There are valuable remarks on 1483 by T. B. Pugh in Fifteenth-Century England, 110–14.

  2 Ives, ‘Andrew Dymmock … and Earl Rivers, 1482–3’, 223–5.

  3 Ibid., 225; Mancini, 81 (who also refers to the division of Edward’s treasure between the queen, Dorset and Edward Woodville).

  1 Pugh, op. cit., 112–13; Ives, op. cit., 225.

  2 CC, 564–5.

  3 Loc, cit.

  4 McFarlane, ‘Wars of the Roses’, 117–19, who describes their mood as ‘chastened, indeed craven’ by 1485.

  5 Mancini, 78–9.

  1 On this point, see the comments of C. A. J. Armstrong in Mancini, 61, 107–8; for the codicils, CC, 564.

  2 More (Richard III, 10) observes that whilst Edward was alive the dissensions amongst friends somewhat irked him: ‘yet in his good health he somewhat the less regarded it, because he thought whatsoever business should fall between them, himself should always be able to rule both the parties’.

  APPENDICES

  SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

  INDEX

  Appendix I

  NOTE ON NARRATIVE SOURCES

  The reign of Edward IV was singularly ill-served by contemporary writers of history. It falls uneasily into a period of limbo between the voluminous monastic chronicles of an earlier age (a form of writing already moribund by 1450) and the developed ‘humanist’ or ‘politic’ histories of the sixteenth century and later. The gap thus left is only very partially filled by the vernacular city chronicles, mainly of London origin, which became ‘perhaps the most important of all the original authorities for English history in the fifteenth century’ (C. L. Kingsford, English Historical Literature in the Fifteenth Century, 70). Nor (with exceptions for the years 1470 and 1471) did the period produce in England the series of official and semi-official histories patronized by the kings of France, nor the ‘memorialists’ like Basin and Commynes, politically-conscious students of politics and government in their own time, who were intent on drawing upon historical experience for general rules of political behaviour (for whom see Denys Hay, ‘History and Historians in France and England during the Fifteenth Century’, BIHR, xxxv (1962), 111–27). The consequences of all this for the student of Edward’s reign are serious indeed. For no other reign in English history since Henry III do we possess less strictly contemporary information, save perhaps that of Henry VI. It is often far from easy to establish a precise sequence of events, especially when these took place far from London, like the Lancastrian resistance of 1461–4, or the northern rising of 1469 (for which see Appendix IV). Still more difficult is any discussion of motive and the interplay of personality in politics, matters generally beyond the range of the unsophisticated and often ill-informed and parochial writers of the time. Too often the inner logic of high politics depends on inference from action and events, and, as G. R. Elton rightly observed, ‘it is because no sound contemporary history exists for this age that its shape and meaning are so much in dispute now’ (England 1200–1640: The Sources of History, 22).

  The failings of contemporary narrative sources can be partly supplemented by the evidence of contemporary letters, notably the Paston correspondence, and from official records. The latter, however, apart from financial and legal records, fall primarily into the category of enrolments of official acts, and fall far short of providing the political insight to be derived by the student of sixteenth-century history from the great mass of memoranda, reports, instructions and correspondence known collectively as ‘State Papers’. These, as Elton expressed it, ‘add the dimension of individual personality to our knowledge of English history’ (op. cit., 66 ff.).

  Whatever their obvious and manifold defects, however, the historian of Edward IV’s reign remains heavily dependent on the available narrative sources, especially for its political history. For this reason, I append below brief historiographical notes, which also indicate the degree of reliance I have placed on individual sources or groups of sources.

  I. The ‘Cropland Chronicler‘

  By far the most important single source for the years 1471–85 is the account generally known as the ‘Second Continuation of the Croyland Chronicle’, cited here as CC. Despite the name, this was not a late survivor of the monastic chronicle tradition, although in form it survives as a continuation of two spurious chronicles associated with the Fenland abbey of Crowland. According to a marginal note, its author was a doctor of canon law and a councillor of Edward IV, who took part in an embassy to Burgundy in 1471, and elsewhere the author claims that he wrote and completed the narrative at Croyland within ten days, ending on the last day of April 1486. These claims were generally accepted (see Kingsford, op. cit., 180–5) until challenged by Sir J. G. Edwards (‘The second continuation of the Crowland Chronicle; was it written in ten days?’, BIHR, xxxix (1966), 117–29), who threw doubt primarily on the date of the chronicle and, by implication, on the authority of the marginal note about authorship. His arguments must, however, be rejected on the internal evidence of the Chronicle itself, though detailed proof awaits the publication of N. Pronay’s forthcoming edition of the text. More recently, M. M. Condon has assembled evidence, to be published shortly, which puts beyond all reasonable doubt that the author of the chronicle was in fact Bishop John Russell, himself a doctor of canon law, a royal councillor, and keeper of the privy seal to Edward IV (1474–83) and chancellor to Richard III (June 1483-July 1485). Even if this identification be not accepted, it can be shown from the internal evidence of the chronicle that its author was a clerk, a royal servant with knowledge of the chancery, who was present in a number of meetings of council, parliament and convocation, and accompanied Edward IV to France in 1475. He was on occasion at least an eye-witness of the events he describes, for example, the stormy council meeting when Clarence and Gloucester quarrelled over the Warwick inheritance, and the Christmas festivities at Edward’s court in 1482. Moreover, he was clearly a man of intelligence and high education who possessed a considerable inside knowledge of affairs. Where his specific statements can be checked against other evidence (e.g., on Edward’s financial policies) they are almost invariably correct. He must, therefore, be accepted as an authoritative witness in default of other evidence. In particular, it is worth noticing that (a) although a loyal servant of Edward IV, he was still capable of trenchant criticisms of his fallible master, and (b) that although not personally hostile to the Woodville family, he regarded them as a disastrous element in politics – this comes out especially in his account of the council meeting following Edward’s death, at which he was probably present in person.

  2. The London Chronicles

  The identification, nature and value of the many surviving vernacular chronicles of London origin were first discussed by C. L. Kingsford in his Chronicles of London (1905), v-xlviii, a volume which contains inter alia the chronicle known as Vitellius A. XVI, which in its present form extends to 1509, apart from a few later jottings up to 1516. His views were developed in his English Historical Literature (1913), 70–112, and his conclusions are still accepted, apart from the revisions made by A. H. Thomas and I. D. Thornley in their edition (1938) of the more recently discovered Great Chronicle of London. Thomas and Thornley were able to show that the common author of both the Great Chronicle and Fabyan’s New Chronicles of England and of France (ed. Ellis, 1811) was the London draper Robert Fabian, who was writing up to the time of his death in February 1513. Sheriff of London in 1493 and master of the Drapers’ Company in 1495–6 and 1501–2, he had been an apprentice to Sir Thomas Cook in
1468, of whose disgrace he had personal memories. Amongst other sources on which he drew was Vitellius A. XVI, which, however, retains a certain independent value. Both the value and the limitations of this group of sources were determined by the way in which they were put together and by the audience which commissioned and read them. For the most part they were assembled by London citizens as a part-time hobby, with an eye to the interests and prejudices of their chief readers, the London merchant class. They remain essentially compilations, with the compiler using one or more existing versions and adding to them from his own knowledge as events neared the time he was writing. They were never national histories for general consumption, and remain parochial to London, showing much interest in civic affairs and events in the capital, but little knowledge of events abroad or elsewhere in the country. They are essentially annalistic rather than analytical, uncritical of their sources, and offering no explanation of the causes or significance of the events they describe. Sometimes the compiler injected a personal note into his account, as in ‘Gregory’s Chronicle’ (Collections of a London Citizen, 58–239), which is of considerable value for the first decade of Edward’s reign. Much the same might be said of the ‘Short English Chronicle’ (ed. Gairdner, Three Fifteenth Century Chronicles, 1–80), which ends in 1465, and was probably written very soon after. Although some of the London chronicles, especially the Great Chronicle, were finally put together at a comparatively late date, and therefore reflect some elements of Tudor prejudice and propaganda, their importance (apart from the lack of other narratives) lies ‘in the fact that they, or the sources from which they were compiled, were written soon after the events recorded and thus reflect, to some extent, the popular opinion of those events’ (Thomas and Thornley, introd. to Great Chronicle, xxxiv).

  3. Other contemporary English sources

  This body of material was surveyed at length by Kingsford, English Historical Literature, chapters VI and VII. Comparatively little has been written since to affect his assessment, except that the Annates rerum anglicarum printed by J. Stevenson [Letters and Papers illustrative of the Wars of the English in France, Rolls Series, II, pt ii, 756–92) from the text originally printed by Thomas Hearne, Liber Niger Scaccarii (2nd edn, 1771), II, 522–41, have been conclusively shown not to have been written by the antiquary, William Worcester (see K. B. McFarlane, ‘William Worcester: a Preliminary Survey’, in Studies presented to Sir Hilary Jenkinson, ed. J. Conway Davies (Oxford, 1957), 196–221, esp. 206–7). This collection (cited here as Annales) has more the character of a scrapbook than of a deliberately composed piece of work, and was compiled by a writer at work in 1491. Nevertheless, it contains material not found elsewhere, especially for the years 1460–68, and is of interest for its strongly pro-Nevill bias, a point not noticed by Kingsford. Another recent discovery was ‘John Benet’s Chronicle’ (ed. G. L. Harriss and M. A. Harriss, Camden Miscellany XXIV, Royal Historical Society, Camden 4th ser., ix. 1972, 151–234). This valuable clerical chronicle is primarily useful for the period of Henry VI’s majority rule but has much of interest for the years 1460–62.

  Also of considerable value for the early years of the reign is the ‘Brief Latin Chronicle’ [Three Fifteenth Century Chronicles, ed. J. Gairdner, 164–85), which is of interest for contemporary reactions to Edward’s policies, especially its critical comments on the military and naval operations in the north 1462–3. In the same context the ‘Brief Notes’ (1422–64) printed by Gairdner [Three Fifteenth Century Chronicles, 148–63) are of considerable use, not least for their highly contemporary character: they seem to have been a record of news written down from time to time as it arrived at Ely, where the collection was compiled. Information about events in the north of England is sufficiently rare to give a greater importance than it might otherwise have possessed to the work of John Warkworth, A Chronicle of the First Thirteen Tears of the Reign of King Edward the Fourth (ed. J. O. Halliwell, Camden Soc, 1839). Master of Peterhouse, Cambridge, the author came from Northumberland, and the chronicle was written by or for him, probably by 1482 (see Kingsford, op. cit., 171–3; Lander, ‘Treason and Death of the Duke of Clarence’, 20–1 and note); it is of special value for the events of 1470–71.

  Very much apart from this miscellaneous material stand the examples of ‘official history’ produced in England during Edward IV’s reign. The two most important are the Chronicle of the Rebellion in Lincolnshire (ed. J. G. Nichols, Camden Soc, 1847) which covers the events of three weeks in March 1470, and the Historic of the Arrivall of Edward IV (ed. J. Bruce, Camden Soc, 1838), covering the period from 2 March 1471, when Edward sailed for England, to 26 May, following the defeat of the Bastard of Fauconberg. Kingsford’s discussion of the latter [op. cit., 174–6) now needs to be supplemented by J. A. F. Thomson, ‘ “The Arrival of Edward IV” – The Development of the Text’, Speculum, xlvi (1971), 84–93. Their value lies in their immediacy – a short version of the Arrivall, for example, was completed within three days of the final event it describes, for distribution on the Continent – and in the fact that the author, a vigorous writer of English prose, was clearly in Edward’s company during the course of these events and was an eye-witness of many. Their propaganda purpose is clear enough (e.g. the statement that Henry VI died in the Tower ‘of pure displeasure and melancholy’) but they are also often remarkably frank – the Arrivall, for example, makes no bones about the extent of the hostility to Edward on his landing in 1471 throughout the north of England. Both must be regarded as of the highest value for the events they describe.

  4. Continental Sources

  Foreigners, especially in France and Burgundy, but also as far afield as Italy, were much interested in the English civil wars, partly for the bearing which changes in England’s attitude might have on the complicated structure of continental alliances. This interest was not generally supported by much first-hand knowledge of English affairs, and some continental authorities are chiefly of value precisely for the hearsay and rumour which they report, much of it quite ill-founded (e.g. the Milanese ambassador in France’s report in March 1461 that Margaret of Anjou had persuaded Henry VI to abdicate and had then poisoned him, or his belief in 1471 that Edward IV had murdered Margaret as well as Henry VI). These ambassadorial reports, of which the most important are in the Calendar of State Papers, Milan, vol. I (1385–1618), ed. A. B. Hinds, are also of value for the French court reactions to events in England (especially in 1472–5) and for the occasional report on English affairs by correspondents who had visited or were writing from England.

  The memoirs of Philippe de Commynes, as an early example of ‘Machiavellian history’, have an importance far greater than their bearing on contemporary English history, and have been the subject of many translations and commentaries. Commynes is unusual amongst contemporary writers in that he had personal acquaintance with high politics, and took part as a principal in many of the dealings he describes, especially the negotiations leading to the Treaty of Picquigny of 1475, for which he is an indispensable source. But his prejudiced view of Edward IV’s character and ability has helped to distort historians’ estimates of the king, and largely contributed to the decline of Edward’s reputation in the seventeenth century and later (see Lander, ‘Edward IV: The Modern Legend; and a Revision’, and above, Conclusion). His reliability for particular statements has been considered in the footnotes, but it is worth noticing that his general historical reputation has recently been under severe attack from several quarters, notably in the works of Bittmann and Dufournet (for which see the useful short introduction to the translation of the Memoires, for the reign of Louis XI, by Michael Jones, Penguin Classics (1972), and the less reliable introduction to the edition by S. Kinser and I. Cazeaux, The Memoirs of Philippe de Commynes, South Carolina, 1969). These criticisms, concerned with Commynes’s explanations of events on the Continent, tend to strengthen suspicions of his reliability on English affairs.

  A modern assessment of the historical writings of Jean de W
aurin, the most important for our purpose of the Burgundian chroniclers of the time, is sadly overdue. Meanwhile, it is hard to assess his authority, especially in view of his confused chronology and tendency to elaborate his narrative by fictitious speeches put in the mouths of his characters. However, Sir Charles Oman’s judgement that ‘his domestic English annals are confused and often worthless’ (Political History of England, 504–5), is too harsh. He was a man of affairs; he visited England in 1467, and in 1469 waited upon the earl of Warwick in the hope of obtaining material for his history; and his account of 1461–71 was written between 1465 and his death in 1474. Some of the information he acquired about England is unique to him, and occasionally I have ventured to depend upon him (for example, in relation to 1460 and 1467).

  The valuable account of the revolution of 1483, written by an Italian visitor to England, Dominic Mancini, before the end of the year, has been the subject of a scholarly assessment in the edition by C. A. J. Armstrong, The Usurpation of Richard III (2nd and revised edn, 1969). Mancini’s account is of particular interest for the importance it attaches to the influence of the Woodvilles in Edward’s later years: even if exaggerated on some points, it may reflect what contemporaries believed. It also tends to substantiate Sir Thomas More’s account on many points of detail (op. cit., xx).

  5. The Early Tudors: Polydore Vergil and Sir Thomas More

  So much has been written about these two famous authors that little need be said. Polydore’s English History has been thoroughly assessed by Denys Hay in his Polydore Vergil: Renaissance Historian and Man of Letters (1952) and again in The Anglica Historia of Polydore Vergil, 1485–1537 (Camden Series, lxxiv, 1950), and More’s Richard III in the splendid edition by R. S. Sylvester (Yale edn of the Complete Works of Sir Thomas More, II, 1963), where full bibliographies will be found. In spite of their differing qualities of bias and historical intent, the value of both men’s works lies in their access to the oral information of contemporaries who had taken part in the politics of Edward’s later years. Polydore’s account of the reign, however, becomes really valuable only for the later years, when he could draw on the knowledge of men like Morton and Bray, and I find it hard to accept in toto Professor Hay’s claim that ‘from at latest 1460 to 1537 the Anglica Historia offers a narrative of the highest value’. So far as the decade 1461–71 is concerned, Kingsford seems to be nearer the truth with his comment that ‘its value lies not in its description of events, but in its presentment of opinion fifty years later’ (op. cit., 254 ff.). Any assessment of the very flattering view of Edward IV presented by More must take into account the remarkable influence on More of his classical models, emphasized by Professor Sylvester (op. cit., xciii-v), especially the contrast made by Tacitus between the ‘good’ Augustus and the ‘bad’ Tiberius, which is reproduced, and in part paraphrased, by More in his juxtaposition of Edward and Richard of Gloucester. Even the innocence of the Woodviiles in More’s narrative owes much to Tacitus’s picture of Augustus’s sorrowing widow and her children.