Three suns seen in the sky before a battle in Herefordshire in 1461, taken as an omen and turned into a badge (1461)
A parhelion before Mortimer's Cross; he adopted the sun in splendour as his emblem.
Monarchs · Lancaster & York
Edward IV
1442–1483
House of York — the sun in splendour
In office: 1461–1470, 1471–1483
The eldest son of Richard, Duke of York, he took the throne at eighteen after Mortimer's Cross and Towton, lost it in 1470 when the Earl of Warwick changed sides, and won it back in 1471 at Barnet and Tewkesbury. His secret marriage to Elizabeth Woodville, and the promotion of her large family, shaped the politics of the rest of the century. He ruled the second half of his reign in solvent peace, and died suddenly at forty, leaving a boy of twelve.
How to spot them
- ▸Six foot four, the tallest English monarch; a soldier who never lost a battle he commanded
- ▸Clue words: 'sun in splendour', 'Elizabeth Woodville', 'Warwick the Kingmaker', 'Picquigny', 'malmsey'
- ▸Two reigns, broken by six months in exile in Burgundy
- ▸The first king of the House of York; father of the Princes in the Tower
- ▸Began the rebuilding of St George's Chapel, Windsor, where he is buried
In the reign
A secret marriage to a Lancastrian knight's widow, admitted in 1464 to the fury of his chief supporter (1464)
Elizabeth Woodville, married at Grafton Regis; Warwick was at that moment negotiating a French match.
Flight to Burgundy in the autumn of 1470 and a return through Ravenspur the following March (1470–1471)
He landed claiming only his duchy, as Bolingbroke had, then claimed the throne once he had support.
Two victories in the spring of 1471, at a fog-bound Hertfordshire town and then in Gloucestershire, that destroyed the Lancastrian cause (1471)
Barnet, where Warwick was killed, and Tewkesbury, where the Lancastrian heir died.
A brother executed privately in the Tower in 1478, drowned, it was said, in a butt of malmsey wine (1478)
George, Duke of Clarence, condemned by act of attainder.
An invasion of France in 1475 that ended without a battle, bought off with cash and a pension (1475)
The Treaty of Picquigny: 75,000 crowns down and 50,000 a year.
A royal library of illuminated Flemish manuscripts, now in the British Library — the only intact medieval English royal collection (1470s)
Assembled largely in and after his Burgundian exile.
The rebuilding of a chapel at Windsor from 1475 as a dynastic mausoleum for the white rose (from 1475)
St George's Chapel; he was buried there in 1483 and Elizabeth Woodville joined him in 1492.
Quick-fire facts
- •Born at Rouen on 28 April 1442, son of Richard, 3rd Duke of York, and Cecily Neville.
- •He was proclaimed king in London in March 1461 and confirmed it at Towton on 29 March, traditionally the bloodiest battle on English soil.
- •At about 6 ft 4 in he was the tallest English monarch, measured when his tomb was opened in 1789.
- •His marriage to Elizabeth Woodville produced ten children, including Edward V, Richard of Shrewsbury and Elizabeth of York, who married Henry VII.
- •Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick, 'the Kingmaker', turned against him, allied with Margaret of Anjou, and was killed at Barnet in 1471.
- •William Caxton set up England's first printing press at Westminster in 1476, during his reign, under Woodville patronage.
- •He restored royal finances by trading on his own account, by customs revenue and by the French pension, and died solvent.
- •He died on 9 April 1483 at Westminster, aged 40, after a short illness following a fishing trip; the cause is unknown.
- •His younger brother Richard, Duke of Gloucester, took the throne within three months of his death.
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Sources
- The Royal Household — Edward IV (r. 1461–1470 and 1471–1483)
- Dan Jones — The Wars of the Roses: The Fall of the Plantagenets and the Rise of the Tudors