PREVIEW： Epochs #259 ｜ The Life of Edward IV
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Summary
The story of the fall of the House of York continues with a new chapter in Edward IV's history of the English monarchy. This time I'm reading from a book written by Prof. Sir Charles Oman, the Oxford Professor of History and the author of The Rise of the Tudors, a history of England written in the late 19th century and early 20th century.
Transcript
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Hello and welcome back to Epochs where I should be continuing my story all about the English
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monarchy and specifically the wars of the roses and the reign now of edward the fourth if you
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remember last time we finished up more or less with the complete yorkist victory over the house
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of lancaster at tewksbury at barnet when the kingmaker warwick the kingmaker was slain and
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then at tewksbury the final final battle the final end of the lancastrian attempts to regain the
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throne and after that they decided they sort of had to do away with the old mad king Henry VI
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the son of Henry V so now it really is just the full full that really was the full Yorkist victory
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final victory at that point so nothing stops does it nothing ever stops the the narrative the story
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continues time pauses for no man so what happens next because the whole saga certainly isn't over
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if you remember at the beginning of this series I said that basically the whole thing you can say
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sort of ends in 1485 we're still only here in 1471 that's when Henry VI was murdered 1471 but
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the whole saga isn't really over until 1485 at Bosworth Field the Battle of Bosworth Field
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when Henry Tudor Henry VII Henry VIII's father finally wins so what happens in that the next 14
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years it's a big one ultimately it's the story of in the end anyway we've got a period of
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of calm but in the end the implosion of the house of york the house of lancaster lasted three
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generations if you cast your mind back you had the old richard ii the son of the black prince
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the grandson legit grandson of edward iii the last true plant had true plantagenet he was usurped
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and murdered probably murdered by henry bolingbroke henry the fourth him with his father and then
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And then you've got three generations of the Lancastrians there.
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Well, once the Yorkists beat the Lancastrians, how well do they do?
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So they do worse, really, in the ultimate scheme of things.
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The next chapter I should be reading, as always,
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from Professor Sir Charles Oman, early 20th century,
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late 19th century, early 20th century, Oxford Professor of History,
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Charles Oman and Sir Winston Churchill and his history of the English-speaking people so
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the next chapter Oman calls it the fall of the house of York 1471-1485 so I'll let Oman pick up
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the story he tells us this quote all the males of the house of Lancaster had now fallen by the
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sword or the dagger not only the last representatives of the elder and legitimate branch
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which had occupied the throne, but also the whole family of the Beauforts, the descendants of the
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natural sons of John of Gaunt. Hopefully I don't need to say again, although I will, just to be
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clear. There's the sons, the various sons of Edward III, right? The eldest one was the Black Prince,
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who I just mentioned. Then a Lionel, whose descendants are the Yorkists. Then it was the
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third son, remember? That very, very pivotal person, the third son of Edward III, John of Gaunt,
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after chooksbury he's reigning defending undisputed king of england basically the only descendants of
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john of gaunt's first family who survived were the kings of spain and portugal just to make it even
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more complicated john of gaunt had more than one family where his wife had died and he got remarried
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and things so his other family are the kings of spain and portugal who traced themselves back to
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john's eldest daughter while the beauforts were represented by lady margaret beaufort daughter of
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that Duke of Somerset who had died in 1444, the elder brother of the man who lost Normandy and
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fell at St Albans. That was one of the Dukes of Somerset. So there are surviving Beauforts but
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only through the female line but this Margaret Beaufort is absolutely pivotal, absolutely key
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particularly due to her progeny. Oman says the Lady Beaufort married Edmund Tudor. Here we go
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getting to the Tudors Earl of Richmond the half-brother of Henry VI and by him had a single
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child Henry another Henry now Earl of Richmond by his father's decease just inherited that title
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in Henry the Beaufort Lion had its last representative but he was but a boy of 14
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at this stage and was overseas in Brittany whether his mother had sent him for safety
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because you never know Edward son of York king of England might decide that it's best to kill
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Henry Tudor at this point he didn't but you know just to be safe she sent him off to France for
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safety while she herself had wedded as her second spouse Lord Stanley a peer of strong Yorkist
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proclivities so a few things to say there we must flesh out I said I'd do this earlier than now in
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this story but flesh out a bit of Henry Tudor and so Edmund Tudor I think I talked about it before
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didn't I that Henry V's widow Catherine of Valois a full-blown French princess the daughter of the
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last mad king of France after Henry V had just died of natural causes got dysentery and died
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she was free eventually years later because she wasn't very old when that happened she was free
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basically owen tudor apparently he was very very suave and sophisticated and fun to be around and
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you can only imagine handsome if she could have picked more or less anyone she wanted within
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reason she picks this kind of nobody but apparently he was fun and interesting to be around owen
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tudor and they had a son and that's this edmund tudor who you know is basically is the half brother
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of the old mad henry the sixth they've got the same mum and you might have thought that he might
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have wanted his half-brother Edmund Tudor to sort of disappear one way or other either not just be
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seen just put him away send him away or keep him in a castle in a remote place somewhere and just
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basically never hear or see from him again or even kill him but that's not what Henry VI was like
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he was kind to him he kept him around the court and things and treated him as you know a normal
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Brother basically so this Edmund Tudor and it's he who marries Margaret Beaufort the last the last
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real descendant of John of Gaunt so Edmund Tudor although his father was a nobody Owen Tudor his
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his mother was extremely eminent extremely eminent in French terms as eminent as you could get and
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he married very very well married into the direct royal lion in England and it's their son they had
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she was very very young when she gave birth to the little Henry Henry Tudor she was very young
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she was like 12 or 13 terribly young I mean in our terms it's it's paedophilia isn't it but there
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it is some say it was a very difficult birth she never had any more children okay so this little
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boy Henry Tudor or or Henry of Richmond is sometimes called at this point Omar goes on
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saying neither the distant Spaniards nor the boy Henry of Richmond was seriously thought of even by
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themselves as claimants to the English crown, right? We just had the Wars of the Roses and
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Edward's finally won it and he's a great general and everything. There's no question of anyone
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trying to unseat Edward IV at this point. And King Edward might for the rest of his life repose
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on the laurels of Tewkesbury and Barnet and take his ease without troubling himself about further
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dynastic troubles. He reigned for 12 years after his restoration in 1471, i.e. after Tewkesbury,
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and did little that was noteworthy in that time end quote do you remember we talked about in one
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of the previous episodes how when there's things to be done like having battles and raising armies
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edward the fourth is superb but when there isn't anything to be done like that he just takes his
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foot off the gas entirely and just enjoys hunting and feasting and womanizing and having a good time
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and he's not really interested in the business of government he's not interested in rushing around
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you know, like Henry II or Edward I or anything like that.
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His love of these gradually sapped all his energy.
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His life grew more and more extravagant and irregular
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as he sunk into all the grosser forms of self-indulgence.
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He completely ruined a handsome person and a robust constitution
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and by the age of 42 had declined into an unwieldy and bloated invalid so he got fat basically some
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a slightly kinder way of saying he got extremely fat and unhealthy and of course in those days in
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the 15th century they had no real concept of well no concept what constitutes a healthy diet
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you know if you have anything go wrong like you start having minor heart attacks or strokes or
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things like that then there's no way back really there's no real cures so to speak for things like
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that if you lose your health it's almost certainly lost forever everyone says Edward's rule was not
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so bad for England as might have been expected from his very unamiable character his second reign
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was comparatively free from bloodshed if we accept one dreadful crime committed on the person of his
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own brother so end quote so you remember his brother Clarence George Duke of Clarence had
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betrayed him during the Wars of the Roses badly right you remember that they'd made up again to
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remind you there's three boys there's the eldest boy the eldest son of Richard Duke of York is this
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Edward the king the second brother George Duke of Clarence and a third brother Richard or during
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the Wars of the Roses Warwick the kingmaker when he'd fallen out with Edward George Duke of Clarence
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over to his side and said, you know, if Edward dies or is killed one way or another, you can be
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king, right? Marry my daughter. Yeah. And he'd had. And then George obviously realised perhaps
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the way the winds were going and betrayed the kingmaker and gone back into Edward's camp.
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However, you know, once you've badly betrayed someone once, it's never the same again,
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is it really? And it seems that George, even after Tewkesbury and everything, still wasn't
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trustworthy, still couldn't be trusted in a number of ways. Oman tells us, perhaps he deserved little
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praise on this score, for both the Lancastrians and the partisans of Warwick had been practically
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exterminated by the slaughter of 1471, i.e. the Battle of Tewksbury and afterwards. It is more to
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his credit that he bore lightly on the nation in the matter of taxation. His pockets were full of
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plunder of the House of Neville, that's Warwick, Warwick the Kingmaker, and the old Lancastrian
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families and though self-indulgent he was not a spendthrift indeed he lived within his means
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and seldom asked for a subsidiary from parliament remember the state is much much much smaller at
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this stage you've got the king's household the royal household and as long as you can pay for
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that there isn't there is no giant machinery of government that needs to be paid for from the
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king's purse at this stage but there's no police there's no health service there's there's hardly
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anything hardly anything this moderation however does not imply that he was a constitutional
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sovereign he ruled through a small clique of ministers and personal dependents mostly members
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of his wife's family remember the woodvilles elizabeth woodville the white queen and all her
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brothers the ones that survived the was of the roses that is he disliked edward the king edward
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he disliked parliamentary control so much that he seldom summoned a parliament at all for one
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whole period of five years between 1478 and 1482 he was rich enough to be able to refrain from
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calling one altogether a personal rule there when he did want money however he did not shrink from
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raising it in the most objectionable manner by compelling rich men to pay him forced loans
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called benevolences again you've got to be kind of careful with that thing that sort of thing
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remember Edward II did that sort of thing didn't go down well did it Richard II did that sort of
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thing didn't go down well did it both Edward II and Richard II found themselves murdered in the
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end so you've got to be you've got to be careful with that sort of thing I mean Edward IV is a
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whole different beast to someone like Edward II or Richard II who were weak men weren't they
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our Edward here is far from from weak when it comes to it right so he extorted money out of
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rich men and called it benevolences it is fair to add that he generally paid his debts and only
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owed 13 000 pound when he died which is a lot of money for those days but not insane it's about
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what you could expect to be honest not bad at all imagine that if our whole national debt now was
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13 000 pounds even adjusted for inflation from the late 15th century the drop in the ocean isn't it
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on the whole it may be said that his rule though selfish and autocratic was not oppressive he gave
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the land peace in his later years and any kind of quiet was an intense relief after the anarchy of
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the wars of the roses commerce and industry began slowly to rally and the wealth of the land seemed
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to have suffered less than might have been expected again we talked about that before
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the wars of the roses although it's a civil war it is a civil war it's not the type which these
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whole towns burnt down the massacre of tens of thousands of civilians over and over again it
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wasn't like that was it there were a few odd big battles but the nobles the cousins kept it largely
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between themselves it didn't ravage the land we've got the anarchy right back in the end of the 11th
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or beginning of the 12th century during the 12th century that that did that ended in like large
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scale famine and things the wars of the roses wasn't that destructive yeah oman says the land
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suffered less than it might have expected the bloodshed and confiscations of the unhappy years
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between 1455 and 1471 had fallen almost entirely on the nobles and their military retainers and
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the cities and the yeomen had fared comparatively well. England had never been left desolate like
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France at the end of the Hundred Years' War. Edward's foreign policy was feeble and uncertain.
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At first, after his restoration, he intended to attack France in alliance with his brother-in-law,
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Remember that? Everything looked lost for Edward
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style and of asserting his right to the French crown but Louis XI the wily king of France
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offered to buy him off proffering him a great sum down to an annual subsidy if he would abandon the
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calls of Duke Charles Charles the Bold of Burgundy abandon him and I'll pay you loads and loads of
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money including every year going forward Edward was selfish and ungrateful enough to accept the
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offer with delight he does like an easy life if possible doesn't he he met King Louis in a formal
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interview in Picardy and bargained to retire and remain neutral for 75,000 gold crowns paid down
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and an annuity of 50,000 more so long as he lived. A lot of money. He also rung a second 50,000 out
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of Louis as a ransom for the unfortunate Queen Margaret of Anjou a prisoner since the day of
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Tewksbury because they're the same family Margaret of Anjou is closely related to the French kings
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And stipulated that the Dauphin was to be married to his eldest daughter
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The Dauphin, the equivalent of the Prince of Wales
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Was most useful in enabling him to avoid having to call parliaments
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but edward took no heed and the duke was slain and not long after while waging war on the swiss
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and the duke of lorraine okay now we get the story all about george duke of clarence the king's
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younger brother we're told two years after the treaty of picagny occurred a tragedy which showed
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that edward could still on occasion burst out into his old fits of cruelty his brother george duke of
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Clarence, had been received back into his favour after betraying Warwick in 1471 and had been
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granted half of the kingmaker's estates as the portion of his wife, Isabel Neville, you know,
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Warwick the kingmaker's daughter. But Clarence presumed on his pardon and seems to have thought
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that all his treachery to his brother between 1468 and 1470 had been forgotten as well as
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forgiven he was always a turbulent unwise and reckless young man and provoked the king by his
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insolent sayings and open disobedience edward had twice to interfere with him once for illegally
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seizing and causing to be executed a lady whom he accused of bewitching his wife isabel who died in
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childbirth yeah poor poor ill-fated isabel neville very unhappy life basically a second time the king
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had to intervene in his brother's affairs a second time for trying to wed without his brother's leave
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mary of burgundy the heiress of charles the bold when clarence was again detected in intrigues with
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a foreign power this time with scotland the king resolved to make an end of him kill his own brother
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suddenly summoning a parliament he appeared before it and accused his brother of treason though he
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gave no clear or definite account of clarence's misdeeds awed by edward's wrath and vehemence
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the two houses passed a bill declaring the Duke convicted of high treason. The king then condemned
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him, cast him into the tower, and there had him secretly slain. And that was in 1478, seven years
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after Tewksbury and the death of Warwick and his brother's betrayal. Ten years after his first
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betrayal, finally felt the need to have him killed, executed. You can only picture, you can only
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really imagine that George was, Duke of Clarence, was actively plotting against his own brother
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again, because it's the ultimate thing, isn't it, to have them executed. It's like you've got no
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other choice. Remember, Edward has got a streak. We'll talk about a streak of cruelty. He's also
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got a streak of clemency, hasn't he? Remember at one point in the middle of the Wars of the Roses,
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he wanted to just try and forgive everyone and let them all live and execute as few as possible.
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He has got that gear, right? He's not Genghis Khan, so you can only think that really he had to,
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his calculation was that he had to execute George. Some say he was drowned in a vat of wine,
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malmsy wine. It's quite a way to go, isn't it? We hope you enjoyed that video, and if you did,
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please head over to lotusseaters.com for the full unabridged video.