Edward IV (28 April 1442 – 9 April 1483) was King of England from 4 March 1461 to 3 October 1470, then again from 11 April 1471 until he died in 1483. A member of the House of York, he was a central figure in the Wars of the Roses, a series of civil wars in England fought between the Yorkist and Lancastrian factions between 1455 and 1487.
Edward inherited the Yorkist claim to the throne at the age of eighteen when his father, Richard, Duke of York, was killed at the Battle of Wakefield in December 1460. After defeating Lancastrian armies at Mortimer's Cross and Towton in early 1461, he deposed King Henry VI and took the throne. His marriage to Elizabeth Woodville in 1464 led to conflict with his chief advisor, Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick, known as the "Kingmaker". In 1470, a revolt led by Warwick and Edward's brother George, Duke of Clarence, briefly re-instated Henry VI. Edward fled to Flanders, where he gathered support and invaded England in March 1471; after victories at the battles of Barnet (where the Earl of Warwick was killed) and Tewkesbury (where Henry VI's son, Edward of Westminster, Prince of Wales, was killed), he resumed the throne. Shortly afterwards, Henry VI was found dead in the Tower of London, possibly killed on Edward's orders.
Despite facing an overseas threat from Henry Tudor, the last remaining Lancastrian claimant, Edward reigned in relative peace for the next twelve years. However, he nearly restarted the Hundred Years' War, following his invasion of France in 1475, but was assuaged by Louis XI in the Treaty of Picquigny. This diplomatic agreement formally ended the Hundred Years' War, which had been in abeyance since 1453. Following his sudden death in April 1483, Edward was briefly succeeded by his son Edward V. He had appointed his younger brother, Richard, Duke of Gloucester, Lord Protector of England for the duration of the new king's minority. However, Edward V and his younger brother Richard, Duke of York, disappeared shortly after and their uncle seized the throne as Richard III.
Edward was born on 28 April 1442 at Rouen in Normandy, eldest surviving son of Richard, 3rd Duke of York, and Cecily Neville. Until his father's death, he was known as the Earl of March. Both his parents were direct descendants of King Edward III, giving Edward a potential claim to the throne. This was strengthened in 1447, when York became heir to the childless King Henry VI on the death of Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester.
Allegations of illegitimacy were discounted at the time as politically inspired, and by later historians. Edward and his siblings George, Duke of Clarence, and Margaret, Duchess of Burgundy, were physically very similar, all three being tall and blond, in contrast to their father, the Duke of York, who was short and dark. His youngest brother, who later became King Richard III, closely resembled their father.
During Edward's youth, there was economic decline in England and military defeat abroad, exacerbated by a weak and corrupt central government. Both Edward and his younger brother Edmund, Earl of Rutland, were born in Rouen, where their father, the Duke of York, served as governor of English lands in France until 1445, when he was replaced by Henry Beaufort, 3rd Duke of Somerset. Edward and Edmund were probably brought up at Ludlow Castle, in the Welsh Marches, where the Duke of York was the dominant landowner.
In 1447, the Duke of York was made chief governor of Ireland, although he did not take up the post until 1449. Most of Normandy was recaptured by the French, leaving Calais as the last English possession in Northern France; Somerset, whom many held responsible for the losses, was appointed King Henry's chief minister. English politics became dominated by the struggle between the Yorkists and supporters of the House of Lancaster, or Lancastrians, notably the Duke of Somerset, William de la Pole, 1st Duke of Suffolk, and King Henry VI's wife, Margaret of Anjou.
Matters came to a head in August 1453 when King Henry VI collapsed into a catatonic stupor on hearing news of the loss of Gascony, an English possession for over 300 years. The Duke of York took over the government, his chief supporters being Richard Neville, 5th Earl of Salisbury, and Salisbury's eldest son, Richard Neville, 16th Earl of Warwick. In January 1454, 12-year-old Edward accompanied his father to London to attend the Great Council.
The birth of King Henry VI's son, Edward of Westminster, Prince of Wales, in October 1453 created a viable Lancastrian figurehead, and the 1450s was dominated by political conflict between the two factions. By the age of 17, the Earl of March was a political and military leader in his own right; after their defeat at the Battle of Ludford Bridge in 1459, his father and brother Edmund fled to Ireland, while the Earls of March, Salisbury and Warwick made their way to Calais. Edward's name appears alongside those of his father, Warwick and Salisbury in widely circulated manifestoes declaring their quarrel was only with Henry's evil counsellors.
In 1460, Edward crossed the English Channel with Warwick and Salisbury, and marched into London. At Northampton in July, he commanded one of three divisions in a Yorkist victory that led to the capture of Henry VI. York returned from Ireland; on entering the Palace of Westminster, he declared himself king, a claim greeted by the assembled lords in silence. The Act of Accord agreed to a compromise, whereby Henry remained king, but York and his descendants were designated his successors.
The implications of removing the legally accepted heir to the throne created substantial opposition to the Yorkist administration; in late 1460, Edward was given his first independent command and sent to deal with a Lancastrian insurgency in Wales. Warwick remained in London, while York, Salisbury, and Edmund marched north to suppress another in Yorkshire; all three were killed following defeat at Wakefield on 30 December, leaving Edward as the new head of the Yorkist party.
At this stage of Edward's career, contemporaries like Philippe de Commines described him as handsome, affable, and energetic. Unusually tall for the period at 6 feet 4 inches (193 centimetres), he was an impressive sight in armour, and took care to wear splendid clothes. This was done deliberately to contrast him with King Henry VI, whose physical and mental frailties undermined his position.
On 2 February 1461, Edward won a hard-fought victory at the Battle of Mortimer's Cross in Herefordshire. The battle was preceded by a meteorological phenomenon known as parhelion, or three suns, which he took as his emblem, the "Sun in splendour". However, this was offset by Warwick's defeat at the Second Battle of St Albans on 17 February, the Lancastrians regaining custody of Henry VI. The two met in London, where Edward was hastily appointed king, before marching north, where the two sides met at the Battle of Towton. Fought on 29 March in the middle of a snowstorm, it was the bloodiest battle ever to take place on English soil, and ended in a decisive Yorkist victory.
Estimates of the dead range from 9,000 to 20,000; figures are uncertain, as most of the mass graves were emptied or moved over the centuries, while corpses were generally stripped of clothing or armour before burial. Nevertheless, casualties among the Lancastrian nobility were enormous and explain the enduring bitterness among those who survived. Since 1996, excavations have uncovered over 50 skeletons from the battle; an analysis of their injuries shows the brutality of the contest, including extensive post-mortem mutilations.
Margaret fled to Scotland with Edward of Westminster, while the new king returned to London for his 28 June 1461 coronation. Henry VI remained at large for over a year, but was caught and imprisoned in the Tower of London. There was little point in killing him while his son remained alive since this would have transferred the Lancastrian claim from a frail captive to one who was young and free.