Edward’s Death and Richard of Gloucester

The atmosphere of Edward IV’s court was of crucial significance in determining events after Edward’s sudden death in 1483, at the age of forty. The cause of his death remains uncertain, but gluttony may well have been a contributing factor. For at least the past ten years, Edward had been running to fat. As with the obesity of William I in the 1080s, corpulence could be interpreted as the wages of sin: the outward mark of the criminal usurper. Through his management of men rather than institutions, through his sheer capacity to survive the outrageous fortunes of the 1460s, and through his careful husbanding of the crown’s finances, Edward appeared to have restored at least some stability to English kingship. Government still functioned, both in the provinces and at the centre, albeit increasingly without any active role for Parliament, with authority mediated instead through local power-brokers and the favouring of one magnate faction against another. In the Midlands, Lord Hastings had been promoted to replace the Duke of Clarence as the King’s chief enforcer. John de Vere, earl of Oxford, was deliberately ruined in order that his estates might be used to reward John Howard, himself settled into the shoes of the late Duke of Norfolk. The King had intervened in the local warfare fought out between the Stanley and the Harrington families in Lancashire. Above all, Edward IV had relied upon his younger brother, Richard, Duke of Gloucester, granted a large share of the estate that had formerly belonged to Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick, and a power base entirely his own in south Wales and the north of England.Throughout the 1460s, and in the face of the rebellions by Clarence and Warwick, Richard of Gloucester had remained loyal to Edward IV. In 1471, aged barely eighteen, he had taken a decisive lead in suppressing rebellion in Kent, executing the rebels’ leader, in theory pardoned his crimes. When the citizens of York disputed the wisdom of admitting Edward IV to their city, Richard suggested killing them all and being done with it. Already, Richard displayed a very practical approach to murder. Thereafter, through the disgrace of the Veres and of his brother, Clarence, he had established an unassailable position for himself as the King’s most trusted confident and as one of the richest men in England. He was also one of the best regarded. His probity, his loyalty, his espousal of morality and his patronage of puritan spirituality, his collection of books and his patronage of pious literature, all marked him out as a good man amidst a court of sinners. With an uncle such as Richard, it was supposed, the young sons of Edward IV would be shepherded to the throne in just the same way that John of Gaunt, in the end, had shepherded his nephew Richard II, or John, Duke of Bedford, uncle of Henry VI, had upheld the cause of his own royal ward. Richard, in accordance with historical precedent, was groomed to become the very best of royal uncles. He turned out to be the very worst.

Edward IV died at Windsor on 9 April 1483. His twelve-year-old son, Edward V, was then at Ludlow on the Welsh border. The coronation was set for 4 May. In the company of his mother’s brother, Lord Rivers, the boy was brought southwards, the party diverting to Stony Stratford in Buckinghamshire in order to meet up with Edward’s loving uncle, Richard. There, entirely contrary to what anyone had expected, Richard arrested Lord Rivers and other members of the Woodville affinity. The Woodvilles themselves were unpopular, regarded as upstarts glutted on the spoils of power. Richard had little difficulty in manipulating public opinion, and the affinity of the King’s household, against them. By 10 June, he was writing to the city of York for assistance against Elizabeth Woodville, the former Queen, and her associates, claiming that they intended his murder.