The Life of Edward IV: Edward IV was born on April 28, 1442, the eldest son of Richard, duke of York and Cecily Neville. He was born in Rouen, France, where his father was serving as King Henry VI's Lieutenant-General. He was created Earl of March about September 1445.

Because his father was involved in the political turmoil of the 1450s, Edward himself first appears on the political stage at the age of ten, marching at the head of an army to free his father from captivity. After his father's forces were routed at Ludlow in 1459, Edward accompanied his cousins Richard, earl of Warwick and Richard, earl of Salisbury to Calais. At this point Edward emerges as a political figure in his own right, playing a key role in the invasion of England and the capture of Henry VI at the battle of Northampton in the summer of 1460.

Following his father's death at Wakefield (December 30, 1460), Edward rallied the Yorkist troops to spectacular victory at the battle of Mortimer's Cross (February 2-3, 1461). He assumed the throne March 4, 1461, won a second and decisive victory at the Battle of Towton (March 29, 1461), and was crowned king on June 28, 1461. The Edward IV Roll was quite possibly commissioned between March 4 and June 28 or shortly thereafter.

Despite some Lancastrian attempts to regain the throne in the early 1460s, Edward settled into a largely peaceful reign. His political alliance with the powerful magnate Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick ("the Kingmaker") was strained, however, when Edward secretly married an impoverished Lancastrian widow, Elizabeth Woodville, in 1464. This clandestine marriage thwarted Warwick's hopes for a royal alliance with France. Relations were further strained when Edward favored an alliance with France's adversary, the Duchy of Burgundy.

In 1469 Warwick entered into an alliance with the Lancastrian forces and in 1470 was successful in reinstating Henry VI on the throne. Edward and his brother Richard, together with other Yorkist adherents, fled to Burgundy, where they gathered mercenaries and returned to England in the spring of 1471. In two hard-fought battles, Barnet and Tewkesbury, Edward delivered the final blow to the House of Lancaster. Warwick was killed during the Battle of Barnet, Henry VI's only son Edward of Lancaster was slain during or immediately after the battle of Tewkesbury, and Henry VI himself met his end, probably at Edward's orders, in the Tower of London shortly thereafter.

From this time until his death, Edward ruled with little opposition. He mounted an invasion of France in 1475, but accepted a treaty and a financial settlement in lieu of a war. In 1477, Edward accused his brother George duke of Clarence of treason. George was executed in February 1478, and rumor had it that he was drowned in a barrel of malmsey wine, a rumor immortalized in Shakespeare's Richard III. In the early 1480s, England was involved in a series of border skirmishes with the Scots, a campaign Edward entrusted to his remaining brother, Richard, duke of Gloucester.

Edward was a vigorous, handsome and charming man and a charismatic leader by popular accounts. As his biographer, Charles Ross, describes him, "He was clearly a man of considerable intelligence, equipped with a particularly retentive memory. He had considerable personal charm and affability and by temperament was generous, good-natured and even-tempered. Consistently courageous, he had great confidence in himself and the capacity to inspire it in others, and from early in his career showed natural gifts of leadership." His contemporaries described him as handsome, and when his coffin was opened in 1789 his skeleton found to measure 6'3-1/2". He was not a particularly scholarly man, although like many of his contemporaries he ordered lavish manuscripts for his personal library, nor was he especially pious or devout. He enjoyed the pursuits of ceremony and display (especially lavish dress), hunting, feasting, and the company of women. His court borrowed heavily from the culture of the Burgundian court, where his sister Margaret presided as Duchess of Burgundy.

When Edward died, on April 9, 1483, he left behind a widow and seven surviving children -- two sons and five daughters. After two months of political upheaval, in which Edward's widow and her supporters were involved in a struggle with Edward's brother for control of the government, Edward's son was set aside and his brother Richard assumed the throne as Richard III. The fate of Edward's sons is a hotly debated mystery to this day. Following the death of Richard III at the Battle of Bosworth Field in 1485, Edward's eldest daughter Elizabeth became the queen of King Henry VII.

Further Reading

Edward IV's lifetime spans the principal events of the Wars of the Roses. There are several excellent reviews of the political and military history of the time, including the following: