One of my long-standing interests is Fifteenth-century England and, in particular, the life and reign of Richard III. I have been a member of the Richard III Society since 1973 - nearly 50 years! Far longer than Richard himself was alive. For the past decade or so, I have been writing reviews on relevant books and the reviews have ended up in the Society's Bulletin. For this and the next Blog, I am posting what I wrote on Edward IV and Henry VI. I am now reading Rosemary Horrox's book on Richard III.
Tony Pollard’s biography, in the excellent series ‘Penguin Monarchs’ (we look forward to Rosemary Horrox on Richard III, due in 2017), is ideal for at least two audiences. First, as an introduction to a monarch, whose ‘sun’ has been certainly overshadowed by the far briefer reign of his younger brother, both in popular imagination and book sales; and, secondly, for those readers, who with considerable knowledge of Edward IV of their own, would value a refresher course – an opportunity to test their own understanding of a figure who Michael Hicks has argued ‘has always been a controversial king’.
Pollard, whose postgraduate research was under Charles Ross’
supervision, and who has written books and articles on the 15th. century
over several decades, is steeped in the period’s vicissitudes and its
personalities. With only 106 pages at his disposal, he must perforce canter -
but what a stimulating ride. From his excellent Preface (‘Edward IV was a usurper…a ruler who rarely looked beyond
the short term, his own close circle and his own immediate ends.’), through a succinct
detailing of contemporary and near-contemporary appraisals, to his own summary The End of Summer, chapter after chapter
gives the bare narrative bones of Edward’s life and reign, clothed in
invaluable analysis of motives, failures and successes. Pollard’s Edward is a
man of precocious military talent (Mortimer’s Cross, Towton, Losecoat Field,
Barnet and Tewkesbury); seemingly in his youth with ‘a penchant for
aristocratic widows’ and ‘an excessive sexual appetite’ throughout his life; a leader
with no master plan, whose regime’s shape emerged and changed by trial and
error, but whose frame work was clear: England was to be ruled through those he
believed he could trust.
Pollard argues that Edward’s ‘clandestine marriage proved to be the pivotal event of the reign’; in subsequently allowing and encouraging his wife’s family to make powerful marriages and providing many of them with important offices of state, Edward ‘had created a new faction about his person, a counterpoise to the Neville interest’. This support, not only jarred with the Earl of Warwick, but with Clarence and, with dire consequences, with his younger brother Richard of Gloucester. Pollard does not shy away from charging Edward with serious shortcomings: the speed with which his position crumbled in 1470 was caused by the king’s inability to rise above factional politics and the internal divisions this exacerbated. However, his successful return in 1471 was due to his decisive actions: ‘He had out-thought and out-manoeuvered his enemies at every stage…He who had dared had won.’ Edward’s early death would come as no surprise these days. The self-indulgence of ‘a gross man addicted to conviviality, vanity, drunkenness, extravagance and passion’ (Crowland), ‘in food and drink…most immoderate’ (Mancini); meant he had not lived long enough to establish his dynasty successfully (compared with, say, Henry VII). Pollard ends his survey with a splendid final line: ‘For Edward IV, tragically, summer’s lease had all too short a span’. It is good news that Cora Scofield’s 1923 book The Life and Reign of Edward the Fourth, republished in 1967, is available again in a reprint by Fonthill Media. Charles Ross, rightly regarded it as ‘a piece of sustained and meticulous scholarship’. Ross’s own biography (1974), together with the works of Keith Dockray (1999), Michael Hicks (2004) and Hannes Kleineke (2009) are also all ‘main courses’ worth turning to after reading Pollard’s aperitif.
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