Edward IV by A J Pollard

Author:A J Pollard
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780141978703
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2016-06-10T16:00:00+00:00

6

The Sun in Splendour

Commynes noted that when he saw Edward at Picquigny in 1475, this once handsome man was beginning to go to seed. He had looked, he judged, at his best in 1470.1 The likeness in the Royal Collection, with ‘the bovine and lack-lustre features which peer blearily’2 at us, made in the early 1470s, might capture the beginning of this physical deterioration. Nevertheless, now in his mid thirties, he had all the appearance of a model monarch ruling his kingdom with verve and authority. He had pursued the ultimate princely purpose of going to war, and – in his own version, at any rate – had returned with honour. His kingdom too was internally more at peace and prosperity was at last returning. Economic revival and industrial expansion were discernible that would continue for half a century. William Caxton set up his first printing press in Westminster in 1476 to sell books to a new, wider market. New schools promoted the revived classical learning, the first Atlantic exploration was launched, the clothing industries of the West Country, the West Riding and East Anglia boomed, and parish churches were refashioned in the current Perpendicular style. There was some foundation to Thomas More’s nostalgia for a golden age at the time of his birth in 1478.

Edward now had the leisure to fulfil one outstanding family duty: the reburial with full funeral rites of his father in the family mausoleum at Fotheringhay in Northamptonshire. This great state event, in the summer of 1476, was a dynastic ceremony designed to demonstrate the unbreakable unity of Edward’s family and the unchallengeable hold of the house of York on the throne. The bodies of Richard of York and his second son Edmund, who had fallen at Wakefield at the end of 1460 and been buried at nearby Pontefract, were exhumed on 21 July. After a requiem Mass a magnificent cortège, accompanied by the principal nobles of the realm led by Richard of Gloucester, and including 400 men on foot chanting prayers, processed solemnly in a week-long journey to Fotheringhay where it was met by the king, queen and Duke of Clarence. The reburial, marked by another requiem Mass, took place on 30 July followed by a gargantuan banquet. The house of York, the world was to understand, was here to stay as the true ruling dynasty of England, united and secure in its hold on the throne.3

In these years Edward’s court, ‘such as befitted a mighty kingdom filled with riches’, was at its most magnificent. It was heavily influenced by the style and etiquette of Burgundy, the most flamboyant ruling house in northern Europe, which he had observed during his exile.4 In part the splendour of the court reflected the king’s liking for show and conspicuous consumption; in part it was a public display of power designed to underscore his total command. The court, the political, social and cultural hub of the kingdom, was inhabited not only by the leading members and officers of his household, but also by great nobles who were not of the household.

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