Abstract
The minority of Edward V is a story of failure: nothing less, and very little more. Edward V was twelve years old when he acceded to the English throne on 9 April 1483. Ten weeks later, on 25 June 1483, he was deposed by his paternal uncle Richard Duke of Gloucester, King Richard III. One of the two Princes in the Tower, the exking disappeared and was probably murdered. It is his brief reign that best highlights just how perilous royal minorities were. Whilst Richard III’s ambition was important and most probably he sought the crown from the start, it was actually divisions within the minority regime that made his usurpation possible. Richard was not the prime mover. The dire consequences of the failure of this minority included the resumption of civil war, a successful invasion, the bloody defeat and death of his usurper, and a change of dynasty. For centuries the fate of the Princes was the most terrible warning against political ambition. It remains the stuff of legend today.
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Notes
J. S. Roskell, “The Office and Dignity of Protector of England with Special Reference to its Origins,” English Historical Review lxviii (1953): 193–226.
D. Mancini, The Usurpation of Richard III, 2nd ed., ed. C.A.J. Armstrong (Oxford, 1969) [hereafter Mancini].
However the marriage was apparently impugned in 1469–70, Michael Hicks, Edward V. The Prince in the Tower (Stroud, 2003), 52; and see below.
Ibid. 57–58; The Rolls of Parliament, ed. C. Given-Wilson, 16 vols (Woodbridge, 2005), 14:24–36.
Hicks, Edward V, 61–63; The Rolls of Parliament, 14:24–39.
The Crowland Abbey Chronicles 1459–86, ed. N. Pronay and J. C. Cox (Gloucester, 1986) [hereafter Crowland], 152–53.
Hicks, Edward V, 58, 69; Excerpta Historica, ed. S. Bentley (London, 1833), 369.
M. A. Hicks, Richard III, 2nd edn. (London, 2000), 51.
T. More, History of King Richard III, ed. R. S. Sylvester (New Haven, CN, 1963), 10–11; Mancini, 62–63.
English Historical Documents 1327–1485, ed. A. R. Myers (London, 1969), 273.
Hicks, Edward V, 68–69.
A. Hanham, Richard III and his Early Historians 1483–1535 (Oxford, 1975), 118; Mancini, 72–73.
Registrum Thome Bourgchier, i, ed. F. R. H. Du Boulay ( Canterbury and York Society cxxi, 1948–50), 52–53. Those present may or may not have been the executors.
Historic Manuscripts Commission 11th Report Appendix III, MSS of the Corporations of Southampton and King’s Lynn (1887), 170.
The York House Books, ed. L. Attreed, 2 vols (Richard III and Yorkist History Trust, Stroud, 1991), 1:282.
The services at Westminster Abbey on 17th were attended by Archbishop Rotherham, 11 bishops, Dorset, the earls of Huntingdon and Lincoln (a minor), Viscount Berkeley, and 12 barons (Abergavenny, Audley, Cobham, Dacre of the South, Dudley, Ferrers, Hastings, Howard, Lisle, Morley, Stanley, and Welles). Present at Windsor on 18th/19th were Rotherham, 3 bishops, Dorset, Huntingdon, Lincoln, Berkeley, and 12 barons (Abergavenny, Audley, Cobham, Delawarr, Ferrers, Fitzhugh, Hastings, Howard, Lisle, Maltravers, Stanley, and Welles), The Royal Funerals of the House of York at Windsor, ed. A. F. Sutton and L.Visser-Fuchs (Richard III Society, London, 2005), 18–25.
Mancini, 74–75.
Crowland, 152–53.
C. Moreton, “A Local Dispute and the Politics of 1483: Roger Townshend, Earl Rivers and the Duke of Gloucester,” The Ricardian 107 (1989).
Mancini, 72–73.
Sutton and Visser-Fuchs, Royal Funerals, 18–25.
Mancini, 72–73. However, Mancini reports that Gloucester was to be chief councillor, on the pattern of 1429; ibid. 71–72.
Crowland, 152–55.
Crowland, 154–55.
Mancini, 72–73.
M. A. Hicks, Richard III and His Rivals. Magnates and Their Motives During the Wars of the Roses (London, 1991), 227; Mancini, 74–75.
Crowland, 154–55.
Mancini, 74–79.
Crowland, 156–57.
Ibid. 156–57; Mancini, 76–77, 80–83.
Mancini, 123.
Mancini, 82–85; Crowland, 156–57. There are no surviving records of this great council, but the administration of Edward IV’s will at Baynards Castle on 11 May was attended by both archbishops, 8 bishops, Buckingham, Gloucester, Arundel, Hastings, Stanley, “and many other nobles,” presumably mere barons, Reg. Bourgchier, 52–53.
Crowland, 156–57.
Crowland, 158–59.
“Financial Memoranda of the Reign of Edward V,” ed. R. E. Horrox, Camden Miscellany xxix (Camden 4th ser xxxiv, 1987), 200–44.
Mancini’s statement that the weapons had been prepared for the Scottish war (Mancini, 82–83) is credible, both because Rivers and Sir Edward Wydeville served on it and because Grafton was the obvious place for them to be stored.
Mancini, 119; Hicks, Richard III, 126–27.
Mancini, 84–85.
Ibid. 76–77.
Crowland, 158–59.
S. B. Chrimes, English Constitutional Ideas in the Fifteenth Century (Cambridge, 1936), 177–78.
Ibid. 172.
Hicks, Richard III and His Rivals, 275–56. Among Dorset’s property seized by Richard by 9 June 1483 may have been Warwick, who was placed in the custody of his aunt Duchess Anne, Stonor Letters and Papers 1290–1483, ed. C. L. Kingsford (Camden 3rd ser xxix, xxx, 1919), ii.159; Mancini, 88–89.
Mancini, 90–91; Crowland, 158–59; More, Richard III, 46–47.
Richard III: The Road to Bosworth Field, ed. P. W. Hammond and A. F. Sutton (London, 1985), 103–4. It seems likely that all such letters were directed to Richard’s adherents in the north.
Ibid. The army’s progress to London was timed to coincide with the coronation, parliament, and the usurpation, see Crowland, 158–59.
Hammond and Sutton, 103–4.
Crowland, 158–59.
Crowland, 156–59; Mancini, 88–91; Stonor L & P, 2:161; see also Hicks, Richard III, 112–16.
Mancini, 123.
Hammond and Sutton, 157.
Through Elizabeth’s mother Jacquetta’s first husband John Duke of Bedford, a grandson of John of Gaunt and through Edward’s mother Cecily, Gaunt’s grand-granddaughter of Gaunt.
More, Richard III, 64–65; Hicks, Edward V, 34.
Calendar of Milanese State Papers, ed. A. B. Hinds (London, 1902), 1:113–14; Hicks, Edward V, 47–48.
Calendar of Patent Rolls 1467–1477, 190.
Hammond and Sutton, 155–56; see also J. Ashdown-Hill, “Edward IV’s Uncrowned Queen: The Lady Eleanor Talbot, Lady Butler,” The Ricardian 139 (1997).
Crowland, 160–61.
P. de Commines, Memoires, ed. J. Calmette (Paris, 1925), 2:232, 305.
Hicks, Edward V, 26.
Hammond and Sutton, 155–59.
Letters and Papers Illustrative of the Reigns of Richard III and Henry VII, ed. J. Gairdner, 2 vols. (Rolls Series, London, 1861–63), 2:11–12.
Ibid., 12; see also C.A.J. Armstrong, “The Inauguration Ceremonies of the Yorkist Kings and Their Title to the Throne,” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 4th ser xxx (1948), 51–73.
Hicks, Richard III, 153–64.
Cely Letters 1472–1488, ed. A. Hanham (Early English Text Society 273 [1975]), 185; Hicks, Richard III, 114.
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© 2008 Charles Beem
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Hicks, M. (2008). A Story of Failure: The Minority of Edward V. In: Beem, C. (eds) The Royal Minorities of Medieval and Early Modern England. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230616189_6
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