By this time, Edward IV was in the fourth year of his first reign as King of England. With the help of the Earl of Warwick, he had been able to score a succession of impressive victories over the rival Lancastrians in his bid for the throne. However, Edward's reliance of the proud and chronically undependable Warwick meant that his grip on power was never entirely secure. Edward's decision to marry in secret the commoner Elizabeth Woodville was regarded by Warwick as nothing less than a personal insult, a humiliating rebuff to his strenuous efforts to find Edward a suitable French bride. Edward's clandestine marriage permanently damaged his relations with Warwick, turning his erstwhile ally into a sworn enemy.
Warwick conspired with Edward's younger brother, George, Duke of Clarence, to depose Edward. Initially, they were successful, and Edward was briefly replaced on the throne by Henry VI, his weak and vacillating predecessor. However, Edward fought back and soon regained the throne. Warwick was killed in battle, while Clarence was convicted of treason against his brother and reportedly drowned in a large vat of wine.
Thus began Edward's second reign, one in which he was finally able to achieve some degree of stability in his deeply unsettled kingdom. He took control of the nation's finances and built up a chamber system to oversee royal revenues, subsequently enabling him to reduce the country's debt. He also enhanced his authority as king by establishing a magnificent court that reflected his glory and sovereignty as monarch, binding the fractious aristocracy more closely to the Crown. Edward also took a lead role in promoting a common culture, one heavily influenced by notions of late medieval chivalry. In doing so, he provided a deeply divided, war-weary nation with some degree of cultural unity, strengthening the foundations of his throne in the process.
https://www.historic-uk.com/HistoryUK/HistoryofEngland/King-Edward-IV/
Saturday, November 19, 2011
To what extent did Edward bring stability to England in 1465?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Summarize the major research findings of "Toward an experimental ecology of human development."
Based on findings of prior research, the author, Bronfenbrenner proposes that methods for natural observation research have been applied in ...
-
One way to support this thesis is to explain how these great men changed the world. Indeed, Alexander the Great (356–323 BC) was the quintes...
-
Polysyndeton refers to using several conjunctions in a row to achieve a dramatic effect. That can be seen in this sentence about the child: ...
-
Both boys are very charismatic and use their charisma to persuade others to follow them. The key difference of course is that Ralph uses his...
-
At the most basic level, thunderstorms and blizzards are specific weather phenomena that occur most frequently within particular seasonal cl...
-
Equation of a tangent line to the graph of function f at point (x_0,y_0) is given by y=y_0+f'(x_0)(x-x_0). The first step to finding eq...
-
Population policy is any kind of government policy that is designed to somehow regulate or control the rate of population growth. It include...
-
Gulliver cooperates with the Lilliputians because he is so interested in them. He could, obviously, squash them underfoot, but he seems to b...
No comments:
Post a Comment