King of England (1442-1483, king 1461-1470 and 1471-1483). The son of Richard, 3rd Duke of york, and Cecille Neville, daughter of Ralf, Earl of Westmorland. Although the deepening division between the Lancastrians and Yorkists in the late 1450s seemed inevitably to have been leading to a Yorkist bid for the throne, the statement of intent that preceded their victory over Henry VI and the Lancastrians at Northampton in July 1460 referred only to their pressing need to free the king from the counsel of their declared enemies. Nevertheless, before he was killed at Wakefield in December 1460, Richard of York had been declared Henry's heir and the Yorkist strategy in 1461 aimed at placing Richard's son, Edward, Earl of March, on the throne. The decision of Northampton would have been reversed had March not defeated the Lancastriand at Mortimer's cross. Margaret of Anjou, Henry's queen, failed to expel Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick, from London after the second battle of St Albans. Edward was recognised as king by the Londoners in March, crowned after his further defeat of the Lancastrians at Towton, and accepted by Parliament in November 1461.

Edward owed his throne to a number of factors - the support of the Nevilles, his successful and popular appeal to the Londoners, and not least to his own spirited campaigning. Yet his position was precarious. The Lancastrians had been decimated in battle but Edward knew that few of the magnates supported him, that public order still had to be secured, and that Warwick was capable of placing him under a tutelage as strict as that imposed on the imbecile henry VI by the Lancastrian lords.

Nowadays Edward IV appears with Henry VII to have been the restorer of English monarchy in the 15th century; the Yorkist achievement underpinned the stability constructed under the Tudors. Edward has been depicted as dissolute and unscrupulous: to William Stubbs he was 'as a man vicious far beyond any king that England had seen since the days of John; and more cruel and bloodthirsty than any king he had ever known', and 'an exponent of despotic theory'.

The reign hinges on the momentous events of 1470-1471 when Warwick, driven to ally himself with Margaret of Anjou and the Lancastrians, succeeded in replacing Henry VI on the throne. All the evidence suggests that Edward's breach with Warwick 'the Kingmaker' was premeditated: Edward had no intention of granting Warwick a special relationship. The king's emancipation was inevitably a process rather than an event. It began with his marriage, in 1464, to Elizabeth Woodville, and it continued with the systematic promotion of her family to positions of power. Warwick was angered by the marriage, and regarded himself as deliberately insulted because the king chose to announce it just at the moment when the earl was negotiating a settlement with France that envisaged Edward's marriage to a French wife. Warwick's reply consisted in deploying his personal popularity against the king and his new allies, and in dividing Edward from his brother Clarence, married at Calais in July of 1469 to Warwick's daughter Isabel. After initial success, Warwick and Clarence were forced into exile. Here they formed an unlikely compact with Margaret of Anjou and the Lancastrians which led to Henry VI's temporary restoration in 1470-1471. Edward fled to the Netherlands.

Then with the aid of his ally Charles of Burgundy, he fitted out a small army which landed on the Humber in March 1471. Warwick and the Lancastrians had no common strategy. In April Warwick was defeated and killed at Barnet, in May Margaret was overwhelmed at Tewkesbury; her son Edward was killed in the battle, and her husband, Henry VI, was executed on Edward's return to London.

In the remaining years of the reign Edward effectiely re-established the monarchy and brought it to a position of power unattained since Edward III. The 'Restored Monarchy' was wealthier than that of the Lancastrians. Edward enriched the crown with his own considerable possessions, his brothers were endowed with the Warwick eststes, and after the still treacherous Clarence had been executed in 1478 there was a further concentration of resources in the hands of the king. Even foreign policy was made profitable. Whatever the real objective of Edward's French campaigns the peace of Picquigny in 1475 clearly appealed to the buisinesslike English ruler - he recieved a cash payment of 75,000 crowns for withdrawing his army, and an annual pension of 50,000 crowns. Financial independence reinforced Edward's politcal power over the magnates. His benevolences, which did not need Parliamentary consent, were skilfully levied and, as taxes, just:'he has plucked out the feathers of his magpies without making them cry out', said an Italian observer in 1475. In addition Edward efficiently steered the bulk of financial administration through the Chamber, a household department.