Edward IV

Edward IV won his crown on the battlefield at the age of eighteen. Born at Rouen in 1442, the eldest surviving son of Richard, duke of York, and Cecily Neville, he bore the title earl of March during his father's contest with the Lancastrian court of Henry VI. When York and Edward's brother Edmund were killed at Wakefield in December 1460, Edward took up the Yorkist claim, won the battle of Mortimer's Cross, and with the backing of his cousin Richard Neville, earl of Warwick, was proclaimed king in London in March 1461. His victory at Towton, among the bloodiest battles fought on English soil, secured the throne.

In 1464 Edward secretly married Elizabeth Woodville, a widow of gentry stock, while Warwick was negotiating a French royal match for him. The marriage, and the advancement of the queen's large family, estranged the earl. Warwick rebelled in 1469-70 with the king's brother George, duke of Clarence, and after the failure of his risings allied with the exiled Margaret of Anjou. In October 1470 Edward fled to the Burgundian Netherlands, where his sister Margaret of York was duchess as wife of Charles the Bold, and Henry VI was briefly restored. With Burgundian help Edward returned in March 1471, killed Warwick at Barnet, and destroyed the last Lancastrian army at Tewkesbury, after which Henry VI died in the Tower.

The second reign was largely peaceful. Edward invaded France in 1475 in alliance with Burgundy, but accepted at Picquigny a settlement under which Louis XI bought him off with a pension, and the treaty also provided for a marriage between his daughter Elizabeth and the dauphin, though it never took place. He restored royal finances through trade, careful estate management, and benevolences, and in 1478 had Clarence tried and executed for treason.

Edward died suddenly on 9 April 1483, a few weeks short of his forty-first birthday, leaving two young sons. His brother Richard, duke of Gloucester, named protector, took the throne within three months as Richard III, and Edward's children were declared illegitimate. His daughter Elizabeth of York later married Henry VII, joining the houses of York and Lancaster.