Record

CodeGB/187/N0041
Dates1475-1449
Person NamePlantagenet; Edward (1475-1449); 17th Earl of Warwick; potential claimant to the English throne
Epithetpotential claimant to the English throne
Title17th Earl of Warwick
SurnamePlantagenet
ForenamesEdward
DatesAndPlacesHeld title 1478-1499.
NationalityEdward, styled earl of Warwick (1475–1499), potential claimant to the English throne, was the first and only surviving son of George, duke of Clarence (1449–1478), and Isabel, daughter and coheir of Richard Neville, earl of Salisbury and Warwick. He was born on 21 or 25 February 1475 at Warwick Castle. Edward IV was among his godparents and ordered that he be called earl of Warwick from the time of his baptism. His older surviving sister was Margaret [see Pole, Margaret], who was to be restored to the earldom of Salisbury in 1513, but she was executed in 1541, as a possible threat to the Tudor succession. His younger brother Richard died in infancy, his mother having died soon after Richard's birth, and it was Clarence's high-handed use of the law to punish two of his servants for their alleged murder of these two that was one of the immediate causes of the duke's fall. On his father's attainder in February 1478, Edward's lands, consisting essentially of the Warwick earldom as it stood at Clarence's death, were taken into royal custody. This was officially for his minority only, and he was indeed subsequently on occasion referred to as earl of Warwick. In practice, however, the attainder was never reversed and, although he was of full age in 1496, and could well have been given at least partial livery earlier, the lands remained with the crown under successive kings until his death, and both the lands and Clarence's west midland affinity were effectively absorbed into the growing crown estate and affinity. Edward himself was placed in the wardship of Thomas Grey, marquess of Dorset, in 1481.

Edward's only appearance on the political stage was under Richard III, when he was present at the coronation in July 1483 and was knighted at the investiture of Richard's son as prince of Wales at York the following September. Thereafter he was kept in some sort of custody at Sheriff Hutton, one of Richard's principal northern residences, though he does seem to have been associated, albeit nominally, with the prince of Wales's council in the north, and may even have been heir apparent to the throne for a while on the prince's death in 1484. Richard is said eventually to have named John de la Pole, earl of Lincoln, as heir, and, whether formally named or not, he was undoubtedly preferred over Warwick. This was almost certainly because of the dangers of drawing attention to the fact that Edward had a better claim to the throne than Richard himself. In 1485 Henry VII was quick to remove Edward, now the obvious Yorkist claimant, from Sheriff Hutton to the Tower of London and there he remained, except for an appearance at St Paul's in 1487 designed to make public the fraudulence of Lambert Simnel's attempt to impersonate him. There followed other plots focused on Edward, now clearly seen as the main Yorkist rival to Henry VII. Finally, in 1499, the Yorkist pretender Perkin Warbeck, who had been placed in the Tower in 1498, was alleged to have plotted to free himself and Edward, and the latter was accused of conspiracy to depose the king. In November both were tried and executed; Edward met his death at Tower Hill on the 28th. This double execution may simply have been a precondition for the marriage of Prince Arthur to Katherine of Aragon, which finally occurred in 1501. Edward was buried at Bisham Abbey, the burial place of the Montagu earls of Salisbury, from whom his mother was descended.
SourceOxford Dictionary of National Biography
RelatedRecordGB/187/N0025

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