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In 1461 Edward, Earl of March, a handsome 18-year old of massive charisma and ability, usurped the English throne from his vacant Lancastrian predecessor Henry VI. Ten years on, following outbreaks of civil conflict that culminated in him losing, then regaining the crown, he had finally secured his kingdom. The years that followed witnessed a period of rule that has been described as a golden age: a time of peace and economic and industrial expansion, which saw the establishment of a style of strong monarchy that the Tudors would make their own. Yet, argues A.J. Pollard, Edward, who squandered his undoubted talents in a frenzy of sexual and epicurean excess, was a man of limited vision, his reign remaining to the very end the narrow rule of a victorious faction in civil war.
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Charles II has always been one of the most instantly recognisable British kings – both in his physical appearance, disseminated through endless portraits, prints and pub signs, and in his complicated mix of lasciviousness, cynicism and luxury. His father’s execution and his own many years of exile made him a guarded, curious, unusually self-conscious ruler. He lived through some of the most striking events in the national history – from the Civil Wars to the Great Plague, from the Fire of London to the wars with the Dutch. Clare Jackson’s marvellous book takes full advantage of its irrepressible subject.
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Edward VI, the only son of Henry VIII, became king at the age of 9 and died wholly unexpectedly at the age of 15. All around him loomed powerful men who hoped to use the child to further their own ends, but who were also playing a long game – assuming that Edward would outlive them and become as commanding a figure as his father had been. This book gives full play to the murky sinister nature of Edward’s reign, but is also an account of a boy learning to rule, learning to enjoy his growing power and to come out of the shadows of the great aristocrats around him. England’s last child monarch, Edward would have led his country in a quite different direction to the catastrophic one caused by his death.
