Attractive Ryal
YORK. Edward IV. First reign, 1461-1470. AV Ryal (34mm, 7.69 g, 11h). Light coinage. Type VII. Tower (London) mint; im: –/sun. Struck 1465-1466. Half-length figure of Edward standing facing in ship with bowsprit, holding sword and shield; Є on banner on stern, rose on hull / Rose over sun with fleurs, crowns, and lions; small trefoils in spandrels. Cf. Schneider 343-357 (for type); North 1549; SCBC 1950. Toned, edge smoothed. Good VF.
The restoration of Edward IV to the English throne was one episode in the thirty-year dynastic conflict known to history as the “Wars of the Roses” (1455-1485). So-named because of the roses employed by the competing houses – a red one for the Lancastrians and a white one for the Yorkists – the war was the result of the conflict that occurred between the sons of Edward III and their respective descendants in competition for the English throne. Beginning with the deposition in 1399 of Richard II by Henry Bolingbroke (subsequently Henry IV), the Lancastrian branch became the ruling family. The untimely death of Henry’s successor, Henry V in 1422, left the throne to the infant Henry VI. Until 1437, when he achieved his majority, the country was ruled by regents; after this, Henry’s own inability to rule effectively, as well as his personal insanity, created a volatile political instability that allowed for the rise of the Yorkists. In 1461, Henry VI was deposed by Edward, Duke of York, who became Edward IV. Edward, through the support of his cousin, Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick (“The Kingmaker”) consolidated his position as king, but the two fell out over Edward’s marriage to Elizabeth Woodville, the widow of a Lancastrian sympathizer. Warwick rebelled, capturing Edward, but subsequently being compelled by the nobles to release him. In 1470, Warwick again rebelled, restoring Henry VI (who had been in the Tower since 1465) again briefly to the throne. Following the decisive Battle of Tewkesbury on 4 May 1471, Edward IV was restored as king and Henry VI, deposed for the final time, was re-imprisoned in the Tower, where he died a little over two weeks later. Edward and the House of York now ruled unopposed, since direct Lancastrian opposition had been checked. Only Henry Tudor, the great-great grandson of John of Gaunt, remained – an exile in France.
