Edward IV was proclaimed king in 1461, weeks before Towton

Edward, Duke of York, was proclaimed King Edward IV in Westminster Hall on 4 March 1461, aged 18, seated in the marble chair of the King’s Bench before a small band of nobles and hand-picked commoners. No Parliament took part, and the coronation waited until he had beaten the army that still backed Henry VI.

The staging was deliberate. The History of Parliament notes that it mirrored what had been done 62 years earlier, when Henry IV displaced Richard II, and that a formal Parliament was again kept carefully out of the room. The legal case leaned on the Act of Accord of autumn 1460, which let Henry VI keep the crown for life but settled the succession on the house of York. By rejoining his wife’s forces at St Albans, the Yorkists argued, Henry had broken it and forfeited the throne. The blunter reason: having lost custody of Henry, they could no longer rule in his name.

• 30 December 1460: Edward’s father, Richard of York, is killed at Wakefield.
• 17 February 1461: the Lancastrians win at St Albans and recover Henry VI.
• 4 March 1461: Edward is proclaimed king at Westminster.
• 29 March 1461: Yorkist victory at Towton, fought in driving snow.
• 28 June 1461: Edward is crowned in Westminster Abbey.

Towton is often called the bloodiest battle on English soil, but that reputation rests on contemporary estimates of some 30,000 dead. The Battlefields Trust calls such figures likely gross exaggerations and doubts either side mustered more than 10,000 men.

The proclamation did not end the argument. A week later, townsmen in Bedford’s market place denounced Edward as a traitor, and a London grocer was beheaded at Smithfield for speaking against him. By June the regime felt safe enough to spare a notary, John Clerk, who refused to watch the coronation procession:

“I had as leef se the hunting of a dooke as him!”

Edward lost the throne in 1470 and regained it in 1471, shortly before Henry VI died in the Tower of London.