Warwick the Kingmaker

This book charts the extraordinary rise of the Neville family to their leading position on the local and national stage. The most powerful and most famous member of this family was Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick, a man remembered by history as The Kingmaker. Warwick rose to fame steadily, as his family had done for generations, following in his father’s footsteps with a spectacular marriage that brought even more power. His rise gathered pace as the political situation in England worsened. The decision of the Neville faction to back the Yorkist cause was critical to the next thirty years of English politics. Why did the Nevilles abandon the Lancastrian regime that had brought them wealth and power? Could the rupture have been avoided?

Returning to primary source material, this book shows what drove a man trusted by Henry VI into opposition and eventually to take the field of battle, playing a key role in unseating the Lancastrian dynasty. Warwick’s famous and spectacular fall from favour under the king he helped create, Edward IV, is explained. Warwick would go from trusted guardian of the king’s youngest brother to pariah, taking the king hostage only to be forced to release him before being driven from the country. How did he rise so high only to fall so far? Why did he decide to re-establish the Lancastrian regime he had toppled a decade earlier? In short order, Warwick would lie dead on the field at Barnet, killed by his old friend and protégé King Edward IV.

Is history right to remember Warwick as a Kingmaker? Was he an arrogant man who overreached himself or a victim of a king who needed to prove he was his own man? A vastly wealthy lord with a popular common touch, a full re-examination of this most spectacular of medieval lives will seek to answer these questions.