"Edward IV was not perhaps quite so bad a man or so bad a king as his enemies have represented: but even those writers who have laboured hardest to rehabilitate him, have failed to discover any conspicuous merits. With great personal courage he may be freely credited; he was moreover eloquent, able, and fairly well educated. He had a definite plan of foreign policy, and although he was both lavish in expenditure and extortionate in procuring money, he was a skilful merchant. He had, or professed to have, some love of justice in the abstract, which led him to enforce the due execution of law where it did not interfere with the fortunes of his favourites or his own likes and dislikes. He was to some extent a favourer of learned men; he made some small benefactions to houses of religion and devotion, and he did not entirely root up the collegiate foundations of his predecessors of the house of Lancaster. But that is all: he was as a man vicious far beyond anything that England had seen since the days of John; and more cruel and bloodthirsty than any king she had ever known: he had too a conspicuous talent for extortion."
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William Stubbs, The Constitutional History of England in its Origin and Development, Vol. III (1878), pp. 219-220
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Edward_IV_of_England
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Edward IV of England
Edward IV (28 April 1442 – 9 April 1483) was King of England from 4 March 1461 to 3 October 1470, then again from 11 April 1471 until his death in 1483. He was a central figure in the Wars of the Roses, a series of civil wars in England fought between the Yorkist and Lancastrian factions between 1455 and 1487.
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