1461–1483: Edward IV, Yorkist Rule and the Later Medieval Weald

A New Dynasty over an Established Western Weald

Western Sussex already contained institutions capable of absorbing a change of dynasty. Arundel Castle remained the principal secular centre of the lower Arun valley, joined to its borough, bridge, collegiate church, estates and river traffic. Petworth belonged to the Percy inheritance and linked a great Sussex manor with northern lordship. Amberley and Drungewick formed part of the temporal estate of the Bishop of Chichester. Beneath these centres stood lesser manors, moated farmsteads, freehold and customary tenancies, mills, woods and market connections.

The Yorkist victory altered allegiance at the top of this structure while much of its daily work continued. Stewards held manor courts, bailiffs accounted for rents and produce, foresters regulated parks and woods, and parish clergy maintained worship under the same Catholic order. Great houses needed bread, ale, meat, fish, fodder, candles, linen, timber and metalwork regardless of the badge worn by the ruling dynasty. Their demands drew farms and crafts into a regional economy whose movement followed the roads towards Horsham, Petworth, Pulborough, Arundel, Chichester and Guildford.

For communities around Wisborough Green, Kirdford, Alfold and Loxwood, lordship was encountered through named officers and recurring obligations. A royal grant might change the holder of an office; an attainder could place an estate in the king’s hands; a pardon or restoration could return it to an heir. The manor court, deed chest and rent roll gave these changes practical form. The survival of land use across political reversal depended upon clerks and local witnesses who could prove what was owed, where a boundary ran and who possessed lawful title.

The chapel at Loxwood belonged to another layer of this landscape. It remained within Wisborough Green parish and the Diocese of Chichester, supported through local property, offerings and guardianship. Its founders had accepted a religious purpose that continued after their deaths. Under Edward IV, the most revealing local evidence follows the passage of land and responsibility from one generation to another.

Bishop John Arundel and a Diocese across Dynasties, 1461–1477

Bishop John Arundel remained at Chichester when Edward IV replaced Henry VI. His continuation in office gave the diocese immediate institutional stability: cathedral worship, benefice appointments, ecclesiastical courts and episcopal estates carried on while writs and public prayers changed to the Yorkist king. His long episcopate therefore linked the final Lancastrian years directly with Edward IV’s settlement.

The bishopric’s established structure carried authority across each change of Crown. Clergy required ordination and institution; ecclesiastical courts heard causes concerning marriage, wills, tithes and discipline; the cathedral chapter maintained the daily offices; estates supplied the income that supported administration and worship. Bishop Arundel’s officers continued this work while royal commands and public prayers adopted Edward’s name.

Arundel endowed the nightly singing of the antiphon Nunc Christe at Chichester Cathedral and established a perpetual chantry. Annual rent supported priests and clerks and placed the service within the cathedral’s continuing round of worship. The foundation provides a cathedral-scale example of a principle also visible at Loxwood: prayer intended to continue across generations required property, income, documents and people capable of administering the founder’s purpose.

Late-medieval religious life was strongly corporate. Lay people and clergy invested in continuing worship through rents, gifts, lights, vestments, images and commemorative services. Endowment linked property to prayer, and the resulting institutions carried religious intentions beyond individual lifetimes. Bishop Arundel’s chantry and the Loxwood guardianship belonged to the same wider habit of making devotion durable through material provision.

By 1464 the bishop’s age, bodily weakness and infirmities excused him from regular attendance at Parliament and council. Greater responsibility fell upon the chapter, archdeacons, rural deans, officials and estate officers acting in his name. Amberley offered a fortified episcopal residence closer to Chichester, while Drungewick represented the bishopric near the Surrey boundary through its rents, courts, buildings, chapel and officials. The see therefore remained present through land, jurisdiction and corporate administration throughout the Yorkist settlement.

Margery Irlond, Feoffees and the Protection of Property, 1463

In April 1463 Margery Irlond returned to the documentary record at Loxwood. Three years earlier she had conveyed Hudefold in Wisborough Green and Kirdford to her son John. Her new declaration concerned an earlier feoffment and opened a close view of property, legal memory and family authority during Edward IV’s first reign.

Margery’s 1463 declaration concerned an earlier feoffment of the holding once associated with Robert Hudyfold. Feoffment placed legal title in the hands of named people who could act for an agreed purpose. Lord Audley, John Tanner, Laurence Hichecok and others had been involved. Margery stated that Laurence was to pursue the land, take its profits until his expenses and labour were recovered and then allow the property to return to her. She recorded that he had sold the holding for a substantial sum and withheld the proceeds.

Margery responded through the law available to her. Acting upon advice, she entered upon her feoffees and made an estate in fee simple to her son and heir. Her sealed declaration protected the family account and named a broad body of witnesses: John Threell, Harry Strodewyk, Richard Shudd, William Loteman, Richard Hammond, Richard Cave, John Mechewyk, John Coker, George Kynge and Harry Jakeman. The words ‘written at Loxwood’ place this legal action inside the settlement itself and reveal a community capable of preserving title through witness and written memory.

Margery’s action protected more than the immediate title to Hudefold. It preserved the property, witnesses and legal memory within the same local network that sustained the chapel. The later appearance of the Irlond or Yrlond name among the formal guardians confirms that these fifteenth-century deeds belong to the continuing history of the foundation’s management.

Margery’s position also demonstrates the authority of widows and heiresses within late-medieval property transmission. Her claim came through her father, was defended through her own legal action and was settled upon her son. Land, documentary knowledge and religious responsibility could pass through daughters, marriage and widowhood as well as through male succession.

The declaration belongs beside the battles and parliaments of the reign because both royal and local society depended upon accepted forms of title. Edward IV reordered great estates through attainder, restoration and parliamentary settlement. Margery secured a local inheritance through feoffment, entry, witness and sealed declaration. The same legal culture equipped the families who managed chapel lands and renewed collective guardianship across generations.

The Woodville Marriage and the Politics of Patronage, 1464–1469

Edward secretly married Elizabeth Woodville in the spring of 1464. She was the widow of a Lancastrian knight and the daughter of Richard Woodville and Jacquetta of Luxembourg. When the marriage was announced, members of her large family entered the royal affinity through offices, honours and advantageous marriages. The queen’s household became a new centre through which petitioners and dependants sought favour.

The decision challenged Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick, whose military support had helped Edward gain the Crown and whose diplomacy had been directed towards a foreign marriage. Patronage lay beneath their disagreement. A king governed through appointments, wardships, marriages, grants and access to justice. Warwick expected influence over these resources; the Woodvilles created competing routes to royal favour. Foreign policy widened the division, with Edward moving towards Burgundy while Warwick pursued an accommodation with France.

The marriage of Edward’s sister Margaret of York to Charles the Bold of Burgundy in 1468 strengthened the Burgundian connection. Burgundy mattered to English merchants because the Low Countries formed a major market for wool and cloth. Court alliance, dynastic ceremony and commercial interest met in the same relationship. Fine textiles, plate, books, tapestries and devotional objects moved through aristocratic networks, while customs revenue connected trade with the king’s finances.

Local consequences appeared through office and estate patronage. Gentlemen sought places on commissions; stewards and receivers served magnates; patrons presented clergy to benefices; wardships and marriages altered family strategies. Arundel, Petworth and the bishop’s estates each contained households through which royal and noble influence could reach lesser landholders. A change in court favour might redirect an office while the field, mill or wood continued to produce its income.

The chapel trusteeship worked within this political society while preserving a different objective. Guardians might belong to local affinities, hold land from great lords or seek patronage for their families. The property attached to the chapel still had to serve worship according to the bishop’s settlement. Royal favour could raise a household quickly; the chapel’s endurance depended upon several families accepting the same continuing obligation.

Guardianship after the Founders: Property, Records and Renewal

By Edward IV’s reign the founding petitioners belonged to an earlier generation, while the office they had created remained active through transferable responsibility. The chapel needed rent-producing property, tenants who met their obligations, documents proving title and guardians able to act when a lease expired, a repair became urgent or a fellow guardian died.

Several title-holders gave the institution continuity. Surviving feoffees could convey property to a renewed body, and witness groups preserved the public memory of each transfer. Margery Irlond’s dispute demonstrated why accountability mattered: profits had to be applied to the purpose for which authority had been given, and records had to survive when that purpose was challenged.

The ecclesiastical and temporal roles were clearly ordered. Bishop and vicar governed the chapel’s position within the Church; the chaplain celebrated the authorised services; the guardians managed leases, rents, endowed property, repairs and documents. These functions allowed the religious foundation to continue through political changes that repeatedly altered royal and noble office.

Such work carried spiritual weight. Lay communities assumed extensive responsibility for the buildings and furnishings through which worship was maintained. At Loxwood, trusteeship supplied a local legal mechanism for that corporate devotion. Managing a rent or repairing a roof became part of maintaining Mass, lights, sacred vessels and the chaplain’s service for the community.

Later records make the continuity explicit, with the Irlond or Yrlond line and other founding-family names appearing among the chapel’s trustees. Their recurrence confirms that the responsibility accepted around the foundation became an enduring local institution rooted in property, kinship and public trust.

Rebellion, Captivity and the Readeption, 1469–1470

The first Yorkist settlement broke apart in 1469. A northern rising associated with the name Robin of Redesdale drew Edward away from London. Warwick and the king’s brother George, Duke of Clarence, supported the movement, and the royal army was defeated at Edgecote. Edward entered Warwick’s custody, yet the earl’s political support proved too narrow for permanent government through a captive king. Edward recovered his freedom and resumed authority.

A further rising in 1470 ended at Losecoat Field and forced Warwick and Clarence to flee. In France they reached an agreement with Margaret of Anjou, whose Lancastrian cause Warwick had spent years opposing. The marriage of Prince Edward of Lancaster to Warwick’s daughter Anne Neville sealed the reconciliation. French support enabled Warwick to return to England in September.

Edward’s position collapsed rapidly. Several leading supporters gathered too slowly, and the king crossed to the Burgundian Netherlands. Henry VI was brought out of the Tower and restored to the throne in the period known as the Readeption. Public authority changed once more: writs ran in Henry’s name, prayers named the Lancastrian king and officials decided whether to retain office under the government dominated by Warwick and Clarence.

The reversal reached western Sussex through magnate connections, commissions and estate administration. Great households watched the allegiance of their lords. Receivers needed to know which grants remained valid; merchants assessed the security of roads and payments; clergy adopted the restored royal name in worship. The chapel’s land and obligations remained governed by local deeds and episcopal arrangements while the monarchy above them changed hands.

The speed of the Readeption revealed the fragility of personal political loyalty. An affinity could move with a lord, and an office could be lost with his defeat. The guardianship of endowed property offered a slower structure. Surviving title-holders, tenants and witnesses continued to recognise the purpose attached to the land even as royal seals and proclamations changed.

Barnet, Tewkesbury and Edward’s Restoration, 1471

Edward returned to England in March 1471 with Burgundian assistance. He landed at Ravenspur and initially declared that he sought only the Duchy of York. Support gathered as he moved south. Clarence abandoned Warwick and rejoined his brother, London opened its gates and Henry VI returned to custody.

The Yorkist and Lancastrian armies met at Barnet on 14 April. Fog obscured the field and contributed to confusion within Warwick’s army. The earl and his brother John Neville, Marquess Montagu, were killed. On the same day Queen Margaret landed in England with Prince Edward. Their army moved west, seeking supporters and a crossing towards Wales.

Edward pursued and brought them to battle at Tewkesbury on 4 May. The Lancastrian army was defeated and Prince Edward was killed. Queen Margaret entered captivity. Henry VI died in the Tower on 21 May, after the destruction of the cause that could restore him to effective rule. The adult male Lancastrian line that had challenged Edward was removed from the centre of politics.

The restoration altered the character of Edward’s reign. His sons provided a visible Yorkist succession, Warwick was dead and surviving opponents had fewer routes around which to organise. Parliament and royal justice confirmed grants, attainders and settlements arising from victory. The king could now draw upon Crown estates, customs and negotiated revenue with less dependence upon continual emergency mobilisation.

In the Western Weald, the return of stability changed the kinds of work most visible in local records. Estates turned again to leases, repairs, inheritance and routine accounting. The chapel’s guardians could manage property with a clearer expectation that royal authority would remain settled. The scars of civil war remained in noble families, while farms, woods and parish institutions entered a longer period of investment.

Petworth, Arundel and the Reordering of Great Estates

Edward’s settlement of the great estates influenced western Sussex through Petworth and Arundel. Henry Percy had been restored to the earldom of Northumberland in 1470. After Edward’s return he remained loyal and became essential to government in the north. Petworth formed one part of the Percy inheritance, carrying Sussex rents and produce into a household whose principal political responsibilities lay far away.

Restoration required administrative work. Officers re-established the earl’s authority, held courts, reviewed rents and managed parks, woods, mills and demesnes. Tenants rendered their obligations to the restored lord. A Sussex manor could thus help support northern service through money and produce, while its own economy remained connected with nearby markets and craftsmen.

Arundel followed a different path. William Fitzalan, Earl of Arundel, maintained a great regional centre whose castle, borough, river crossing and collegiate church concentrated lordship. The Fitzalan estate possessed its own networks of office, worship and commemoration. Household expenditure supported food production, transport, metalwork, textiles and building repair, and the Arun carried bulky goods between the coast and inland routes.

The bishop’s manors formed a third estate system. Amberley, Drungewick and the other temporal holdings of the see funded diocesan government through rents, demesnes, courts and resource management. These institutions were corporate in another sense: a bishop died, yet the property passed with the office. Stewards and tenants preserved continuity until the next bishop took possession.

Local trustees lived among these overlapping lordships. Their land might be held from different superiors, and witnesses in one deed could serve several estates. Chapel governance therefore rested upon cooperation across manorial boundaries. The same person could appear as tenant, freeholder, witness, juror or guardian according to the business before him.

Woodland, Cloth and Skilled Production after 1471

The later years of Edward IV’s reign coincided with a more commercial use of the Western Weald’s resources. Farming remained the foundation of household survival, while woodland, animal products and skilled crafts created income beyond the field. The district supplied great houses, market towns, parish buildings and regional traders through a dispersed network of small producers and specialist crafts.

Woodland management depended upon time measured across generations. Selected oaks were allowed to mature for structural timber, carts, bridges and large repairs. Coppiced underwood was cut on a cycle that produced poles, fencing, hurdles and fuel, then allowed the stools to grow again. Rights to timber, pasture and pannage required agreement between lords, tenants and neighbours. A woodland’s value came from disciplined renewal as much as from a single felling.

The skills surrounding timber were specialised. Sawyers converted trunks; carpenters framed buildings and repaired roofs; wheelwrights made wheels, carts and agricultural equipment; coopers produced vessels; turners shaped bowls and smaller objects. Smiths supplied axes, augers, knives, hinges, straps and nails. A chapel trustee commissioning a repair drew upon the same regional workforce as a manor steward repairing a barn or an estate officer renewing a bridge.

Charcoal linked the woods with heat-intensive work. Smiths needed controlled fuel, and the Wealden glass industry depended upon large quantities of wood, ash, sand and clay vessels. Glass served church windows, lamps, tableware and high-status domestic openings. Production sites were dispersed according to fuel and raw material, while glaziers and carriers brought finished material to cathedrals, colleges, manor houses and parish churches. The surviving records identify a regional craft network supplying places such as Loxwood through producers, glaziers and carriers across the wider Weald.

Clay supplied daub, hearths, tiles and bricks. The earlier royal licence concerning the bishops’ manors had already used the language of stone and ‘brykes’, reflecting the growing status of brickwork in high-status construction. Tile-makers, brick-makers and lime burners converted local or transported materials into durable roofs and walls. Their products needed carts, draught animals and roads firm enough for heavy loads.

Wool and cloth added another chain of work. Sheep supplied fleece as well as meat and manure. Women and men washed, carded, spun and wove fibres within households and workshops; fulling, dyeing and finishing added value before cloth reached market. The Low Countries remained important to English trade, and the Burgundian alliance of Edward’s court intersected with commercial interests in wool and textiles. Local producers participated at modest scales through merchants and market centres that connected rural work with the wider commercial economy.

Leatherworking used hides from cattle and skins from sheep and deer. Saddlers, shoemakers and harness makers supported transport and agriculture. Mills processed grain and, where adapted, could serve fulling. Ale brewing, baking, dairying and poultry supplied everyday trade. The relative peace after 1471 encouraged estates and households to spend on repair, clothing, storage and transport, sustaining craftsmen whose work crossed parish boundaries.

The chapel’s economy formed part of this world. Rental income arose from productive land; repairs required timber, clay, iron and skilled labour; documents required parchment, ink and literate clerks. The guardians’ decisions converted agricultural and woodland value into the continuing care of a religious building. Their administration joined devotion to the commercialising countryside around it.

Revenue, Trade and the Treaty of Picquigny, 1475

Edward’s second reign rested upon stronger royal finance than the government of Henry VI had possessed. Crown lands, customs, feudal revenues, loans and negotiated payments allowed the king to govern with fewer parliaments. Merchants and urban communities remained important because customs on wool, cloth and imported goods provided cash that estates paid only indirectly.

In 1475 Edward assembled an army for France. Parliament had granted taxation, nobles contracted to bring retinues and ports prepared shipping and provisions. Sussex lay on the Channel and contributed through coastal watch, transport, collection and the market supply of food and equipment. Inland estates met assessments or sold produce into networks serving the expedition.

The expected Burgundian support proved limited, and Edward negotiated with Louis XI. The Treaty of Picquigny provided an immediate French payment and an annual pension, together with a projected marriage between Edward’s daughter Elizabeth and the French dauphin. Negotiation brought the expedition to an early conclusion. Military preparation had demonstrated Edward’s capacity to mobilise, while diplomacy converted that capacity into revenue.

The settlement reflected Edward’s willingness to use military mobilisation as leverage for a profitable diplomatic agreement. Money from France strengthened the court and reduced the need for immediate taxation. Local communities had already borne the preparation through grants, loans and supply. The agreement then spared them the continuing burden of garrisons and repeated campaigns.

The episode also placed records at the centre of policy. Contracts, indentures, muster rolls, accounts and treaty instruments transformed promises into enforceable obligations. The same late medieval confidence in written title shaped estate leases and the deeds preserved by local families. Government at every scale relied upon words whose authority continued after the people who sealed them had departed.

Pecock’s Books and the First English Press, 1475–1477

The religious argument associated with former Bishop Reginald Pecock survived his removal from Chichester. In February 1475/6 Edward IV wrote to Pope Sixtus IV about Pecock’s books. The king described the former bishop’s teaching as dangerous and reported that his writings continued to circulate among lay people, clergy and university graduates nearly two decades after his fall.

Pecock’s condemnation left a body of English manuscripts whose continued circulation mattered as much as the arguments they contained. His books showed that substantial theological discussion could move through the vernacular before printing reached England, and their survival created a direct bridge between manuscript controversy and the new technology of the press.

Manuscript culture already carried English religion into lay households. Catechesis, prayers, saints’ lives, moral verse and practical material could share the same collections. Pecock’s manuscripts therefore circulated through an audience already accustomed to devotional and instructional reading in English.

William Caxton introduced a new means of multiplication when he established his Westminster press in 1476. The following year Anthony Woodville, Earl Rivers, the queen’s brother, brought courtly English prose directly into the new medium through his translation of The Dictes and Sayings of the Philosophers. Court patronage and printing now met at the heart of royal government.

Caxton’s early market included courtly, moral, historical and devotional works. Printing enlarged an existing manuscript culture of Catholic devotion and instruction while Wycliffite Bibles and Lollard writings continued principally in handwritten form. The religious significance of print therefore lay in its capacity to reproduce authorised devotion, moral teaching, history and controversy with increasing consistency and reach.

By 1483 the Church and Crown still regulated preaching, translation and doctrine, while readers encountered a growing body of English material in manuscript and print. Pecock’s surviving books and Caxton’s press represented two forms of transmission operating together on the eve of Edward V’s accession.

Clarence, Gloucester and the Fragility of Yorkist Unity, 1476–1478

Edward’s restoration had defeated his principal Lancastrian opponents, while division remained within the Yorkist family. George, Duke of Clarence, had deserted Warwick in 1471 and returned to Edward. He then disputed the Neville inheritance, quarrelled with royal policy and became associated with renewed accusations of treason and unlawful influence.

Parliament attainted Clarence in 1478, and he was executed in the Tower. The later story that he was drowned in a butt of malmsey became one of the most famous legends of the dynasty. His fall showed how inheritance, affinity and suspicion could overcome royal brotherhood.

Richard, Duke of Gloucester, followed a different course. He had remained loyal during Edward’s return and married Anne Neville, Warwick’s younger daughter. The settlement of the Neville inheritance gave him extensive interests, and the king entrusted him with authority in northern England. His household, offices and military responsibilities created a regional power that would become decisive after 1483.

Royal family conflict affected estates through wardship, marriage, forfeiture and parliamentary settlement. Great inheritances could be divided by political agreement, then altered by attainder. Tenants met new receivers while continuing to work holdings whose boundaries changed far less quickly than the titles above them. The chapel guardians operated through shared purpose and renewable title, giving their authority a durable local basis distinct from princely household patronage.

Bishop Edward Story and the Ordered Diocese, 1478–1483

Bishop John Arundel died in 1477. Edward Story became Bishop of Chichester in 1478 and began an episcopate that would continue until 1503. Story was a doctor of laws whose training placed legal procedure, institutional order and the regulation of worship at the centre of his office. He entered a diocese shaped by Pecock’s controversy, Arundel’s long administration and repeated changes of monarchy.

The cathedral chapter maintained the daily offices; archdeacons and officials heard causes; patrons presented clergy; parishes managed buildings and local obligations; stewards and bailiffs administered episcopal estates. Amberley, Drungewick and the other manors supplied income and hospitality. Story became the personal head of an established corporate structure whose authority reached from Chichester to the northern edge of the diocese.

His later actions reveal the character of that government. He regulated devotion at the shrine of St Richard, founded educational provision and supported civic and religious building in Chichester. Saints, shrines, pilgrimage, offerings and images occupied a central place in late-medieval lay religion. Story therefore governed an active devotional economy in which spiritual practice, offerings, clergy and urban trade met around the cathedral.

The shrine of St Richard drew pilgrims who required lodging, food and goods; their offerings supported the cathedral and its worship. Clergy and officers organised access and ceremony and protected the endowed purposes attached to the cult. The same principle operated at Loxwood on a smaller scale: devotion generated gifts and property, and responsible administration kept those resources directed toward worship.

At the northern edge of the diocese, Drungewick continued through officers and tenants. Loxwood remained within Wisborough Green parish and the guardians managed the temporal foundation under episcopal authority. Story’s long episcopate carried this confident late-medieval Catholic order through the end of Yorkist rule and into the Tudor dynasty.

Local Memory, Sacred Property and the Next Generation

The later years of Edward IV preserve deeds, witness groups and family succession, giving a different kind of record from formal chapel minutes. The documentary line was already secure. John Irlond stood within the inheritance traced from Philip Naldrett through Margery, while Threel, Shudd and King witnesses belonged to the same local world of land, title and neighbourly authority.

A religious foundation depended upon continuing legal and practical memory. Tenants had to know where rent was paid; guardians needed access to deeds; replacements had to be admitted while surviving holders could still convey title; boundaries and obligations had to remain intelligible. The property records of this reign show the legal habits that later appear openly in the trustee renewals.

Edward IV Dies and the Succession Unravels, 1483

Edward IV died at Westminster on 9 April 1483. His twelve-year-old eldest son immediately became Edward V, carrying the Yorkist succession into a royal minority whose government now depended upon the adults around the child king.

Edward V remained at Ludlow while preparations began for his journey to London. The new reign therefore opened with the Crown secure in a child’s title and effective authority waiting to be shaped by the adults who would meet, advise and accompany him on the road to the capital.

News of the accession travelled through writs, proclamation and prayer. Bishop Edward Story carried Chichester into another royal minority; Arundel, Petworth, Amberley and Drungewick awaited confirmation of offices and commands; Loxwood’s chapel continued under the same grant and guardianship. The succession crisis now centred on Edward V’s journey from Ludlow and on control of the child king before he reached London.

The Yorkist Inheritance in 1483

Edward IV’s reign had moved from conquest to exile, restoration and relative stability. It strengthened Crown revenue, restored commercial confidence and reordered noble lordship after civil war. Arundel, Petworth and the bishop’s estates connected western Sussex with this political economy through offices, rents, parks, markets and household demand.

The reign also advanced the local story of corporate responsibility. Margery Irlond’s declaration carried the founder Philip Naldrett’s line toward John Yrlond and the documented trustees. Land, deeds, rents and successive guardians gave religious obligation a structure capable of surviving the repeated reversals of the Crown.

Pecock’s manuscripts and Caxton’s press brought a quieter transformation. English religious instruction already possessed deep roots in Catholic pastoral practice, while printing began to multiply devotional, moral, historical and courtly texts. Edward V inherited a kingdom in which traditional worship remained vigorous and the means of reading and communicating in English were expanding rapidly.