Richard Neville, the powerful Earl of Warwick, known as "the Kingmaker,” has become the greatest landowner in England.

Already a great magnate through his wife's property, he had also inherited his father's estates and has been granted much forfeited Lancastrian property.

He also holds many of the offices of state.

Convinced of the need for an alliance with pro-Lancastrian France, he had been negotiating a match between Edward and a French bride.

Warwick had told Louis XI that Edward would be delighted to marry the French princess.

However, Edward had married Elizabeth Woodville, the widow of a Lancastrian knight, in secret in 1464.

He later announced the news of his marriage as fait accompli, to Warwick's considerable embarrassment.

This embarrassment had turned to bitterness when the Woodvilles came to be favored over the Nevilles at court.

Many of Queen Elizabeth's relatives have married into noble families and others have been granted peerages or royal offices.

Other factors compound Warwick's disillusionment: Edward's preference for an alliance with Burgundy rather than France and reluctance to allow his brothers George, Duke of Clarence and Richard, Duke of Gloucester, to marry Warwick's daughters Isabel and Anne.

Furthermore, Edward's general popularity is on the wane in this period with higher taxes and persistent disruptions of law and order.

Louis XI of France, who wishes to forestall a hostile alliance between Edward and Edward's brother-in-law Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, suggests the idea of an alliance between Warwick and Margaret.

Neither of those two formerly mortal enemies entertain the notion at first, but eventually they are brought round to realize the potential benefits.

However, both are undoubtedly hoping for different outcomes: Warwick for a puppet king in the form of Henry VI or his young son; Margaret to be able to reclaim her family's realm.

In any case, a marriage is arranged between Warwick's daughter Anne and Margaret's son Edward of Westminster, and in the autumn of 1470 Warwick invades England.

Edward IV had already marched north to suppress another uprising in Yorkshire.

Warwick, with help from a fleet under his nephew, the Bastard of Fauconberg, lands at Dartmouth and rapidly secures support from the southern counties and ports.

He occupies London in October, freeing the imprisoned Henry VI, and parades him through the streets of London as the restored king.

Warwick's brother John Neville, who had recently received the empty title Marquess of Montagu and who has led large armies in the Scottish marches, suddenly defects to Warwick.

Edward is unprepared for this event and has to order his army to scatter.

He and Richard, Duke of Gloucester, flee from Doncaster to the coast, and thence to Holland and exile in Burgundy.

They are proclaimed traitors, and many exiled Lancastrians, such as the Percys, return to reclaim their estates.

Warwick's position nevertheless remains precarious.

His alliance with Louis of France and his intention to declare war on Burgundy is contrary to the interests of the merchants, as it threatens English trade with Flanders and the Netherlands.

Clarence has long been excluded from Warwick's calculations.

Parliament in November 1470 declares that Prince Edward and his descendants are Henry's heirs to the throne; Clarence will become King only if the Lancastrian line of succession fails.

Unknown to Warwick, Clarence secretly becomes reconciled with his brother, King Edward.

The restoration of Edward IV in 1471 is sometimes seen as marking the end of the Wars of the Roses proper.

Peace is restored for the remainder of Edward's reign.

His youngest brother, Richard, Duke of Gloucester, and Edward's lifelong companion and supporter, William Hastings, are generously rewarded for their loyalty, becoming effectively governors of the north and midlands respectively.

The reinstated king also restores his brother Clarence to royal favor.

As his father-in-law had died, Clarence becomes jure uxoris Earl of Warwick, but does not inherit the entire Warwick estate as his younger brother, Richard, Duke of Gloucester, marries Anne Neville, the widowed younger sister of Clarence's wife.

Clarence on March 25, 1472, is created 1st Earl of Warwick.

With the deaths of Somerset and his younger brother, the House of Beaufort, who are distant cousins of Henry VI and had a remote claim to succeed him, has been almost exterminated.

Only the female line of Somerset's uncle, the 1st Duke of Somerset, remains, represented by Lady Margaret Beaufort and her son Henry Tudor.

Henry escapes from Wales with Jasper Tudor, his paternal uncle, and remains in exile in Brittany for the remainder of Edward's reign.

The year after the Battle of Tewkesbury however, Lady Margaret marries Lord Stanley, one of King Edward's supporters, who will later turn against Edward's brother Richard of Gloucester when he becomes King as Richard III, and will be instrumental in putting Henry Tudor on the throne.

Clarence's wife Isabel had in 1475 given birth to a son, Edward, later Earl of Warwick.

She died on December 22, 1476, two months after giving birth to a short-lived son named Richard, and they are buried together at Tewkesbury Abbey in Gloucestershire.

Their surviving children, Margaret and Edward, will be cared for by their aunt, Anne Neville, until she dies in 1485, when Edward is ten years old.

Though most historians now believe Isabel's death was a result of either consumption or childbed fever, Clarence is convinced she had been poisoned by one of her ladies-in-waiting, Ankarette Twynyho, whom, as a consequence, he has judicially murdered in April of 1477, by summarily arresting her and bullying a jury at Warwick into convicting her of murder by poisoning.

She is hanged immediately after trial with John Thursby, a fellow defendant.

Clarence's mental state, never stable, deteriorates from this point and leads to his involvement in yet another rebellion against his brother Edward.

The arrest and committal to the Tower of one of Clarence's retainers, an Oxford astronomer named Dr. John Stacey, leads to his confession under torture that he had 'imagined and compassed' the death of the King, and used the black arts to accomplish this.

He implicates one Thomas Burdett, and one Thomas Blake, a chaplain at Stacey's college.

All three are tried for treason, convicted, and condemned to be drawn to Tyburn and hanged.

Blake is saved at the eleventh hour by a plea for his life from James Goldwell, Bishop of Norwich, but the other two are put to death as ordered.

This is a clear warning to Clarence, which he chooses to ignore.

He appoints Dr. John Goddard to burst into Parliament and regale the House with Burdett and Stacey's declarations of innocence that they had made before their deaths.

Goddard is a very unwise choice, as he is an ex-Lancastrian who has expounded Henry VI's claim to the throne.

Edward summons Clarence to Windsor, severely upbraids him, accuses him of treason, and orders his immediate arrest and confinement.

Clarence is imprisoned in the Tower of London and put on trial for treason against his brother Edward IV.

Clarence is not present—Edward IV himself prosecutes his brother, and demands that Parliament pass a Bill of Attainder against his brother, declaring that he is guilty of 'unnatural, loathly treasons' which were aggravated by the fact that Clarence was his brother, who, if anyone did, owed him loyalty and love.

Following his conviction, he is "privately executed" at the Tower on February 18, 1478, by tradition in the Bowyer Tower, and soon after the event, the rumor gains ground that he had been drowned in a butt of Malmsey wine.

Shortly afterward, his son Edward Plantagenet is created Earl of Warwick.