People mostly have some clue to whom you are referring if you say Warwick, the ‘Kingmaker’, to distinguish him from all other Earls of Warwick that existed before or since – and there have been many! That’s fair enough, but when it comes to whether the term is justified, then that’s another matter entirely. I have no trouble with using such a tag as an easy handle for recognition purposes. And of course, for good or ill, the epithet stuck fast. However, it was not a term in common use for several hundred years until the eighteenth century historian, David Hume, made it more well-known. The first known English reference is: ‘That brave Kingmaker, Warwick’ which appears in Samuel Daniel’s poem, The History of the Civil War written in the reign of Elizabeth I. A Scottish philosopher and intellectual, John Major (or Mair), wrote in 1521 of Warwick in his History of Greater Britain: ‘Of him, it was said that he made kings and at his pleasure cast them down’ and Major used the Latin phrase ‘regum creator’ to describe the earl. In Act 2, scene 3, Warwick is described by the bard as: “thou setter up and plucker down of kings.”īut the term ‘kingmaker’ actually predates Shakespeare.
Well, Shakespeare – who else? – gives us a place to start with the character of Warwick in his play Henry VI Part 3.
So when was the name ‘Kingmaker’ first used about the Earl of Warwick? These nicknames are thus the judgement of one society or culture upon another that came before – and they sometimes come with a fierce perspective! Often it’s worth finding out, if you can, who first used the term and why.
Unfortunately, they are often wholly, or partly, inaccurate – and frequently based upon the opinions of a few influential early historians. They are useful handles for us to use to identify a particular figure and they have become part of our collective memory. Such nicknames will be familiar but these names are not about history, they are about legend. History likes important people to have nicknames: Alfred the Great, Ethelred the Unready, William the Conqueror, Edward ‘Longshanks’, or the ‘Hammer of the Scots’, ‘Good Queen Bess’ or ‘Gloriana’, ‘Bloody’ Mary and ‘Bluff’ King Hal. I vowed to do something about it, so here’s my second offering which seeks to explode the myth that Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick, justified the epithet of “kingmaker”. I have had a bit of a rant on Facebook about the common myths which persist about many aspects of the Wars of the Roses period.
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