Note 116 — Chapter I · —How the King of France cajoled the English after the Duke of Burgundy’s Death, for fear they should have interrupted him in the Conquest of the Territories belonging to the said Duke.—1477. (continued 2)

King Edward IV. died on the 9th of April, and the Dauphin’s marriage did not take place until the 22nd of June, more than two months later; so that the supposition of Commines that he died of grief at the disappointment of his own daughter, who had long been contracted to the Dauphin, is evidently erroneous. His dissolute mode of life renders it exceedingly probable that he died of a surfeit, according to the popular report. “He was a prince,” says Hume, “more splendid and showy than either prudent or virtuous; brave, though cruel; addicted to pleasure, though capable of activity in great emergencies, and less fitted to prevent ills by wise precautions, than to remedy them after they took place, by his vigour and enterprise.”