The Death of Edward IV

King Edward IV is said to have been tall and handsome, a charismatic and affable character, but in months before his death that man had long since disappeared , and in his place, according to Dominic Mancini, was a 

"a tall man and very fat though not the point of deformity." who had "to take an emetic for the delight of gorging his
stomach  for this reason.........he had grown fat in the loins."

On the  9th April 1483, King Edward IV died suddenly and unexpectedly, his death has been attributed to pneumonia, typhoid, or appendicitis. Mancini's suggested that during a fishing trip, Edward had "allowed the damp cold to strike his vitals."  Many of his court must have known, but dare not say, that it was Edward himself who was to blame for the situation he now found himself in, and they would have been right, only nineteen days before his forty-second birthday his hedonistic life of drinking and sexual pleasure had finally caught up with him.
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Another suggestion as to the cause of Edward's death was poison. Polydore Vergil wrote that Edward 

 "died of a disease utterly unknown to all the physicians which showeth some that there was some foul play, and
that may be understood to be either poison or sorcery"

Whatever the mode of death, it was a shock for the family on a personal level, but it would turn out to be an absolute catastrophe for the House of York which Edward's brother, the Duke of Gloucester foresaw and was quick to act upon.

"...we heartily pray you to come unto us in London in all the diligence ye can possible, after the sight hereof, with
as many as ye can make defensibly arrayed, there to aid and assist us against the Queen, her blood, adherents and
​affinity, which have intended and do intend, to murder and utterly destroy us and our cousin, the Duke of Buckingham, and the old royal blood of this realm, and as it is now openly known, by their suble and damnable ways forecasted the same"

While his country fell into a state of panic and his family into infighting, Edward's body was passed into the care of his personal physician

                                     "our trusty and well-beloved servant, William Hobbys, cirurgion for oure body."
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William Hobbes had been in the pay of Richard, Duke of York as his medicus et sirurgicus up to his untimely death at Wakefield in the December of 1460, and following that, Hobbes became a member of the household of York's heir Edward, being appointed his Sergeant Surgeon. It was in this capacity that he attended both Edward and Richard, Duke of Gloucester and following his accompanying the Duke of Gloucester to Scotland, Hobbes returned to find the king ailing. ​

On the death of any anointed king, there was a specific ritual that would have been performed, the body would have been washed and dressed and laid out on a board and covered with gold cloth. This ritual, in the case of Edward's death, is documented in Gairder's 1861 work The Letters and Papers illustrative of the reigns of Richard III and Henry VI.

According to this Edward's body was 
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                 "first the corps was laide upon a burdle, all naked saving he was covered from the navyll to the kneys, and
              so laie x (10) or  xij(12) hours" to be viewed and then " shewid to his nobles by the space of ij (2) days and more 
            if the weather it be suffre, when he may not goodly lenger endure, thake hym away, and bowel hym and then efstone                                         bame (embalm) him" after which he would have been placed in a lead coffin.

Edward was later buried at St George's Chapel, Windsor Castle.

Thus ended the reign of King Edward IV, his death lit the fuse on a giant powder keg, it finally exploded on the 29th April 1483.