War of the Roses

Wars of the Roses, (1455–85), in English history, the series of

dynastic civil wars whose violence and civil strife preceded the
strong government of the Tudors. Fought between the houses of
Lancaster and York for the English throne, the wars were named
many years afterward from the supposed badges of the contending
parties: the white rose of York and the red rose of Lancaster.
The Wars of the Roses, known at the time and for more than a century after as
the Civil Wars, were a series of civil wars fought over control of the English
throne in the mid-to-late fifteenth century, fought between supporters of two
rival cadet branches of the royal House of Plantagenet: Lancaster and York.

Fought between 1455 and 1485, the Wars of the Roses were a dynastic struggle
for the English crown which pitted the Houses of Lancaster and York against
each other. Initially, the Wars of the Roses centered on fighting for control of
the mentally ill Henry VI, but later became a struggle for the throne itself.

The wars extinguished the male lines of the two dynasties, leading to the Tudor
family inheriting the Lancastrian claim.

Following the war, the Houses of Tudor and York were united, creating a new
royal dynasty, thereby resolving the rival claims.

The clash ended in a decisive Tudor victory, and Richard III was killed during
the fighting by a vicious blow to the head.

Tudor was immediately crowned King Henry VII, launching a new Tudor
Dynasty that flourished until the early 17th century.
 Competing claims to the throne and the
beginning of civil war

Both houses claimed the throne through

descent from the sons of Edward III. Since the
Lancastrians had occupied the throne from
1399, the Yorkists might never have pressed a
claim but for the near anarchy prevailing in the
mid-15th century. After the death of Henry V in
1422 the country was subject to the long and
factious minority of Henry VI (August 1422–
November 1437), during which the English
kingdom was managed by the king’s council, a
predominantly aristocratic body. That
arrangement, which probably did not accord
with Henry V’s last wishes, was not maintained
without difficulty. Like Richard II before him,
Henry VI had powerful relatives eager to grasp
after power and to place themselves at the
head of factions in the state. The council soon
became their battleground.

Great magnates with private armies dominated the countryside. Lawlessness was rife and
taxation burdensome. Henry later proved to be feckless and simpleminded, subject to spells of
madness, and dominated by his ambitious queen, Margaret of Anjou, whose party had allowed the
English position in France to deteriorate.

Between 1450 and 1460 Richard, 3rd duke of York, had become the head of a great baronial
league, of which the foremost members were his kinsmen, the Nevilles, the Mowbrays, and the
Bourchiers. Among his principal lieutenants was his nephew Richard Neville, the earl of Warwick, a
powerful man in his own right, who had hundreds of adherents among the gentry scattered over 20
counties. In 1453, when Henry lapsed into insanity, a powerful baronial clique, backed by Warwick,
installed York, as protector of the realm. When Henry recovered in 1455, he reestablished the
authority of Margaret’s party, forcing York to take up arms for self-protection. The first battle of the
wars, at St. Albans (May 22, 1455), resulted in a Yorkist victory and four years of uneasy truce.

A new phase of the civil war began in 1459 when York, goaded by the queen’s undisguised
preparations to attack him, rebelled for the last time. The Yorkists were successful at Blore
Heath (September 23) but were scattered after a skirmish at Ludford Bridge (October 12).
York fled to Ireland, and the Lancastrians, in a packed parliament at Coventry (November
1459), obtained a judicial condemnation of their opponents and executed those on whom they
could lay hands.

From then on the struggle was bitter. Both parties laid aside their scruples and struck down
their opponents without mercy. The coldblooded and calculated ferocity that now entered
English political life certainly owed something to the political ideas of the Italian
Renaissance, but, arguably, it was also in part a legacy of the lawless habits acquired by the
nobility during the Hundred Years’ War.

In France Warwick regrouped the Yorkist forces and returned to England in June 1460,
decisively defeating the Lancastrian forces at Northampton (July 10). York tried to claim the
throne but settled for the right to succeed upon the death of Henry. That effectively
disinherited Henry’s son, Prince Edward, and caused Queen Margaret to continue her
opposition.

Gathering forces in northern England, the Lancastrians surprised and killed York at
Wakefield in December and then marched south toward London, defeating Warwick on the
way at the Second Battle of St. Albans (February 17, 1461). Meanwhile, York’s eldest son
and heir, Edward, had defeated a Lancastrian force at Mortimer’s Cross (February 2) and
marched to relieve London, arriving before Margaret on February 26. The young duke of
York was proclaimed King Edward IV at Westminster on March 4. Then Edward, with the
remainder of Warwick’s forces, pursued Margaret north to Towton. There, in the bloodiest
battle of the war, the Yorkists won a complete victory. Henry, Margaret, and their son fled to
Scotland. The first phase of the fighting was over, except for the reduction of a few pockets
of Lancastrian resistance.

The ascendancy of Warwick

The next round of the wars arose out of disputes within the Yorkist ranks. Warwick, the
statesman of the group, was the true architect of the Yorkist triumph. Until 1464 he was the
real ruler of the kingdom. He ruthlessly put down the survivors of the Lancastrians who,
under the influence of Margaret and with French help, kept the war going in the north and in
Wales. The wholesale executions that followed the battle of Hexham (May1464) practically
destroyed what was left of the Lancastrian party, and the work seemed complete when, a year
later, Henry VI was captured and put in the Tower of London.

Warwick made an equally vigorous effort to put the government of the realm in better
shape, to restore public order, to improve the administration of justice, and, by confiscations and
economies, to make the crown solvent. At the same time, both Warwick and his master were caught
in the diplomatic schemes of the astute Louis XI, who had succeeded Charles VII as the king of France
in 1461. He was still preoccupied with the power of Burgundy, and the English were to be the pawns
in the game he intended to play for the humbling of Charles the Bold.

Yet Edward IV was not prepared to submit indefinitely to Warwick’s tutelage, efficient and
satisfactory though it proved to be. It was not that he deliberately tried to oust Warwick;
rather he found the earl’s power irksome. Edward’s hasty and secret marriage to Elizabeth
Woodville in 1464 was the first overt sign of his impatience. The Woodvilles, a family with
strong Lancastrian connections, never achieved real political influence, but they climbed into
positions of trust near the king, thus estranging Warwick still further.

The open breach between the king and the earl came in 1467. Edward dismissed Warwick’s
brother, George Neville, the chancellor; repudiated a treaty with Louis XI that the earl had
just negotiated; and concluded an alliance with Burgundy against which Warwick had always
protested. Warwick then began to organize opposition to the king. He was behind the armed
protest of the gentry and commons of Yorkshire that was called the rising of Robin of
Redesdale (April 1469). A few weeks later, having raised a force at Calais and married his
daughter Isabel without permission to the Edward’s rebellious brother, George Plantagenet,
duke of Clarence, Warwick landed in Kent. The royal army was defeated in July at Edgecote
(near Banbury), and the king himself became the earl’s prisoner, while the queen’s father and
brother, together with a number of their friends, were executed at his command.
By March 1470, however, Edward had regained his control, forcing Warwick and Clarence to
flee to France, where they allied themselves with Louis XI and (probably at Louis’s
instigation) came to terms with their former enemy Margaret. Returning to England
(September 1470), they deposed Edward and restored the crown to Henry VI, and for six
months Warwick ruled as Henry’s lieutenant. Edward fled to the Netherlands with his
followers.

The triumph of Edward IV

Warwick’s power was insecure, however, for the Lancastrians found it difficult to trust one
who had so lately been their scourge, while many of the earl’s Yorkist followers found the
change more than they could bear. There was thus little real opposition to Edward, who,
having secured Burgundian aid, returned from Flushing to land at Ravenspur (March 1471) in
a manner reminiscent of Henry IV. His forces met those of Warwick on April 14 in the Battle
of Barnet, in which Edward outmaneuvered Warwick, regained the loyalty of the duke of
Clarence, and decisively defeated Warwick, who was slain in the battle. On the same day,
Margaret and her son, who had hitherto refused to return from France, landed at Weymouth.
Hearing the news of Barnet, she marched west, trying to reach the safety of Wales, but
Edward won the race to the Severn. In the Battle of Tewkesbury (May 4) Margaret was
captured, her forces destroyed, and her son killed. Shortly afterward Henry VI was murdered
in the Tower of London; Margaret remained in custody until being ransomed by Louis XI in
1475. Edward’s throne was secure for the rest of his life (he died in 1483).

In 1483 Edward’s brother Richard III, overriding the claims of his nephew, the young Edward
V, alienated many Yorkists, who then turned to the last hope of the Lancastrians, Henry Tudor (later
Henry VII). With the help of the French and of Yorkist defectors, Henry defeated and killed Richard at
Bosworth Field on August 22, 1485, bringing the wars to a close. By his marriage to Edward IV’s
daughter Elizabeth of York in 1486, Henry united the Yorkist and Lancastrian claims. Henry defeated
a Yorkist rising supporting the pretender Lambert Simnel on June 16, 1487, a date which some
historians prefer over the traditional 1485 for the termination of the wars.

Women in the Wars of the Roses

The events of the middle and late 15th century were, we have always
been told, driven by men.

It was a story of the battlefields on which kings, dukes and earls fought
for control of the country during the Wars of the Roses; a great dynastic
confrontation that saw the houses of York and Lancaster battle for control of the
English crown from 1455–85.

 The she-wolf: Margaret of Anjou (1430-83) - Wife of Henry VI

 The Rose of Raby: Cecily Neville (1415–95)- Mother of Edward IV
and Richard III

 The tragic lady: Anne Neville (1456–85) - Wife of Richard III

 The commoner queen: Elizabeth Woodville (c1437–92)- Wife of
Edward IV, mother of the princes in the Tower
 The fiery plotter: Margaret ‘of Burgundy’ (1446–1503) - Sister of
Edward IV and Richard III
 The unifier: Elizabeth of York (1466–1503)- Daughter of Edward IV &
Elizabeth Woodville, wife of Henry VII, mother of Henry VIII
 The ambitious Tudor: Margaret Beaufort (1443–1509) - Mother of
Henry VII