the wars of the roses

THE

OF IHE ROSIS

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A.'.POLIARD

British History in PersPectiveGeneral Editor: Jeremy Black

PUBLISHED TITLES

D. G. Boyce The Irish Question and British Politics 186B-1986A. J. Pollard The Wars of the Roses

Robert Stewart ParQ and Polilies, lB30-1852

FORTHCOMING TITLES

C.J. Bartlett British Foreign Polic2 in the Twentieth Century

John Davis British Polities 1885 1931

John Derry Brilish Polities in the Age of PittAnn Hughes Causes of the English Ciuil War

Diarmaid MacCulloch Religion and Societl 1547-1603Michael Prestwich English Politics in the Thirteenth Century

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THU WensOF THE ROSNS

A. J. ?orrenoPrincipal Lecturer in History

Teesside Polytechnic

O A J. Pollard l9BB

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British Library Cataloguing in PublicationPollard, A. J.The Wars of the Roses.-(Britishhistory in perspective).1. Great Britain-Historv-Wars ofthe Roses, 1455-1485I. Title II. Series942.04 DA250ISBN 0-333-40603-6ISBN 0-333-40604-4 Pbk

Data

ConTENTS

Prefuce

Map and tables

Introduction

I The Wars in History

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62

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The Course of the WarsPrelude to the wars: 1450-59The first wars: 1459-71The second wars: l483-87Summary: the character of the wars

The Causes of the WarsLong-term causes of the first warsShort-term causes of the first warsImmediate causes of the first warsThe causes of the second wars

The Scale of the WarsThe wars and English societyThe wars and European Politics

5 Aftermath and the Wider Context of theThe restoration of royal authorityEnsland's neighbours

Conclusion

References

Select Bibliography

Glossarl

Index

Wars 9595

104

111

1t4

126

l3l133

PnppecE

This work is a discussion of what seem to me to be the importantand distinctive characteristics of the Wars of the Roses. It isfounded upon and reflects the work of many scholars and hashad the advantage of many hours of discussion with friends andcolleagues too numerous to name. On some issues it aerees withthem, on others it disaerees. Ary strengths it possesses owesmuch to them, the weaknesses are all my own. I would howeverlike to record a special debt to the late Charles Ross, whose bookunder the same title will for long remain the best introductorywork on the subject. And I would like to thankJill Wren for herpatient assistance in preparing the typescript for publication.

TauntonSeptember, 1987

For Richard and Edward

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The Wars of the Roses

of the Wars of the Roses. In lg77 The Sundry Times carried areview by Bernard Levin of Terry Hands' spectacular productionof the three parts of Henryt VI for the Royal Shakespeare Company.In his opening remarks, Levin ruminated on the likelihood thatthere were old people still living in Stratford when Shakespearewas born who were alive before Bosworth. The Wars of theRoses were thus not merely history: 'the air still resounded withthe cries of the wounded and dying, and the earrh was soakedwith their blood'. For this reason, Levin suggested, ,it is hardlyto be wondered at that the horror of ambition, faction andanarchy, with which he (Shakespeare) grew up, never left him,.rIt is perhaps understandable that in 1977 Bernard Levin wasnot in touch with recent thought about the Wars of the Roses(or Shakespeare for that matter). But even in 1986 it waspossible for one Shakespearean scholar writing on the playwrieht'sperception of politics and history to remark in passing andwithout any apparent awareness of a differerrt perspective on the'chaos of the Wars of the Roses'.2 In some circles, academic aswell as literary and political, the Sellar and Yeatman vision ofthe Wars of the Roses as the revival of the 'Feudal amenities ofSackage, Carnage, and Wreckase' still remains supreme.3

This work is a reconsideration of the Wars of the Roses. It isboth an examination of what the phrase itself has meant (andstill means) as a summing up of one particular phase in Englishhistory and a discussion of what happened, why and with whatconsequences in the later-fifteenth century. It is a political not amilitary history. For recent discussions of the military historythe reader can turn elsewhere, especially to the works of AnthonyGoodman and Charles Ross.a In concentratins on the politicaltheme the work follows K. B. McFarlane's adaptation of Clause-witz's dictum that civil war is 'the continuation of politics byother means'.5 Chapter 2 o{fers a narrative, but if more detail iswanted the reader has a wide choice of modern textbooks andmonographs to which to turn. The narratir.e here serves as abasis for the further discussion of the causes, character, scaleand aftermath of the wars.

As a study in political history this work does not take up indetail a discussion of the age as a whole. To some this might

Introduction

sccm a srave imbalance . One of the paradoxes of the age of the

Wars of the Roses is that it was also, despite the characteristictlismissal of one nineteenth-century historian, an age whichindeed witnessed significant 'proeress in the arts of peace''6 The

last decades of the fifteenth century were years of economicclevelopment and growing per capita prosperity for many men and

women especially in south-eastern and south-western England''l'hese same decades were the years when the 'New Learning'began to take root in England and the first humanist grammarschool, Magdalen College School, Oxford, was founded. It wasalso in the middle of the Wars of the Roses that Caxton, thenOxford University and others set up their printing presses. Itwas an age, in fact, of expanding educational opportunity and(possibly) growing literacy, whether in the new fashion or morecommonly in the traditional mould. It was perhaps also an eraof intensifying personal religious devotion and piety; an era in

which lay men and women in growing numbers began to demand

more of the institutions of the Church than they ultimately could

supply. And it was also, in the midst of civil war, the age ofrebuilding in the perpendicular style of East Anglian naves andSomerset bell towers. Thus, while it is recognised that duringthe Wars of the Roses English society was at the same timeexperiencing significant cultural change ('progress in the arts ofpeace'), this work is not an examination of that process ofrenewal and resurgence itself.

If this work can claim to add a distinctive perspective to thesubject it might lie in the attempt to place the experience of civilwar in England in the later-fifteenth century in a wider European

context. Most recent comment has tended to emphasise the fact

that in comparison with the experience of neighbouring European

kinsdoms England su{Iered little from the ravages of civil war'What has tended to be overlooked is the basic fact that therewas a common experience of such civil war. Approaches to theWars of the Roses have tended to be excessively Anglocentric'The normal perspective is that of the place of the wars in the march

of English history and, more recently, the unfolding of English

historioeraphy. But England in the later-fifteenth century wasalso part ol a European community. The European context


impinges on Ensland in two ways. First of all the rulers ofEnsland were causht in a complex network of internationalrelations. In the continual same of international politics anddiplomacy the internal affairs of neishbouring kinedoms were assienificant to rival powers as the external posturine. Thus allrulers, of England as well as of France, Scotland, the Burgundianinheritance or the Spanish kinedoms, intervened in the afiairsof the others. Intrigue and plottine and occasional open militaryintervention were part and parcel of the constant attempts todestabilise and exploit the weaknesses of rivals. The civil warsof England, France, Scotland, Burgundy or Spain were all atcritical times intensified and extended by foreign intervention.In an important sense the Wars of the Roses were a part of aninterlinked chain of European civil wars. Secondly England andher neighbouring kingdoms were all by the very nature of theirpolitical structures and the cultural values of their 6lites proneto civil war. Central sovernments in all European kinsdoms andstates were fundamentally weak and lackine in coercive power.All depended on the willing obedience and cooperation of ahighly volatile and independent nobility. Moreover the nobilityof Europe was educated in the school of chivalry which elevatedthe making of war to the highest secular ideal. Civil war,therefore, was senerally in northern Europe less exceptional thanit seems today.

THp WENS IN HISTORY

The twentieth century, especially the last third, has witnessed amajor revision of received ideas about the Wars of the Roses.The 30 years 1455-85, it has been argued, were neither years ofconstant civil strife nor years of uncontrolled anarchy' In termsof open warfare, it has often been repeated, there were no morethan 12 or l3 weeks of actual fighting in the whole 30 years.And this fighting was restricted to the narrow world of thepolitical 6lite, most of whose membels were either indifferent tothe outcome or shamelessly opportunistic. A handful of isolatedbattles, armed clashes, murders and executions, we are told, had

little impact on the day-to-day life of the kingdom. Theseinconveniences were not caused by dynastic dispute: the questionof the throne only arose as a consequence of political rivalry.There were no roses, red for Lancaster or white for York,deployed as badges by rival parties. Even the phrase 'Wars ofthe Roses', we are assured, was not thought of until invented bySir Walter Scott.r In short, the Wars of the Roses is a myth. Inits extreme manifestation this was the argument advanced bythe late S. B. Chrimes in a recorded discussion with ProfessorR. L. Storey. The roses, he stated, had nothing to do with it andthere were not, 'in any meaningful sense', any wars. The onlyadmissible use of the phrase, he conceded, was ifit were restrictedto the first three months of 1461.2 The Wars of the Roses, itwould seem, have been talked out of existence.

Apart from the fact that it would probably be impossible to


remove the phrase from our lanpuaee, there are, however,compelling historiographical grounds as well as sound historicalreasons for retaining it. To start with the roses. While it may bestrictly true to say that the exact phrase'the Wars of the Roses,was not employed until the early-nineteenth century, as DrAston pointed out in 1971, the concept it encapsulates of thewarrins roses has a very lons history stretchine back throughHume's 'wars of the two roses' (1761) and SirJohn Oslander,s'the quarrel of the warring roses' (1646) to the fifteenth centuryitself.3 Badges (as has frequently been observed) were adoptedindividually by late-medieval noblemen and women. A sreatfamily, especially a royal family, collected several, reflectins itsown lineage and agglomeration of titles from diflerent ancestors.An individual might even use several badges reflecting dillerentclaims, associations and objectives. Henry VII deployed notonly the Tudor Rose itself but also the portcullis (from hismother), the red drason of cadwallader (from his father's line)and fleetingly a dun cow for his earldom of Richmond. Thus thehouse of Lancaster had a red rose in its vast collection - usedmore by fourteenth-century earls and dukes. While the favouritebadge of the last Lancastrian, Henry VI, was an antelope, thereis a likelihood that the red rose became an emblem of theBeauforts, also descended from the dukes of Lancaster. Similarlythe white rose is to be found in Yorkist use (inherited from theMortimer earls of March), but the badge of Richard of York wasa falcon and fetterlock, the badge of his son Edward IV a sunwith streamers, of Georee, duke of Clarence a black bull and ofRichard III a white boar. It seems that Elizabeth of York herselftook up the white rose as her personal badge; and plausible thatHenry VII on coming to the throne in l4B5 adopted the old,Lancastrian/Beaufort red rose of his mother for the very easewith which it could be deployed for propaganda effect.

The roses became quickly sisnificant because of their immedi-ate employment by Henry VII. The evidence is unambisuous.In April 1486 the new kins made his first, critical progress rothe north of England. So as to ensure that maximum advantasewas taken of his entry into York, the resion's capital, he sentahead instructions as to how he should be received. A series ol

The Wars in History

pageants and displays were to be mounted. The very first, atMicklegate Bar, through which he was to enter, was to represent

a heaven 'of great joy and angelical harmony' and under it 'aworld desolate full of trees and flowers' in which was to becontrived (mechanically) 'a royal, rich, red rose conveyed by avice, unto which rose shall appear another rich white rose, untowhom all the flowers shall lout (bow) and evidently givesovereignty, showing the rose to be principal of all flowers, andthere upon shall come from a cloud a crown covering the roses'.Thus was the Tudor badge of the rose and crown to be createdbefore the very eyes of the citizens of York.a The message wasclear and unambiguous. At approximately the same time, at theabbey of Crowland further south, a senior civil servant wasputting the finishing touches to his account of the history of theYorkist dynasty. He added some exhortatory verses, includingthe followine lines, which he helpfully told his readers employedthe banner and badges of the victor, vanquished and sons ofEdward IV, whose cause was avenged.

In thc ycar 1485 on thc 22nd day of August thc tusks of thc boarwcrc bluntcd and thc rcd rosc, the avcnger of the whitc, shincsupon us.5

If the author is to be believed the roses were respectively thebadges of Henry VII and the children of Edward IV and theirsymbolism was clearly understood by contemporaries'

The imagery and idea thus propagated became firmly estab-lished in the received wisdom of what the victorious andultimately successful Henry VII had achieved' Thus in 1561 SirThomas Smith, speaking for the realm, urged Elizabeth I tomarry so that she could perpetuate 'the race of the mixed rose,which broueht again the amicable peace long exiled from among

my children by the striving of the two roses'. And later in thesame pamphlet he added more colourfully, 'those two blades ofLyonel and John of Gaunt never rested pursuing the th'oneth'other, till the red rose was almost razed out, and the whitemade all bloody'.6 The idea of the warrins roses, if not thespecific phrase, 'The Wars of the Roses', undoubtedly hadcontemporary origins and was elaborated within two or three


senerations as part of an all-embracing interpretation of thepast.

That interpretation was also spelt out as early as 1486. Thepreamble to the papal bull of dispensation permitting themarriase of Henry VII and Elizabeth of York, the text of whichwas composed by the kine's servants, read as follows:

Our Holy Father, the Popc Innoccnt VIII, understandine of thclong and gricvous variance, contentions and dcbatcs that hathbccn in the Realm of England bctween the house of Lancastcr onthc onc party and thc house of York on the other party, willingall such divisions following to be put apart, by the counsel andconscnt of his college of cardinals approveth, confirmcth andcstablisheth the matrimony and conjunction made bctwcen oursovcrcign King Hcnry VII, of thc house of Lancaster, olthat oncparty and thc noble Princcss Elizabcth of thc housc of york ofthat othcr with all thcir issuc lawfully born bctween the same .

The bull was published and orders issued for it to be read fromevery pulpit.T

But Henry VII was not the first usurping king to suggest that hisaccession would end 'the long and grievous variance,. Richard IIIin his parliamentary declaration of his title emphasised moreluridly that during the reisn of his brother Edward IV:

no man was sure of his lifc, land, nor livelihood, nor ol his wifc,dauehtcr, nor servant, cvcry good maidcn and woman standingin drcad to bc ravished and dcfoulcd. And bcsicles this, whatdiscords, inward battlcs, cffusion of Christian men,s blood, andnamcly by thc dcstruction of thc noblc blood of this land, was hadand committcd within thc samc, it is evidcnt and notorious throughall this rcalm, unto thc grcat sorrow and hcaviness of all trucEnglishmcn.t]

Richard III was in fact borrowins the language used by EdwardIV which he had used 22 years earlier to blacken his predecessor:

this rcalm of Eneland thercforc hath suffercd thc charec ofintolcrablc pcrsecution, punishmcnt and tribulation, whercol thclikc hath not been sccn or heard in any othcr Christian rcalmby any mcmory or record, unrcst, inward war and troublc,unrishtcousncss, shcdding and effusion of innoccnt bloocl, abuscof thc laws, partiality, riot, cxtortion, murdcr, rape and vicious

The Wars in History

living, havc becn thc guidcrs and lcadcrs of thc noblc rcalm ofEngland.!)

Moreover, Edward IV, invoking the propaganda lately employedby his father, stated for the first time the idea that this anarchyresulted from Henry IV's heinous crime 'against God's law,man's liegance and oath of fidelity' of deposing Richard II. 'Iheidea of the Wars of the Roses as a period of anarchy consequent

upon the deposition of Richard II indeed had its roots incontemporary propaganda: Yorkist, not Tudor, propaganda.Henry VII took it over and added the particular detail of thered and white roses as symbols of Lancaster and York.

What began as the crude propaganda of successive usurpingkings was absorbed and elaborated by later generations so thatby the mid-sixteenth century it had been transformed into apersuasive and sophisticated historical explanation of the past'It was taken up and developed by the early-Tudor historianPolydore Vergil in his English Histor2; made more accessible inHall's [Jnion of the Houses of Lancaster and York, a mid-centurycelebration of the success of the Tudor dynasty; employed witha flourish by Sir'fhomas Smith; and completed in Shakespeare'sgreat cycle of history plays. By 1600 there could have beenscarcely anyone in England who did not know about the Warsof the Roses.

As understood in the later-sixteenth century the Wars of thcRoses encompassed 86 years of trnglish history: what happenedbetween the summer of 1399 and the summer of 1485. The keyevent was the deposition of a lawlul king. The consequenceswere a divine punishment on not just the royal family but alsothe whole of England. Hall, in his preface, drew a clear distinctionbetween normal division caused by laction and controversy)which he admitted unfortunately still existed, and the unnaturaldynastic division between Lancaster and York which had infested

England: a division the consequence of which, he claimed, 'my

wit cannot comprehend nor my tongue declare neither yet mypen fully set forth'.r0 This indescribable hell on earth had byGod's grace been set aside by the marriage ol Henry VII andElizabeth of York and, when he wrotc, stood 'suspended and


appalled' in the person of Henry VIII. Sir Thomas Smith wasmore willing to attempt a description of hell. 'By reason of titles,,he stressed, 'this poor realm had never long rest'. The cursedestroyed the royal family. 'And when this fell upon the head,,he asked, 'how sped the body think you? . . . Bloocl pursuedblood and ensued blood till all the realm was broueht ro grearconfusion . . . England in the latter end of King Henry VI wasalmost a very chaos. .. .'ll In Smith's colourful account we canrecognise some of his sources: rolls of parliament and early Tudorenclosure acts as well as the first histories. More significantly weshould note how everything known about the fifteenth century -its economic difficulties as well as its political instability - hasbeen subsumed under the one controlling idea of chaos.

This was the scenario taken up by Shakespeare. If one were tosit through all eight plays of the history cycle from Richard II toRichard III one would be periodically reminded that the themeand unity of the whole were the working out of divine retributionfor the crime of deposing Richard II. The idea is there in thebishop of Carlisle's prediction in Richard 11; in Henry V,s prayerbefore Agincourt; and finally in Richmond's prayerof thanksgiving at the end of Richard III. But there is more toShakespeare's cycle than a restatement of the conventional late-sixteenth-century interpretation of English history before 1485.There is a sense that the audience witnesses political behaviourcommon to all ages. It is both England then and England now.Implicit in the text is Hall's observation that all other divisionsstill flourish. In addition to a warning to contemporaries not torebel against Elizabeth I, there may also be a debate aboutwhether it is better to su{Ier tyranny or take the consequencesof overthrowing it. Moreover on another plane the plays can beseen as a nostalgic lament for a lost paradise - a eolden ageassociated with the era of Edward III when all was well in thepolitical world.12 By Shakespeare's day the idea of the Wars ofthe Roses had passed beyond mere propaganda: it was aperception of English history accepred as rhe truth on the basisof which it was possible to oIler contemporary political debateand comment.

A second influence entered English historiography in the

The Wars in History

sixteenth century: the Renaissance. Humanism was influentialin two ways. It enhanced the status of history as a branch ofliterature. At first this meant classical, especially Roman, history.tsut following the pioneering work of Polydore Vergil and Sir'I'homas More in the early decades of the sixteenth century therewas a conscious effort to develop a native history, a history ofEngland written not in Latin but in the vernacular. Secondlythe perception of English history before 1500 was coloured bythe humanist outlook on learning. To the humanist there wereonly two ages worth considering: the ancient and the modern inwhich good letters had been revived. Between the two lay thelong, benighted Middle Ages. In extending this perception toEngland, humanists identified the accession of Henry VII inl4B5 as the turning point. Soon it was taken for granted thatEngland before l4B5 was medieval and barbarous. The ideadovetailed neatly with the idea of the Wars of the Roses. Thusthe wars were not only the anarchy from which Henry VII hadrescued a suflering kingdom but also the final death throes ofthe Dark Ages; an idea caught beautifully in the nineteenthcentury by Bishop Stubbs: 'it was "as the morning spread uponthe mountain", darkest before dawn'.13

The later evolution of the historical interpretation of thefifteenth century is inseparable from the development of historyas an academic discipline. Until the late-nineteenth century thereceived wisdom, a marriage of T'udor propaganda and humanistprejudice, was irresistible. Admittedly an idiosyncratic unortho-doxy developed which took a provocatively favourable view ofRichard III. Sir George Buck in the early-seventeenth century,Horace Walpole in the late-eighteenth century and CarolineHalsted in the early-nineteenth sought to reverse Henry VII'sand Shakespeare's image. But this owed more to the personaltemperaments of the arrthors than to a fundamental reappraisal ofthe subject.ra The cumulative eflect of the quickening antiquarianinterest in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and thedevelopment of modern historical research in the nineteenth -the exploration and publication of government archives, legalrecords and private papers of the era - was to tend to confirmthe received wisdom. The Paston Letters, first readily available


in Fenn's edition (1787-1823), later supplemented by the publi-cation of Smyth's Liues of the Berkelelts (lBB3-85) provided plentyof evidence of skulduggery in fifteenth-century East Anglia andGloucestershire. Sir Harry Nicolas' six-volume Proceedings of thePriul Council in l836 and the steady stream of publication by theDeputy Keeper of Public Records, the Rolls series and theCamden Society brought more and more contemporary evidenceto light which appeared to confirm all that was previously known.The records of Kins's Bench, more prolific lor the fifteenthcentury than earlier, provided (and still provide) a further richseam of evidence of lawlessness and disorder. The landscaperevealed to the greatest ofthe first generation ofmodern historiansof medieval Eneland, Bishop William Stubbs, was anything butsublime. In the third volume of his Constitutional Historlt, firstpublished in lB78, confident in 'the power of good' to triumphin 'the progress of this world', he concluded:

'fhc most cnthusiastic admircr of medieval lifc must grant that allthat was good and grcat in it was languishing even to death; andthc firmest belicvcr in progrcss must admit that as yet there werefcw signs of returning health. Thc sun ol thc Plantagenets wentdown in clouds and thick darkncss: thc coming of the Tudors gaveas yct no promise of light.r"

Charles Plummer in his sketch of the Lancastrian and Yorkistperiod which introduced his edition of Sir John Fortescue 's TieGoaernance of England (lBB5) especially emphasised 'the oversrownpower and insubordination of the nobles', the utter lawlessnessof the aristocracy, as a canker of the times. He traced the originof the evil, which he christened bastard feudalism, back to thedays of Edward III and asserted that it reached its greatestheight durine the Lancastrian period. Backed by bands of armedmen the great lords corrupted and perverted the law, overawedparliament and Crown, and prosecuted their own private warswithout restraint. Ultimately the anarchy so created over-whelmed the realm.r6

But it was William Denton, Fellow of Worcester College, whoin IBBB delivered the most scathing denunciation of the fifteenthcentury and the Wars of the Roses. His account reads like a

The Wars in History

rnodernisation of Sir Thomas Smith's sketch three centuriescarlier. From the deposition of Richard II the house olLancasterand York turned on one another. Not only did they destroy eachother, 'the baronage of England was almost extirpated'. 'Theslaughter of the people was greater than in any former war onEnglish soil', but 'want, exposure and disease carried off morethan the most murderous weapons of war'. The commerce ofEngland was almost destroyed; hamlets and villages disappeared,

all the towns, save London, were well-nigh ruined;

and this ruin was but a type of a deeper ruin. . . . Thc standardof morality could not wcll have bccn lowcr than it was at the cndof the fiftccnth ccntury. Lust, cruclty and dishoncsty wcrc paradcd

before thc cyes of the pcoplc.rT

The principal cause lay not in a crime asainst God but in thedegeneracy of an ill-educated and corrupt baronage. Indeed in

one splendid passage Denton went so f;ar as to suggest that themoral degeneration was matched by physical deterioration ('lowin stature and leeble in frame') induced by the practice of teenage

sexual intercourse (at fourteen or earlier) .rB Altoeether the late-medieval baronage suffered from a most shocking want ofmuscular Christianity.

It was however during the nineteenth century that the appli-cation of the term Wars of the Roses was narrowed to the 30years 1455-85. While the fifteenth century as a whole wasshameful, the Wars of the Roses came to describe the nadir only.The new usase was summed up by the l91l edition of theEnclclopaedia Britannica'a name siven to a series of civil wars inEngland during the reign of Henry VI, Edward IV and RichardIII . . . matched by a ferocity and brutality which are practicallyunknown in the history of English wars before and since'.re Thusthe backsliding era of the Wars of the Roses received short-shrift

at the hands of eminent Victorians convinced of the progressivevirtues of their own age.

Dissentine voices were, however, already being raised. In1874, before Stubbs published his Constitutional Histo{2, J. R-Green in his controversial Short Histor;tt of the English People, whileacknowledsing that 'there are few periods in our annals from

t2 l3

'fhe Wars of the Roses

which we turn with such weariness and disgust as from the Warsof the Roses', suggested that the savage and brutal strife waslimited to great lords and their retainers. 'For the most part thetrading and agricultural classes stood wholly apart.' While thebaronage was dashing itself to pieces in battle after battle, thecountry at larse enjoyed a general tranquillity.20 His briefobservations were lollowed up ten years later by Thorold Rogerswhose study of wages and prices led him to declare that theagricultural class, 'must have had only a transient and lansuid

interest in the faction fight which was going on around them'and, far from being impoverished, enjoyed a golden age olcomparative prosperity.2r These views were taken further ageneration later by C. L. Kingsford, whose seminal Ford Lectures

of 1923 Prejudice and Promise in Fi,fteenth Centurlt England were thefirst attempt to counter the prejudice ol succeeding generationsand to draw attention to the promising features ol fifteenth-century life. Drawing particularly on the Stonor letters andpapers and the legal records in which he had immersed himself,he argued that the disruptive effect of the Wars of the Roses hadbeen exaggerated and that neither civil disorder nor civil warnecessarily aflected the lives of the county gentry any more than

it did ordinary men and women.22The revisionist torch was passed to K. B. McFarlane who in

the year in which Kingsford's Ford Lectures were published took

his Final Schools at Oxford. Over a liletime McFarlane gradually

and painstakingly refined his views on the fifteenth-centurynobility: in effect a continuing commentary on Plummer. Inessence his argument was that the later Middle Ages were notuniquely or structurally corrupt or lawless. 'Bastard Feudalism'had its roots long before Edward III and continued to flourishlong after the death of Henry VIL IT was no more than a formof the clientage and patronage which had oiled the wheelsof society throughout Ensland's pre-industrialised history.23McFarlane did not publish directly on the subject of the Warsof the Roses until the year before his death. But by his teachinghe inspired a generation of scholars to question more thoroughly

received interpretations and explore more deeply the sources offifteenth-century history. The result was that after 1960 there

'fhe Wars in History

was an explosion of new writings on the wars. McFarlane himself

was characteristically cautious, suggesting that the scale andimpact of the wars were limited and that the onset of 'realwarfare' was agonisingly slow because desired by no-one' The

fundamental cause, he argued, lay not in the degeneration oroverweening might of the nobility but on the contrary on theundermighty shoulders of Henry VI and the feebleness ofcentral government. Lords and gentry tried to avoid committing

themselves, putting a higher premium on survival than loyaltyto one house or another, or indeed one magnate or another' Few

noble lines were exterminated by the wars: if there were anyIasting eflect it was that the baronase was demoralised by threedecades of political upheaval and uncertainty.2a

McFarlane's views were in part echoed by J. R. Lander whoalso published a work on the Wars of the Roses in 1965' In alater summary of his views which appeared in 1976 Landerconcluded that the Wars of the Roses were very limited in scaleand effect; that there was little devastation, little looting, fewsieges; and that the wars had only the most temporary e{Iectson trade, and little on agriculture'2s In the same year, CharlesRoss stressed the same points. The wars had little impact onsociety:

England in the later-fifteenth century was in fact thc homc of arich, varied and vigorous civilization. To study it is to remainIargely unaware that it was a product of an age of political violcncc,which did nothing to hindcr its steady devclopmcnt.26

The same theme was taken up and emphasised even more by

John Gillineham who stressed in 19Bl that England in the aseof the Wars of the Roses was 'a society organized for peace' and

'the most peaceful country in Europe'.27 All that was wantingwas S. B. Chrimes' declaration that the Wars of the Roses never

took place at all.Those who have wished to reverse the Victorian view of later-

fifteenth-century society have not had it all their own way'Lander and Ross themselves both stressed the high level ofviolence which was endemic in late-medieval society' Andalthough Ross conceded that the wars might have made matters

15

rl

t+


worse, it was only in the work of R. L. Storey on their origins(endorsed by M. H. Keen in 1973) that a casual connectionbetween aristocratic violence, lawlessness and the wars 'w'assustained.2B Following Storey, D. M. Loades re-emphasised in1974 the chaos of factional quarrels amons 'noble bandits',whose innumerable savage aflrays justifiably led contemporariesto consider the 1450s and 1460s as a period of unprecedenteddisorder.2s And Anthony Goodman in The Wars of the Roses(l98l), pictured the wars as a long series of calamities, warninsthat the dearth of evidence concernins disruption and destructionshould not necessarily be taken to mean that they did not occur.30

Like would-be Lancastrians and Yorkists themselves, his-torians in the last quarter of the twentieth century are dividedover the scale , character and impact of the Wars of the Roses.Nevertheless a consensus has been reached on several issues.Whether the phrase 'the Wars of the Roses' is considered to bestrictly appropriate or not, it is accepted that it describes threeor four decades of political instability and periodic open civilwar in the second half of the fifteenth century. Secondly it isaccepted that one cannot describe the combatants as beineirrevocably divided into two parties called Lancastrians andYorkists; allegiances and alliances were considerably too fluid toenable one to allocate individual lords and gentlemen to one orother side throughout the period. Thirdly none but the mostfervent admirer of the Tudors would argue that the later-fifteenthcentury was an era of moral delinquency or a time to beunsympathetically pitied. Fourthly discussion of the Wars of theRoses is now concentrated on interpreting political history, noton the moral or physical condition of society at large or itseconomic, ecclesiastical or cultural history. And finally, althouehnarrower points of delinition arc debated as to precisely whenthe Wars should be said to have begun or ended, none wouldnow arsue that l4B5 marked a clear break between one era andanother, let alone 'fhe End of the Middle Ages'. On the wholethe years 1450-1530 are perceived to have a unity. If 'modern'England is to be said to have a beginning al any particular timethen that time is more likely to have been durins the 1530s. Ifthe B0 years belore the break with Rome is to have any particular

The Wars in History

overall characteristic it lies in that overworked phrase 'an age oftransition'.

Debate nevertheless continues about several aspects of thesubject if only because of the quality of the evidence availableto the historian. There can be no doubt that our detailedknowledge of this era is immeasurably ereater than it was acentury ago. While reconsideration of the concept of the Wars

of the Roses is relatively recent, detailed historical research since

lg00 has added greatly to the sheer quantity of informationavailable. A line of monumental political studies from coraScofield's Edward IV (1924) to R' A' Griffiths' The Reign of KingHenry VI (l98l ) stand witness to generations of painstakins search

through the public records. The development of prosopoeraphical

studies, most particularly in the field of parliamentary historyby J. C. Wedgwood and J. S' Roskell, has since the 1930sbrought forward, and continues to reveal, more and more detail

.or.errli.s the lives and careers of individual protaeonists.3lSince 1960 the dramatic expansion of British higher educationand the realisation that the fifteenth century offered a relatively

unworked field has quickened the pace of this research. Although

in 1976J. R. Lander drew attention to the enormous quantitiesof neglected archives, both government records and privatepapers, which were still awaiting students willing to ploughihrough them, both before and since an unprecedented number

of researchers have been at work. At first, in the postwaryears, research concentratcd on administrative, financial andconstitutional topics. Then it turned to the as-yet untappedprivate collections, many newly deposited in county recordtffi..r, to study baronial families and, latterly, the gentry andcounty societies. The Beauforts, Courtenays, Greys of Ruthin,Howards, Mowbrays, Percies, Staffords, Stanleys, Tudors and

Talbots all found their historian. Derbyshire, Devon, Hereford-

shire, Kent, Nottinghamshire, Staflordshire, Warwickshire and

the west Riding of Yorkshire have all been, or currently are, the

subject of doctoral theses. Anyone seeking to master all facets of

fifteenth-century political life has to assimilate an ever-growing

mass of detailed evidence.while in sheer quantity of inlormation more and more is made

t7


available, the principal lines of interpretation and issues ofdebate remain very much the same. Perhaps the most importantchange broueht about by recent research has been the growingawareness of regional and local variation and the need foreven greater care in making generalisations. What was true ofWarwickshire may not have been true of North Yorkshire orKent. Yet the evidence remains, as it always has been, incompleteand unreliable. Narrative accounts (the chronicles) are all to alesser or greater degree partisan and imperfectly informed. Therecords of government, private individuals and corporations(mostly legal and financial documents) have the advantage ofnormally being politically neutral, but they yield mainly trivialinformation which is only cumulatively of value, and are excep-tionally fragmented and frustratingly incomplete. Matters aremade worse by the fact that many private collections dry up inthe mid-fifteenth century. In J. R. Lander's memorable words;'In reality the political history of the period is a web of shredsand tatters, patched up from meagre chronicles and from a fewcollections of letters in which exaggerated gossip and wildrumours have been, all too often, confused with facts'.32 Whateverindividual researchers may unearth from record sources, it islikely that the Wars of the Roses will remain one of the moreinadequately documented and controversial topics of Englishpolitical history.

Typical, and a matter for immediate consideration, is thefailure to agree on how many Wars of the Roses there were,when each one started, when each ended and what distinguished

one from another. Although Goodman characterised them asmerely a series of upheavals between 1452 and 1497, mostrecent historians have opted for three wars of varying lengths.McFarlane suegested 145V64; l+64-7 l; 1483-87 : Gillinghamconcluded 1455-64; 1469-7 I ; l4B3-87 : Ross gave 146V64; 1469-

7l; l4B3--87. But Ross also pointed out that in terms of dynasticstruggle between Lancaster and York there were only two warswhich ended in 1471.33 This line is taken a step further here.Although there were indeed two distinct periods of open warfarewith a lull between 1464 and 1469, the issues involved and thefundamental causes remained essentially the same between 1459

The Wars in HistorY

and l47L In short, the wars of 1459-64 and 1469-71 were twostages of the same struggle: the wars of Lancaster and York' On

the other hand the wars of l4B3-87 were separate in cause, and

di{Ierent in issue: they were wars between York and Tudor' The

story and analysis of the wars of the Roses which follows is thus

founded on the interpretation that there were in essence twowars: the first ending in 1471, the second beginning in 1483' Itwill be noted too that recent historians have dated the outbreakof the first of these two wars variously between 1450 and 1460:

there is no longer a consensus concerning 1455. In this study1459 is taken as the beginning of the first wars of the Roses.

while it is certainly the case that the first battle of St Albans in1455 was a major civil disturbance, it was an isolated clash, part

of a long prelude to the sustained conflict which broke out four

years later.

Tnn CounSE oF THE Wens

Prelude to the wars: f450-59

In 1450 England's king was Henry VI, a youns man in his latetwenties.r He was the son of the famous warrior Henry V, afather he had not known for he came to the throne when he wasnine months old. He had no memory of being other than kins.He had been cossetted and nurtured to step into his father'smartial shoes. He had inherited two kinedoms, beinu crownedking of England in 1429 and king of France in 1431. From theage of sixteen in 1437 he had begun to play an active part in theaffairs of the kingdom. By 1439 his minority was at an end. Ithad been a surprisinely harmonious minority. Rifts, conflictsand factional rivalry had, of course, occurred, but the leadingcouncillors and nobles, inspired by their dedication to thememory ol Henry V whom they had served, had been at one intheir determination to hand on to his young heir his inheritancein both kingdoms.

Henry VI was, however, almost the complete opposite of hisfather. Where Henry V had been the paragon of chivalry,Henry VI eschewed the field of battle. ln 1440 when all seemedpropitious for him to lead his subjects to war in defence of hisfather's conquests, he turned instead to the foundation of EtonCollege.2 The war in France was henceforth left to his leadingsubjects. In England he rapidly fell under the domination of an

'Ihe Llourse of the Wars

his 30th birthday, Henry was faced with the greatest politicalcrisis since the reign of Richard II. Following years of indecisionand duplicity, Normandy was lost to France with scarcely ablow given in one of the most ignominious campaigns everconducted by an English army (1449-50). At the height of thecrisis parliamentary anger and popular rebellion shook Henry'sregime to its foundations. His principal adviser, William de laPole, duke of Suflolk was impeached, sent into exile, interceptedand murdered.

The year 1450 provided the opportunity for Richard of York,Henry's greatest subject and heir presumptive (for althoughHenry had married Margaret of Anjou in 1445 he still had nochildren) to bid for political power. York had been excluded inthe previous decade. Removed from the command in Normandy,in 1447 he had been sent off as lieutenant of Ireland. Untaintedby the failure of recent policy he returned to Ensland determinedto establish himself as the king's chief minister. He found,however, that the king had turned to none other than EdmundBeaufort, duke of Somerset, the last and discredited governor ofNormandy. Try as he might, York and his allies could notimpose themselves on the king. In 1452, having spent a periodin voluntary internal exile in his marcher Welsh lordships, Yorkraised an army and sought to force his way into o{fice. AtDartford his army was outfaced by the forces of the court. Yorksubmitted and he was allowed to return once more to self-imposed exile.

After York's defeat at Dartford, Somerset and his friends wereable to tighten their grip on power. In fact there are sisns thatin these years after the fall of Su{Iolk Henry VI himself wasbeginning to play a more decisive role in affairs. He showedgreater vigour in suppressing the popular rebellion of 1450, hebegan to show himself more to his subjects and when in 1452,in answer. to an appeal from a group of dissident Gascons, theveteran earl of Shrewsbury was able to recover Bordeaux andmuch of Gascony (Gascony had been overrun by the French inl45l) he was able to rally considerablc support for his regime.By the summer of 1453 it was beginning to look as thoughHenry VI's reign was set on a new and more steady course.unscrupulous court qc+-$frer l0 years of personal rule, before

z{1 ttx";rxl_,._ .,4 \'"t v.?0'r, I",. , , ,:?/- ., l. ir, .,.


In August 1453 two, possibly connected, events occurredwhich decisively changed the situation. First Henry heard thatShrewsbury had been defeated and killed at Castillon; secondly,a lew days later, he collapsed into a state of what has beenidentified as catatonic schizophrenia: total mental withdrawalfrom the world. For fifteen months or more Henry did not, couldnot or would not communicate with a single living soul (later itwas to be imagined that he was communicating exclusively withGod). This sudden, unexpected, event, for Henry had neverpreviously shown signs of mental instability whatever othershortcomines he may have had, threw the political world intonew turmoil.

After several months of uncertainty, and with no sign ofrecovery, in March 1454 a protectorate was established. Henry,scondition was comparable to childhood and the precedent for aminority was to place the government of the kinedom into thehands of a protector and council. Precedent also determined thatthe protector should be the senior adult male member of theroyal family: in 1454 this was Richard of york. And so incircumstances entirely unpredictable and after four years ofapparent failure, York achieved his ambition and more. york,sposition as protector was strensthened by the recruitment ofpowerful new allies: the Nevilles father and son, who were theearls of Salisbury and Warwick. But the Nevilles had becomeembroiled in a private war in Yorkshire with the earl ofNorthumberland and the price of their support was the protec-tor's backing, given under the guise of royal pacification, insecuring a victory over their rival. Warwick too was in disputewith the duke of Somerset in south Wales. Somerset foundhimself not only dismissed, but also committed to the Tower. Inthe midst of this Queen Marsaret gave birth to a son, Edward.York was no lonser heir presumptive and had rneasurably lesscause in future to claim that he should be high in the king,scouncil.

'fhe process of polarisation which took place in 1454 was onlyhastened by the king's recovery early in 1455. Soon Somersetwas released. If not before, he now found that he had a powerfulally in the person of Queen Marearet whose son,s interests had

The Course of the Wars

to be defended. York and the Nevilles withdrew from court. InMay rival armies met at St Albans. In a brief skirmish whichtook place in the kins's presence, Somerset, the earl of Northum-berland and one of his sons were hacked to death. The king wasescorted back to Westminster with his old advisers. Whetherbecause he had been wounded or because he su{Iered a secondmental collapse, Henry once more became incapacitated and theprotectorate was restored. But a new and deadly element hadnow been introduced. Blood had been shed. What had beenrivalry for place had been transformed into feud. The new dukeof Somerset sought revenge for the death of his father, Edmund;the new earl of Northumberland soueht revense for the death ofhis. The young heirs allied themselves with Margaret of Anjouwho clearly emerged at this point as the new leader of the courtfaction. York was removed from his second protectorate early in1456 although he continued to act as chief minister for severalmonths. But in the autumn of the same year his friends wereremoved from office and replaced by men more inclined to thequeen. The king was by now no more than a fieurehead. Hishealth would seem to have been permanently damaeed. Andalthough there is no evidence of a return to his condition of1453-55, there can be little doubt thar eventually he becamenothine but the pathetic puppet of faction.

These years are perhaps the most obscure in the whole of thefifteenth century. It is possible that before l45B the hotheads,perhaps even the queen herself, were held at bay by a groupunder the duke of Buckineham who still sought, ineffectively, tofind some means of reconciliation. York and his friends were nottotally excluded. In March l45B a erandiose 'Loveday' (ritualreconciliation) was staged, at which the sons of the victims of StAlbans and the victors publicly made reconciliation and agreedterms of restitution. It proved to be an empty charade but theeffort made and the king's own shadowy role in the proceedingssuggest that as yet the point ofno return had not been reached.It would seem that the principals were only too conscious of thepotential dansers and were desperately seekins to avert a revivalof overt conflict which would only be more catastrophic.

That moment came one step nearer in the autumn of 1458. A

22 23


brawl broke out at court from which the earl of Warwick had tofight his way clear. There may even have been an attemptedassassination. He promptly withdrew to Calais of which he wascaptain and where he had the backing of a strong garrison.Immediately following, the chief o{ficers of state were chansedand men more closely associated with the queen took over.3During 1459 the queen, now unequivocally in control, began totake steps to deal with York and the Nevilles once and for all.Plans were laid to condemn the Yorkists for treason at a councilmeeting in the summer and preparations were begun to enforcesuch a decision by arms. The Yorkist lords knowing fully whatwas in store, themselves took up arms. While the Court satheredits strength in the midlands, based at Coventry, the Yorkist lordsplanned to gather at Worcester in September. Warwick cameover from Calais, while Salisbury marched down from northYorkshire to meet York at Ludlow before movinq up to Worcester.Salisbury was intercepted by royal troops at Blore Heath inCheshire, but was able to defeat the army led by Lord Audleyand press on, if somewhat reduced in numbers, to the rendezvous.At Worcester the three lords declared their continuing loyaltyto the king but their determination to rid him of his evil ministers.Pressed by a superior royal army they retreated to Ludlow andthere, before the town, at I-udford drew up the army for battle.But on the night of 12/13 October, knowing that they wereheavily outnumbered and discoverins desertion by key elementsof the Calais garrison which had accompanied Warwick, thelords decamped and fled; York makins his way to Ireland,Warwick and Salisburv to Calais.

The first wars: 1459-71

If one is to pick any moment when open civil war began it wouldbe the campaign of 1459. It came after several years of politicalcleterioration ancl several months of military preparation. It wasintended by both sides to be a decisive test ol strength in whichno mercy was to have been shown to the losers. The battle lineshad been clearly drawn. As yet the objective was still domination


of the court and removal of all rivals. The queen enjoyedoverwhelming numerical support among the English nobilityand gentry. All but a handful of the peerage rallied to her cause.The appeal of loyalty to the king was still strong. York and hisallies were too easily cast in the role of malcontents. But theYorkist lords, though heavily outnumbered, had compensatorymaterial and military strength. They were three of the richestand most powerful magnates. Not only could York tap theresources of his Welsh marcher lordships, but Warwick comman-ded the Calais garrison and Salisbury could draw on the militaryexperience and strength of the far north. Militarily the two sideswere not as ill-matched as a roll call of peers would suggest.

In October 1459 Queen Margaret completed her design ofproscribing her enemies. At a pliant parliament called to meetat Coventry (the parliament of Devils), York and his followerswere found guilty of treason by attainders and their landsforfeited and occupied by royal o{ficers or distributed to loyalsupporters. The Yorkists had no other option but force to reversethese acts. For the time being they were safe in Dublin andCalais. But the Court lost no time in trying to recover Calais.The duke of Somerset was appointed captain and early in 1460began a siege of the town. Its defence was under the directionof Salisbury's brother, William, Lord Fauconberg, an immenselyexperienced veteran of the Hundred Years' War. Warwick andSalisbury were able to slip out of Calais and to sail to Dublin tocoordinate plans with the duke. After their return, in June, theylaunched an invasion of south-eastern England. Marchins viaLondon, where a royal sarrison was left bottled up in the Tower,Warwick and the earl of March (York's eldest son and the futureEdward IV) came up aeainst the king's army at Northampton.There, thanks to the timely switch to the Yorkist side by LordGrey of Ruthin, the royal army was defeated and its leaders -the duke of Buckingham, the earl of Shrewsbury and LordBeaumont - killed, while the king fell into Yorkist hands.Returnins in triumph to London the lords installed themselvesin office and at court and sent out writs summoning a parliamentto Westminster in October, the principal intended business beingthe reversal ofthe attainders passed in 1459.


York himself delayed, or was delayed, in returning to England'When he did land he immediately caused a stir by displayingthe royal banner and marching up to London in the manner ofking. Timing his arrival to coincide with the gathering ofparliament he strode purposefully into Westminster Hall andlaid his hand on the throne. Thus for the first time did Yorkdeclare his dynastic ambition. His act was not met by acclaim.According to one or two reports it even surprised his closestassociates. Doubt has recently been raised about this, but theclear truth seems to have been that not even this parliament,called when the Yorkists were fully in control, would accede tothe deposition of Henry VI.a Ultimately a quite unworkablecompromise was patched up: Henry was to keep the throne forhis lifetime; York was declared his heir in place of his seven-year-old son.

It was one thing to pass such an act; it was quite another toenforce it. Queen Margaret with her son was at large gatherinutroops in the west country, Wales and the north even before theNovember 'Accord' was reached. They now had even greatercause to reverse the decision of Northampton' York and hisfollowers too faced an urgent need to suppress her and to recovercontrol of their estates. Thus after parliament went down, Yorkand Salisbury set out in strength for the north, there to confrontthe queen. They reached Sandal, York's castle near Wakefield,but on the last day of the year were caught foraging. York andhis son the earl of Rutland were killed on the field; Salisburyshortly after. Among the victorious Lancastrian leaders were the

duke of Somerset and the earl of Northumberland. St Albanshad been avenged. The earl of March, now duke of York, in themeantime had set off to Wales to attempt to sain control there.On 2 February 1461 , at Mortimer's Cross, he defeated the earlof Pembroke and secured that front. However, Queen Margaretwas already pushing south with an army whose size and lack ofdiscipline spread terror as it passed. On 17 February, at StAlbans, it met and defeated Warwick who had marched outfrom London to face it. With Henry VI back in her hands thecapital now lay at the queen's mercy. But she failed to presshome her advantage. As she hesitated, she heard that March,


having met with the fleeing Warwick, was now on his way upto challenge her. Faced with this new threat the queen withdrewleaving March to enter London unopposed on 27 February. Fivedays later, declaring that Henry VI had forfeited his rieht to thethrone by failing to honour the November Accord, Edward IVtook possession of the throne. Barely hesitating to raisereinforcements, Edward IV set out once more in pursuit of thequeen's army that had retreated north. Catching up with theLancastrians in southern Yorkshire the decisive ensasementwhich had been threatened since October 1459 finally took placeon the field of Towton. After a long and bloody battle, EdwardIV emerged victorious. Henry VI, Queen Margaret and PrinceEdward, who had been behind the lines in York, escaped toScotland. Edward IV returned in triumph to London to becrowned.

Henry VI's reisn may well have come to an end, but civil warwas not over. Lancastrians held stronsholds in the far north ofEngland and Wales. Their king and his heir were still at large.Edward IV could not feel completely secure on the throne untilall pockets of Lancastrian resistance were crushed and hisLancastrian rivals killed. It was to take him ten years andconsiderable upheaval to achieve both these ends. Relying onScottish and French support Queen Margaret was at first hopefulof an early comeback. Several Lancastrian plots were unearthedin the first years of the reien; disturbances occurred in severalparts of the kingdom; and there were frequent invasion scaresin southern England. In Wales the castle of Harlech wasgarrisoned by Lancastrians until 1468. Far more daneerously,operating from a safe refuge north of the border Lancastrianswere for three years after 146l a constant threat to Northumber-land. The castles of Alnwick, Bamburuh and Dunstanburshbecamc the focal point of a lons-drawn out battle for control.Twice Warwick and his brother John, Lord Montasu, tookthese castles (September 1461, December 1462). Twice theLancastrians retook them (October 1462, March/May 1463). Itwas not until the spring and early summer of 1464 thatLancastrian threats to the far north were finally crushed.Following two victories won by Lord Montaqu at Hedgeley

26 27


Moor and Hexham the Northumbrian castles were for a thirdand final time reduced. During all this time Henry VI and PrinceEdward remained safely out of Edward's clutches. Henry VIseems to have divided his time between Scotland and Northumber-land. Prince Edward was taken to France in 1463. After the finalsuppression of Northumberland Henry VI roamed as an exilein northern England sheltered by loyal servants. In July 1465he was tracked down and captured. Lodged in the Tower, hislife was spared because it would have been both pointless andcounterproductive to have killed him. Killing Henry would onlyhave passed the Lancastrian torch to Prince Edward in France;and such a needless death would have been a propaganda giftto his enemies. Henry thus languished a prisoner in the Tower.

After 1465 Edward could perhaps have begun to look forwardto more secure and relaxed times. However the clouds of warbegan to blow up again from another direction. In May 1464,while ostensibly marching north to pacify Northumberland,Edward IV secretly married Elizabeth Woodville at StonyStratford. The marriage undertaken at a time when Warwickwas in good faith conducting negotiations with France for theking's hand naturally piqued the earl. But he put on a goodface and publicly showed no opposition. The king's marriagewas bound, however, to have wider implications, particularly asthe new queen came from a prolific English family, had beenmarried before and had several Lancastrian connections. Regard-less of the question of etiquette involved in the king's marriaseto a widow of not quite the right birth, it set up politicalrepercussions. Historians have been divided a.s to the extent towhich the Woodvilles, as the queen's relations and friends areconveniently called, were inordinately favoured. They may nothave received excessive grants ol land, but in one respect, bycornerins the upper reaches of the marriage market, they hadan important bearing on future developments.s Moreover thequeen, any queen, was likely to set up a separate and alternativepolitical focal point. It may not have been entirely aeainstEdward's will that a group known afterwards as the NewYorkists, focusing on the queen's father Earl Rivers, and LordHerbert, earl of Pembroke emereed at court to counterbalance


the enormous power and influence of the Nevilles. Whatever theprecise cause, and it may be no more than a working out of aninevitable rift between a king determined to be the master of hisown house and a kingmaker naturally reluctant to see hisprominent position whittled away) relationships between War-wick and his king began to cool and worsen. The turning pointwas almost certainly a difference over the policy to be adoptedtowards France and the Netherlands where the king of Franceand the duke of Burgundy were intense rivals. Warwick hadcome to favour a pro-French line; the king, supported by thequeen (her mother was of the house of Luxembourg in theNetherlands) and her friends, came to prefer a Burgundianalliance. In 1468 Edward completed an agreement for themarriage of his sister Marsaret with Charles the Bold, the newduke of Burgundy. Insult was added to injury by the manner inwhich he allowed the earl to conduct futile negotiations for analternative match while the Burgundian alliance was also beingpursued. Although Warwick still came occasionally to Court, bythe end of l468 his hostility to the queen and her family and hisestrangement from the king were being noticed. Towards theend of 1468 serious Lancastrian plots were uncovered. Therewas, moreover, growing popular disillusion with the newgovernment. In these circumstances the breach between EdwardIV and Warwick burst into open conflict in the summer of 1469.

Over the next two years, 1469-7 1, there was reenacted thesame sequence of events as had occurred in the 1450s. Adisgruntled mighty subject at first tried to force himself backinto influence at Court and then, failing that, sought to deposethe king. The action moved more rapidly and more bewilderinglypartly because the understudies of the 1450s were now theleading players; partly because both principals had been on thestage before; and partly because the alternative king was waitinsin the wings. Warwick laid his plans well. InJuly 1469 he slippedacross to Calais to celebrate the marriage of his elder daughter,Isabel, with the king's twenty-year-old brother, George, duke ofClarence. 'fhis marriage had earlier been vetoed by the king,who nevertheless, by his backing of ambitious Woodville mar-riages, had virtually left the earl no alternative for befitting

28


husbands for his two daushters and heiresses other than membersof the royal family. Clarence, who was to prove himself anambitious but weak, vacillating and untrustworthy man hadclearly been suborned by the earl. The Calais marriase was ineffect a declaration of opposition. At the same time the latest ofa series of northern risings led by 'Robin of Redesdale' revealeditself to be a rising of Warwick's substantial northern afhnityunder the leadership of a member of the Conyers family, stalwartand long-servins retainers of the Nevilles. Their force marchedsouth and having united with Warwick and Clarence cameup aeainst a royal army at Edgecote near Banbury. At thisengasement, largely due to dissension in their ranks, the king'smen were overwhelmed and afterwards Earl Rivers, and theearls of Pembroke and Devon were executed. Three days laterWarwick took the kine prisoner. For two months at the mostWarwick sought to rule in the kine's name) keeping the kinghimself under arrest first in Warwick, then at Middleham innorth Yorkshire. But a Lancastrian risins by Warwick's kinsman,Sir Humphrey Neville, which threatened Warwick as much asthe kine, could only be suppressed if the king were at large.Consequently early in September he was released. Like Yorkbefore him Warwick had discovered that it was impossible torule throush a captive king, especially a king in the prime oflife.

Edward IV seems for the time being neither to have had thestrength nor the inclination to seek retribution against Warwickand his brother. They were welcomed at Court, although theking began to take steps to guard against a repetition. When sixmonths later Warwick and Clarence rose aoain, Edward IV wasready to take swift and decisive action. The earl and duke tookadvantase of a feud in Lincolnshire to foster a new risine inMarch 1470. But the king moved promptly and dispersed therebel force at the ironically named Losecoat Field near Stamford.No sooner had this been accomplished than he heard news thatWarwick was raising north Yorkshire and Clarence the westcountry in a plan to put Clarence himself on the throne. Pressinenorth, and in strensth, Edward secured Yorkshire before turningsouth in pursuit of Warwick and Clarence who fled to Devon


and took ship at Dartmouth for France. Warwick was totallydiscredited.

There now followed the most dramatic volte-face in the wholehistory of these wars. In France Warwick was induced on 22July to perform a solemn and public reconciliation with QueenMarsaret which was sealed by a marriage the following monthbetween Warwick's younger daughter Anne and Prince Edward.Thus once more Warwick became a loyal servant of the houseof Lancaster, committed to the restoration of Henry VI. No timewas lost mounting, with French help, an invasion of England'Edward IV took full precautions for coastal defence, but Warwickoutmanoeuvred him by calling upon his northern retainers torise once more. In August Edward had no choice but to marchnorth to crush this, the third rebellion of northerners againsthim in twelve months. He knew all too well how dangerous sucha movement could be if left unchecked. The rebellion meltedaway in front of him and the leaders submitted. But they haddone their work.6 While Edward was still in Yorkshire, Warwicklanded in the west country. Learning that many English nobleshad declared for Warwick in the name of Henry VI anddiscovering that Warwick's brother Montagu had also sone over,Edward, with only his household and a remnant of loyalnoblemen with him, realised that he had been outmanoeuvredand isolated. Now himself taking flight he found ships at KingsLynn and escaped to the Netherlands and the protection of hisbrother-in-law Charles, duke of Burgundy.

Thus on 3 October 1470 Henry VI was restored to the throne,the Readeption as contemporary legal documents put it. Abroken 50-year-old, he could only have been a caretaker monarchuntil his son, by all accounts a young man of his grandfather'schivalric mettle, was ready to take his place. 'fhe return of thequeen and the prince was, however, fatefully delayed both bythe queen's excessive caution and, latterly, adverse winds. Whenthe Lancastrian party did finally land in England in April it wastoo late. The wheel of fortune had turned once more. For EdwardIV, aided by Burgundy, who was faced by a Franco-Lancastrianalliance, had already returned to recover his kingdom.

Edward IV's recovery o{'the throne in March-May 1477 was


a remarkable feat of arms, achieved, as his own official andchivalrically inspired account willingly admitted, against all theodds. He landed at Ravenspur in Holderness accompanied byonly a few men - his brother Richard, duke of Gloucester,Anthony Woodville, the new Earl Rivers and William, LordHastines included. Claiming, as Henry IV had before him, thathe was returnins solely to recover his duchy, he was admittedreluctantly to the city of York. He moved west to his lordship ofWakefield where he had hoped to raise troops but found littleenthusiasm. Yet he was able to leave Yorkshire unmolestedpartly because of the studied neutrality of Henry Percy, earl ofNorthumberland, whom a year earlier he had restored, andpartly because of the inability of Lord Montagu to raise troopsto resist him. In the midlands he received much needed supportfrom followers of Lord Hastings. Pressing on towards Coventryhe sought an engagement with the earl of Warwick. The decisivemoment occurred when his brother George, duke of Clarence,at the head of a force raised in the south-west threw in his lotwith Edward. The Yorkists, unable to force Warwick into battle,then marched up to London which opened its gates. Warwickhad followed and finally the two armies came to blows in thickfog at Barnet on Easter Sunday, l4 April. In a more than usuallyconfused battle Edward was victorious: Warwick and Montagulay dead on the field.

There was, however, no time for the victor to rest for Edwardreceived news of the landing at Weymouth of Queen Margaret,Prince Edward and an army. The Lancastrians, having heardof Warwick's defeat, sought to reach the comparative safety ofWales. But Edward, after a forced march, intercepted them atTewkesbury before they could cross the Severn. And there on 4May the Lancastrians too were defeated, the duke of Somerset,the earl of Devon and, most significantly, Prince Edward beingkilled either in the field or shortly afterwards. Secondary risingsin the north and Kent having been suppressed, Edward was ableto return in triumph to London on 2l May. On the self samenight Henry VI was put to death, almost certainly on the ordersof Edward IV himself. Edward IV had recovered his throne


through a combination of his own boldness and decisiveness, his

enemies' indecision and a generous slice of luck.The first wars ended on the night that Henry VI was murdered.

Since the moment Richard of York publicly advanced his claimto the throne in the autumn of 1460 there had been trvo rivaldynasties claiming to rule England. There had been open warfare

from 1459 to 1464, if only sporadically after Towton in March1461. It had resurfaced again in 1469. Throughout the first reignof Edward IV, while Prince Edward remained at large in France,the potential of renewed dynastic conflict, realised in 1470, hadalways existed. Only after his death, and in its wake, that of theunfortunate Henry VI, was this threat removed. It took theYorkists ten and a half years to destroy the Lancastrian dynasty.

The second wars: 1483-87

After l47l Edward IV was secure on the throne. By all reasonableprediction the Wars of the Roses, the wars between Lancasterand York, should have been over. Yet they were not. In 1483,on the death of Edward IV, England was plunged once moreinto turmoil. There had been few indications that this would bethe case. Admittedly it had taken Edward IV two more yearsfully to suppress all opposition. In 1473 there were landings inboth the south-west and north-east by die-hard Lancastrians, butthereafter there were no further signs of Lancastrian resistance or

rebellion. Nor is this surprising. After the death of the childlessPrince Edward, the only remaining claimants to the Lancastrian

title were either distant geographically, in the person of KingJohn II of Portugal, or feeble dynastically (through the femaleBeaufort line) , in the person of Henry Tudor, earl of Richmond.Only a tiny rump of die-hards, including the earl of Oxford,Lord Cli{Iord and the claimant to the earldom of Devon besidesHenry Tudor's uncle Jasper, earl of Pembroke, clung to hisremote chance of succession. Mainstream opinion concludedthat rightly or wrongly, the Yorkist dynasty was established.Many old Lancastrians who had opted for exile with QueenMarsaret or stood out in rebellion in the 1460s now returned to

32 .).)

The Wars of the Roscs

England and royal service, prominent among them being JohnMorton, who became bishop of Ely, Sir John Fortescue, theeminent lawyer and Sir Richard Tunstall. Edward IV did nottotally dismiss the threat of Tudor as a pretender in exile inBrittany. From time to time, in a somewhat desultory manner,he soueht to persuade the duke of Brittany to hand him over.By 1482, moreover, there were siens that, throush the goodoffices ofhis mother, Margaret Beaufort, now married to Thomas,Lord Stanley, Richmond was ready to reconcile himself with theYorkist regime.T

After l47l Edward IV ruled with firmness and aurhority, ifnot high-handedly. Until 1475 he was preoccupied with forminga triple alliance with Brittany and Burgundy in order to mountan invasion of France. It is not clear whether he was inspired toemulate the feats of Henry V or more praematically motivatedby a desire to unite a divided realm asainst a common foe: tomake outward war to secure inward peace. After the invasionended inuloriously but profitably at Picquieny where Louis XIbought Edward ofi the kins seems to have had no furtherambition save to enjoy his state. 'I'he only major event to rufflethe calm was the arrest, trial and death of the incorrisible dukeof Clarence in 1477-78. Clarence may well not have been guiltyof treason, but since 1470 he had never asain been fully trustedby his brother and by his folly broueht his judicial murder uponhimself. From l47B the king appeared to be presidins over aharmonious Court and country. In his last years a moderatelysuccessful war with Scotland was o{rset by a debacle in foreienpolicy which left him isolated and without the French pensionpaid since 1475. When he died, after a short illness ar the earlyage of 42, the talking point was whether England would bedrawn once more into a continental war.

Within three monrhs of Edward IV's death, the kingdom hadonce more been thrown into confusion. The applecart was upsetnot by an exiled pretender, but by a member of the kins,s ownfamily - Richard, duke of Gloucester. Gloucester was a man whohad won universal respect for his probity and loyalty to hisbrother, as well as his piety, courage and chivalric zeal. Hisqualities stood out in stark contrast to his fickle and untrust-


worthy brother of Clarence. Nor was his high reputation withoutloundation. Having assumed the mantle of the earl of Warwickin northern England (he married his younger daughter Anne,widowed by the death of Prince Edward) he had with consider-able skill both secured the loyalty of the region to the regimeand brought a measure of good sovernment and local concordwhich had not been known for two decades. The last personanyone expected to be a threat to the peaceful succession of thetwelve-year-old Edward V was his paternal uncle Richard'

Events on Edward IV's death were to show that the harmonywithin the Yorkist court was more apparent than real.Resentments and feuds ran beneath the surface which only theking's imposing presence had been able to contain. Lord Hastingsand the queen's son by her first marriage, Thomas Grey, marquisof Dorset were rivals. The queen herself seems to have resentedGloucester. A tense atmosphere as the major politiciansmanoeuvred for initial advantage during the new king's minoritywas quickly created. The queen sought to establish herself asregent. This was promptly stopped by the majority of the councilwhich preferred to follow constitutional precedent and to acceptRichard of Gloucester as protector. His olfice of protector wouldonly have lasted until the king was crowned; as the king wastwelve this could take place immediately. Thereafter the dukecould have expected to preside over the council until the king,like Henry VI, could begin to exercise his own authority whenhe reached his sixtcenth birthday in November 1487. Whilecoming up to London three weeks after Edward IV's death,however, and before a council could formally agree to his role,the duke took matters into his own hands. At Stony Stratford atdawn on 30 April, with the assistance of a new-found ally, Henry,duke of Buckingham, he arrested Earl Rivers, Lord RichardGrey, the queen's younger son by her first marriage, and'fhomasVaughan, the chamberlain of the new king's household, andtook forcible possession of the youns king's person. By this coupd'itat Glotcester secured the protectorate, but he also made animplacable enemy out of Earl Rivers and set himself on a course,which, if not already determined, led inexorably to taking thethrone for himself.

3+ 35


First reactions to this coup revealed that the queen immediatelyfeared that the lives of herself and her younser son were indanser, for she hurriedly retreated to sanctuary in westminsterAbbey' Gloucester was duly made protector and set in motionthe arrangements for the coronation and the calling of the newking's first parliament. Neither event was to take place. In afrantic two weeks in the middle ofJune, Gloucester seized andexecuted without trial william, Lord Hastines, who had untilthat moment publicly supported him; arrested Lord Stanley andthe two most influential clerical councillors,John Morton, bishopof Ely and Thomas Rotherham, archbishop of york; browbeatthe queen mother to surrender herself and her younger son fromsanctuary; cancelled the parliament; and on 22 June formallyclaimed the throne for himself on the grounds of the bastardy ofEdward v and his brother. There was no resistance. 'Elected'by a body of London citizens and would-be members ofparliament who had already come up to Westminster, hetook the throne on 26 June. On 6 July, in solemn state, he wascrowned.

ft was, with the element of surprise on his side, comparativelyeasy for Richard III to take the throne. It was more difficult tohold. By his act he had split the yorkist establishment in two.He had powerful and committed support in the north (whichincluded the northern earls of Northumberland and westmor-land) and the duke of Buckingham on his side. He won overJohn, Lord Howard (by eranring him his claim to the duchy ofNorfolk), his nephewJohn de la pole, earl of Lincoln and heirto the duchy of Sufrolk and several lesser yorkist peers. His baseof support was not too narrow. But asainst him were ransed allthose who had leant towards the woodvilles and most of EdwardIV's exhousehold men. Althoush taken off guard in June, thesemen regrouped and in late september raised most of the southerncounties with the objective of resroring Edward v. The risinsprobably sealed the deposed kins's fate, for it quickly becameclear to the rebels that he and his brother were dead. In theirplace they turned to the exiled Henry Tudor who overnishtfound his prospects transformed. Henry sailed to England; but'arrived to find the rising crushed and turned back to Brittany.


Henry, duke of Buckingham, in an almost inexplicable volte-face, threw in his lot with the rebels, was quickly captured andsummarily executed. He had been liberally rewarded by RichardIII and could hardly complain that he had been cold-shouldered.He might simply have misjudged the situation and believed hewas joining the winning side. He might even have imagined thathe had an opportunity to make himself king, for he too had aclaim through his great grandmother, the daughter of EdwardIII's youngest son, Thomas of Woodstock. Buckingham's earlydefection was a shattering blow to Richard's confidence, probablymore disheartening than the risings of disgruntled members ofhis brother's disbanded household and friends of the Woodvilleswhich he may well have half-expected.

After October l4B3 Richard had fewer supporters on whomhe could rely. Lord Stanley, because of his wife's provencomplicity in the risings of the autumn of 1483, and despite hispublicly displayed loyalty during the crisis, could not be fullytrusted. The king fell back more overtly on the support of histrusted ducal following, predominantly northern in character,many of whom were given rewards and key offices in the dissidentsouth. This no doubt solved a short-term problem of security,but the evident unpopularity of his 'plantation' only exacerbatedhis longer-term standing. A steady trickle of defections continuedto his enemies abroad. Henry Tudor presented himself as arallying point for old Yorkists by his solemn oath to marryEdward IV's eldest surviving child, Princess Elizabeth and rulejointly with her (the second part he did not fulfil)' Richard III'smorale was further damaged by the death of his only son andnewly created Prince of Wales in the spring of 1484. At the sametime he had to take the unusual step of issuing public statementsreiterating his title to the throne and ordering the local authoritiesto quash false rumours about it. Richard wisely tried to rebuildhis bridges with the queen dowager, Elizabeth Woodville, andwon a minor victory when she agreed finally to leave sanctuaryand, with her daughters, join the Court. Early in 1485, however,after the death of his queen, rumours quickly spread that hepoisoned her. A growing desperation is indicated by his plan tomaffy Elizabeth of York himself, a scheme which would no

36 5l


doubt have scotched Henry Tudor. But this foundered on therock of the intransisence of his principal councillors, especiallyCatesby and Ratcli{Ie, who well knew that such a marriagewould have been accompanied by a general Woodville restorationand a loss of their own privileged position and hold on forfeitedlands. The king was forced to take the unprecedented andhumiliating step of publicly announcing at the Guildhall inLondon that there was no truth in the rumour that he wasintending to marry his niece.

Richard's problems might have been eased if a plot to seizeRichmond in Brittany had succeeded. But Richmond escaped toFrance in Ausust l4B4 where he found his plans for oruanisingan invasion of England given full support. By the summer ofl485 active preparations for war were underway. Early in August,with 3,000 French troops, Richmond set sail. Landing at MilfordHaven on 7 August, he took a roundabout route through Walesand, gathering support as he marched, finally on 22 Augustcame face to face with the king near Market Bosworth inLeicestershire. 'Ihe king himself might well have welcomed theopportunity to deal a final blow to the alliance of excludedYorkists and die-hard Lancastrians who opposed him. A decisivevictory could well have established him securely on the throneand enabled him to make a fresh start. What precisely decidedthe battle in Richmond's favour is not entirely clear. He wasoutnumbered on the field, but had the support of Lord Stanleyand his brother William at the critical moment. Yet the kingwas anticipating this treachery. It is possible that Henry Percy,earl of Northumberland, who commanded one unit of the royalarmy, refused to engage; or alternatively the forces might havebeen so arrayed that it was impossible for him to join the fray.In the event an impetuous charge by Richard at his rival'sstandard in the hope of deciding the issue quickly gave theopportunity for his enemies to close in for the kill. When thebattle was over Henry 'fudor had emerged the improbable victorand the wearer of the crown.

As with his predecessors, it took Henry VII a lone time tosecure his throne. Although he presented himself as the unifieiand healer of old wounds, there were many who refused to accept


the change of regime. Ricardian sympathy was strons in thenorth. There was a rising in the spring of 1486, which quicklyfizzled out, but several of those involved preferred to take to theCumbrian fells before submitting in the autumn. A more seriouschallenge came in 1487 behind the name of the imposter LambertSimnel who claimed to be Edward, earl of Warwick, the son ofGeorge, duke of Clarence, held by the kins in the Tower. Thisrising which again received substantial support in north-eastEngland, was crushed on the field of Stoke, near Newark inNottinghamshire. More trouble occurred in l4B9 in the north,when the earl of Northumberland was killed in a tax riot, partlyit was said because he was blamed for betraying Richard III.Three years later another imposter emerged, Perkin Warbeck,who claimed to be the youneer of the two princes who haddisappeared in 1483. Supported by Margaret, duchess of Bur-gundy, and exploited by the Scots the would-be Richard IVremained on the scene, a thorn in Henry VII's side, for severalyears. Even after Warbeck's capture and death, along with theunfortunate earl of Warwick in 1499, Henry faced intrigue andplots in the name of the house of York which focused on theremaining descendants of Edward IV, members of the de la Polefamily in exile. It is easy for historians to dismiss these impostersand intrigues as trivial, but Henry VII himself did not. He knewonly too well how a twist of fortune could turn an apparentlyhopeless cause into a triumphal victory. Moreover the death ofhis queen and his first and third sons in quick succession in1501-3, leaving only an eleven-year-old boy to carry the hopesof his dynasty, intensified his sense of insecurity. 'fhe king'spropaganda had as much immediacy and pertinence towardsthe end of his reign as at the beginning.

Ultimately it was to become apparent, perhaps not until afterthe unchallenged succession of Henry VIII in I509, that Henry VIIhad indeed succeeded in restoring dynastic stability andeven monarchical authority. That indefinable quality of generalcredibility and natural acceptance as the unquestioned resime *achieved by Henry V after Agincourt and by Edward IV afterTewkesbury - came slowly to the Tudors. In retrospect, however,the battle of Stoke came to be seen as a decisive confirmation of

39


the result of Bosworth. The Wars of the Roses had for allpractical purposes come to an end then.

Summary: the character of the wars

The events we have recounted had three separate but overlappingcharacteristics: that of dynastic struggle; that of factional conflictbetween 'ins' and 'outs'; and that of a series of private vendettas.The term 'Wars of the Roses' is explicitly dynastic. Interpreteddynastically there were but two wars: Lancaster against Yorkand York against Tudor. In an important sense the second wasalso a war within the house of York between Richard ofGloucester and his heirs, real and feigned, on the one hand andEdward IV's heirs, ultimately Elizabeth of York, on the other.As the champion of the rights of Elizabeth of York, Henry VIIwas an adopted Yorkist. The support he received fromexhousehold men of Edward IV and Edward V was in practicefar more important in his campaign to win and to hold the thronethan his die-hard Lancastrian following. This characteristic ofHenry VII's political position was well understood by theCrowland continuator who wrote in l486 that 'the tusks of theboar had been blunted and the red rose, the aaenger of the uthite,shines upon us'(my italics). For this well-placed writer it wasnot a question of the red rose overcoming the white: on thecontrary the red took common cause with the white against theboar (Richard III). One cannot go to the extent of suggestingthat these second wars were fought merely between York andYork: Henry VII was nobody's tool. Thus they were warsbetween Yo

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