The Wars of the Roses

Michael Hicks

• Publisher: Yale University Press
• Year: 2010
• ISBN:
  9780300170092
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: British History
• Index: History

A new assessment of the battle for the English throne: "All readers interested in late medieval history will appreciate this" ( Library Journal ). The Wars of the Roses (1455–85) were a major turning point in English history. But the underlying causes for the successive upheavals have been hotly contested by historians ever since. In this original and stimulating new synthesis, distinguished historian Michael Hicks examines the difficult economic, military, and financial crises and explains, for the first time, the real reasons why the conflicts between the House of Lancaster and the House of York began, why they kept recurring, and why, eventually, they ceased. Alongside fresh assessments of key personalities, Hicks sheds new light on the significance of the involvement of the people in politics, the intervention of foreign powers in English affairs, and a fifteenth-century credit crunch. Combining a meticulous dissection of competing dynamics with a clear account of the course of events, this is a definitive and indispensable history of a compelling, complex period.

PART I

UNDERSTANDING THE WARS OF THE ROSES

CHAPTER 1

WHAT WERE THE WARS OF THE ROSES?

This book explains the civil wars that beset England roughly between 1450 and 1509, known as the Wars of the Roses. The Wars of the Roses are actually the longest period of civil war in England's post-conquest history. They are much longer and also much more complex than either the Anarchy of King Stephen's reign (1135–54) or the English Civil War (1642–51) that are the principal parallels in English history.

There is a great deal to explain, for never before and never again after the Wars of the Roses was the government of England to be so insecure. There were three regional revolts, in 1450, 1489 and 1497; a host of private feuds, murders, ambushes, skirmishes and sieges; thirteen full-scale battles, including four in 1461, 1471, 1485 and 1487 that were decisive; at least ten coups d'état and attempted coups; fifteen invasions, including the four in 1460, 1470, 1471 and 1485 that succeeded; five usurpations, in 1461, 1470, 1471, 1483 and 1485; five kings – Henry VI, Edward IV, Edward V, Richard III and Henry VII – the first two of whom actually reigned twice; seven reigns; and five changes of dynasty, in 1461, 1470, 1471, 1483 and 1485.

Yet this was not a ‘frenetic and purposeless’ collection of events, as Professor Carpenter dubbed it.¹ The next section groups these events in order and makes some sense of them. Further reference is available in the Chronological Table of Events and the family trees, or List of Pedigrees.

THE COURSE OF THE WARS OF THE ROSES

The Wars commenced in the reign of King Henry VI (1422–61), the third of three kings of the House of Lancaster since 1399. His father Henry V (1413–22) was designated as successor to Charles VI of France (1380–1422), and so Henry VI was also the only king of England really to have reigned also as king of France. In 1445 Henry VI married Margaret of Anjou, a French princess, daughter of René I of Naples, Duke of Anjou. It was during Henry VI's reign, in 1449–53, that the English lost the Hundred Years War and all their French territories except Calais. These defeats contributed to the series of domestic disturbances, beginning with the Crisis of 1450 and culminating in the First War in 1459. The Crisis began with the impeachment in January 1450 and murder of William, Duke of Suffolk, the king's principal adviser, the murder of Bishops Aiscough and Moleyns, and Jack Cade's Rebellion in Kent and Sussex in May. It ended with the emergence in the autumn of Richard, Duke of York, as principal critic of the regime, rival of the king's favourite Edmund Beaufort, Duke of Somerset, and leader of a programme of reform that he repeatedly sought to force on the king throughout the 1450s. Although rebuffed in 1450, York tried unsuccessfully to seize power in 1452 (the Dartford episode). After Henry VI lapsed into madness in August 1453, York became Lord Protector and figurehead of the regime (York's First Protectorate, 1454–5), but was superseded on Henry's recovery early in 1455. With his Neville allies the Earls of Salisbury and Warwick, York attacked the royal court at the First Battle of St Albans (22 May 1455), resumed control of the government, and was briefly Protector again until relieved of office early in 1456. A major attempt at reconciliation was made in March 1458, the Loveday at St Paul's, but failed. Instead York and the Nevilles tried to seize power again in 1459, thus instigating the First War (1459–61).

The First War began when Salisbury fought the royalist Lord Audley at Blore Heath in Staffordshire (23 September 1459). Forced on the defensive by Henry VI at Ludford in Shropshire (13 October), York fled to Ireland, Salisbury and Warwick to Calais. Although condemned as traitors by Parliament, Warwick and Salisbury invaded Kent in June 1460, defeated and captured the king at the Battle of Northampton (10 July) and York laid claim to the throne. Even his own supporters objected to him succeeding at once. The Accord kept Henry VI as king, but substituted York as his heir in place of Prince Edward of Lancaster and also gave him control of the government. This settlement was unacceptable to many, especially Henry VI's queen Margaret of Anjou. York was obliged to go northwards to enforce his rule, but was defeated and killed, along with Salisbury, at the Battle of Wakefield (30 December 1460). Queen Margaret and her troops marched southwards, defeated Warwick at the Second Battle of St Albans (17 February 1461), but failed to take London. Meanwhile, York's son Edward had defeated the Welsh Lancastrians at Mortimer's Cross (2–3 February), met up with Warwick, proclaimed himself King Edward IV (4 March), and annihilated the Lancastrian army at the Battle of Towton near York (29 March). The Lancastrian King Henry VI had lost his throne and was replaced by the Yorkist King Edward IV (1461–83).

King Edward in turn reigned for the rest of the decade (his First Reign, 1461–70) before conflict resumed. The second phase or Second War (1469–71), resulted from a rift within the Yorkist regime that made his former ally Warwick the Kingmaker into his principal foe. Edward's ill-advised marriage to the widow Elizabeth Grey (née Wydeville) was a root cause. Along with his son-in-law George, Duke of Clarence (d. 1478), Warwick rebelled in 1469, defeated and eliminated Edward's new favourites at Edgecote (24 July 1469), imprisoned the king and took control of the government. When this broke down in the autumn of 1469, Edward came to terms with Warwick and Clarence, who early in 1470 raised a rebellion in Lincolnshire, this time to make Clarence king. Following the defeat of the Lincolnshiremen at Empingham (Losecote Field, 12 March 1470), Warwick and Clarence fled to France, where they agreed with Queen Margaret of Anjou to restore Henry VI as king. Warwick's other, younger daughter Anne was married to Henry VI's heir Prince Edward. Clarence now became the next heir. The combined invasion was entirely successful: Edward IV fled in September 1470 to the Low Countries and Henry VI reigned again for six months from 6 October (his Readeption). Edward was backed by his brother-in-law Charles, Duke of Burgundy, and invaded England on 14 March 1471. Landing first in Yorkshire and proceeding southwards, Edward took London and defeated first Warwick at the Battle of Barnet (14 April) and the Lancastrians at the Battle of Tewkesbury (4 May). Henry VI, his son Edward and Warwick all perished; only Henry's half-brother Jasper Tudor, Earl of Pembroke, and nephew Henry Tudor escaped abroad.

Edward IV's Second Reign (1471–83) was much more successful. Following the natural death twelve years later of Edward IV in 1483 and the automatic accession of his young son Edward V (1483), the third phase of the conflict (The Third War, from 1483) resulted from the self-conscious decision of the young king's uncle, Richard, Duke of Gloucester, to take the throne as King Richard III (1483–5). First, Gloucester ousted the queen's family (the Wydevilles) and then Edward IV's most trusted retainer William, Lord Hastings. Once king, however, Richard found he had numerous enemies determined to rid themselves of him. Although able to defeat a first rebellion in autumn 1483 (Buckingham's Rebellion), Buckingham himself being executed, Richard was confronted by a large body of Yorkist exiles first in the duchy of Brittany and then in the kingdom of France who backed Henry Tudor. A largely French and Scottish army invaded England, defeated Richard at Bosworth (22 August), and made Henry Tudor into Henry VII (1485–1509), the first Tudor king. He married Edward IV's eldest daughter Elizabeth of York in 1486 and fathered the Tudor dynasty.

Yet this was not the end. A stream of Yorkist claimants continued to threaten the new dynasty in the 1480s, 1490s and even perhaps until 1525, the date of the death of the last serious contender, Richard de la Pole. As late as 1541, Henry VIII imagined Clarence's daughter Margaret, Countess of Salisbury, to be a threat to his throne: like his wives, she too was executed.

Clearly 1485 was not the terminus of the conflict, as Tudor propagandists claimed at once and repeatedly. It is arguable precisely when the Wars can be said to have finally petered out.

THE CASE FOR THE WARS OF THE ROSES

This book, therefore, discusses at least three Wars that were fought over different issues by an evolving cast list. Most of those who fought in the first two Wars had died by 1485. They were thus unaware that they were part of something called the Wars of the Roses. They had no idea how long into the future the dissension was to last until it had actually ceased. It was not even obvious when it had ceased. Not until 1485 was it realized that the Wars were a distinct period in history that had commenced, continued and now – it was hoped – had passed.² It was much later, in 1829, that Sir Walter Scott invented the collective title. In the process he lumped together all the civil strife that characterized the second half of the fifteenth century and attributed it to the dynastic rivalry of Lancaster and York.³

Looking back over half a millennium, it is convenient for us today to view the age as a whole and to explain it through that single acquisitive motive – the ambition to be king – of the principal participants. This perception dates back to Polydore Vergil, the official historian of Henry VII.⁴

However, the Wars had begun very differently in 1450, as a call for reform that only became dynastic in 1460 and that appeared to be over in 1461. William Caxton, England's first printer, typified a whole series of historians who ended their chronicles with Edward's accession in 1461 and looked ahead to the permanent return of peace. They believed that 1461 signalled not merely the end of the first phase or a pause in ongoing strife, but the end of civil war altogether. The First War would be the only War. At the end of his Chronicles Caxton was to pray to God ‘to save & keep him [Edward IV]’, to enable him to reign in accordance with God's will to the benefit of all his subjects, and to campaign against the Turks and heathen men.⁵ Caxton was no prophet. No crusade happened and Edward was to be supplanted by Henry VI. Under the year 1470 the Second Anonymous Crowland Continuator (henceforth Crowland), a senior civil servant and the best historian of the time, wrote that:

You might have come across innumerable folk to whom the restoration of the pious King Henry was a miracle and the transformation the work of the right hand of the All Highest; but [he goes on] how incomprehensible are the judgements of God, how unfathomable his ways: for it is well-known that less than six months later no-one dared admit to having been in his counsels.⁶

They, too, were mistaken. Crowland was amongst those who rejoiced when Edward IV returned victorious in 1471. Following the king's death in 1483, he looked forward hopefully to the reign of Edward V and had high expectations of Richard, Duke of Gloucester, as Lord Protector. Once Richard had apparently triumphed, in the spring of 1484, even his most bitter rival Elizabeth Wydeville, queen-dowager of Edward IV and queen mother to Edward V, felt obliged to make her peace with him. Again, in 1485, Crowland applauded Henry VII's decisive victory that had brought the Wars to an end.⁷

In 1461, therefore, and again in 1470, 1471, 1484 and 1485, most people surely believed that the conflict was over. Two chroniclers of the 1470s who looked back across thirty years saw the whole cycle in terms of reform, not of dynastic rivalry.⁸ Nobody before 1483 could have predicted the eventual result nor could they have viewed it as a whole in the way that the Tudors were to do and their successors have done.

Yet it is not wholly anachronistic or unhistorical to talk of the Wars of the Roses or to identify Bosworth as a decisive moment. When Crowland sat down in November 1485 to continue an existing chronicle from 1470 to his own day, he chose to start in 1459 ‘so that it might be clear from the beginning how the kingdom of England was agitated by many warlike incursions before the calamitous incursion of the northerners’ of Queen Margaret of Anjou in 1461. Already Crowland believed that the Battle of Bosworth had ended the civil wars of the fifteenth century and had ushered in an era of hope and peace. Bosworth was the decisive victory by Henry Tudor over Richard III. Bosworth was the end of the Wars that Crowland had lived through: ‘and so ends the history’, he wrote less than three months after the battle, in November 1485. ‘Out of this warfare came peace for the whole kingdom.’ The new king, he reports, ‘had shown clemency to all’ and thus ‘began to receive praise from everyone [including himself] as though he was an angel sent from heaven through whom God deigned to visit his people and to free them from the evils which had hitherto afflicted them beyond measure’.⁹ He did not notice the irony that he had written much the same of Henry VI in 1470!

Of course, it was not quite the end. There was to be another full-scale battle in 1487, further insurrections throughout the 1490s, and the last hope of the White Rose (Richard de la Pole) survived until 1525. Yet such was Crowland's perception and it was shared by Vergil and a host of other Tudor writers culminating with Shakespeare, who devoted eight plays to the history of the Wars of the Roses, which he too saw as a unity, an assessment which still shapes our views today.

Tudor historians, moreover, had an explanation for the whole sequence of Wars. They illustrate the workings of divine providence: Bosworth was God's solution to the deposition of Richard II (the Revolution of 1399). That explanation no longer works today, in an age where even most Christians no longer believe that God shapes events or intervenes in our world. Once stripped of God's underlying purpose, which gave them meaning, the plethora of events, of characters who change their names and their allegiances, of victories and overthrows, does appear both ‘frenetic and purposeless’.¹⁰ The Wars become quite inexplicable or, alternatively, explicable only in terms of the basest of human motives, the clash of blatant and ruthless ambitions. Hence our difficulties in grasping the whole conflict, setting it all in order, or explaining it. Yet once it is recognized that each War was actually different, that the causes of each were distinct, and that most of the participants changed from War to War, as outlined above, then every conflict becomes more manageable and its causes, course of events and consequences are easier to understand. By separating out the different causes and indeed the different principal characters, each War makes sense on its own terms. Great strides have been made here by modern historians in the last fifty years. Moreover, it becomes apparent th...